• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About
  • Destinations
    • Philippines
    • Japan
    • Indonesia
    • Malaysia
    • Singapore
  • Guides
    • Hikes
    • Beaches | Lakes | Rivers | Falls
    • Hotels & Resorts
    • Cities
    • Restaurants
    • Parks & Walking Tours
    • Travel Essentials
  • Stories
    • Reflections on the Road
    • Life As a Writer
    • Parenthood
    • Womanhood
    • Quarantine Series
    • Events
  • Poetry
  • Letters to Lia
  • Contact
Our World in Words

Our World in Words

Letter #22: Nine

 
Hello, Lia.
 
Yesterday marked your second birthday in quarantine. In the old days, we’d go out into the world, our oversized backpacks brimming with zest for all things wild and undiscovered. Normally, I’d say change is life-enchanting, but we both know a pandemic is anything but.
 
You had your fair share of tears in the past year, each the color of sadness. Some were shed for classrooms whose walls are now merely imagined. Some for people whose hands you can only touch via a screen. Some for trees you cannot hug. Some for homes and still moments – in airports or long bus rides; at sea or in the mountains; head up to the sky or looking down the earth.
We are living amid a monumental shift, Lia. I wish I can assure you that beautiful things can be looked forward to with certainty. But like time, touch and sight are but gifts lent to us. We exist in impermanence, and the only way to make sense of it all is to live now, Here, with intention and gratitude.
 
So, today I hope to create space for gratitude. Despite the small world we now move in, like light, we can still move in it at our own speed, without contraptions and hooks. In spite of how grim the following days, weeks, and years might become, I have your resilience, humor, and wisdom to see them through with. And though tomorrow hangs in great uncertainty, I am grateful that we have us Here, now – dreaming, loving, fighting for the future, and making the best of what we have together, as we always do. This moment, what you feel Here and now, is real and certain. Never forget that.
 
Grateful to be Here on your ninth year on Earth, witnessing you soldier on,
Mama
 
PS – Your birthday was celebrated at home with your friends, Lola, and Lolo. You said it’s your “best birthday ever”.

in Letters to Lia # Letters to Lia

About the Author

Gretchen Filart

Gretchen is a writer of poems and creative nonfiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Rappler, Philippines Free Press, The Daily Drunk Mag, Anti-Heroin Chic, Rejection Lit, The Alien Buddha, Maudlin House, Janus Literary, and elsewhere. She resides in the Philippines with her daughter and kooky cats and dogs.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Recommended Reads

Returning to an old new

A lesson from beetles

Surrender to Self

Latest ‘grams

This is the sweetest! In November we did a birthda This is the sweetest! In November we did a birthday hike in Benguet. I didn't know my niece, @themaiaimperial, was taking candid videos and planning to make a video as a present for me (thought she was just taking photos of us and the landscape - and she does commissioned work btw). And she used one of my favorite songs: Mt. Joy's Evergreen! 💖

Should also prolly tell you: Don't wear sneakers, like I did, in Mt. Yangbew. Trail is muddy and slippery. Only wore a pair and that tita outfit because we were eating out after, and am too lazy to bring hiking shoes and dry-fit clothes.
Wrote this exactly on New Year - perhaps my heart Wrote this exactly on New Year - perhaps my heart trying to reawaken to light after a soul-shattering 2022.

I thought of people who arrived and left my life as the verses shaped themselves. I whispered a little thank you and some loving kindness, that 2023 finds them in peace despite the goodbyes we exchanged.
Being on the road fills one with so many good memo Being on the road fills one with so many good memories. A kind of pilgrimage to one’s old self and the small joys that growing up and heartbreak threaten to diminish.

I close my eyes and breathe, knowing my breath is a prayer sent out to the Universe. May I regain my footing out there, I whisper. May I be healed in your embrace as always. Rediscover happiness, and self-forgiveness for having a hand in breaking my own heart.

Read the rest on my website (new post, yes! 🙂). Link in bio.
Eight years ago, Lia and I took a bus to Sisiman, Eight years ago, Lia and I took a bus to Sisiman, a small coastal town in Mariveles. Last Sunday, we returned and took our photos in the same spots. How the town has changed - so has Lia. It seemed just like yesterday. Time flies indeed. Don't blink. 
.
.
.
#ThenAndNow
#thenandnowchallenge 
#motheranddaughtergoals 
#travelwithkids
#Throwback
#Mariveles
#Sisiman
#travelphilippines
I am writing letters and essays on the website aga I am writing letters and essays on the website again (link in bio). The past months I felt like I abandoned them; that I no longer know how to write anything that is not a poem. God, the tears putting it all in words. So poignant (and sappy, like always😆). Feels like a return home. I hope to return home every week. 💖
This is how nauseatingly sappy I can get😆 Writt This is how nauseatingly sappy I can get😆 Written many moons ago. 

My friends: Who do you think you are? Jesus? 🤣

Footer

Legal Stuff

  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact Us

Copyright

Any part of this website may not be reproduced on another website or platform without the author's written consent. All applicable copyright and intellectual laws apply. Copyright applies to all posts, images, and pages of this website, unless otherwise stated. To seek permission for reproduction, contact the author at [email protected].

Explore

  • Destinations
  • Food & travel guides
  • Stories
  • Letters to Lia

Sign up to be the first to receive updates from us!

2021 © Our World in Words. All Rights Reserved.
made by soulmuse