Thursday, February 10, 2011

Channeling Anne Morrow Lindbergh

A cottage by the sea
I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I love Anne Morrow Lindbergh. 

She and I, we both lost our sons very early in our lives. I'd like to think that it was partly her grief that fueled so much great writing. That's exactly what I'm trying to do do here, leaving Manila behind and opting to live by the sea for close to a week to find the inspiration that will give me my second wind on the last leg of writing my thesis about grieving mothers. So help me Anne, and help me God.

I write from the terrace of my little cottage by the sea, under the shelter of towering Talisay trees, listening to the gentle waves at play on the shore just beneath me. I'm on an island in the southern part of the Philippines, in a place that my father used to frequent as a young boy.  The property where this quaint and charming resort stands belongs to the family of my father's boyhood best friend. Both of them are in heaven now. 


I find great solace and inspiration here. In the mornings it is so peaceful and my bedroom faces the sea and each day I wake to a gentle, peach-orange sunrise. Barefoot, I walk out onto the terrace and sit on a rocking chair as I gaze out on a vast and endless sea.


There's something about being by the water that always helps me write. Perhaps I was a mermaid in a previous life? :-)  But always, my best writing is completed when I have solitude by the sea. In the mornings or late afternoons, I take long leisurely walks on the pantalan when everything is quiet. And in the evenings, I have meals with myself under a blanket of skies filled by a thousand stars.


Anne Morrow Lindbergh was spot on when she said -- 
"If you surrender completely to the moments as they pass, you live more richly those moments."  

Ah, there's that word again -- surrender. 

Excuse me now, as take a break from wading through the grief, and surrender to the call of the beach below my window.  See you later...



 

Monday, February 7, 2011

My Mother's World

And so I have finally set foot in my mother's world. Well, sort of.

I haven't become an actress as one of my closest friends joked, but I now find myself working side by side with people from the industry that has been a part of her life for almost half a century now.

I thought it would be awkward, but to my surprise, I immediately felt at home. I guess in that sense, I am her daughter. For the longest time, while growing up, she sheltered me from her industry, but I guess eventually finding myself part of  her world (but not quite) was inevitable. The board is composed of 30 members, some of them have been there for a really long time -- pillars in the industry, masters of their craft and highly respected. It's an interesting mix actually and I look forward to working with each and every one of them in time. PDI ran a list of the board's new members in yesterday's paper.

I've always loved movies so it's a thrill and great honor for me to be a part of the new Movie Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) -- and a huge responsibility to ensure that the movies and television shows that our children view are rated properly.

It was interesting to finally meet other children of show business --  Grace Poe- Llamanzares, our Chair and Liezl Martinez  who is a board newbie like me, met for the very first time today. In spite of the fact that our parents had known each other for four decades, we had never been introduced.  In my album somewhere, I have an old black and white photo of attending Liezl's 3rd birthday party at their home in New Manila. Other than that, we never had the chance to get to know one another.

New chapters are always interesting when they unfold -- new experiences, a whole new set of characters, a different plot...as they say, abangan.

Stop and Smell The Roses

Smelling the roses, being enthralled by how the pieces of a puzzle fit together, seeing the sunlight as it dances in the clouds, feeling the thrill of reaching a mountain summit: these are experiences that need yield nothing more to be fully justified. And one might go so far as to argue that a life devoid of such experiences is hardly a life at all. -- Edward Deci in Why We Do What We Do

Sunday, February 6, 2011

New Beginnings


Each day brings with it the promise of a new beginning... I'm about to have two over the next couple of days. Thank you Lord for the doors that open. Go before me so that the way will be smooth.

Tina Tagle's Serendipity

Tina Tagle's Serendipity
I read Tina Tagle's blog today  and I was simply blown away by the woman's irreverence, candor and honesty. In a world filled with so much pretense, she is so refreshing! I'm sure many people will disagree with me, but I like Tina. She tells it like it is. Walang kiyeme kyeme.

I'm not really a fashion person, but I like the way she puts herself together and boy, she looks fab for fifty-something! At mukhang totoo lahat, if you get what I mean. I know that many are perhaps put-off by her outfit of the day displays but I guess the woman is just being honest. As my friend Joey Reyes says, "nothing wrong if you can afford it, if it came from your pockets and not someone else's at kung carry mo ba and it will make you happy..." So I guess that's Tina's philosophy too.

Today the Philippine Daily Inquirer ran a review of her blog Blogging with the real housewife of Dasma and naturally it drew hundreds to Tina's blog. I am sure naloka sya momentarily.

People who are as real as Tina, usually have gone through a lot in life. In spite of being the lady of leisure that she is, I wonder what her struggles have been. You don't have that kind of tenacity, that kind of gift to laugh at yourself, and the courage to say it like it is if you haven't been through the eye of some major storm, if you haven't been through hell and back.

Basta totoong-totoo sya at maganda ang puso nya. I'd love to meet her someday.

Listen To Your Body


“THE BODY is all-wise, pay attention to it when it speaks,” my mentor would constantly tell me when I was often falling ill.

Relationships can be stressful. Work and the people around you can cause you stress—as was experienced recently by a dear friend who had been afflicted with one form of lung infection after another in the last three weeks.

His doctor told him that the number of infections he’d been having was highly unusual.

I knew that my friend had been terribly unhappy at his job for months now; he had been at odds with his boss. He couldn’t quit because he needed the money, but without a healthcare plan, his resources were being drained by medical bills.

I told him that perhaps his body was speaking loud and clear—his lungs could no longer tolerate breathing in the negative energy at work. It was a light bulb moment.

‘Toxic’

Another young girl I knew was in a rigorous nursing course. She wanted to be a nurse but felt so alone in the program.

“The people in my course are just so toxic and competitive!”

She said that while in the hospital, recuperating from unexplained back pains, she had been bombarded with text messages by insensitive classmates about work that was due that week. The poor girl was still hooked to an intravenous drip while surfing for answers on her iPad using her other hand.

When I visited her that day, I shook my head and asked her, “And you guys want to be health-care providers?” Slowly she began to see the irony of her situation.

According to healthline.com, Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) was the term coined by Dr. Robert Adler (1975), director of the division of behavioral and psychosocial medicine at New York’s University of Rochester, to explain the link between what we think (our state of mind) and our health and our ability to heal ourselves.

PNI is a relatively recent branch of science that enforces beliefs that physicians have held for many centuries, perhaps well before the ancient Greeks. The premise is that a patient’s mental state influences diseases and healing. Specifically, PNI studies the connection between the brain and the immune system.

Many PNI studies have focused on how stress, hostility and depression impact the immune system. Many conditions such as heart disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, ulcerative disease, delayed wound healing and premature aging, are related to stress and negative emotions.

The mind is certainly a powerful thing and emotions can wreak havoc on one’s psyche and body. Thus, the unexplained migraine headaches and backaches, the palpitations or asthma attacks that are found to have no physiological reasons, are often indicators that there is something amiss deep within and the body is speaking, sometimes softly at first.

When several attempts to get the message across remain unheeded, the body finally caves in and a trip to the emergency room or a hospital confinement is warranted.

The website lifepositive.com cites a study that found out that “susceptibility to influenza, for instance, is higher in families that are rigid and chaotic than in balanced families. Psychologists have found that people could be trained to improve their resistance to disease by recognizing the mind-body link in disease and learning how to deal more effectively with emotionally challenging events. In such cases, what is important is the extent to which you can bring change in yourself by recognizing and altering the patterns of behavior that characterize you.”

Meditation, prayer help

Meditation, yoga, prayer or quiet time, exercise and journaling have all been found to be helpful in managing stress and in keeping the immune system healthy. Stress is a given, and some degree or amount of it is healthy.

It becomes problematic or harmful when it becomes a constant in one’s life—either through people, situations or relationships.

Learning to set your boundaries, tuning out the negative energy and for lack of a better description, building a “force field” to keep the emotional vampires who suck the lifeblood out of you are ways to keep yourself sane and healthy.

The bottom line is that you’ve got to be peaceful and happy to stay healthy. Throw the stress out the window or take yourself out of the negative situation. Stress is often the result of wanting to control things or being fixated on a particular outcome.

If you can’t, find a way to manage the toxic energy, be self-aware, know your limits, do what you must and surrender the rest. Work on what brings you bliss, and the healthy part will simply be a natural by-product of choosing joy each and every day.

Published in "Roots and Wings" in the Lifestyle section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, 
6 February 2011