Life, full on

Mountain biker, body builder, volunteer, community champion, mother, activist, DJ. While some heroes don’t wear capes, they certainly wear a lot of hats.

Words: Judene Edgar

Sarah Kerby wouldn’t describe herself as a hero, but for the women she’s inspired, encouraged and supported, she definitely is. For Sarah however, none of it was planned; it’s all been about finding “her people” and putting her values into action.

Growing up she was a self-described bookworm. “I couldn’t read enough. I’d read an entire Harry Potter book in a night.” But these days, “my two favourite past times are mountain biking and smashing the patriarchy,” she laughs.

Mountain biking hasn’t always been her passion. In fact, when Sarah was growing up she considered sport “absolute punishment. If it was cross country day, I’d do anything to get out of it”.

All of that changed after having her first child, Baillie. She wanted to lose some weight and get fitter so she started walking up the Grampians. She did this every day. Then she started running up the Grampians. Six months later she bought her first gym membership “and it exploded after that”.

During her second pregnancy she maintained her fitness as much as possible, and after Willy was born, she wanted a challenge. “I’d always loved weightlifting at the gym, so I wanted to see how far I could take it.”

She took it all the way to the podium! Eight months later winning the Tall Novice Figure category at the National Amateur Body Builders' Association competition in Christchurch.

“My mental health really improves when I’m training, exercising and getting out there,” she says, “and winning was totally unexpected. I just wanted to get stage ready”.

However, as a single parent of two young boys, things weren’t always easy. Fortuitously, a friend of hers posted on Facebook about the charity she was volunteering for – Bellyful Invercargill – being named joint winners in the Trust Power Community Awards. Bellyful provides support to whānau with babies or young children by cooking and delivering free nutritious meals.

While this was the very service Sarah was needing, she knew that others were needing it too. So, she set about establishing a Nelson branch. She held a public meeting and received an influx of volunteers, and very soon sponsors started coming on board. Within a few hours of launching the programme they received their first referral.

“It really reinforced the need, and made me feel good to support other new parents,” says Sarah. “We now make around 800 meals each year, supporting about 150 families. Our sponsors are part of our Bellyful whānau and they often come and help us cook. They are good people, good businesses, that share our values.”

Bumping into another friend soon after, she was invited to go mountain biking. The day after, lying on her back in a ditch looking up at the Kaiteriteri sky having just fallen off the borrowed mountain bike, Sarah was hooked. The next day she bought a secondhand bike for $300 to feed her new-found obsession.

Racing down hills at speed, or slogging up to the top of mountains, Sarah describes the isolation and calm that comes with mountain biking as cathartic. “It gives me such a sense of calmness – it’s my form of meditation,” she says. “You’re so focused on not nailing yourself that you can’t think about anything else.”

She has shared her passion for bikes with her two boys, Baillie (10) and Willy (5). Baillie “lives on his bike” and goes riding with friends, and Willy has recently advanced to an e-balance bike. “Biking is so good for them and there are so many great opportunities for family biking in Nelson Tasman.”

And to further share her joy, she also volunteered to help run the Nelson Mountain Bike Club’s mini-series, supporting other children to get a taste of the thrills and spills of mountain biking.

Her volunteer work and community activism brought her to the attention of Rachel Boyack who, at that time, was also a keen community volunteer and union representative. “I was always left wing, but it took me a while to find my people who shared my values.” Rachel has been Sarah’s mentor for the past 10 years and became her employer three years ago. And when Sarah’s son Willy was diagnosed with neuroblastoma (cancer) shortly after he turned four, she says that Rachel was supportive and flexible, enabling her to work as much as she could, while providing the care that Willy needed.

“When Willy was diagnosed it felt like my whole life was taken away. My eldest son wasn’t allowed in the hospital due to Covid so I was continually having to choose between my children – it was a lose-lose situation. Being able to do a little bit of work when I could helped me to maintain a sense of normality and identity”.

The past 18 months have been a blur of chemotherapy, radiation treatment, infections, surgeries, blood transfusions, immunotherapy, emergency procedures, and more. Willy has over 1,000 beads that bear testimony to everything he has been through. The Beads of Courage programme is run by the Child Cancer Foundation with each bead telling a story of a child’s journey, honouring their strength, courage, and resilience.

Treatment has now finished, pending one more scan and then three-monthly scans to monitor his health. Sarah thanks her ‘village’ for their support. In addition to Rachel’s ongoing support, Sarah’s grandmother and aunts have also been mainstays, supporting her and the boys, as well as her partner Sam, who “has been a pillar of strength to all of us.”

There were also many gestures of support from friends and the wider Nelson community, from organising quiz nights and selling daffodils, to grocery shopping, baking, a photo book, and massage vouchers.

She was also supported by Bellyful, whose services had since expanded, now providing meals for young families coping with serious illness and those with financial hardship. And as a thank-you, Sarah stepped back into the volunteer co-ordinator role once more, taking over from Anita Watson who had been the co-ordinator for the past for three years.

“I was a Bellyful recipient while Willy was sick, so when Anita stepped down it was a great opportunity to show my appreciation,” says Sarah. “Having received so much support over the past 18 months, I was actually looking for a way to give back, so I’m very happy to be doing this.”

Despite the toll that supporting her son took on her and her whole family, she says that they still had to find some normality and joy, celebrating the good so that their life wasn’t drowned out by the bad.

One highlight was DJing Nelson’s 2022 New Year;’s Eve party, welcoming in the new year with thousands of Nelsonians at the Cawthron steps. This wasn’t the first New Year’s Eve party DJing for Sarah, AKA Ladykerbs. Ladykerbs has DJed at clubs, festivals, weddings and community events all over New Zealand and Bali, supporting industry heavyweights such as Phace, Savage, P Money, Aphrodite and Ahoribuzz.

Sarah’s first stint as Ladykerbs was while working as a bartender in the Vinyl Bar in Invercargill. “They had such a cool collection of records, and I got good at reading people and guessing what they liked,” she says. After shifting to Nelson when she was 21, she entered a DJ competition for a festival at the Rakaia Gorge.

“I’d bought my own controller and entered a recorded mix, winning a spot at the gig in front of 400 people. I was such a newbie that I didn’t even know how to plug my own gear in, so the person before me had to help me,” she laughs.

Another highlight was a surprise graduation ceremony held on the banks of the Maitai River. Sleepless nights spent in hospital aren’t the most conducive place for finishing a Masters’ degree, but she finished it nonetheless. However, she was sitting at Willy’s beside when her graduation ceremony took place, so friends organised a surprise ceremony complete with procession, bagpipers, balloon columns, singer, and Willy carrying her degree on a silk pillow. “I was absolutely blown away,” she says.

Her thesis "A woman’s place is in the house … of representatives”, came in response to her door knocking to support Rachel Boyack’s election campaign in 2020. “When you’ve had 18,000 conversations with people in your region, what do you do with all that?” she questions. “The focus of my degree was about helping good progressive women to get elected. I also produced a booklet to support women in election techniques because much of the existing material was about women having to change their appearance or conduct.”

While she’s delighted that both parliament and the cabinet have reached gender parity for the first time in history, she says that we still have a long way to go. “I like the traditional approach to campaigning which is about forming genuine relationships, listening to people, and connecting over shared values, so that’s the basis of my election strategy guide.”

In addition to working for Parliamentary Services for the past five years, Sarah is now Hub Chair, Te Tau Ihu - New Zealand Labour Party and co-chair of the Labour Women’s Sector.

“I understand my privilege from so many people helping me and I acknowledge that so much has happened by chance because of the opportunities afforded to me. I have a deep sense of responsibility to use my privilege, to try and help make an easier path for others,” she says. “Regardless of what happens, I will always try to find a way to give back.”