Choosing Life, Time, and the Courage to Surrender
Good morning, beautiful souls. I’m writing this from a quiet morning in the Philippines, coffee in hand, listening to birds chirping, chickens calling out the day, and dogs barking in the distance — the kind of imperfect symphony that reminds me I am home, or at least closer to the version of home my spirit has been searching for. Life here feels slower, softer, more forgiving. There is space to breathe. There is space to feel. And in this space, I’ve been confronting truths I spent years outrunning — truths about time, grief, regret, love, and what it really means to choose a life that feels like my own.
For so long, my life in San Francisco felt like a loop I couldn’t escape: sleep, grind, eat, sleep, repeat. I told myself I was building a future. I told myself the sacrifice would be worth it. I told myself there would be more time later — more time for family, more time for love, more time to rest. But time is not something we can store for later. It doesn’t accrue interest. It doesn’t wait politely while we chase productivity. It moves forward, indifferent to our plans. And the hardest lesson of my life came when I realized that the “later” I was waiting for would never come for my dad.
One of my deepest regrets — the kind that sits quietly in your chest and resurfaces in the stillness — is not making enough time for him. He asked me to visit. He wanted to show me around home, to share the life he knew. But I was always in school, always working, always trying to survive and prove that leaving in 1999 meant something. I thought success meant endurance. I thought love could wait. I didn’t return to the Philippines until 2018, when he had a stroke. I told myself it might be the last chance to see him. I didn’t realize it would be. For years, I carried resentment, believing I wasn’t important to him because he missed my graduations. Only later did I understand the barriers he faced — visas, costs, realities beyond his control. That realization didn’t erase the grief, but it softened the anger. It taught me compassion. It forced me to ask myself what I was truly prioritizing and why.
My dreams have changed shape since then. They no longer look like titles, promotions, or a perfectly curated version of success. My dream now looks like slow mornings with my mom, shared meals, inside jokes, and the quiet comfort of her presence. It looks like taking her traveling while she still can, even if she walks a little slower than before. It looks like choosing memories over material things — earrings from places I’ve visited, fridge magnets that mark moments rather than status. Time has become my most sacred currency, and I spend it differently now. If you know me, you know gift-giving has never been my love language. Presence is. Memory-making is. Being there — fully, intentionally — is.
The years between losing my dad and finding my footing again were some of the most disorienting of my life. I was grieving him while also grieving the end of a four-year relationship, while also carrying the emotional weight of ICU nursing, workplace bullying, and the trauma many of us in healthcare quietly hold. The pandemic magnified everything. I was surviving, but I wasn’t living. Becoming a nurse practitioner was part of my rebuilding, but the deeper work was internal: learning to ask who I was without external validation, without constant achievement, without the need to be everything for everyone. Choosing myself didn’t happen overnight. It came in fragments — in boundaries set, in tears shed, in moments of exhaustion where I finally admitted I could not continue living only to meet expectations.
Lately, the word that has been guiding me is surrender. I used to associate surrender with failure, weakness, or giving up. Now I understand it as one of the bravest choices I can make. Surrender is releasing the illusion of control. It is trusting that not everything meant for me will arrive on my timeline. It is accepting that relationships end, opportunities pass, and plans unravel — not as punishments, but as redirections. When I surrender, my anxiety loosens its grip. My depression quiets. I stop measuring my worth by outcomes I cannot control. I still show up. I still try. But I release the need to force results.
Choosing life — loudly, unapologetically — has become my practice. Yes, it is a privilege to take extended time off, to travel with my mom, to pause. I acknowledge that privilege with gratitude. But it is also a decision to stop postponing joy. Life weighs more than work. Life holds more value than titles. Life is happening now, not someday. I am learning to let other things move around what matters most, instead of asking my relationships to fit into leftover time.
I am still dreaming. I dream of building a yoga retreat and bamboo bed-and-breakfast in the Philippines, a space for healing and stillness. I dream of expanding my work into health coaching, gender care, HIV care, and sexual health — care rooted in dignity and compassion. I dream of a platform that encourages others to live authentically, to release shame, to share their truths. I don’t know exactly how these dreams will unfold, and for the first time, I am at peace with not knowing. That peace is surrender.
If you are reading this and feeling the quiet nudge in your chest — the one that says call your parents, take the trip, rest without guilt, leave the job that is breaking you, choose yourself — listen to it. Time is not refundable. We do not get to replay these years. The version of your loved ones that exists today will not exist forever. Neither will you.
My platform is growing slowly. Some people think I’m cringe. Some friendships have faded. But others remain. Others listen. Others heal alongside me. And that is enough. If even one person feels less alone, more seen, more empowered to choose their own life — then this journey, with all its vulnerability, is worth it.
This morning, as I sit with my coffee and the gentle noise of life around me, I feel a quiet kind of peace. Not because everything is certain, but because I am no longer trying to control everything. I am surrendering. I am choosing time. I am choosing love. I am choosing life.
And for the first time in a long time, that feels like enough.
If you want, I can next:
- Shorten this for web readability
- Add SEO title + tags
- Turn it into a newsletter version
- Create a Part 2 focusing only on “Surrender”
Day in the life of a Filipina Nurse Practitioner 
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