Thea's Truths & Thresholds

Tag: family estrangement

  • When You’re the Afterthought: Family Estrangement, Public Stories, and Finding Our People in the Philippines

    When You’re the Afterthought: Family Estrangement, Public Stories, and Finding Our People in the Philippines

    I came across the article about David Beckham leaving his son, Brooklyn, out of his 2025 year-end recap post, only to share throwback photos of him hours later. When Brooklyn was left out of his father’s recap, only added later, it reminded me of what it feels like to be remembered as an afterthought because that’s how his message came across to me. Maybe even for optics. If he wanted to honor all his kids, he would have included Brooklyn from the start.

    This hit close to home because I know what it feels like to be the one who gets left out or remembered only as an afterthought—if I would even be remembered or included. For years, “echa pwera (to be excluded)” was a recurring theme in my life with my family of origin.

    *****

    I know I’m not the only one navigating this. Looking at public figures helps me remember and reassures me I’m not alone.

    I cheered on when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stepped away from the royal family because of deep-seated issues—racism, lack of support for their mental health, and pressure to maintain an image over their well-being. They chose to prioritize their own family and healing, even when it meant letting go of traditional ties.

    Here in the Philippines, we saw the same with celebrity Sarah Geronimo. She didn’t invite her mother to her wedding, and while some criticized her, many more supported her choice. It was a big moment because it showed our culture is slowly starting to understand that “family first” doesn’t mean staying in harmful, abusive, and traumatizing situations.

    And as for me, I didn’t decide to step back from my birth family on a whim. I started distancing myself from my siblings when I was in my mid-40s, and from my mother a few years later. I’m now in my 60s. My father passed away several years ago. After our parents’ separation, my siblings and I had been estranged from him, too, for a long time—his choice, not mine.

    I was the one who spoke up about things that needed to change. The truth teller. The cycle breaker who tried to break harmful patterns that had been going on all throughout my childhood and adult life, even for generations. It wasn’t easy, especially in a culture where “utang na loob (debt of gratitude)” is often used to pressure us into staying quiet or putting up with things we shouldn’t. But I knew I couldn’t keep sacrificing my own mental and emotional health.

    *****

    No one chooses to walk away from their family without a good reason. It’s a decision that usually comes after years of trying to make things work.

    *****

    I know there are others here in the Philippines who are going through the same thing, or something similar. Maybe you’re the one who had to set boundaries, or perhaps you’re the one who was pushed away. Either way, it can feel incredibly lonely.

    Healing takes time, and it helps to know we’re not the only one on this path. Our well-being matters, and our journey is valid—whatever that looks like for us.

    I find it encouraging to come across recent articles that signal a cultural shift in the Philippines — a willingness to speak more openly about the once-taboo topic of family estrangement and the choice to go no contact:

    Why More Filipino Millenials Are Walking Away From Family Obligations: When family duty becomes too heavy

    Looking for respondents for research on Filipino adult children estranged from their parents

    Calling for participants for a research study that aims to explore and understand family estrangement experiences among Filipino adults

    Filipino & estranged from your family? Especially this [holiday] season?

    Addressing Toxic Behaviors in Filipino Families | #YourMindOurMovement

    *****

    I’m glad not only to see the topic being discussed more openly, but also to see resources becoming accessible for those navigating such a difficult path. When I was contemplating this decision decades ago, there were hardly any materials to turn to.

    A few years back, I considered starting a support group. For now, my focus is on my own journey. Still, I want to offer a space for connection if you feel the need — a place to share reflections or simply be heard.

    I write under a pseudonym to protect my privacy, and I take confidentiality seriously. If you are or you know someone navigating family estrangement or struggling to set healthy boundaries, and you’d like to talk to someone who understands the cultural context we’re in—you may email me at theasjournal25@gmail.com  

    There’s no pressure to share more than you’re comfortable with. You may also share your reflections in the comment section below—whatever feels right and safe to you.

    Even if we’ve been treated as afterthoughts or misjudged for prioritizing our mental health and well-being, we can choose to center our own healing.

    Peace and Blessings,
    — Thea 💙

  • Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: Redefining What Matters

    Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: Redefining What Matters

    For a long time, the phrase “don’t sweat the small stuff” felt hollow to me. It sounded like bypassing. Dismissive. Like another way to excuse what should never have been excused. In my family, in systems that tolerated abuse, in environments that mistook generosity for obligation — those were never small. Those were patterns. Naming them was not oversensitivity; it was clarity.

    Now, in this quieter chapter, I see where the phrase actually lives. It never belonged in places where dignity was eroded or truth had to be swallowed to preserve appearances. But it does belong in how I move through relationships and daily exchanges — where discernment, not erasure, is the measure.

    Friends and Family

    With friends, I notice the difference.

    Claire, with whom I recently reconnected, is someone I can meet at depth, and she meets me there, too. When she didn’t call me back after saying she would, I felt the sting. Her later text about “peace of mind” landed tone‑deaf, and I caught myself bracing. But when we spoke again, the conversation was supportive and real. Because Claire consistently meets my clarity, I can choose to let go of her misstep. There are more substantial gifts her friendship brings, and I won’t make a big deal out of a missed call. That’s small stuff.

    With my family of origin, it was never small.

    There was a pattern of abuse and dysfunction. The time came when I no longer felt compelled to play the rescuer or victim in the drama triangle. I embraced my role as the truth‑teller, and that clarity cost me, but it was structural truth.

    *****

    Neighbors and Community

    The same with the condo community: entitlement and disrespect weren’t lapses, they were patterns. Patterns of abuse. That required fire.

    And yet, not every neighbor is the same.

    Jean has shown she can meet me at depth, even if my family estrangement story is foreign to her. Fatima, on the other hand, cannot meet me there. She is not malicious, and she cares in her own way, but her bandwidth is limited. I accept what she can offer without overextending myself. That’s discernment too.

    *****

    Cultural Terrain

    Even in cultural exchanges here in the Philippines, I’ve seen how politeness can mask avoidance. Hiya (shame), indirectness, palusot (excuses) — they surface daily. Naming them doesn’t mean it needs to be met, addressed, responded to, or even apologized for. Sometimes the truth lands in silence, sometimes in discomfort. Either way, I no longer carry the weight of how it is received.

    *****

    From One Extreme to Another

    In the corporate world, I wore the armor of title and leverage. I was often labeled mataray (feisty) or masungit (grumpy) — sharp, exacting, unbending.

    When I left that world, I overcorrected. Without positional power, I softened too much. I tried to become endlessly accommodating, mistaking self‑abandonment for humility. I lowered my voice, my expectations, my edges. At the time, I thought that was peace. Later I understood: it was erasure. Self-abandonment. Self-betrayal.

    Now I stand differently. I am no longer a boss, but I am still sovereign. I don’t need the armor, and I don’t need the overcorrection. What remains is discernment: fire for patterns, release for noise, acceptance for limits.

    The Reclaiming

    So I no longer confuse peace with silence, or anger with truth, or tolerance with wisdom.
    It keeps me from saying yes when I really mean no.
    It protects me from doing what isn’t mine to do — a reflex of my deeply ingrained rescuing pattern.
    A pattern that, thankfully, I was able to finally overcome only recently.
    My fire is ethical, not emotional.

    This is not numbness. It is grounded strength. Quiet authority. And for the first time, it feels like peace that does not ask me to shrink myself in order to exist.

    Not sweating the small stuff is a call for discernment — a practice of peace with integrity. It means I don’t shrink. I discern, and I choose.

    In the next entry, Everyday Discernment, I’ll share more examples of how this practice shows up in daily interactions — from service lapses to community exchanges — and how cultural values shape the terrain I navigate.

    If any part of this speaks to you, I invite you to share your reflections in the comment section below.

    Peace and Blessings,
    — Thea 💙

  • Learning to Live with Limits—Mine and Theirs

    Learning to Live with Limits—Mine and Theirs

    Today, I noticed a quiet but important shift in myself.

    For years, I have kept revisiting the same chapters of my life—family, betrayal, caregiving, the condo saga, friendships that broke, systems that failed. I told those stories again and again because I needed to. I needed to release them, to make sense of them, to clear them from my body and my mind. That was what my first two blog sites were for. I don’t regret that at all. That was necessary.

    But lately, I’ve felt no enthusiasm for retelling those stories in detail anymore. Even thinking about turning them into new journal entries/blog posts feels exhausting. Not because they were insignificant—but because I no longer live inside them.

    What matters to me now is not what happened, but what those years shaped in me:

    • how my discernment changed,
    • how my boundaries evolved,
    • how my sense of self became quieter but steadier,
    • how my expectations of people became more realistic.

    I see more clearly now that my life moved through extremes.

    Before my health crisis in 1998, I lived in a rigid, high-control, corporate identity. I was sharp, efficient, exacting. When that phase collapsed, I swung to the other end of the spectrum—over-accommodating, people-pleasing, rejecting anything that resembled severity or firmness. Later, after confronting my birth family’s dysfunction and abuse, which I could no longer deny while becoming my brother’s full-time caregiver during his illness, and eventually choosing no contact, I swung again—this time into hyper-boundary, high-standards, zero-tolerance territory.

    That last phase protected me. It also isolated me.

    During the condo chapter, the HOA board chairman once told me that I was, like him, “a perfectionist in an imperfect world“—and that he had already learned how to handle and adjust to that. I remember taking offense at the time. It felt dismissive, as if my struggle came from rigidity rather than from very real lapses, abuse of power, and systemic failure.

    I see that comment differently now.

    I was operating from a place where I truly believed I deserved more than what the world seemed to offer. I don’t believe I deserve crumbs. I don’t believe I should settle for less. That part of me is not wrong. And I still hold those truths to this day. But as I focused on giving myself what I believe I am worthy of, it became increasingly clear that the majority of humanity does not function at the depth, clarity, and self-responsibility that I do.

    That is where the misalignment really lies.

    So how could I expect the world to meet me at that level—not out of unwillingness, but out of actual limitation? Who then must adjust—the more advanced or the less advanced?

    This question also brings me back to my decision to disconnect from my family and, eventually, from friends. With my family, the line was clear: abuse was present. That decision stands. With friends, it was different. They were not overtly abusive—but they were also not truly present, not reciprocal, not deeply real. I didn’t leave because I thought I was better than they were. I left because I felt alone even while staying.

    Now, after the ankle injury, the resultant financial strain, and the experience of being without a stable shelter for a time, something else is happening. I’m not swinging to another extreme. I’m settling into a balance I’ve never quite held before:

    • I still have boundaries.
    • I still have standards.
    • But I no longer interpret every imperfection as a personal threat or an existential meaning event.

    I saw this recently in a small moment with a neighbor. She asked if she could return my spare unit keys. I asked her to keep them while I was away in Los Baños, where I thought my sanctuary awaited. My first reaction was a familiar sting—feeling slighted, feeling as though support was being withdrawn. I caught myself. I didn’t go down that road. I stayed neutral. And in that neutrality, something simple and human happened: she asked if we could meet up.

    That may seem minor, but it matters to me. It showed me that I no longer have to lead with vigilance or symbolic meaning. I can let people be who they are within their capacity—without lowering my dignity or dissolving myself.

    Apart from my recent reconnection with Claire, I also don’t actually have deep or real friendships at this point in my life. That’s simply the truth. Painful but real. The inner shifts I’ve been going through are very recent, so it makes sense that the outside world hasn’t caught up yet. There is always a lag between inner change and outer manifestation. I’m not reading meaning into that gap anymore. I’m just letting it be what it is.

    What I do know is this:
    I am no longer interested in being known for what I survived. I’m more interested in who I am becoming as I move into my later years—how I carry myself, how I conserve energy, how I choose realism over fantasy, and calm over intensity.

    This feels like a different kind of maturity. Quieter. Less dramatic. Less driven by proving or releasing. More shaped by discernment and proportion.

    And for now, that is enough.

    If any part of this speaks to you, I invite you to share your reflections in the comment section below.

    Peace and Blessings,
    — Thea 💙

  • On Regret, Clarity, and the Versions of Myself I Outgrew

    On Regret, Clarity, and the Versions of Myself I Outgrew

    The poppy has long moved through history as a symbol of grief, memory, and awakening. In poetry and art, it marks the passage from sorrow into self-recognition—where what once wounded becomes a source of strength.

    Regret used to be a word I avoided. Almost twenty years ago, when someone asked if I had any, I instinctively said, “None.” At the time, I believed it. Or perhaps I needed to believe it. I was immersed in a worldview that rewarded denial disguised as enlightenment — the “it’s all good,” “everything happens for a reason,” “don’t dwell on the negative” kind of thinking that leaves no room for honest reckoning.

    Looking back, I see that I wasn’t free of regret. I was simply disconnected from it.

    Today, regret feels different. It’s no longer a threat or a failure. It’s a mirror — one that reflects not just what happened, but who I was when it happened.

    I regret the moments when I spoke too quickly, or too sharply, or not sharply enough.
    I regret the times I acted from emotional turbulence instead of clarity.
    I regret the choices I delayed, the boundaries I softened, the truths I swallowed.

    I regret the years, decades, I poured into rescuing others, hoping it would earn me the validation I never received as a child. I regret the energy I gave to people who mistook my generosity for obligation. I regret the chapter when I immersed myself in a condo committee that drained me, distracted me, and left me carrying burdens that were never mine to carry.

    I regret the financial decisions made out of survival rather than stability.
    I regret trusting someone who love-bombed me, only to disappear with my savings and leave me alone in the wreckage. That chapter revealed something painful but necessary: when I needed support the most, there were no true friends to be found.

    And beneath all of these regrets lies the oldest one — the wish that I had been born into a family emotionally prepared for parenthood. So many of my choices were not choices at all but coping mechanisms. Survival strategies. The adaptations of a child who learned early that she had to protect herself.

    But here is what I know now:

    Regret is not self-blame.
    Regret is the moment you realize you’ve outgrown the version of yourself who made those decisions.

    It is a sign of growth, not failure.

    It is the body saying, “I see more now. I know more now. I deserve so much more now.”

    I don’t dwell in regret.
    I sit with it.
    I listen to it.
    I let it show me the patterns I no longer need to repeat.

    And in doing so, regret becomes something else entirely — not a wound, but a threshold. A doorway into a life shaped not by survival, but by sovereignty.

    If any part of this speaks to you, I invite you to share your reflections in the comment section below.

    Peace and Blessings,
    — Thea 💙

  • The Los Baños Threshold: The Mirage of the Cottage Sanctuary

    The Los Baños Threshold: The Mirage of the Cottage Sanctuary

    For years, I carried with me the dream of the cottage sanctuary. I imagined misty mornings in the countryside, verandas where I could sip tea while birds serenade me, gardens that promised healing, and quiet lanes that seemed far removed from the condo circus. I thought rural life would be my refuge, proof that I had risen above the governance battles and the endless rut of urban politics.

    Part of the allure was not just the cottage dream itself, but the silent proof it carried. I wanted to show the condo community—those still entangled in governance battles and the endless circus—that I had risen above them. That while they remained stuck in the rut, I was living in a “better” place, a heavenly retreat. But that impulse was still tethered to them. It wasn’t sovereignty—it was shadow.

    And the cottage sanctuary, I realized, was a myth I romanticized.
    Los Baños exposed it. The ankle injury in June 2025 left me vulnerable. Caregivers who should have supported me instead deepened my distress. And then came the horrific, traumatizing experience with the property landlady that stripped away any illusion of peace and safety. The countryside was not sanctuary—it was unkind terrain. Unsafe. Harsh. It harmed me. Re-traumatized me. Broke me open. It was where everything was unraveled.

    And yet, Los Baños became a full circle moment. A culmination of a long, arduous search for home. Belongingness.

    In 2003, I flew from Manila, Philippines, to San Francisco to become the full-time caregiver of my brother, who suffered from a ruptured aneurysm in the brain due to drug abuse. The experience led me to pursue graduate studies in consciousness and healing in 2006, the beginning of my escape chapter.

    In 2010, with much reluctance, I returned to Manila, holding tightly to my dream and vision of a healing center and healing practice. I continued my escape chapter in Puerto Princesa, Palawan. I fell into the orbit of a so-called healer whose energies were dark, manipulative, and corrosive. It took me years to disentangle myself from that place. Even after leaving, I twice reconsidered returning, still caught in the pull of illusion. It was the second seven-year cycle: 2010 to 2017, the long unraveling of escape and entanglement.

    The third cycle began in 2018, following the breast cancer diagnosis, when I turned toward my condo community. Governance battles, painful as they were, became the crucible where I confronted and healed my rescuing tendency. I learned to set boundaries, to seal misalignment with closure, to stop pouring myself into spaces that drained me. That cycle stretched to 2025, and Los Baños marked its end.

    The difference between Puerto Princesa and Los Baños is the difference between entanglement and sovereignty. What once took me years to escape now took me days. Within a week, I knew I had to leave Los Baños—sooner still if only I had a place to stay in Manila. That is growth. That is cadence. That is clarity.

    In hindsight, I see how much of my longing was entangled with cultural scripts.

    The cottage myth is not just personal—it is collective. Romantic poetry, pastoral ideals, folklore, and today’s cottagecore aesthetic all whisper the same story: that fulfillment lies in a quaint retreat, a rustic dwelling where life finally “comes together.”

    I inherited that imagery, and I projected it onto Los Baños. But projection is not resonance.

    Los Baños burned away illusions. It taught me that sanctuary is not about cottages or condos, not about appearing “above” others.

    Sanctuary is about resonance, cadence, and truth.

    I do not romanticize Los Baños anymore—nor the rustic sanctuary myth, nor any idyllic retreat that promises wholeness through withdrawal. I name Los Baños for what it was: a threshold. Painful. Necessary. Transformative. It shattered the cottage myth I had carried for years—decades even—and gifted me the clarity to see sanctuary for what it truly is.

    Los Baños may be where I was broken. But Los Baños was also where I was forged.
    And now, I carry its lessons: no longer needing to prove, no longer chasing mirages, only living in clarity and sovereignty.

    If any part of this speaks to you, I invite you to share your reflections in the comment section below.

    Peace and Blessings,
    — Thea 💙theasjournal25@gmail.com