Take It From Us with Kent Johns

Wayne Webb was drowning in addiction and darkness when tragedy struck close to home. In his grief, his pain became visible to someone who asked if he was okay - that question changed everything.

Now Wayne creates messages of hope in the sand at New Brighton Beach every day. After decades using alcohol and drugs to cope, he discovered that "busy hands mean a settled brain." What started as personal healing has become bigger...

When Fiona Parrant's sister Charlene was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Fiona moved from Levin to Napier to help care for her - and for Charlene's husband, Alister, who had early onset Alzheimer's at just 60. After Charlene died, Fiona stayed in Napier to continue caring for Alister and help support his two sons.

New Zealand's dementia care system is broken. Despite being our biggest looming health crisis, demen...

Nicola Colman lived with anorexia for 15 years, outwardly functioning through marriage, motherhood and immigration, while giving most of her life to the eating disorder. Her turning point came when her son asked why she never ate dinner with the family - she realised her children were learning this was normal.

In 2019, her 15-year-old daughter was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. Despite Nicola's efforts to create a household f...

Chris Reidy and Di Langdon have spent 20 years advocating for their son with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) - a journey that started with multiple diagnoses and school refusals before finally getting the umbrella diagnosis of FASD at age 15. Their son's struggles with developmental delays, sensory processing issues, and social difficulties led to isolation, bullying, and eventually self-harm and addiction.

The FASD diag...

Linda Collins lost her 17-year-old daughter Victoria to suicide in 2014, on the first day of a new school term before she was to catch her bus. The grief changed everything - not just the unbearable pain, but how people saw her family, how relationships shifted, and how she had to learn to navigate a world that didn't know how to handle their loss.

Seven months later, Linda found Victoria's journals revealing something tha...

Waata Heathcote spots a man in crisis at 8am in a coffee shop and has him connected to support within 15 minutes. It's just another morning for the Rangatira of Waiariki Whānau Mentoring, who leads a team that works 24/7 because "people have nowhere to go after 5 o'clock". 

After working for MSD and as a police officer, Waata saw how the system was failing Māori communities facing intergenerational trauma. Now 70...

Tim Mehrtens is passionate about helping people thrive - but that passion was born from his darkest moments. After experiencing severe trauma in 2012, Tim spiralled into PTSD and multiple suicide attempts, before facing the brutal reality that suppressing emotions had nearly killed him.

Today, Tim directs My Everyday Wellbeing, helping people to develop daily habits that create resilience before crisis hits. In 2023, when his brothe...

Growing up between two worlds, Kayla Schwalger felt disconnected from her Samoan heritage while trying to succeed in New Zealand - a struggle many second-generation Pacific Islanders know well. 

Moving to Samoa at 14 helped, but it also brought challenges including undiagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder in a culture where mental health often wasn't discussed.

Today, this Pacific mental health advocate co-runs Tapasā with he...

Tui Taurua calls herself a "mental health warrior" - and after her journey, she's earned that title. 

From 1977 to 2001, she spent over two decades cycling in and out of psychiatric hospitals, hearing voices that doctors called "hallucinations" and taking up to 25 medications a day that left her sedated on the couch, watching life pass her by.

When Western medicine failed her, Tui made a terrifying but life-c...

Chris Ranui-Molloy's journey from a declining Bay of Plenty logging town to founding Recovery Street is a story of transformation through the most unlikely medium - theatre. 

Growing up with a 'FTW mentality' in Murupara, Chris nearly ended up in gang life before heading to drama school in Auckland where isolation, depression, and addiction left him struggling to fit into an unfamiliar world.

Time in prison followed, b...

Rhonda Hāpi-Smith describes her career as a female prison officer in New Zealand as "wonderful, devastating, fantastic and heartbreaking" - and those contradictions tell the whole story. 

For 20 years, she walked among dangerous criminals at Rimutaka and Hawkes Bay men's prisons, loving the brotherhood, the resilience she witnessed, and the humour that got her through each day. But the career she loved also slowly bro...

At 17, Lola Fisher is living proof that young people don't need to wait their turn to lead. What started as COVID lockdown boredom became her vision for Create Happy Media - a youth-led platform reaching 30,000+ readers after Lola discovered how negatively young people were portrayed in headlines. 

This conversation reveals what it's really like being young in New Zealand today - from social media debates to demanding a se...

This July, thousands of New Zealanders will go alcohol-free for Dry July - but for breast cancer survivor Lisa McDonald, the cause is deeply personal. After facing aggressive treatment including bilateral mastectomy and chemotherapy, Lisa experienced firsthand how the Dry July-funded support services like "Look Good Feel Better" made her feel "a million bucks" during her darkest days.

Dry July NZ Campaign Directo...

In 2020, Grace Curtis faced an unimaginable tragedy when she discovered her father's body after he died by suicide, and had to break the devastating news to her family. 

What followed was a long period of being bedridden with depression, convinced she would never feel peace again. Five years later, Grace has transformed her darkest experience into a mission of hope. She's the author of a new book, The Best Is Yet To Come a...

Take It From Us is back. 

What started as an award-winning community radio show is now something bigger. Host Kent Johns is still here with his same mix of straight talk and warmth, just in a brand-new podcast format.

 Take It From Us is still about talking to real people about what it's actually like to live through the hard stuff - like addiction, trauma, mental health challenges and recovery. 

Same energy. Same realness. Just ...