A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir

by Jacinda Ardern

as policing by consent. The idea that police are essentially citizens in uniforms, and their authority stems from the approval and cooperation of the community.

The challenge isn’t always just making change; it’s making it stick.

Women shouldn’t have to choose—the way our mothers so often did—between being good at their profession and being a good mother, or daughter. There should be support networks, a village, whatever you call it, that can help them be all of those things without completely losing themselves in the process. That’s what I was blessed to have, at the UN and elsewhere: the love and support of others.

A business owner could be pumping pollution into our waterways, I’d heard Grant say before, and struggling with mental health issues within their

family. But as long as that business is making a profit and paying taxes, GDP will say all is well.

Wellbeing Budget.

Now we were launching a plan to ensure that every New Zealand child could live in a home where they were safe and loved and had what they needed to thrive.

Over our time in government, our focus on children would see us increase welfare payments for families with children, build more state housing than any government had in the last fifty years, expand access to early childhood education and health care, invest in violence prevention programs, and roll out free period products in schools.

Being with your family. To be accepted. To be understood and taken seriously. If the parents are good, then the kids are good.

was a challenge the world over—people now

couldn’t even agree on what was fact and what was fiction.

So when someone approaches me to tell me that they thought all our choices were wrong, maybe expressing themselves less politely than that, perhaps even with fists raised and their face twisted with fury, or in an expletive-filled rant: That’s when I remember that all those hard, imperfect decisions saved twenty thousand lives. And that the person in front of me might just be one of them.

Our children are the most important thing to us, our greatest priority. But the simplest measure of that love and care was time. I had done everything to demonstrate my love by every other measure: affection, comfort, patience, my endless striving to be present. But time kept betraying me.

If you have impostor syndrome, or question yourself, channel that. It will help you. You will read more, seek out advice, and humble yourself to situations that require humility to be conquered. If you’re anxious, and overthink everything, if you can imagine the worst-case scenario always, channel that too. It will mean you are ready when the most challenging days arrive. And if you are thin-skinned and sensitive, if criticism cuts you in two, that is not weakness; it’s empathy. In fact, all of the traits that you believe are your flaws will come to be your strengths. The things you thought would cripple you will in fact make you stronger,

make you better. They will give you a different kind of power, and make you a leader that this world, with all its turmoil, might just need.

there’s an inverse feature to seeing the world at its most brutal, because those are also the moments that show people at their most humane. Those are the moments when I saw that it was possible for people to galvanize behind their collective humanity. Sometimes, those moments are small.

Other times, they create a ripple that sweeps across a country.

I watched as Neve turned her eyes away from me, returning to her balancing game. I wanted to tell her that the world and its politics did not need to be perfect for me to keep going. To keep my hope, my optimism, but most o...