Thea's Truths & Thresholds

Tag: growth

  • Wicked For Good: Recognition, Not Rupture — Not A Review, Just My Reflections

    Wicked For Good: Recognition, Not Rupture — Not A Review, Just My Reflections

    The bridge was crossed. The circle closed. I didn’t need the story to break me.

    I hesitated before watching Wicked: For Good.

    After everything this year — the betrayals, the fractured ankle, the unprofessional caregivers, the hotel lapses, and the most recent trauma in Los Baños — I didn’t want anything heavy. I didn’t want another emotional blow.

    I wanted something that would lift me, not break me.

    I was in a vulnerable space, and I knew it. I was holding myself together with care, and I didn’t want a film to be the thing that pushed me past my limit.

    Even with my resilience, I was aware that one more devastating experience might have been too much.

    But I watched it anyway — cautiously, almost bracing.

    And what surprised me was the softness of my response.

    I didn’t collapse the way so many viewers did.

    I didn’t feel gutted by Glinda’s remorse or undone by the separation.

    And for a moment, I wondered if I had missed something.

    But the truth is simpler:

    I’m no longer standing in the same place as the woman who watched Part 1.

    Back then, Elphaba’s story pierced me because I knew it was my story too. I wasn’t discovering anything — I was recognizing myself.

    Now, after all the closures I had before leaving Manila for Los Baños, Laguna, I’m in a different season. A season shaped by boundaries, sovereignty, and the quiet work of reclaiming myself.

    So when I watched For Good, I wasn’t watching from the wound. I was watching from the woman who has already moved beyond it.

    Glinda’s remorse didn’t devastate me because I’m no longer seeking remorse from anyone who betrayed me. The sting still exists when I remember, but it no longer drives me.

    I don’t need fictional accountability to soothe anything in me. I’ve already given myself the closure the past never offered.

    I do recognize Glinda — the performance of happiness, the people-pleasing, the quiet self-betrayal of choosing what is approved over what is true. I recognize the longing of a woman trying to do what she believes is right in a world determined to misunderstand her.

    But that season is behind me now. That pattern is broken. I no longer explain myself into safety. I no longer wait for the world to understand me before I allow myself to be at peace.

    If I hadn’t done that work —

    if I had watched this film before those closures and completions —

    I probably would have broken down like everyone else.

    But I didn’t.

    And I’m grateful for that.

    I didn’t miss anything in Part 2.

    I’m simply in a different space than the majority. The film was grieving a layer I’ve already lived through. The story arrived right on time — just no longer at the center of my nervous system.

    So instead of rupture, it offered recognition —

    a quiet confirmation that I’m no longer watching from the wound,

    but from the woman who has already integrated it.

    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