The secret language is a secret

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There are times I find my husband too gooey and sweet for words. For many years, I always thought that he just wants to flatter me. I won’t bother placing the cute nicknames and code words we give each other in this blog. Our daughters have been brought into it also especially when we use a phrase that makes sense only to the four of us.

They say these sweet-nothings pave the way to a playful, resilient, and satisfying relationship with each other. I thought it was crazy when he deliberately mispronounced my name that I followed suit a few years after we got married. One study on couples’ “insider language” published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships reported that the more goofy nicknames, made-up terms a couple used, the higher their relationship satisfaction tended to be. So all those lovey-dovey words uttered on my ears are healthy for a relationship, huh?

“Using nicknames and made-up language is an easy way to inject positive communication into everyday life,” Jamie Turndorf, Ph.D., a New York City relationship therapist. says. In fact, it’s probably the single easiest thing you can do to keep your romance going strong.

Our secret language remains a secret.

A weekend trip to Kota Kinabalu just before the hostage crisis was an opportunity to be just by ourselves without our adult children admonishing us for PDA. You can really tell your kids are adults when they start to lecture you on proper behavior.

Anyway, thanks to those seat sales, and for only 1,250 pesos for the plane fare , Butch and I spent 3 days and 3 nights in Kota Kinabalu. The sight of lush green cover on the mountains and exotic flowers seemed a wonderful respite from the city jungle. I keep telling Butch that we needed a vacation, just the two of us. August was the preferred month to travel, fearing another Ondoy would strike our home. It is not easy to leave home after Ondoy flooded my home when I left for Singapore . Butch felt the same fear but I said we have to let go because the weather is never predictable. I left word to my daughters to drive the cars to their dad’s office for safety, which is just nearby in case the flood water rose on one side of the street.

So there we were in Kota Kinabalu, just the two of us, our first vacation in a place with no relatives or friends, without the kids tagging along. Just the two of us uttering our pet names and secrets codes that build a connection between us.

Do you use cute nicknames and code words to your significant other?

Slideshow of Photos

The Natasha Goulbourn Foundation: Bringing depression to light

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““Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all.” Bill Clinton

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Did you know that the Philippines has the highest incidence of depression in Southeast Asia? In 2004, there were over 4.5 million cases of depression reported in the Philippines.

Jeanne Goulbourn shares her wisdom on depression.

““Depression is a condition that knows no social class; it could strike anyone regardless of intelligence, educational attainment and financial standing.”

This wisdom she has learned in the midst of pain brought about by the sudden and untimely demise of her well-loved daughter, Natasha, who suffered from depression. As she grieved over her daughter’s passing, Jeanne said she asked God what losing her daughter meant, and prayed for a sign. The sight of over 100 dolphins convinced her she had a higher calling to help people with depression.

“I prayed that if I see five dolphins, Natasha might be in hell. If I see 10 dolphins, could she be in purgatory? But God, if you show me a lot of dolphins, more than 10, I know my daughter is with you. We saw about 108 in Puerto Galera,” she recalled, saying the sight was so rare it even brought the boatman to tears.

Like Jeanne, we know our grief will always be a part of our life and we eventually find ways to resolve it. She and a group of friends from various sectors formed the Natasha Goulbourn Foundation (NGF) five years after the death of Natasha. Its primary advocacy is to promote awareness on depression.

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Not many know what depression is. I have written about suicide prevention and mental health before just to raise awareness. I don’t claim to be an expert on mental health. It’s just that in the course of my grief work at the Compassionate Friends Philippines, I’ve come across a few observations of these mental health issues.

1. Shame often prevents a person from seeking medical help because of this stigma towards mental illness. And even if they ask for help, the gravity of their problem is minimized as mere despair. Oh yes, I know of one death by suicide from a friend because of this reason alone.

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That grief is light which can take counsel

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Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak. Whispers the oe’r
fraught heart and bids it break. ~William Shakespeare

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Picking up the pieces

As we as a nation try to salvage what bit of dignity of we can still salvage on the failed operation of the police, the failure of the government of Noynoy Aquino and the wanton disregard of some irresponsible members of the media for the safety of the hostages, we should also examine how we as Filipinos dealt with the situation and conducted ourselves. Yes, the incompetence of the police, corruption and government and perhaps the arrogant demeanor of some media outfits are so routine to us that we’ve accepted them as a fact of life and part and parcel of being Filipino but at the end of the day, we must not allow these so-called realities cloud our ability to feel compassion – and more importantly to show this feeling of sadness and grief outwardly to those who are really hurting.

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Birthday greetings to the love of my life

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And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln

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Butch turned 51 years old today. He is two years younger than me. As in all birthdays in my family, I celebrate it with food. The more we praise and celebrate life, the more there is in life to celebrate. This time around, I feel bad for waking up late and not preparing a special menu as I used to do in the past before my life became so busy. I love that he did not complain though. He even bought his own birthday cake for lunch. It makes me think that birthdays are nature’s way of telling us to eat more cake. (kidding!)

We spent the afternoon at the resting place of our beloved son watching the pretty blue dragonflies hovering nearby as well as the white-speckled butterfly that fluttered by the flowers on the basket. Just watching the wonders of nature was enough joy.

Earlier, I bought bright orange and pink flowers to brighten our living and dining room. I added a pale violet orchid plant to add the final touch on my antique writing table. He loved the flower arrangement and I hope that made up for my laziness today.

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Shock over the Mendoza-hostage killing of Hongkong Tourists

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Arriving in Manila as a tourist in another country and to hear deaths of tourists in my own country was just so sad and shocking.

I just arrived from Kota Kinabalu at 10:00 PM tonight. I knew about the hostage taker Sp Rolando Mendoza when I read twitter updates at around 3:00 PM, the time I checked out from the hotel. It alarmed me that it started at 10:30 AM and still not much progress on whether the hostage drama would end. My husband said that a person like that is unstable. That should have been a warning signal for the negotiators.

Boarding the plane back to Manila at around 7:45 PM, I had no idea that a bloodbath ensued at 7:30 PM. There was no wifi at the Kota Kinabalu airport for me to monitor the hostage drama. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it to end in bloodshed. The bad news was relayed to us when my husband and I sat inside our taxi cab.

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Is there life after high school?

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The Groovies, my high school classmates (circa St Theresa’s College Cebu 1974) once again got into the groove of bonding moments. There were reasons to celebrate. Our class salutatorian, Deirdra came home from New Jersey for a visit. Birthday celebrants needed to make a wish and the groovies from Manila missed Cebu. You know, I look forward to these small reunions. Groovies remind me that we are still cool and awesome despite the passage of time. I draw inspiration from classmates that still manage to look good.

Marget Fernan-Villarica not only hosted the party but our stay as well in her lovely, comfy home. Our current president, Nerissa Soon-Ruiz gave this brilliant idea of auctioning off our give-aways to raise funds for our batch project. What fun!

Tess, the preceding batch president told me to write an article for our Coral reunion last year. It is only this year that I got to read the printed version of the STC Annual 2009.

Here it is:

Is there life after high school? To be honest, I was relieved when my high school graduation ceremony ended. In high school, I was a painfully shy, mediocre student with average grades (as in 81 to 85). I often felt intimidated by the smart and outspoken girls. You know how it is in high school – there are the popular girls and the invisible girls. I was one of the invisible girls but I was lucky enough to have a few friends who made me feel like I belonged to a group.

So do people ever recover from that intense high school social experience? Some don’t. They spend the rest of their lives trying to justify what they were, or were not, in high school. This is why high school reunions are so emotional, especially the first one. I declined to attend the 25th High School class of 1974 reunion because I was not ready to face that dreaded high school experience once again. Coupled with five deaths of family members in Cebu, I felt Cebu was just bad news for me and going home was not an option at that point.
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Cat lovers watch the musical, Cats

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When Concertus, the local producer of Cats sent two complimentary tickets to the musical “Cats: Now and Forever” , I knew there was no more excuse not to watch the show. They had invited me to the press conference but I was busy finishing an ebook at that time. Anyway, I thought of buying two more tickets for my daughters so they could tag along with us and watch Lea Salonga as Grizabella. I miss my stage mother days and I was certain the daughters still love watching the arts and culture. The last time I was at the Cultural Center was watching my girls dancing ballet.

I thought it was just me but I didn’t get the plot of the musical. One should really read the synopsis before watching the musical. Despite not understanding the story, I loved the cat playground, elaborate lighting, the props, the makeup, the costumes and Lea Salonga of course. She is the only Filipino artist in a production dominated by Australian “triple threat” performers. It was also good that I bought the 50 peso binoculars which I peered into during solo singing. Though seated at balcony 1, I just couldn’t see the details of their “cat-like” makeup in their faces.
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Grieving over job loss

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““Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.” Robert Frost
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It was a wonderful morning when I wobbled over to the Director’s office at the UP Institute of Small Scale Industries (UP-ISSI). The month of January 1986 was just a few months before I gave birth to my eldest girl, Lauren and I was always in high spirits. I thought the new director just wanted to talk business. Meet and greet each other formally. It looked like he had great plans for UP-ISSI which didn’t include me. The new director informed me that my contract will be terminated. (UP then was in freeze hiring so I was always under a contract). Part of me died with the notice. I was angry, depressed, confused, hurt, and worried. I was so bitter and angry at the new director because I was passionate and competent in my job in research and consultancy. Sometimes I think he just terminated me because I was hired by the past director. I didn’t believe there was shortage of funds because I was hired through a foundation of the institute. I had high hopes about going back to work but they never hired me back. It was really a devastating loss. It wasn’t even the financial aspect that made me feel bad. The research and consultancy work served as part of my identity, a place to use my skills and talents and watch them build over time as I believed I became more competent at them. I went through the grief process of anger, denial, barganing in that roller coaster ride and finally accepting the loss.

I guess there is a silver lining to all this. I became a full-time mother devoted to bringing up my children. If I continued on with my work at UP-ISSI, I would have been such a workaholic with little time for my growing kids.

When someone talks about grief, it is often associated with a death of a loved one. When I started this blog, I talked of my grief journey after my son’s death. There are other areas of life in which loss results in grief that is just as real. One of these is being experienced more and more often due to the current trend of companies to ““down-size.”

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Entertainment breaks with my PLDT MyDSL broadband connection

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Do you know that when I just want to relax, I watch funny or entertaining youtube videos? It takes my mind off work, gives me a lot of laughter to just be and let worries go away for the moment. Even just the expectation of a mirthful laughter involved in watching funny videos has some very surprising and significant neuroendocrine/hormone effect. Experiments showed that viewing a favorite funny video can offset symptoms of chronic stress, which can suppress various components of the immune responses, particularly those related to anti-viral and anti-tumor defenses. See, that’s why I look forward to my entertainment breaks.


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