A Reviving of Women's Peace and Personal Power.

Your journey of RISING and Empowered begins here.

This is your space and time to come through and out the other side of challenge and change in a new empowered way.

A repositioning.

I’m Kristi Shaw - I support women and mothers to meet life’s challenges with greater agency and connection in personal and group therapeutic journeys. I am a Narrative Therapist, Appreciative Inquiry Facilitator, Reiki Master, MasterKeys™ Transformation Coach, and Community Development Specialist. I offer gentle, strengths-based support for healing, clarity, and empowered change, grounded in compassionate care and community connection.

I’m based in Waiake, on the North Shore of Auckland, New Zealand. You can see me in person, or online.

Let’s get you started

My Why,

I was 17 when a defining moment shaped the direction of my life.

During a hot summer in Toronto, girls and women were told to stay indoors due to the presence of a serial rapist in the city. Fear was present — but so was anger. I remember questioning why women were being confined when it was a man causing the harm. Why weren’t men being asked to stay inside?

That moment sparked something in me.

I wanted to become the first sexual assault prevention educator in Canadian high schools. I later moved to Vancouver where I became the second, working with SafeTeen during its grassroots years. Together, we brought prevention programmes into schools and universities. Again and again, girls wrote in their feedback that the most important thing they learned was “I have the right to say no.”

Hearing their stories was often confronting — and it deepened my commitment to empowerment. Seeing belief return to their eyes mattered.
Years later, my life shifted again when a serious car accident abruptly halted my work, movement, and social world. At the time, I was already a Reiki Master, and it became a vital support through recovery. Reiki helped my body release trauma — and just as importantly, it helped hope return.

Life continued to invite me into deep and unexpected terrain: moving countries, navigating a difficult divorce, raising children through shared care while studying and working, selling my home independently, supporting my teens through periods of moderate to severe anxiety, and standing up to bullying and online harm — for myself, my children, my colleagues, student leadership teams, and the people I now support in clinic.

Each of these experiences has shaped how I work today — with compassion, strength, and deep respect for what it takes to rise when life asks more of us than we expected.

My work is grounded in respect, collaboration, and care.

I offer non-judgemental, strengths-based spaces that honour the whole person — mind, body, relationships, and context. I believe empowerment grows through appreciation, connection, and supporting people to access their own wisdom, agency, and capacity for change.

Contact the host of Almost Kiwi (not from NZ) - Women RISING Together