Standing Together, Being Seen and Unseen

 Last week I had the privilege of flying to Wellington to attend the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers (ANZASW) Conference. This year's theme was Standing Together, a simple phrase carrying a surprisingly powerful message in a world that is simultaneously becoming more diverse and more individualistic.

Like any worthwhile adventure, the trip had its moments.

One evening I headed out for dinner with my fellow ANZASW Board members. The venue had supposedly been confirmed as wheelchair accessible. On arrival, however, we discovered that "accessible" apparently meant "there are only one or two steps."

The restaurant manager helpfully informed me that there was a side entrance I could use.

The side entrance also had a step.

Fortunately, a wooden cutting board appeared and was promptly repurposed into a makeshift ramp. Problem solved.

I remember sitting there quietly amazed that someone genuinely thought one or two steps qualified as wheelchair friendly. It was a reminder that accessibility is often not about grand policy statements or expensive modifications. Sometimes it is simply about understanding what a barrier actually is.

Thankfully, the rest of the trip was much smoother.

The Wellington Quarter Hotel was excellent. The accessible room featured a large shower area, a complimentary shower chair, and, perhaps best of all, it was located on the sixth floor rather than hidden away on the ground floor. The view looked out over the surrounding hills, making it a genuinely pleasant place to return to after a full day of conference sessions.

The conference itself offered some fantastic networking opportunities. I came away with direct contact details for a couple of university professors in attendance, opening doors for future conversations and collaborations. One of the great strengths of conferences is that you often arrive expecting to learn and leave having connected with people you never expected to meet.

Yet when I reflect on the week, what stays with me most is not the networking, the accommodation, or even the accessibility mishaps.

What stays with me is an idea.

The idea of being seen and unseen at the same time.

That thought crystallised as I listened to Eugene Ryder KSM speak. Eugene's life story is extraordinary. As a child, he experienced severe abuse in state care. He spent time on the streets, became involved with Black Power, offended as a young man, and served time in prison before he was old enough to vote. Yet he later returned to education as an adult, gained a social work degree, became a respected community advocate, worked alongside the Abuse in Care Royal Commission, and was eventually awarded the King's Service Medal for his service supporting survivors and marginalised communities. Today he continues to advocate for those whose voices are often overlooked. 

As I listened to Eugene speak, I found myself unexpectedly overwhelmed.

There are conference presentations that are informative.

Then some presentations reach through your professional armour and punch you squarely in the soul.

This was one of those.

I will freely admit that I became a little teary-eyed listening to his kōrero. In truth, part of me wanted nothing more than to disappear somewhere quiet, regroup, and sort through the emotional cyclone that had just smacked me in the face like a wet fish sundae.

Unfortunately, that wasn't really an option.

I was sitting right up the front for Eugene's presentation.

A tactical withdrawal would have been immediately noticeable.

On the plus side, I did get a hug from Eugene afterwards, so I'd say that balanced things out rather nicely.

One comment Eugene made particularly resonated with me. He spoke about walking a "thin line" between different worlds, never fitting neatly into one camp or another. Being seen as belonging to one group while simultaneously never fully belonging there at all.

Listening to him, I realised that many of us carry our own version of that experience.

For me, that experience is disability.

I have spent more than fifteen years working professionally across disability, trauma, teaching, customer service, and quality management. Alongside that sits nearly half a century of lived experience as a disabled person.

For a long time, I viewed those as separate things. One was my professional life and the other was simply my personal experience.

Over time I have come to realise that they are inseparable.

My disability is not something I work around in practice.

It is one of the tools I bring to it.

Throughout my career I have found that my disability has often helped me connect with people in ways that another practitioner might struggle to. Clients who may have been guarded around an average male practitioner were often willing to engage with me. Sometimes they saw me as less threatening. Sometimes they recognised vulnerability. Sometimes they simply recognised that I knew what it was like to experience life from outside the mainstream.

My disability creates a bridge.

These days I have stopped thinking of it as something separate from my professional identity. In fact, let's call it what it is:

My otherness.

My otherness is not a weakness.

It is not an obstacle.

It is not something to be overcome.

It is one of the secrets of my practice.

The very thing that makes me different is often the thing that allows me to build trust, establish connection, and meet people where they are. It reminds me that every person carries experiences that may not be immediately visible. It helps me look beyond labels because I know what it feels like to be reduced to one.

Perhaps that is why the conference theme, Standing Together, resonated so strongly.

Standing together is not about pretending our differences do not exist.

It is about recognising that our differences matter.

It is about seeing the full person rather than the label attached to them.

It is about understanding that lived experience, trauma, disability, culture, identity, and even our own sense of otherness can become sources of strength rather than barriers to connection.

We are all seen.

We are all unseen.

The challenge is learning to recognise both within ourselves and within others.

That is the thought I carried home from Wellington.

And I suspect it will stay with me for quite some time.

August Has Chosen Violence

Good morning from Dunedin, where Mother Nature appears to have glanced at the calendar, laughed, and carried on regardless. 

Current conditions: 2°C (36°F) with snow in August. That's right, snow. In August. Visibility remains reasonable, though confidence in the seasons is deteriorating rapidly.

Due to the surprise appearance of winter's winter, my wife's campus has officially decided that roads are optional and has moved classes online for the day. Students are advised to attend lectures from secure blanket fortifications with emergency supplies of coffee, tea, and snacks.

In unrelated news, I have just submitted the second instalment in the Gene Bukowski Files, and the first draft of SARCOM Book 3 is officially complete. Coincidence? Probably.

That said, with the current weather situation developing, one has to wonder: can Jack Crowley rescue us from the latest snow dump? Or will he be forced to battle the most relentless antagonist yet, a South Island winter armed with icy roads and horizontal sleet?

Forecast for the rest of the day:

• Cold.
• Still cold.
• Writers making suspiciously good progress indoors.
• Frequent outbreaks of hot beverages.
• A slight chance of fictional heroes being recruited for snow-clearing duties.

Public safety message: Stay frosty... though I'd much rather stay toasty.

Introductions all around

 I've had a busy couple of weeks. In addition to wrapping up the second and third instalments in The Gene Bukowski Files, which I'm hoping will be a kicker and a thinker respectively, I've also started back at university as a tutor for both Social Work and Community Health. The first classes are now well underway, and my Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays are going to be divided up with tutorials.

That got me thinking.

Yes, I know. Thinking is normally a dangerous pastime. The headaches afterwards often leave you wondering whether the whole exercise was worth it. But I digress.

I started thinking about introductions. More specifically, how we introduce ourselves and why.

For many of us, particularly those in the 40 to 60-plus bracket, introducing ourselves can seem relatively straightforward. We bring decades of experience, achievements, failures, lessons, and stories with us. We have careers, families, interests, passions, and identities that have had years, sometimes decades, to develop.

Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, tangata whenua, the Māori people of this land, have long recognised the importance of introduction through the practice of mihimihi. A mihimihi is more than simply stating your name. It is about locating yourself in relation to your whakapapa, your connections, your community, and the places that have shaped who you are. It acknowledges that identity is relational. We are not individuals floating through life in isolation. We belong somewhere, come from somewhere, and are connected to others.

There is something deeply powerful about that.

But what about younger generations?

I found myself asking that question after conducting introduction rounds across my four tutorials. My students were asked to share their name, why they were taking the paper, whether it was part of their degree pathway or simply an area of interest, what they hoped to gain from the tutorials, and what their dreams and aspirations were. To lighten the mood, I also asked them to share their favourite colour.

Simple enough, right?

What surprised me was just how shy many of the students were. Some struggled to answer. Others needed prompting. A few offered only the briefest responses before retreating back into silence.

Although, in hindsight, it probably didn't help that I decided to go first.

When I reached the dreams and aspirations part of my own introduction, I casually mentioned that one of mine was to get up and walk.

The stunned silence that followed was astounding.

You could almost hear the collective gears grinding to a halt.

Eventually, I had to chuckle and break the tension myself.

"Well," I said, "that fell flat."

For those of you who don't know, I use a wheelchair. Yes, I am fully aware that the probability of me suddenly getting up and walking is about as remote as a lion deciding to become a vegetarian. But what's wrong with wanting to get up and go for a walk? It's not as though I said I wanted to run an ultramarathon across the Sahara.

It's still a dream.

It's still an aspiration.

And, as one of the students later pointed out, I'm the one person who gets to decide whether it's possible or not.

Maybe that's part of the challenge when we ask people to talk about their aspirations. We often assume dreams have to be realistic, practical, measurable, and achievable within a clearly defined timeframe. We treat them like goals on a strategic plan rather than things that inspire us, motivate us, or simply capture something we long for.

Perhaps dreams are allowed to be improbable.

After all, if they were guaranteed, they'd probably just be plans.

That experience also made me wonder whether some of my students' reluctance wasn't simply shyness. There are probably several psychological and psychosocial explanations.

For starters, emerging adulthood is a period of identity formation. Many young adults are still figuring out who they are, what they believe, and where they see themselves heading. Questions about future goals and aspirations can feel surprisingly confronting when you're still working out your place in the world.

There's also the reality of social anxiety and fear of judgement. Today's students have grown up in an age where much of their communication happens through screens rather than face-to-face interactions. Standing up in front of a room full of strangers and talking about yourself can feel vulnerable.

Then there's the pressure to have everything figured out. Society often tells young people they should already know what career they want, what success looks like, and where they're heading. Being asked to talk about aspirations in front of peers can sometimes feel less like an invitation and more like a test.

What struck me most, though, was that every student had something worth saying.

Behind the hesitant answers and nervous smiles were stories, experiences, ambitions, and hopes. Every one of them had travelled a unique path into that classroom. Every one of them had something to contribute.

Perhaps that is one of the real purposes of introductions.

Not simply to exchange names, but to create connections.

To acknowledge that every person in the room belongs there.

To begin transforming a room full of strangers into a learning community.

By the end of the tutorials, most students were noticeably more relaxed. Some were chatting with classmates. Others were asking questions. The awkwardness had started to fade.

Maybe introductions are not really about telling people who we are.

Maybe they are about giving ourselves permission to be known.

And perhaps that is why mihimihi remains so significant. It reminds us that identity is not something we perform. It is something we share. Through sharing it, we invite others to do the same.

So I'll leave you with a question. How do you introduce yourself? Do you lead with what you do, where you come from, who your people are, or where you hope to go?

And while you're at it, what's your favourite colour? Mine's blue. After four tutorials, apparently that's the important question.

Three

 I've come to realise something important: I currently have three writing projects underway.

The first is The Bukowski Files, featuring Asset Denied, which is already live. This is an espionage thriller series featuring a character who has been with me for a long time. I have plans for a six-novel series, with each instalment being a short novel.

The second series, SARCOM, co-written with Michael Lavoice. The proof of concept for this series was a short story, also co-written with Michael, which appears in the Face the Storm anthology. You can find the anthology linked here, or by clicking on the cover to your right.

The third project is Dragoon, which I first self-published before it was picked up by Three Ravens about two years ago. This is a military science fiction series that depicts a worldwide alien invasion from the perspective of the New Zealand Defence Forces' mech pilots. You can find the first book here, on the column to your right of the blog:

I really enjoyed writing this series and hope to return to the characters in the future. As for the release dates? They will be coming soon. I know Three Ravens has other titles in the pipeline, so it’s just a waiting game.

Looking backward to go forward, fourteen years on

I recently had a really interesting conversation with the editor and publisher at Defiant House—the team behind the scenes who turned Gene Bukowski’s adventure into the ebook you may have already heard about. We talked about the kinds of topics I could share on this blog, especially now that I’ve come to value my privacy more over the past couple of years.

Truth be told, I think I’ll make it up as I go along.

That conversation got me thinking, and I found myself revisiting some of my old blog posts—mainly because, well, I had some time on my hands and it was lunchtime. In doing so, I came across a real gem: my very first blog post, written back in 2012. Have a look.

That year was a particularly interesting time in my life. The post reflects on a difficult period marked by self-doubt and unemployment after completing my Master’s in Social and Community Work. Despite having strong qualifications and sending out countless job applications, I couldn’t secure work. It led me to question my worth and abilities.

Now, fourteen years on, things have improved on all fronts.

The central insight from that post still holds true: running away doesn’t solve underlying challenges. Instead, it’s about facing them head-on and moving forward. Life, after all, isn’t meant to be lived by constantly looking backward.

Feel free to check it out.

A quick look back

 

I believe it’s been about a week since "Asset Denied," the first book in The Gene Bukowski Files, went live on Amazon. I thought it would be a good time to share where it all started and why.

The first question you might be asking is, who is Gene Bukowski? He is a legacy character who has been with me for a very long time. My editor can confirm that they first encountered him twenty-five years ago as the main character in a story set on Mars, where he chased bad guys and drove buggies. In a way, Bukowski was a version of me—how I envisioned myself if I were not a wheelchair user, or more accurately, how I saw myself without the limitations of disability.

You could say that Bukowski’s initial appearance was little more than a "Mary Sue" character; he represented me in a way.

Over time, I evolved. I finished university, earned a master’s degree in social and community work, worked, fell in love, got married, lost my job, faced health challenges, secured another job, encountered more health issues, and eventually found stable work again. Throughout this journey, I continued writing. Bukowski finally made it into a book, but while it was decent, the rights reverted back to me after a year, and the book was taken down. Once again, Bukowski was buried. During this time, I had "Dragoon: First
Strike" was published through Three Ravens, and I also collaborated on a short story that is now being developed into a trilogy with Michael Lavoice.

I wanted to revisit Bukowski and decided to rewrite his story with a different setting. After I completed the rewrite, I asked Michael to read it, secretly hoping he would advise me to put it away. Instead, he loved it. When I discovered that my old mentor was an editor at another small press that favoured short-length works, I submitted the manuscript to them. You can read their feedback here.

So, who is Bukowski now? He’s still an undercover agent, but his character has much more depth than it did twenty-five-plus years ago. I really hope you’ll enjoy "Asset Denied." Please consider leaving a review once you’ve finished, as I would greatly appreciate your feedback.

Explosive New Espionage Thriller "Asset Denied"

 A gripping new voice in international crime fiction has arrived with the release of Asset Denied: The Gene Bukowski Files, a high-stakes short novel by Peter Stanley that blends global intrigue, political corruption, and deeply human storytelling.

Set across Washington D.C., Mexico City, and Miami, Asset Denied follows Special Agent Gene Bukowski—a hardened FBI investigator and former military operative—who is pulled into a spiralling international conspiracy after a joint U.S.–Mexico operation collapses in violence. A senior Mexican official is assassinated, multiple officers are killed, and Bukowski’s partner takes his own life, leaving behind a trail of unanswered questions.

As Bukowski becomes the focus of a Senate inquiry and is suspended from active duty, he is drawn into a covert, off-the-books mission that pushes him beyond the limits of law enforcement—and into the shadows of intelligence warfare. What begins as a failed investigation quickly unravels into a far-reaching network tied to the powerful cartel La Sombra Negra, implicating corrupt officials, criminal syndicates, and international agencies.

At its core, Asset Denied is as much about people as it is about power. The novel explores fractured loyalties, institutional failure, trauma, and the cost of doing the right thing in a system built to bury the truth. Through complex characters—including analyst Sia Alofa, Bureau leader Wolfgang Keller, and the enigmatic antagonist Manuel Lukamba—the story delivers emotional depth alongside relentless action.

“We are all broken—that’s how the light gets in.”
This guiding sentiment underscores a story about survival, redemption, and the fine line between justice and vengeance.

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Key Highlights

• Genre: Espionage thriller/crime fiction
• Themes: Corruption, loyalty, trauma, global crime networks, moral ambiguity, redemption
• Setting: United States, Mexico, and beyond 
• Protagonist: Gene Bukowski — a lone-wolf agent navigating both personal loss and institutional collapse 
• Conflict: A failed international operation exposes a cartel with deep political influence and global reach 

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About the Author

Peter Stanley draws on decades of storytelling, international perspective, and lived experience to craft a narrative that is both authentic and emotionally grounded. Asset Denied marks a significant entry into the espionage thriller genre, combining procedural realism with character-driven storytelling.

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Availability

Asset Denied: A Gene Bukowski Espionage Thriller is available now on Amazon.