Strong Women

I have very strong women in my family [following the lead of my Seesters' posts on strong women] and I start with my Lola Conchita. She was widowed at a young age with 5 kids to boot right around the second world war. She was a homemaker and a seamstress at the same time making a living with her hands - crocheting curtains, bedsheets and just about anything you can come up with. Left with 5 kids she took them to Nueva Ejica when WW2 broke out at they watch Manila burn from their hideaway. She raised them without a husband but with very supportive family members and relatives from the Ilagan-Mendoza-Reyes-Castillo families in Pandacan.

My mother, the youngest of the five is also another strong woman I know, raising 3 kids in Manila while my father was abroad. In 76 they separated and came home from Africa with two daughters. Our eldest stayed behind to give her two sisters a better chance at a decent education and married a wonderful Pakistani engineer. My mother tried to finish her education as an accountant and landed various jobs while supporting me and my sister Leah. She helped set up Liz Claiborne Ptd. Asia in the early 80s. 

Another strong woman is my eldest sister Amina [Mary Anne] who at 18 faced the uncertain prospect of being in another country and another culture by herself. She chose to stay behind to give me and Leah a better chance of getting a decent education and she continued on with her married life with my brother in law. She has managed to raise 4 wonderful responsible children, maintain a house and still work with the ADB and then with the BBC as their administrator based in both Kabul and Peshawar.

The next strong woman is my other sister Leah.  A fighter, a silent fighter. Unlike me, she's rarely very vocal but her quiet strength is infectious. I almost lost her in 88 to a very rare form of Hepatitis. She lost her eldest child since she was pregnant while the virus ravaged her frail body and it was a miracle she survived a 10% chance of recovering. After being in a coma for 2 weeks, one of her cornea was damaged and left her with partial sight. That never stopped her. She finished her degree in Interior Design and went on to becoming an instructor/professor for the college she graduated from. With 2 kids and a husband in tow, they braved migrating to Canada and with the help of friends over there, managed to settle in and find their niche. Now, raising three wonderful children, she owns a daycare center and is also an instructor in a nearby college.

Another strong woman in my life is my second mother although for the life of me, I prefer to call her a friend. She is the second wife of my dad, Rhoda whom I have great respect for. She sacrificed a lot being with him, suffered the presence of our grandmother's quirks as well while she stayed with Rhoda and my dad. She made him a better person if not a better father and helped him form a Christian church rescuing lost souls and living the life Christians are supposed to. Humble, beautiful and caring, she stayed with my father until his last minutes on earth. I am grateful that in his waning years, she was beside him, always a smile and a silent strength about her that everyone who knew them saw. When I finally got to spend some time with her, I saw what I guess my father also saw in her and I appreciate the woman and who she is that as unorthodox as it may seem for others, she is part of our family. They gave us a brother Jayjay who grew up to be such a responsible wonderful young man as well and when I falter at the feet of our Lord, I know she prays not just for me, but for me and my sisters as well and our children. She came out of her cocoon eventually and now owns a spa in HK with her new husband and family who have also adopted us into the fold. Love is her strength, the strength I see in most of the strong women in my family.

Their biggest achievements are not what they were but what they did with minimal resources, facing the fear of the unknown and looking at the future with children in tow, making the most of what was on hand and still manage to raise their children to become responsible members of society. My Lola and mom are gone, leaving behind a legacy we continue from three different points of the globe and still manage to make life easier, laughable for each other and I would be lost without them. I get my strength from them. I was born into a family of strong women and their blood runs in my veins.

Happy Women's Month! Women Rule!!
https://www.facebook.com/lunar.quinox

I have days....

I have days like these past few days that I look back at my life and I wonder what decisions - right or wrong - I made that led me to this point in my life wherein the future itself looks so bleak.

I have days like these past few days that I analyze current events and I wonder if I should take the necessary steps to rock this boat or sink this ship.

I have days that I am faced with my own mortality and I wonder if I have lived a life enough to leave a legacy and for whom did I live it for.

I have days that I do not see the purpose I once held so dear to my heart and I feel wasted. That everything I wanted back then was never fulfilled not of my own doing but was it? 

I have days I am amazed at how far I have traveled on this road called life and I wonder where the road ends. Because I am tired and my soul is weary. I cannot find the strength to continue and if I did, I fail to see the reason why I need to continue.

I have days I want to walk out and never look back on all the pain and misery I have had to deal with my whole life. To look at the better days only leaves a sense of regret for they are few and far between.

I was told to pray. To whom? My prayers have been unheard and unheeded. And if they were, they were not what I prayed for. Someone said we are given what we need, not what we want. I do not see the need for the heartaches I have been given over the years, nor the conflicts or the sorrows. I have faced defeat as a person and I have failed at being who I was supposed to be. Suppositions mandated by social norms and not of my personal convictions. Because I was supposed to be as society dictated and I have struggled to achieve that.

But I have days that I no longer see the need to follow society's norms. A society that favors only those who can pay to silence others. 

I will be free one day in one of those days, I look forward to it because I claim it even if it is not something society demands of me, even if it is something society denies me. I will be free from these chains that bind me and I shall start living as I should have lived a long time ago before I put society's views ahead of my own life.

Traitor in the midst

Social networks are the only venue I have to rant and vent whatever heartaches I may have. Aside from doing needle work or crochet, or reading a book or using a hammer and fix what needs to be fixed inside this house - the social networks have been a valuable lifeline for me. I'm on the lookout for a job still, always keeping a positive outlook no matter how hard it is for me. I listen to other people's problems, I try to cheer them up or at least be a shoulder for them to lean on. I know how it feels to be alone in a roomful of people. I know how it is to be gagged. 

In my posts, it is unavoidable that the focus of my rant comes out. Because he is the reason I am suffering and suffering for my children and why my children are not getting the sort of life and childhood they truly deserve. They have been robbed of it, deprived of it and denied a childhood they can tell their children about. 

Some people, perhaps; think that it is all just "fun and games" for me to vent. It is not a shallow topic when lives of children are concerned. When their future is at stake. I have been pushed into a corner, beaten psychologically into submission, threatened with abandonment if I were to have my way, my rightful place and what is legally mine. I have been very quiet on the outside, and my only sounding board is the social network which I thought would be with TRUSTED people. People who KNEW what was right from wrong, not for me but for my kids or any child who had a father such as this one. 

Yes he provides. Yes he pays for all the bills. Its only natural that he does since I'm not working. But in saying that, he has no right to deprive us all and make us live in accordance to how he wants us to "have" based on what he is prepared to "share" with his own flesh and blood. And even when I was working, my measly salary went to what he could not provide or refused to provide these kids - a childhood. A weekend out of the house, malling, watching a movie in a decent theater and not some pirated DVD, eating decent food in a restaurant or a fast food and having fun with each other, visiting a museum, walking around parks.... I may not earn as much as he does but when I buy my children clothes or things to wear, I do not take them to an ukay-ukay store or make them settle for the cheapest pair of schools shoes or rubber shoes on the shelf. I get them the best that I can afford because they deserve it. He, on the other hand - does not. He makes them "settle" and demands subservience, usually, its the next thing to the cheapest if not the cheapest item in the store. In a nutshell, you do not shout at a 6 year old for asking P5.00 to buy fishball. THAT's the kind of person this TROLL is.

Enough of that. 

For the traitor who made screen grabs of my comments in threads, I pray you survive only up to this summer. Because I CURSE you. I CURSE the very ground you walk upon, I CURSE the very air you breathe. You are a traitor, no better than the troll you took sides with. I will let the universe "take care" of you and what you did to us, to me. For destroying my trust in people, for putting that idea of doubt into my head, I CURSE YOU and I pray the demons take you before the end of this summer.

Just a simple reminder

Freedom of Speech is dead. Goodbye EDSA 1

February 18, 2014, the day Freedom of Expression died.

What Happened to us?

What happened to us? 

Where is our sense of outrage? 

We cuss and we curse, send out the most vicious invectives at a supposed rape victim, defend an accused rapist just because they're celebrities but we can't find the sense of outrage for the number of children being raped everyday? They have no voice. They are not celebrities. They do not have a network of friends who can wear T-shirts of protest or support for them and yet we turn a blind eye to this.

A country that cannot even protect its weakest citizens is an inept nation, a nation of cowards, a nation of hypocrites, a nation of dense and numb people who cannot even find that moral outrage to set things straight and correct the wrongs that hound us day in and day out.

We have government agencies who molest and rape our natural environment and we do not say anything. We have government officials who steal from us face to face and yet they walk around scot-free. We have a total lack in public service and we take it knowing fully well these agencies will be unable to function without our taxes. When will we demand justice? When its too late to serve its purpose? We have a government office that is supposed to protect the human rights of VICTIMS yet it only speaks up when death threats are hurled at criminals or when criminals are dealt with the way they should be. They allow the human rights of victims and the families of victims to be victimized all over again due to their apathy towards victims but portray a truck load of empathy and sympathy for criminals.

And we keep quiet. We do not speak up. We've lost our sense of moral outrage. We only speak up when we choose to and we retreat to our comfortable corner under the sun unmindful of the fact that people are still living in tent cities, they need our help, they need to feel part of this country and not forgotten. We only speak up when we want to bash another person for their difference in opinion but fail to offer any proactive constructive ones. We speak up against brutality against celebrities but not towards the injustice and murder of innocent nameless ones. 

What happened to us? Where are "we"?