What You Don’t See

Tagaytay 06/2025

Sometimes people look at me and say,

"Ang swerte mo."
"Buti ka pa... blah blah blah"
"SANA ALL!"

I never really know how to respond.
Because how do you explain that the life they see
is built on sacrifices that didn’t always make sense while I was making them?

I’m grateful. I truly am.
But behind everything I’ve built… are parts of me I’ve buried.

I grew up without a father.
That absence shaped me more than I can ever explain.
I was raised by my grandmother with all the love she had, but not much else.
We didn’t have the means. We just survived.

And while others were out being carefree teenagers,
I was already trying to figure out earn,
how to study with an empty stomach, 
how to stretch coins to last until Friday.

I was a working student.
I swept floors. I ran office errands.
I walked into class with worn-out shoes and a worn-out spirit, and still pushed to be a Dean's Listee.
I didn’t have a backup plan.
No safety net. 

You didn’t grow up with my quiet fears,
or carry the long-term effects of a head injury from 2010
that changed the way I remember, think, and live.

You didn’t feel the weight of trying to be strong
as a mom, a wife, a career woman
while sometimes wishing I could just pause and be held.

You didn’t see me whisper to my husband, “Dad, I want to cry,”and not even know why.

Quarter-life crisis hit me like a truck.
Everyone around me seemed to have found their rhythm.
I was still trying to find mine
trying to prove that I belonged in rooms where I always felt like an outsider.

I’m 70% introvert.
I build walls naturally out of protection.
Because when you grow up with only yourself to depend on,
you learn to survive in silence.
You learn to observe, to overthink, to hide your softness.

And people… didn’t like that.
I had bullies, not the childhood kind,
but the adult kind: the ones who smiled at me then questioned my worth behind my back.
They called me hard to approach, too guarded.
They didn’t know how hard it was just to show up,
to speak, to try to be present.

So if there’s something I wish people knew, it’s this:

    Don’t reduce anyone’s life to a headline.
    Don’t box up someone’s growth into a single quote or caption.
    Because behind every “Sana all,”
    is a story you haven’t heard.

And behind mine,
are pieces of me I’ve had to lose
and rebuild over and over again.

People look at me now and see someone who’s “made it.”
In real estate, in family, in life.
But I didn’t magically arrive here.
I crawled here.
Sometimes in silence, sometimes in pain,
sometimes with nothing but faith and one last option left.

And every step forward came with a price
my time, my peace, my health, my past self.

So instead of comparing your journey to mine,
honor your own.

Because this...
this life of mine that looks “put together” from the outside
isn’t perfect.
It’s patched, scarred, healing, honest.
And very much real.

So now when people say, “Sana all,”
I just breathe.

Because no one saw the nights I cried quietly,
wondering if I’d ever be enough for myself, let alone anyone else.

You see the strength now.
You see the wins.
But you didn’t see what it cost to get here.

I am proud of what I’ve become,
Because it was painful...
And I survived it anyway.

So instead of wishing you had someone else’s story,
hold your own a little closer.
It’s valid.
It’s beautiful.
And it's yours.

PS:

If you're also building a life from scratch,
If you’ve been your own hero more times than you can count,
Just drop me a “Still rising.”
We don’t need to explain. We’ll know.