I use all the hot water / my electric kettle fails / which remedy is / recommended by / the Times editorial board / my therapist sends / another check-in email / I walk out to / the front porch / the torn skin on my thumb / hasn’t healed / all winter

In Minneapolis by Tarik Dobbs

Things won’t always go your way

No matter how much you try, things won’t always go your way.

The painstaking preparation. The brave execution. The crawling-on-your-knees desperation. Despite all your efforts in trying to do things perfectly, life has a funny way of humbling you, of tethering you to the ground and reminding you that you are no god.

The fault could have been your own doing. Acting a certain way. Saying something you would have rather not said. Forgetting to do something crucial, unknowingly letting it slip through the cracks in the process of taking care of business.

When the mistake is consummated, you berate yourself for being idiotic. You scold yourself for being flawed, even if in retrospect, you really did try your best given the situation and resources bestowed to you.

Apart from these woes derived from the human conscience, there are the Uncontrollables. Bigger picture things we are born to navigate: the horrendous job market, social and economic dynamics, the cards we are dealt with, factors as unfrivolous as the weather.

These fated roadblocks ruin perfect plans, delay goals, and restrict movement. Yet, regardless of the inevitable nature of these, you beat yourself up for not having things go your way, for wishing you did things better.

How curious is it that we kill ourselves for being imperfect when the world isn’t—when nature, which we are intrinsically a part of, doesn’t demand itself to be perfect nor even have a concept of perfection. Nature simply flows; on the other hand, we resist.

Detaching from the pain

Ignoring the mayhem in your heart is easier said than done.

But there is pain derived from a situation and pain that is self-inflicted, and you’ll be wise to differentiate both.

There is pain caused by externalities. Apart from unfortunate situations, there is pain caused by others, from those we hold dear to acquaintances and even strangers. Everyone is battling their own demons, yet there is the kind of hurt from those whose pain inflicted to us cannot be justified, no matter. We can’t be isolated from being hurt by others, just as we can’t be removed from people’s kindness and good intentions.

Then there is pain from imperfection. Pain from weakness, from not being as strong and as sharp and as disciplined as you’d like to be. The haunting kind of pain from untapped potential and unrealized possibilities, the kinds that stems from your ego’s hunger and your own yearning for wanting more and better.

Whatever the source of your pain is, it’s important to honor it, to acknowledge it, to sit with it. Feel it now, feel it again. Let it be a phantom that emerges every now and then, or a tsunami that drowns you in waves of sorrow. Pain could take a moment up to years to disappear. Feel it as many times as you need until you don’t anymore.

Dwelling on the pain to the point of masochistic self-hatred is what is unnecessary. Latching onto it like it completely defines you, like it consumes your entire identity, rather than treating it as a circumstance that happened to you.

Why would you bind yourself to something that no longer exists, when everything and everyone has moved on except you?

On radical lightness and handling days better

A concept that strikes me is radical lightness.

Being playful without being immature. Or rather, being playful because of maturity, from having the wisdom of life’s fleeting and unserious nature.

Laugh at yourself or laugh at the world if you have to. Treating yourself kindly in a world where people are unkind to themselves is a revolution. Many things are simply irrelevant to achieving your end goal. Many things are not worth losing sleep over and are not worth creating bigger problems from.

Eventually, you will realize that you don’t want to keep hurting yourself anymore. You give yourself grace. You let go of weight that you don’t need to carry. You commit to taking one small step forward, to trudge through the day with a clouded mind and heavy heart, to show up imperfectly, knowing that time will pass and things eventually get better.

Good days happen after bad days. Stillness emerges after turbulence. It’s the natural order of things. At the end of the day, each of us is smaller than a speck of dust, on a minuscule planet floating in the infinite void of the universe.

So tread lightly.

Building a muscle for tough days

Handling undesirable circumstances in the most ideal manner takes experience.

Acknowledging the problem in a level-headed way, identifying solutions, and taking the best course of action, sans being affected by emotions, is easier said than done.

You won’t get it right the first time, but you may in succeeding similar scenarios. Like a dance, responding well during negative situations takes a lot of practice to perfect. I imagine astronauts undergoing rigorous training to prepare for extreme environments and worst case scenarios thousands of kilometers away from Earth. Luckily, our daily obstacles and problems have less stakes than being up in space where every action requires strict mathematical calculations.

Endurance is built when bearing pain and hardships. The fact that you’re feeling pressure and resistance is a sign of progress and growth. Things may feel new or difficult, but showing up, no matter how imperfectly, in such situations is already something to be proud of. Besides, there is no need to be one hundred percent all the time, especially when your one hundred percent looks different on any given day.

I used to reserve buying flowers on special occasions, accomplishing something grand like graduating from my master’s program or celebrating an anniversary. Now, I would argue that anyone is deserving of flowers, even on—and especially during—days when the only achievement made was making it through.

Because isn’t that something to be proud of in itself?

✧˚ · .

To giving yourself grace,

Danna

Thank you for reading! If you had any thoughts while reading this, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below. 💭

🕯️ other related posts you might like: [the sowing, tending, and reaping], [my life is my art], [on living gently], & [coming back home to yourself]

Hi, you. It’s been a while. Surprisingly, my subscriber base has grown during my two-year hiatus, so if this is the first newsletter you’ve received from me, welcome!

Apart from occasional essays on culture, I write about living a creative life, romanticizing (or scrutinizing) the mundane, ruminations on the human condition, and media that catches my attention.

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✦ introduction after a two-year (!) hiatus

After booking a one-way ticket from the Philippines to Spain, finishing my Master’s degree in Barcelona, navigating complex visa procedures as one does, and spending majority of my time offline, I’m back with a clearer headspace and a renewed sense of creating.

By creating, I don’t necessarily mean solely producing content.

But rather, also, creating a life that feels meaningful and rich.

Creating could mean cooking a new recipe you’ve been wanting to try, curating a Pinterest board, piecing together an unlikely outfit and wearing jewelry that makes you feel good, or organizing an idyllic picnic at the park. It could be about making an itinerary for places you’ve been putting off from visiting for too long, revamping your living spaces, or learning new words for a more expansive worldview.

Creation isn’t only about producing something tangible. Apart from photos, written works, and other forms of craft, moments, experiences, and environments are also achieved through creation, nevertheless the fleeting nature of these.

A mood. An ambiance. A life in which personal touches, intentional choices, and deliberate actions are honored and pursued.

What is your intuition telling you to create?

✦ throwback to october 2023: a journal entry written two years ago from barcelona, as a freshly minted master’s student splitting herself into multiple halves

It’s October 2023. I wake up on a mild-tempered Saturday morning in my humble shared apartment in Las Tres Torres, Barcelona. It’s autumn, a season when crunchy multi-colored leaves have fallen on the pavements, and yet, walking through the city’s streets under the glaring sun signals that summer is latching on stubbornly.

Compared to the chillier autumns in Tokyo and Sydney, cities I’ve shed my skin in during transitory week-long stays, the season here is the mildest I’ve yet to experience.

My headspace is brimming with a to-do list that keeps getting outdated by the second: what topic to choose for my thesis, group projects with overlapping timelines, the work I need to accomplish for my clients abroad, catching up with my family back home in Manila—what time am I meeting friends again later?

Speaking of heading out in the evening, will folks even show up on time? If we’re following Spanish time, which is more or less the same as Filipino time (see: no one will crucify you for arriving thirty minutes to an hour late for a hangout), then that means I can take my sweet time cooking and eating dinner past nine, yes?

Which combination of clothes do I wear in this mercurial weather? Do I have to take the ever-unpredictable night buses if I head out at around 11:30 pm, a time that’s considered too early to start partying here in Spain? Meanwhile, I’d already be halfway through my social battery by that time on a Saturday night out in Manila.

What groceries do I need to buy? If the packaging of products are labeled completely in Catalan or Spanish, two languages I have yet to master, which items do I need to translate from English and jot down on my grocery list, in case the supermarket’s signal is too weak and I won’t be able to use my translator app on the spot?

There’s laundry I need to do, readings I need to finish, dust I need to sweep.

I’m still reeling from the first two weeks of university, all its demands, the wealth of information we’re learning, the emotional baggage that one carries while studying sustainability. I’m studying sustainability even though scientists have claimed decades ago that we’re (mostly) doomed if we continue to move at such a glacial pace.

It feels a tad too late to choose this field of study, a tad too idealistic considering the state of this increasingly hyper-consumerist and exploitative society, but it feels like the right thing to do.

Sometimes, you’ve got to do just that: to do what feels right.

I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. A change in environment is good. A new way of living is good. While I had predicted feeling discomfort, actually living it and being in a constant state of flux is overwhelming to say the least. The uncertainty of it, the messy and haphazard quality of it—like I’m grasping at straws trying to build a foundation, one that feels too precarious and fragile for someone who likes stability and structure—is immense. I’m not complaining, I’m merely describing.

We keep on keeping on, anyhow.

I wake up late on weekends and don’t beat myself up for it. The sun here rises much later, beckons me to stay in bed longer than usual. I acquiesce. I say yes to attending events when my body wants to rest. I yield to the divine timing of stepping into new situations. We’re all strangers trying to find a connection with each other, aren’t we?

One missed encounter, one chance opportunity, can change the course of your life.

Where Manila’s society is relatively homogenous, one of Barcelona’s defining characteristics is its national diversity. Meeting new people from different cultures has been eye-opening.

Uncomfortable at times, but at most times a joy.

It can be uncomfortable in a way that reminds you how your values and culture are totally unrelatable to another, and vice versa. But largely it’s been a joy, because you’re exposed to people who think and behave differently, and therefore, you realize that the world is so much larger than it is, how life offers so many possibilities you wouldn’t have imagined yourself living.

When meeting new people, I’m most curious to learn how they got here, what fuels them, and how they think. The way their upbringing and environment inform the way they react, speak, and navigate the world. I’m learning so much about myself by learning about them—us human beings, as a collective—and how different we all are yet somehow still the same.

All of us have similar desires regardless of our differences. All of us have differences despite having similar desires.

Two things can exist at once.

I remember a quote I came across that went something like, “each of us is made of bits and parts of other people we have met in our lives.” In a way, that means no one person is ever isolated.

They don’t know it, but they’re changing me, just as I am changing them.

In a Vogue interview, Emma Watson says, “You can’t always be in the reaping stage or harvest stage of life. Life has seasons.”

Lately, it feels like life is telling me to let go and enjoy the present. I consistently wrote in my journal when I arrived in September 2023, but that habit has fallen away.

Living can mean forgetting to write. To allow events to happen without giving them a second life on paper or on screens.

Writing, which has largely been my vice and oftentimes my profession, is an act of retrospection. To piece together what has happened, to articulate memory, to live in imagination. Life here has been so vivid and tangible, a stark cry from my more reclusive self in Manila—I had left in late 2023, a time where folks like myself were still latching onto the paranoia from a post-pandemic life—that it feels too overwhelming to jot down my days in a journal, to live through moments a second time around, because the first time had been more than enough.

Sometimes I forget to write or take pictures, and it’s okay.

I haven’t even touched my beloved film camera.

But let it be known, to my future self and whoever else is reading this, that I am enjoying my time.

✦ notes on taking up space and letting go of perfection

We put ridiculous pressure on ourselves to have our stories perfectly wrapped up before we dare share them, to have learned all the lessons, healed all the wounds, and arrived at some gleaming destination of wisdom before we’re “qualified” to speak our truth.

What if the most powerful stories—the ones that actually change lives—are the ones still being written? The messy, unfinished, gloriously imperfect narratives that say, “I’m still figuring this out, and that’s precisely why it matters”?

—Dale Darly, Mentor for Women With A Story to Share

✦ present day: october 2025

I’ve been living in Barcelona for two years now. I’ve grown so accustomed to saying this that I forget how much of a big deal it is—especially to my younger self in her mid-20s, who had no desire whatsoever to pursue a life abroad. That is, until the pandemic completely changed my viewpoint of the world and made me realize what type of city I’d prefer to spend my 30s in, especially in the event of another pandemic or the rise of climate disasters.

I love Manila with all my heart, but Barcelona has stolen it.

Two things can exist at once.

What I gather from all this is: If a better opportunity presents itself to you, take it. And if it doesn’t present itself to you, get creative and chase multiple pathways towards it. Whether or not you’ll receive the opportunity in the end, at least you’ll have the peace of mind knowing that you tried. You would have grown thicker skin, an expanded mindset, and brandished wings by the end of it, too.

There are things in life that one achieves, many of which are gained through a mix of luck, timing, and hard work—the first two aren’t in our control, so might as well do your best with the third and see where life takes you from there.

✦ moodboard: latching onto a moment, a feeling, a state

“The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” — Robert Henri

✧˚ · .

To being in that wonderful state,

Danna

Thank you for reading! If you are so inclined, let me know your thoughts in the comments. You can also follow me on Instagram or Threads where I share when a new newsletter has been posted.

If you enjoyed this, I would appreciate it if you share it with your Internet friends who might enjoy reading notes on introspection and creative living.

🕯️ other related posts you might like: my life is my art, on living gently, & coming back home to yourself

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This is about having language laid out bare for things you find incomprehensible, from the offensive heat lately and late-stage capitalism to your peculiar mood swings

Two months ago, I was listening to the August 2023 Energy Report of the Manifest Daily podcast when I realized that the slump I’d been feeling wasn’t a special case.

Host Dheandra Nicollete says, “If you’re in a similar season when you are ending chapters, closing doors, possibly cutting connections off that no longer serve you into the next chapter you’re going into, know that it’s okay to feel sad, it’s okay to mourn those things when you know there’s something better waiting for you on the other side.”

By the time you are reading this, I’m already in Barcelona to pursue my Master’s degree. Back in Manila pre-departure, when friends asked how I felt about spending a year in a foreign country, I wholeheartedly meant it whenever I answered, “I’m excited and I can’t wait.” I wasn’t afraid, wasn’t anxious. However, the weeks leading up to my departure felt draining to a staggering extent.

Yes, I had already expected The Big Move to be logistically exhausting. Fitting one year of your life inside two luggages isn’t the simplest task, not to mention moving out of a rented apartment and disseminating your furniture to your family’s homes. Just in the nick of time, my husband and I turned over two foster kittens to their adoptive homes three days before our 16-hour flight. Don’t get me started on the documents needed for a Filipino citizen to study in or even travel to Spain. To put it mildly: passport privilege is real and the lack of it with ours is dehumanizing.

But I digress.

Once the mountain of paperwork was settled, as I bid ‘see you later’ to loved ones before leaving, I didn’t expect to be crawling my way out of every day. Despite feeling thrilled to start a new chapter of my life, there was a curious weariness in my movements, a pressing burden on my shoulders as I ticked off every seemingly impossible task on my pre-departure to-do list.

“You are allowed to grieve,” Dheandra says, who also happened to be moving to a new city while she was recording the podcast. Oh, I gasped to myself — the big G word. I didn’t think of framing my lethargy as a manifestation of grief, which is to say, in a kinder, more tender way. All this time before being enlightened by a random Spotify podcast, my self-critical streak had been berating me for being weak and lazy.

Perhaps that’s what I was dealing with: grief, caused by letting go of a love.

It wasn’t painfully obvious to me, but it seemed that I had been apparently grieving about leaving the life I’d built in Manila. It was hard, it was easy, it was frustrating, it was beautiful. I was (am) certain that if I left, even for a blip of a year, I would never be the same person when I came back.

I’d be a different puzzle piece upon returning, one that doesn’t fit my social circles quite the same way. I’d have shifted into someone new, one who’d have sharper edges, differing world views, and fresh badges earned by spending a year abroad. But as Taylor Swift croons, it’s been a long time coming. And with Dheandra’s episode of vulnerability, I felt validated and seen, less alone and less peculiar in this period of change and flux.

I find that voices, from books and songs to other types of media, that can articulate your circumstances and state of affairs are guardian angels in your life. They bare the language you have yet to piece together for yourself, unknowingly sending you into a state of enlightenment.

This epiphany made me think of systems and situations that we’re unable to process until someone speaks up or writes about them. How articulation cements experiences into existence, eventually becoming bright streetlights to strangers who feel lonely in their path of darkness and obscurity.

💡 Ongoings that I’ve found the right articulations for lately:

• On how this summer was the hottest to date1. The climate crisis is here and is felt more and more in each passing season. This is when the Earth's weather gets warmer due to human activities like burning fossil fuels (like coal, oil, and gas), which then causes global warming problems like extreme weather and rising sea levels. Not only do we need to use clean energy to combat this, but there must be a complete mindset shift in society that prioritizes sustainability and community versus greed and ego.

• On how self-commodification bombards your social media feeds. Gray Miller writes in his article about late-stage capitalism, “We’ve gone from purchasing things for what they actually do for us to what we hope they say about us, whether it’s our self-esteem or our reputation.” Self-commodification is a manifestation of late-stage capitalism2, a post-industrial era where lifestyle activities and the arts have become consumable and commodified. We are all free to judge how one wins their bread, but instead of automatically questioning or looking down on new ways people earn a living (feet pics, anyone?), it’s important to first question why people even need to resort to such. Personally, I can respect the hustle, especially in this economy.

• On how you identify as a feminist, but you don’t know why you cringe at certain choices women make. I’ve learned about choice feminism3 lately, a form of contemporary feminism that encourages women to see the choices they make as always justified and politically acceptable. The operative word here is always. There are debates on this, namely with plastic surgery, beauty culture, and sex work as guises to self-empowerment. But are these truly empowering when they (1) are rooted in patriarchal systems, and (2) continue to oppress your own people? I don’t have the answer, but it’s something to ponder on.

When you’re at a loss for words to describe peculiar events, there are scientists, philosophers, economists, field experts, and writers who have most likely already pieced together why the way things are, are.

When you feel alone, scared, or anxious, know that your existence is shared and that somebody out there is most likely living through a similar situation as you. The difference is in whether or not one articulates and shares their experience loudly.

If you find that the room you’re in is silent, why don’t you speak up and let people find you instead?

✧˚ · .

In the quest for the right articulation,

Danna

Thank you for reading this newsletter! If you are so inclined, let me know your thoughts in the comments, on Instagram, or on Threads. If you enjoyed this, I would appreciate it if you shared it with your friends who might enjoy reading notes on mindful living and introspection. ☁️

🕯️ Other related posts you might like: coming back home to yourself, how social media culture of consumerism is fueling the climate crisis, and truisms vol. 01.

It’s those moments of serene joy, spent by yourself and without anyone’s watch, that remind you how wonderful it is to be at home within one’s self.

The older I get, the more my childhood fascinations haunt me. My beloved ghosts in the machine, I call them. While I may not always be thinking about them, I can feel the weight of their existence — long-lost friends you think you’ve outgrown, but whose presence lingers in the back of your mind.

Instead of rekindling my relationships with these childhood avocations, I focus on preoccupying myself with the drudgery of being a grown-up, leaving them ignored and unattended for the most part.

Adulthood can have its way of keeping you too exhausted to do more than just survive. It has its way of hindering you from sustaining nourishing pursuits that have no monetary return.

Enter the inevitable season of adulthood, a game you’re supposed to be an expert on despite nobody telling you its rules.

It does have its perks, but my goodness, does it have its impediments.

Abiding by the reality of living paycheck to paycheck. Grasping for time with friends and family beyond a 9-5, leaving meager time for yourself. Spending time on things you thought mattered. Spending too much on things you thought would bring you lasting joy.

Burning bridges, mending relationships, opening yourself up to new experiences, only to have your heart broken. Again and again. Trying again.

The endless pursuit of trying again.

And yet, there are rays of light that flash between the cracks. Amid the drudgery of adulthood, it catches you when you least expect it: that unmistakable spark. Only you can tell when it hits you, only you can acknowledge it as it is: a newfound love affair between you and an act of doing.

If not a newfound love affair, it’s the one that got away — or so you thought.

You might feel this jolt of electricity in your first pottery class, visiting an art gallery or museum, or catching a film on your own. It could be dressing up in a fashion that’s unlike what you’re used to, whipping up new recipes in the kitchen, or listening to a new artist whose music strikes your heartstrings in the most exquisite way. You might feel it when you move your body intentionally, like trying a new sport or getting back to an old one.

Oftentimes this spark is conjured while doing something creative — which is manifesting a thing into perceptible existence from your vision and body.

Painting on a pristine canvas, typing on a blank document, strumming that guitar, picking up that mic again.

You as the artist, the world’s objects as your medium.

What premeditates these moments of eureka is allowing yourself to be in a flow state — permitting yourself to gravitate towards things that pique curiosity or interest.

This precious spark, this distinct fire, can also be felt while engaging in sacred pastimes.

I was the biggest cat girl in my pre-teen years. I owned several cat-related books that displayed different breeds, their behavior, and how to take care of them. But alas, due to my sister’s allergies and the stringent no-pets-allowed rules of our family’s townhouse, owning a cat was out of the question.

More than a decade later, at the onset of the pandemic in 2020, I found myself inclined to volunteer for animal groups. In a period of isolation from family and friends, I sought the company of community cats.

Being a volunteer feeder for them gave me a routine to look forward to. I’ll go so far as to say that volunteering for cats healed my inner child. After two years of feeding community cats, my husband and I took it a step further by moving to another apartment, a pet-friendly one unlike our previous residence, to be able to foster cats that need adoptive homes.

It has been one of the best and most fulfilling decisions we’ve made in our lives.

Other pastimes that lead me to this insatiable flow state include reading books, taking myself out for coffee, surrounding myself in green spaces, and exploring new cities. Pursuits of leisure that make life delightful and make me forget that clocks exist.

As I allow myself to be captivated by my inclinations, I uncover aspects of myself that I previously denied. On this freeing road of self-discovery, I explore my thoughts, feelings, and experiences without judgment.

More than walls, a roof above my head, and being surrounded by those dear to me, home is about being anchored in myself through the unpredictable currents of life.

It’s about realizing a sense of shelter within yourself, where you grant yourself permission to feel, do, and be.

What are the things that light you up? What are some of your childhood interests that you’ve been suppressing and have been meaning to get back to? Are there activities that you’re excited to do or curious to try?

May you embrace what made you happy in your childhood and unearth new avenues in which you thrive. May you acquiesce to them and let them paint your life with vivid and more radiant colors.

✧˚ · .

To opening doors (within the home of yourself),

Danna

People who live gently can be stereotyped as weak and gutless, but it’s overlooked how they are able to subscribe to this lifestyle by being the most strong-willed out of the status quo.

Living gently means living in a way that is least exploitative to earthly resources, the people you surround yourself with, and most especially, yourself.

It’s taken a while for me to feel like I’m living gently. In seasons when the world demands more from me, I admit that it’s still a struggle. Saying no, taking a step back, settling for ‘just enough’. The more I disavow the ruthless ways society operates, the more I realize that living gently is synonymous with living sustainably — a lifestyle that attempts to reduce one’s personal and societal environmental impact.

In normal speak, it’s the opposite of burning yourself out and consuming excessively.

This newsletter would have a vastly different angle if I had written it years ago. Instead of ‘living gently’ as the theme, it would have probably been along the lines of ‘living furiously’. My younger self lived a little too fast, hard, and fell into the black hole of consumerism. (I’m grateful for the sustainability advocates I came across online for helping me see the light — or rather, the dark truth of overconsumption.)

You might also want to read ‘How social media culture of consumerism fuels the climate crisis' and ‘Self-care is an act of community care’

For the past few years, I don’t shop as often as I used to. I try to buy mostly second-hand clothes. If I buy something brand new, I make sure that it will be put to good use. I eat mostly plant-based food and try to select locally-sourced ingredients when I cook. I try not to travel via car, but I’m aware that I’m only able to do this because (1) I live in what’s considered a relatively pedestrian-friendly city in Metro Manila, and (2) I’m lucky enough to have a remote job.

I often police myself on my own privilege, but I think of how I got here — this version of myself who’s vastly different from who I was years ago. The tough times that led me here: living paycheck to paycheck, working several jobs, and taking on more than I can in order to build the life I want. All the hitting, missing, and hitting again. The topsy-turvy path of sustaining one’s self in this unpredictable world.

Until finally, you’re able to afford more time for yourself — to rest, think, and do things you’ve always wanted to — while still paying the bills.

Although living gently this way can entail a lot of time, hard work, and luck to achieve, especially for those not born with a silver spoon in their mouths and bestowed with a hefty amount of generational wealth, I found that wanting less is crucial in order to live gently.

To be capable of more, and yet, to not be swayed into wanting and being more just for the sake of it.

Living gently isn’t only centered on the self, of course. I’ve seen people extend all kinds of gentleness toward both human and non-human lives, witnessed how beautiful it is when echoes of their kindness reverberate through the world.

A mother tucks her twenty-year-old daughter’s feet under the blanket. A father holds his son close, tells them it’s okay to cry. A middle-aged spinster feeds stray cats in her neighborhood. A stranger extends a hand and asks if you’re okay after you trip on the uneven sidewalk. Despite having places to be, a dismayed witness remains at the scene of a car accident to be the unconscious victim’s guardian.

Gentleness isn’t only manifested in tender ways. In order for tenderness to span out into the world, I think about how tough actions can be necessary. Going against the norms, fighting for what’s right, and facing conflicts with unwavering conviction are some of the ways people cultivate a gentler world.

The friend who gives you an intervention because they hate seeing you on the path of self-destruction. The mother who breaks a fight between her two children and lectures the child who punched first, because violence should never be tolerated. The introverted human rights defender who faces cut-throat institutions in court. The meek citizen who attends their first street rally against the plunderous legacy of a political family.

I am in awe of the courage, strength, and fearlessness it takes for humans to fight violence caused by ignorance, lack of empathy, or plain injustice. The way this bravery is fueled by envisioning what it’s like if no one intervenes, if no one pays attention, if no one cares to right the wrongs.

Gentleness is needed in the disoriented state of the world, where grandiosity, exploitation, and bravado are commonplace, and in many cases, glorified.

These actions and behaviors are proliferated by “The Man” and rob future generations of thriving in a safe, tender, and soulfully-rich world. Acts of gentleness can be challenging to do because society pushes us to be complacent in taking part in exploitative and unethical systems, whether as victims or perpetrators, whether unknowingly or not.

I challenge you, just as I challenge myself, to live more gently — and if the need arises, to engage against acts of violence in order for a tender world to bloom.

Say no to commitments that don’t align with your values and add unnecessary responsibilities. Sleep in when your body can’t handle it any longer. Relish in small wins even when nobody is applauding for you. Allow yourself to cry when you’re feeling distraught and overwhelmed. Reach out to a loved one for solace instead of isolating yourself.

Don’t be too hard on yourself and the people around you, because most people are trying their best given what they have. I’m sure you are.

Remember that choosing to be gentle is a formidable act of strength.

In a society that always pushes you to be more, do more, and have more, will you be someone who goes against this capitalistic point of view and proudly says, “I am enough, I am doing enough, this is enough”?

✧˚ · .

To gentler (and stronger) days,

Danna

Your glimmering daydream

In all their years of perceived existence,
    they finally yearn to be a phantom,
inscrutable, intangible. Some thing
    you can’t possibly know nor learn.

They refuse to be a prisoner caged 
    in tiny four-by-fours, a boxed present 
waiting to be tapped in red,  
    left on display and ravaged, 
exposed and fingered through screens. 

They were not born to be on display,
     raw meat ogled by hungry-eyed dogs.
They were not meant to be a self-hating mirror,
    misconstrued ideologies reflected
in each self-distorting filter.

They are not a fantasy of bones and flesh and sex
   but a diaphanous and earth-shattering echo 
of your deepest unspoken thoughts,
   an everlasting and piercing hallucination. 

✧˚ · .

unearthed from the archive (2017). happy world poetry day, my love bugs and glimmering daydreams.

—D

This ‘In the trove’ series is where I share masterpieces I’ve encountered that have struck chords in my heart—from books, films, songs, paintings, and everything in between.

Nothing jolts me out of being on autopilot like a good cry from a book.

I always welcome a cathartic cry, especially when the waterworks are conjured by hallucinating through a brilliant mess of words in books. No one is hurt, everything is still, and yet in these electrifying moments, it always feels like I’m properly alive amidst the simulation of life.

Here are books with accompanying passages that made me shed a tear or two.

(Needless to say, this newsletter includes spoilers. If you’re strange like me and don’t mind reading random passages from a book before finishing its entirety or knowing its full story, you should be fine.)

✧˚ · .

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)

The Handmaid's Tale is a futuristic dystopian novel set in New England that centers on the story of Offred, one of the unfortunate “Handmaids” under the new social order who are fated to have one purpose: to breed.

In Chapter 13, Offred runs through the woods with her daughter in an attempt to escape. She couldn’t run very fast since she was carrying her child, and they end up falling unceremoniously to the ground. Offred begs her daughter to stay silent but she was too young to understand and comply. Gunshots are fired, authorities catch up with them, and Offred gets restrained while she helplessly watches her daughter get dragged away from her.

It reminds me of a heartbreaking scene from the film I Am Legend (2007) where the main character played by Will Smith hides with his dog in a bathtub at night. Huddled in that small, stale space, he tries to stay as quiet as possible—hoping his dog will follow suit—in order to avoid drawing attention from the monsters outside their home who may lead to their demise.

Back to The Handmaid’s Tale: I’m not a mother, but reading the passage below from Chapter 13 made me understand what it feels like to want to protect someone vulnerable, fragile, and faultlessly ignorant of the ruthless ways of the world. How burdensome it is to be entrusted with that responsibility, and how awfully demoralizing it is to fail in fulfilling it.

I pull her to the ground and roll on top of her to cover her, shield her. Quiet, I say again, my face is wet, sweat or tears, I feel calm and floating, as if I'm no longer in my body; close to my eyes there's a leaf, red, turned early, I can see every bright vein. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I ease off, I don't want to smother her, instead I curl myself around her, keeping my hand over her mouth. There's breath and the knocking of my heart, like pounding, at the door of a house at night, where you thought you would be safe.

It's all right, I'm here, I say, whisper, Please be quiet, but how can she? She's too young, it's too late, we come apart, my arms are held, and the edges go dark and nothing is left but a little window, a very little window, like the wrong end of a telescope, like the window on a Christmas card, an old one, night and ice outside, and within a candle, a shining tree, a family, I can hear the bells even, sleigh bells, from the radio, old music, but through this window I can see, small but very clear, I can see her, going away from me, through the trees which are already turning, red and yellow, holding out her arms to me, being carried away.

✧˚ · .

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (2005)

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a novel about a nine-year-old boy named Oskar Schell who discovers a key in a vase that belonged to his father, a year after he was killed in the 9/11 attacks. Throughout the story, Oskar embarks on a quest across New York's five boroughs to find out which key it will unlock.

At the end of Chapter 17, the book’s last chapter, Oskar narrates a reversed order of his father’s activities before the unspeakable occurred on 9/11. It somehow reminds me of one of the ending scenes from the film Slumdog Millionaire (2008) where flashbacks of the main character’s life play out, showing how every single moment in his life led him to where he stands at the moment: kissing his lover’s scar in a train station.

But contrary to that scene from Slumdog Millionaire, the end of Chapter 17 from Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close leaves a taste that's more bitter than sweet. The passage takes your breath away not only for its overwhelming dismantling of time but in how Oskar, instead of relentlessly contemplating about how his father died (which he often did throughout the story), finally focuses on thinking about their last moments together instead, relishing in the comfort this memory brings.

His backward recount of his father’s final moments felt like an act of sheer abandonment and accepted defeat, of how, as much as you can dissect a moment long gone, there is absolutely nothing you can do to the past but to either honor it or to create fictional parallel-universe stories about it as a way of coping.

Dad would've left his messages backward, until the machine was empty, and the plane would've flown backward away from him, all the way to Boston.

He would've taken the elevator to the street and pressed the button for the top floor. He would've walked backward to the subway, and the subway would've gone backward through the tunnel, back to our stop. Dad would've gone backward through the turnstile, then swiped his Metrocard backward, then walked. He would've spit coffee into his mug, unbrushed his teeth, and put hair on his face with a razor. He would've gotten back into bed, the alarm would've rung backward, he would've dreamt backward.

Then he would've gotten up again at the end of the night before the worst day. He would've walked backward to my room, whistling 'I Am the Walrus' backward. He would've gotten into bed with me. We would've looked at the stars on my ceiling, which would've pulled back their light from our eyes.

I'd have said 'Nothing' backward.

He'd have said 'Yeah, buddy?' backward.

I'd have said 'Dad?' backward, which would have sounded the same as 'Dad' forward.

He would have told me the story of the Sixth Borough, from the voice in the can at the end to the beginning, from 'I love you' to 'Once upon a time'

We would have been safe.

✧˚ · .

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (2011)

Set during the Greek Heroic Age, The Song of Achilles is a new take on Homer's The Iliad as told from the perspective of Patroclus, an awkward young prince exiled from his homeland. The plot revolves around his friendship-turned-romance with Achilles, a hero of the Trojan War and the greatest of all Greek warriors.

In Chapter 12, Achilles goes missing. After learning that he is on the island of Scyros, Patroclus ventures out to find him and does so in unexpected circumstances. I won’t expound, but the raw desperation with which Patrocles describes how he can identify Achilles no matter what destroyed me.

I find Miller’s prose enchanting and elegant in its simplicity. There are rare times you read a book and are confronted with quotes so hard-hitting they get imprinted in your mind, and the passage below has got to be one of them for me.

Had she really thought I would not know him?

I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell, I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.

✧˚ · .

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (2015)

When I picked up this book in 2016 a year after it was released, I remember being exceptionally drawn by its cover when I found it on display in Fully Booked. It shows a black-and-white close-up of a man’s face, his eyes screwed shut and his eyebrows furrowed while holding a pose with an obscure, distorted quality I haven’t seen before.

Later on, after researching online, I learned that the photo is entitled “Orgasmic Man”, a part of a series of photos taken in the 1960s by Peter Hujar. This article I read a while back mentions that “Yanagihara fought to use the photo on the cover because of the ambiguity of whether the man is in pleasure or pain. It gives the viewer a sense that they may be seeing someone at their most vulnerable–as readers witness Jude throughout the book.”

I detected more pain than pleasure from its cover, which the book has a devastating dosage of. The novel covers four college classmates, namely JB, Malcolm, Willem, and Jude, as they move to New York in search of success in their adulthood. It centers on Jude, the main protagonist of the novel who becomes a brilliant lawyer in his adult life but is tormented by his traumatic, mysterious past. Somewhere along the plot, aspiring actor and Jude’s closest friend, Willem, becomes his life partner.

In Chapter 1.3, Jude wakes up Willem in the middle of the night with a bleeding arm and tells him that he cut himself by accident. Willem takes him to Andy, Jude’s physician, who then asks Willem to tell him if he notices Jude being suicidal in the future. A bit later on, when JB, Malcolm, Willem, and Jude are spending time together, they accidentally lock themselves out in the cold on the roof of their apartment building. They regain access via a risky plan that Jude suggests of himself being lowered onto the fire escape and entering the apartment through the bedroom window. Willem is troubled by this considering he knew about Jude’s injury but acquiesces with the plan.

I wasn’t prepared for how cloyingly intimate the scene between Willem and Jude is in this part of Chapter 1.3. Despite how mundane and platonic the moment was, it was as if I wasn’t supposed to be reading it, as if the two characters weren’t fictional and the moment that transpired between them should have just been kept to themselves.

Out of all the events in the book, this one bleeds into my memory the most—a quiet yet profound moment between two friends who love each other hard, despite being painfully unaware of it yet at that time.

The drop was scarier, and the landing harder, than he had thought it would be, but he made himself recover quickly and went over to where Jude was and wrapped his arms around his waist, tucking his leg around a spindle to brace himself. “I’ve got you,” he said, and Jude leaned out over the edge of the railing, farther than he could have done on his own, and Willem held on to him so tightly that he could feel the knuckles of Jude’s spine through his sweater, could feel his stomach sink and rise as he breathed, could feel the echo of his fingers’ movements through his muscles as he twisted and unkinked the twigs of wire that were fastening the window into its stile. And when it was done, Willem climbed onto the railing and into the bedroom first, and then reached out again to pull Jude in by his arms, careful to avoid his bandages.

They stood back on the inside, panting from the effort, and looked at each other. It was so deliciously warm inside this room, even with the cold air gusting in, that he at last let himself feel weak with relief. They were safe, they had been spared. Jude grinned at him then, and he grinned back—if it had been JB before him, he would’ve hugged him out of sheer stupid giddiness, but Jude wasn’t a hugger and so he didn’t. But then Jude raised his hand to brush some of the rust flakes out of his hair, and Willem saw that on the inside of his wrist his bandage was stained with a deep-burgundy splotch, and recognized, belatedly, that the rapidity of Jude’s breathing was not just from exertion but from pain. He watched as Jude sat heavily on his bed, his white-wrapped hand reaching behind him to make sure he would land on something solid.

Willem crouched beside him. His elation was gone, replaced by something else. He felt himself weirdly close to tears, although he couldn’t have said why.

“Jude,” he began, but he didn’t know how to continue.

“You’d better get them,” Jude said, and although each word came out as a gasp, he smiled at Willem again.

“Fuck ’em,” he said, “I’ll stay here with you,” and Jude laughed a little, although he winced as he did so, and carefully tipped himself backward until he was lying on his side, and Willem helped lift his legs up onto the bed. His sweater was freckled with more flecks of rust, and Willem picked some of them off of him. He sat on the bed next to him, unsure where to begin. “Jude,” he tried again.

“Go,” Jude said, and closed his eyes, although he was still smiling, and Willem reluctantly stood, shutting the window and turning off the bedroom light as he left, closing the door behind him, heading for the stairwell to save Malcolm and JB, while far beneath him, he could hear the buzzer reverberating through the staircase, announcing the arrival of the evening’s first guests.

✧˚ · .

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (2019)

This novel is special. Woven with the most lyrical, tear-inducing prose I’ve ever read, it’s written in the form of a letter from a Vietnamese-American boy named Little Dog to his illiterate mother. A literary feast for a reader peppered with abstract vignettes, its narrative is less straightforward than that of a conventional novel’s. To me, it felt less like reading a novel and more like studying a raw, poetic, and vivid letter that recounts the complexity of immigrant life and queerness.

In Part 1, I was absolutely struck by the passage where Vuong describes the human eye being god’s loneliest creation. I literally had to set the book aside for a moment, read the passage again, ascend into literary heaven, then come back down to earth as a mere mortal bestowed with a miraculous book in my hands. I was whiplashed.

Encountering the passage only a few pages in, I knew I had to brace myself for the outrageous ride the book was going to take me on. There are several more instances in the novel that made me feel that same mad, unhinged way—I can’t recall each specific part just because it happened so often. Even in parts that aren’t meant to make you cry, I often found myself weeping because of how Vuong’s prose is, well, gorgeous.

You once told me that the human eye is god’s loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing. The eye, alone in its socket, doesn’t even know there’s another one, just like it, an inch away, just as hungry, as empty. Opening the front door to the first snowfall of my life, you whispered, “Look.”

✧˚ · .

Have you read any of these books? Which book has made you cry?

Danna

✧˚ · .

1. I was listening to Antichrist by The 1975 on an afternoon train ride from Rome to Florence when I caught myself choking back tears. Sat by the window seat with my head against the glass, my face flushed from the autumn sun’s warmth, and surrounded by drowsy passengers who were either nodding off or reading a book, the onslaught of emotions was an abrupt yet welcome intermission amidst the drudgery of voyaging.

Glimpses of the sleepy Italian countryside stretched before my eyes, flashes of lime-green fields, medieval villages, and pastel blue skies swallowing my vision in fast-forwarded stop motion. It was somewhere in the midst of these nondescript locations that I found myself feigning nonchalance, blinking back the wetness from my eyes under my black rectangular sunglasses.

It’s not the first time it’s happened, but it’s been a while since it last did.

These were obviously “tears of wow”, for lack of a better term. A phrase coined by one of my high school friends, it describes tears that creep up on you when you least expect it, caused by neither sadness nor happiness, but an influx of indescribable feelings from a banal yet overwhelming moment. What triggers these “tears of wow” could be anything, really: an uneventful movie scene that isn’t meant to make you cry, a verse in a song that isn’t particularly heart-wrenching but somehow strikes a chord in your chest, singing the Philippine national anthem in a crowded cinema before the movie starts.

I couldn’t comprehend—and still can’t today—what exactly brought me to tears.

Perhaps it was Matty Healy’s low register and the way the song’s lyrics juxtapose religion and his love for his mother, the brooding instrumentals of the song that make me envision life in black-and-white akin to Lois Lowry’s The Giver. Perhaps it was the profound way the sun blanketed the nameless provincial fields of Italy so gently, so certainly—how ordinary yet immensely gorgeous the scenery looked, how distant it was all from the applaud and scrutiny of myriad tourists.

As someone who had fallen out of love with traveling, for reasons including but not limited to the climate crisis, I realized at that very moment: this is why people travel.

✧˚ · .

2. As humans, we naturally compare ourselves to every person we meet, whether we do it consciously or not. So when I see elders, living their daily lives outdoors in a leisurely manner, biking and driving and sipping on coffee or cocktails under the sun, I imagine how I’ll fare in my autumn years compared to them. With their creased leather skin, winter-white hair, and worn-down bodies that have lived through times, I think to myself: perhaps I will be like them someday. That is, if luck is on my side.

Before you wonder what makes elders-being-out-and-about so fascinating to me, you have to know where I come from. I hail from the place that Dan Brown described as the ‘gates of hell’ in his book called Inferno. In 2013 when the book was published, I vaguely remember the uproar this caused in the media, how both Philippine authorities and netizens were outraged by the description. I found the conglomerate offense to this measly one-liner strange, considering the book is fiction. Fast forward to a decade later and it seems that many have woken up to the fact, the bullseye accuracy of the description.

Hell can mean many things. “Traffic jams, suffocating pollution, and massive poverty” aside, hell is seeing my elders stuck in a system that impedes them from practicing and celebrating what their bodies are capable of. When I witnessed fragments of how elders lived in Rome, Florence, Paris, and Barcelona, I imagine the lives my elders could have lived had they not been born in the gates of hell, or had they chosen not to stay.

I think of myself and other people like me, the ever-changing fork in our roads paved by privilege.

I think of those in a spoon—how endlessly slippery is. The unfortunate fate of being led back to the same concave abyss, no matter how hard or smart one tries to break out, until the day one is swallowed up whole.

✧˚ · .

3. We were in a Prada store in Rome when an employee complimented my husband’s galactic-painted nails—festive gold glitter over black gel lacquer, to be exact.

In case you’re wondering, we weren’t there to shop for ourselves. In typical Filipino fashion, we asked friends and family before traveling abroad if they would like us to buy something for them—bilin, if you will—while we were in the mecca of signature Italian brands. That way, they’d get to save on shipping fees and taxes compared to shopping online for imported items.

Having manicured nails is the least men can do to break gender stereotypes, but seeing it appreciated jolts me out of the present (and by this, I mean living in the twenty-twenties) in the most delightful way. Years ago, it was unthinkable to see men wear nail polish without being mistakenly stereotyped. It makes me wonder what will be socially accepted for people to wear in a decade.

Maybe we won’t recognize ourselves—and each other—in ten years.

Maybe then, we’ll all start to look alike.

✧˚ · .

4. Driven by adrenaline and a burning desire to explore after a grueling day of switching time zones, we headed out at the ungodly time of 5:30 am on our first day in Europe.

Via di Donna Olimpia, the neighborhood of our stay nestled in the southwest walls of Rome, was bathed in deep cobalt stillness. We were the early birds on a mission, searching for worms before the morning garbage collectors were even on duty. It was the first time we saw a condom vending machine along the street, the blue hour of dawn emphasizing its flickering neon lights. A handful of local workers lugged boxes of fruits inside convenience stores, the fruits’ citrusy scents piquant and distinct.

The temperature was so chilly that water vapor exited our mouths with each exhale.

During this aimless stroll, we decided to enter a tall open gate that seemingly led to a park. It happened to be the famous Villa Doria Pamphili, but we’ll only realize that hours later when we look back at our trail via Google Maps. A sandy and rocky area with parking spaces, the entrance was so dark we had to use our iPhones’ flashlights in order not to fall or trip. Upon turning mine on, I had to stop myself from stumbling and muttering profanities out of shock, because less than three meters away from us, the first sight I spotlighted in the darkness was of two people hugging (or kissing?) by a tree.

My surprise didn’t arise from what they were doing, but how these two persons were conspiring at this time of day while the rest of Rome was still asleep. As they seemed unfazed and unbothered by the intrusive flash of light from my phone, we scurried past them to leave them to their privacy. I thought to myself, are we in Call Me By Your Name? Who meets up with a lover in a park at 5:45 am? I could be delusional, but I felt an air of sadness surrounding them the second I saw them—was it a farewell hug? How old were they, how did they look like, what kind of lives did they live?

In that fleeting instance of illuminating these two strangers, a lasting silhouette of two shadows gets imprinted on my mind.

I still think of this pair to this day.

✧˚ · .

5. A black pigeon catches my eye as I sit on a bench waiting for the 7:57 am Italo train ride from Venezia to Milano. Making its way out of the cinematic Venetian fog, it lands on the railway platform a meter away in front of me, poking its beak on the floor to salvage crumbs of food.

I think of the birds who roam aimlessly by the canals, cobblestoned squares, and electric train lines, flapping their wings and moving from one point to another without any hesitation or pause.

Free and primal and untethered.

An animal who doesn’t enforce its existence to the world, who sees and breathes and lingers, meandering until its last breath.

I think of what society has become, our never-ending quest for excess and exploitation.

I think of the pigeon that flown by, on its way to complete the merry-go-round of life with the bare minimum.

✧˚ · .

Danna

If you’re reading this in real-time, it’s mid-January 2023. When the letters and numbers slip through my fingertips as I type the date, it feels rushed yet overdue, overwhelming yet somehow unimpressive.

Onion prices in the Philippines have skyrocketed, the mask mandate has been lifted, and Filipinos’ social media feeds have (finally) been overflowing with photos and videos of face-to-face holiday gatherings. I hope these days have been treating you as well as they could—and if not, I hope you have been treating yourself as well as you could.

To me, it only feels like the “new year” has started now. While I was gifted with plenty of social gatherings during the holiday season, I’ve had to pay attention to what my body was telling me all throughout, which was to say: I am terribly exhausted. I got sick for a while (not covid) and I’ve had to say ‘no’ to attending a few get-togethers because I knew I’d end up being more burned out than I already was if I ended up going. I guess this is what forced isolation in the past two years has done to me. (Don’t get me wrong—the past few months have been nothing short of brilliant and rewarding, but alas, my three-decades-old body and introverted disposition can only handle so much.) If you feel the same way, know that you are not alone.

On this note, I remember writing a piece in 2021 for Young STAR by The Philippine Star entitled Self-care is an act of community care which I’m sharing below. Sometimes I write an article and completely forget about it, other times it can feel like a buried treasure—this piece to me is the latter.

Here’s to showing up for yourself, saying ‘no’, and knowing that these two aren’t mutually exclusive.

With love and in telepathy,

Danna

It’s thrown around as a trendy come-on, slapped on labels to drive purchases of products or experiences that calm, heal, or spark joy. Whether you embrace it, deprive yourself of it, or are confused by it, self-care is a prevalent movement in today’s zeitgeist that’s here to stay. 

At its most basic definition, self-care is the practice of preserving or improving one’s own well-being through deliberate individual means. From staying off of social media, to working up a sweat, to religiously practicing a bedtime routine, self-care looks and feels different for everybody. While it’s commonly linked with attractive words like indulge and pamper, the concept has become associated with unglamorous terms like sacrifice and discipline, evolving it into a practice that reflects a holistic view of wellness.

Personally, I view self-care as a means of self-preservation: the crucial refueling that allows me to cope with life’s challenges. It means acting for myself in order to steer clear of any possible regrets I might have in the future—whether that’s in the physical, emotional, social, professional, or even financial aspects of my life. Besides exercising, eating healthy and getting sufficient rest, it also encompasses the nitty-gritty of showing up when I don’t feel like it, paying bills and accomplishing errands on time, and investing time, money, and effort in activities that will provide me security in the future.

I view self-care as a means of self-preservation: the crucial refueling that allows me to cope with life’s challenges.

In the context of the ongoing pandemic, self-care can even feel like an act of escapism—as we’re stuck in a system of ruthless incompetency, corruption, and deceit, it has become a means of preserving one’s sanity. When you have no control over things that are falling apart outside of you, sometimes there’s nothing left to do but focus on and fend for yourself. 

There are times I feel guilty for prioritizing my well-being instead of extending a hand to those in need. Not only does self-care get flak for being commodified and advertised as self-indulgence, but the pandemic-driven plight of the majority can warp our view of the practice, tricking us into thinking that it’s selfish.

In this pandemic where societal inequalities are exposed daily in the media, being part of the privileged few can lead to feelings of guilt. This guilt tells us that we have no right to celebrate life nor complain because so many people have it worse. There are times I think, “What right do I have to focus on myself when others are suffering?” I have to remind myself that, wherever I may lie in the privilege spectrum, I can only do so much without sacrificing my well-being. This applies to everybody, as each of us has personal limits that must be respected. 

Taking good care of yourself is more far-reaching than it sounds—when you choose yourself, your healing, and your growth, you become more capable of showing up as your highest self, allowing you to affect and influence your communities in a more positive light.

As I grow older, I keep realizing that the more I take care of and enrich myself, the more I’m able to give back in the long run. No matter how self-serving it seems, self-care does affect the communities around you. Taking good care of yourself is more far-reaching than it sounds—when you choose yourself, your healing, and your growth, you become more capable of showing up as your highest self, allowing you to affect and influence your communities in a more positive light.

As someone who grew up in a single-parent household and was surrounded by elders who are stoic about their struggles, I’ve had to unlearn concepts that can be considered the antitheses of self-care. Since my dad passed away when I was 15 years old, I watched my mom raise three kids and send us to college all by herself—gracefully, and with flying colors, if I may so myself.

But despite this massive achievement, I’m certain this entailed several struggles and sacrifices that were unspoken. Don’t get me wrong: my siblings and I grew up comfortably in a loving home, but I believe we could have shared more of our struggles with each other if it weren’t for our stolid environment.

Carrying burdens all by yourself, staying silent and refusing to ask for help during times of difficulties, and exerting yourself to the point of self-neglect and self-sabotage are notions that we can all do without.

Watching my mom work hard without complaining, especially in my impressionable teenage years, molded me to become a somewhat secretive person who always tries to put up a good front. Opening up to each other about our emotions and being vulnerable wasn’t the norm for our family; getting the work done silently was what we all did. Although it fostered grit, this kind of upbringing gave me the inclination to deny my personal struggles. Until now, I still have to remind myself that it’s completely normal and healthy to be vulnerable, to ask for help when needed, and to express when I’m not okay.

Carrying burdens all by yourself, staying silent and refusing to ask for help during times of difficulties, and exerting yourself to the point of self-neglect and self-sabotage are notions that we can all do without. Although there is tremendous value in perseverance and hard work—ideas that older generations value—the concepts of rest, communication and transparency are just as important, too.

By valuing self-care, we are also healing our kin, our social circles, and the communities we are a part of.

Prioritizing self-care doesn’t just heal yourself, but it also heals your lineage. Just as elders can influence the young, children can absorb and internalize what their elders do. If we break the chain of violence we inflict toward ourselves, those who come after us will be exposed to better ways of coping with the stresses and strains of life. In a way, self-care can be viewed as a form of intergenerational healing. If we all learned how to cope healthily with our traumas and struggles, imagine how much better society would be.

Self-care is not an act of weakness, but a revolutionary protest. In a world that glorifies suffering, in a society that has ingrained in us that we must always be toiling, only for our struggles to end up at our own expense, self-care is one of the most rebellious acts we can do. It is saying “I am enough, I will care for myself because it is my right, because I am human, because the world is already going through so much pain and I’m not going to let that pain fester within me.” 

Self-care is not an act of weakness, but a revolutionary protest.

Treat yourself the way you treat others, as the old saying goes. By valuing self-care, we are also healing our kin, our social circles, and the communities we are a part of. By treating self-care as a necessity, our people and future generations won’t feel the need to replicate the self-sabotaging ways we’ve been needlessly imposing on ourselves all this time. 

Ultimately, self-care isn’t only about fostering kindness and respect towards ourselves, but allowing these values to echo in our environment for a more tender world.

This article was originally published in Young STAR by The Philippine Star (2021).

It’s the way I trip and stumble out of bed, groggy and disillusioned with the trappings of life, and get on with handling whatever it is that needs attention or upkeep.

Wash my face, let the cold water drip down my forearms, blink my red-rimmed eyes open to witness myself in the mirror—always the same, yet never the exact same again.

Arrange and re-arrange the furniture to fit my liking, let the dust settle in newly-uncovered corners, remove the clutter to make space for more: fading grocery receipts, books with beautifully-designed covers for my impossibly perpetual to-read pile, inky handwritten birthday notes from friends and family, creased fast food coupons kept as an afterthought, neatly set aside as a vain attempt to ‘get smart’ on inflation.

Organize my treasured books not alphabetically, but by the colors of the rainbow. Covers of blacks and whites and greys settle in a lower compartment of the bookshelf, a calm sea of literary worlds beneath its more vibrant counterparts, a nod to visual balance.

I keep in mind that the French word armoire means closet or wardrobe in English; I take pride in all the weapons I’ve amassed throughout the years: lived-in mom jeans in faded blues, secondhand coats and thrifted blazers from dusty corners of Intramuros and Makati Square, viciously-highlighted books that ingrain wisdom and solace in me.

Bottles of perfume pepper a corner of my dresser, scents of which filter the memories of seasons and eras: Light Blue by D&G in the heat of the summer, Scandal by Jean Paul Gaultier under the glimmer of the night lights. On another corner are tiny bottles of nail lacquer lined up like soldiers: obsidians and emeralds for October, festive reds and glitter for the holidays, neutral and pastel shades for the rest of the Philippines’ warmer lapses of time. The tints of my claws on rotation like clockwork, like a snake shedding its skin.

Close the curtains, open the curtains, let the outdoor world filter the room with a soft golden glow or a contemplative indigo depending on the time of day. Nestle on that concave side on the sofa right by the window, observe the late afternoon sky meld into baby pink and lavender hues, how these cotton-candy shades blanket Metro Manila luminously, signaling the capital to move slower into the night.

Paint the canvas of air with sounds of comfort—play that 3-hour-long LoFi video on YouTube in the background or a lengthy Spotify playlist with ambient sounds. Rummage through my belongings for a Royal matchbox, fumble with a posporo and flick it on the box’s gritty side until it sparks amber, light a handcrafted scented candle made by brown hands. Sit back and let its nostalgic fragrance simmer my senses, that familiar scent of fresh laundry and sleep-inducing sunshine.

The grass I lie on is the greenest it can ever be, no matter where I am, in every moment of time.

All there is to life is here, here is all there is to life.

(I’ll tell you a secret: when life starts feeling like a romance with yourself, you may be onto something right.)

Fall into its spell when you feel it coming.

✧˚ · .

May your 2023 be showered by the brilliance of the mundane.

With love (and in telepathy),

Danna

Today, I turn 30 years old.

Amidst the world burning, a handful of governmental dictatorships, several typhoons and record-breaking heat indexes in the Philippines, and an ER visit (we’ll talk about that later), here I am still: a miracle. Just like you—yes you, the person reading this right now. It’s a miracle that you and I are still here, isn’t it? Every day can feel like a curse or a miracle, depending on which lens you view the world through and what part of Earth you reside in. And for sanity’s sake, I’ve found it’s always best to choose the latter, no matter how stubborn and unyielding self-deprecating streaks can be.

I’m breathing. I’m conscious. I can hear the distant sound of barking dogs in my neighborhood as I type this, I can see letters forming on my laptop screen as I lucidly transmit my mind’s thoughts to my fingers. I’m here, I’m present, you’re here. Not to sound like I’m romanticizing life—which is an exceedingly valid coping mechanism in this day and age—but being alive at this moment seems to be pure magic to me.

However miraculous it is for me to be here, however uncontrollable some forces are that got me here (see: my countless privileges and the butterfly effect), I’m paying tribute to some realizations I’ve made throughout the years that I would like to remember. These have helped me navigate my decisions more deliberately and resolutely, and I’m writing these so I do not forget, because my god can my memory be tenuous. (Yes, the irony of only turning thirty is not lost on me.)

Here’s to looking back, to looking ahead, and most of all, to being: the imperfect, ever-evolving earthling who tries her best and makes it all up as she goes.

Choose whom you take advice from.

Not everyone will have your best interests at heart. Would you take career advice from someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to navigate today’s volatile and ever-shifting industries? Would you take relationship advice from someone whose marriage you don’t look up to (that is, if your end goal is marriage)? Would you take lifestyle advice from someone who doesn’t understand what it’s like to live with your circumstances, especially with respect to social class, gender, race?

More often than not, those who push their unsolicited advice feel the need to give you their opinions in order to feel validated. When they offer their inconsiderate or ill-intending counsel, it’s not about you, it’s about them and their own projections. If their suggestions don’t resonate with you, be a dear to yourself and take them with a grain of salt. Leave them with their own issues while you choose the right decision for you. It’s your life after all. No one else will be doing your job’s grunt work, paying your rent, dealing with people you choose to associate with, and navigating the consequences of your actions—but you.

Life works in favors.

I would have to quote my family’s tour guide on this during a trip to England in 2019, who happened to be a British history scholar, author, and excellent storyteller.

It means that life works to your advantage if you do favors for others. On the flip side, it’s natural to seek help from others, because as much as you’d like to be hyper-independent (trust me, I know how this feels and how tough it can be to unlearn this mindset), you can’t achieve everything on your own.

I don’t believe in karma. I don’t wholly believe in the saying, “you get what you give”, because life is full of inequity and unfairness. Sometimes, you’re just not dealt with the right cards no matter how much strategy and energy you put into attaining them. Giving won’t always mean you’ll get something back, but it does increase your chances of receiving something in return. So be good to others by helping out when you can, ask for help when you need to, and watch your life unfold in ways you can’t imagine.

All things are in entropy, so make the most out of the present.

Everything is in a state of disappearance, disorder, and death. These are inevitable for all things: yourself, your job, your appearance, the titles and achievements you latch onto, the pets you hold dear, the people around you.

All your loved ones will eventually die. Some of them will suffer painful and drawn-out illnesses, while others will pass away quickly and unexpectedly. What you can do at present is to show them love, warmth, and kindness every chance you get, and accept that you will never be prepared enough when that time of passing comes.

Life is about loving and letting go. Keeping in mind that there’s an end to all things can help you be fully present—and be more at peace when it’s time to let go.

Honor your truth.

Not only is it easy to drown in the noise of others' opinions, but it’s also easy to over-consume all the media at our disposal and allow these to overpower our inner voice. Remember, only you will ever be an expert in your own truth.

Your past. Your regrets. Your secrets. Your mistakes. Your insecurities.

Your goals. Your pleasures. Your desires. Your needs. Your contentment.

Don’t let anybody tell you who you are, what you want, and what you can and can’t be. There is no perfect way of doing things and there is no standard formula for a perfect life, because nobody is the same and everyone’s definition of success and happiness differ. Be at peace with who you are, focus on your personal journey, and have the courage to follow your intuition.

Community is where the heart is.

What use is your power if you keep it all to yourself and don’t share it with others? Self-improvement and personal achievements can be fruitful, but there is a greater gift to receive if you share your skills and talents for the common good.

It’s easy to isolate ourselves in this modern world, but you’ll be surprised to find the joy, connection, and satisfaction that being a part of a community can offer you. Be brave, show up, and help foster a healthy society—not just for yourself, but for those who will come after you.

If things don’t go as planned (which plenty of times, they won’t), lean into pleasure and just dance.

There’s a threshold to dwelling on your mistakes, your regrets, and what isn’t going your way. If you feel that you’re going in circles, you can always pivot, focus on what you can control, and take it easy on yourself. If you pay close attention, the world offers overlooked pleasures and pockets of respite within your reach.

Lean into them, because the simplest things can ease moments of struggle.

Lean into them, because you can.

✧˚ · .

I hope you have a wonderful December ahead of you.

Danna

For better or for worse, online shopping and social media usage have skyrocketed since the pandemic started. Aggravated by social isolation and the monotony it brings, what used to be viewed as a luxury is now the norm—purchasing products and goods, from the most basic to the most frivolous, are right at our fingertips.

According to Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman in his book Consuming Life, consumerist culture values individualism, transience over the duration, reinvention, and the ability to acquire things quickly. Through social media, this hurried culture has seamlessly forced itself upon us and permeated our daily lives. Whether it be advertisements on our feeds or influencers with large followings, the masses of online media and personalities are almost always trying to sell us something, whether it’s a product, feeling, or lifestyle. Oftentimes, there needs to be something bought for us to satisfy this aspiration.

According to Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman in his book Consuming Life, consumerist culture values individualism, transience over the duration, reinvention, and the ability to acquire things quickly. Through social media, this hurried culture has seamlessly forced itself upon us and permeated our daily lives.

The breakneck speed of social media urges brands, influencers, and consumers to be on-trend to stay relevant, thus driving the promotion and purchasing of fashion items, food, home decor, and mobile electronics at an unprecedented rate. This mania of consumption has manifested itself in seemingly innocuous haul videos—especially from fast fashion brands—and flex culture, a way of showing off purchases that indicate an abundance of wealth.

On an alarming note, large e-commerce companies are not only offering the usual seasonal holiday sales but are now commonly seen promoting monthly sales in hopes of beating the competition and reaching higher targets. Combine these ubiquitous (and extremely tempting) sales with our need for instant gratification, and you get a recipe for climate disaster.

This mania of consumption has manifested itself in seemingly innocuous haul videos—especially from fast fashion brands—and flex culture, a way of showing off purchases that indicate an abundance of wealth.

There are studies that show e-commerce produced fewer carbon dioxide emissions than traditional brick-and-mortar shopping, but what’s better for the environment isn’t quite clear cut, especially when factors like consumer behavior, logistics, and waste aren’t unaccounted for. With social media’s material-centric culture of consumerism, this notion that online shopping is largely more eco-friendly seems improbable.

The speed and frequency of online purchases are producing a phenomenal volume of plastic packaging waste that ends up in our oceans and landfills. Shopping from different distribution centers, purchasing from farther locations, and instances like missed deliveries and returns result in higher green gas emissions per purchase. Due to the overconsumption driven by social media, these negative environmental impacts will only worsen if this business-as-usual scenario is let on.

While online shopping is convenient for a multitude of reasons, there must be a fine line drawn between what’s necessary and what’s excessive. As e-commerce provides jobs for people and is the safer way of business in this pandemic, it should be noted that it’s a complex issue with regard to living sustainably. The burden lies among all of us, albeit in varying degrees. Businesses must foster more sustainable practices while consumers have the power to make mindful purchases that are less damaging to the environment.

Rather than shaming individuals who are most likely just trying to make a living, we should all be supporting green practices and policies, and giving more power to sustainable businesses so that their competition will follow.

Although pressuring sellers to be more sustainable and eco-friendlier is productive, it’s also important to question the systems in place. Rather than shaming individuals who are most likely just trying to make a living, we should all be supporting green practices and policies, and giving more power to sustainable businesses so that their competition will follow.

To stop feeding this system of overconsumption, I believe that there must be more green jobs, more sustainable policies, and a more even distribution of wealth. If green jobs are much more accessible and basic needs are being met, would sellers still resort to exploitative and unsustainable means to earn a living? From career choices to purchasing decisions, I believe that individuals would uphold more eco-friendly lifestyles if given the chance—greed, materialism, and ignorance aside.

While this culture of consumerism has seeped into our daily lives, we do have the power to educate ourselves and be more conscious about our purchasing decisions. Be wary of what you typically see online and adopt perspectives that are good for ourselves and the environment.

Focus on how your life feels rather than how it looks online, where people feel that they constantly need to prove their status and identity through never-ending, avoidable purchases.

Buy less, choose well, and make your purchases last. Be intentional with who you follow online, support local and eco-friendly businesses, and do what you can in demanding more sustainable alternatives from brands. Focus on how your life feels rather than how it looks online, where people feel that they constantly need to prove their status and identity through never-ending, avoidable purchases.

Online shopping is here to stay, but what we can do is to be more mindful of our lifestyle choices. Let us not be carelessly swayed by the demands of a consumerist culture, as they are not in favor of the planet’s health, and therefore, not in favor of us.

This article was originally published on Manila Bulletin’s Eleventh Hour column (2022), a space for honest and timely climate conversations spearheaded by The Climate Reality Project Philippines.

Words by Danna is an ongoing inquiry into mindful living and the human experience. Expect 1-2 monthly newsletters sent to your email inbox once you subscribe. 💌