All kinds of mothers exist and deserve to be celebrated. On Mother’s Day, I want to shine a light on a different kind of motherhood: on life as a polyamorous mother.

We may not be the norm, and for some of us it may not be safe to acknowledge this aspect of our identities, but we exist, and somehow, we thrive.

Sometimes what helps us do so is finding each other.

In any aspect of life, but perhaps more so in motherhood, community brings joy, connection, expansiveness and perspective. Life has prevented me from gathering this particular community of mine in a while, but I still want to celebrate it, anyway.

This piece was first published as a guest post by ’s on her newsletter, Things Worth Knowing. I’ve updated it with unpublished material from ‘the freezer’—a folder where I keep writing that needs to be cut, so I don’t feel bad about deleting it.

Hope you enjoy it.

Like so much of the private lives of mothers, our first meeting takes place after the children have gone to bed.

One by one, the women arrive. Cheese platters are placed on the table, mismatched champagne flutes from the Monday vintage market filled to the brim with Prosecco. Some nights we are six; on others, as many as ten around the table. All of us have children under 13.

The invitation was simple: my place, Sunday night, snacks, wine. All mums, all polyamorous.

Just like me.

When I wrote this a year ago, one mum was married and had a monogamous boyfriend, whilst her husband had a longtime girlfriend of his own. Another had moved in with her boyfriend of four years, who is also poly, so they had an agreement not to bring dates back home. Another was on the road to divorce when her spouse had an accident that left him incapacitated for a year. He agreed to an open marriage while she cared for him and their children; they are now divorced.

Since then, various configurations have shifted, including mine; my six-year relationship with my boyfriend ended six months ago. What remains constant is that we are and will always be mothers, and that no one is going back to monogamy any time soon.

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I met many of these women on social media while I was writing my memoir and decided to come out about my own open marriage on Instagram.

DMs trickled in not only from strangers, but also from women I knew.

I’m in an open marriage too, but we don’t talk about it, one wrote.

I’m polyamorous, but we can’t really tell anyone.

My friends just don’t understand.

In these messages was the thrill of recognition (‘at last, someone just like me!’) and a thread of longing (‘I wish I had someone I could talk to’). For connection. For community. But also for answers.

The sense of connection came loudest from the mums whose thoughts and concerns were both specific and unique. How do I talk about this with my kids? How do you protect them? How do you do it? How should I?

I brought all of us together on a Whatsapp group I named ‘Poly Mums Wine Night’, thinking I’d change it later. The name stuck, and so have we, a small community coming together to discuss lives very few understand.

A different kind of motherhood journey

I didn’t set out with the intention of becoming non-monogamous. I didn’t even know it was an option.

I grew up in the Philippines, one of the only two nations in the world where divorce remains illegal— the other being Vatican City. In my book, ASK ME: A MEMOIR OF DARING TO LOVE DIFFERENTLY, I write about how the parallel identity shift of marriage, migration and motherhood triggered the transition from a monogamous marriage to an open one.

Having a child triggered something deep within me.

The sharp, sudden loss of autonomy; the mind-numbing repetitiveness of caring for a newborn; the utter dependence of this fragile creature’s existence upon my body; my husband and I being forced from a more egalitarian relationship into more tightly constricted gender roles, he the provider, I the nurturer, made me feel trapped—wondering who I was in this new world, reaching for a life beyond routine.

Though my identity was swallowed up by this new existence, something in me fought back to remain myself.

To be seen as more than a mother; for my body to be more than sustenance.

Growing up, I had always felt different from everyone around me in the way I saw love, relationships, and sex. I felt at odds with the shame and guilt around desire and pleasure, and the secrecy, suffering and self-abandonment that seemed to be baked into making marriage and motherhood work.

It wasn’t until I moved to Amsterdam that I realised: there is another way.

The excitement of exploring new connections, new facets of my identity, and new ways of experiencing pleasure was an adventure I wanted to be on. I wanted to share that with my husband, without having to keep anything from him.

Turns out I wasn’t the only mother who felt the same.

Dating, jealousy, and shared calendars

What I love about our little community is that no one needs to justify their choices. After all, there’s no one way of ‘doing’ polyamory, especially when you have children. All of us adapt it to our individual and familial makeup.

Instead, what we have is a space where we can breathe and say out loud: this is how it works for me, without judgement or shame.

We’ve laughed about our situations from time to time, like how my best friend and I match with the same guys on dating apps (we are both curvy brunettes so some men clearly have a type), even having slept with the same man once. Or that several of us keep running into the same man on dating apps.

One of the misconceptions I run into most often is that it’s men who initiate open relationships, and the women who suffer for it. But in this group the opposite is true.

Because the ratio of men to women on dating apps is heavily stacked in our favour, it’s women who find it far easier to get dates. No one has been pressured into an open relationship or is weeping into their wine glasses while the men are out having a grand time.

Our being mums is not a turn-off; in fact, I’ve found the opposite to be true. Men fetishise mums, but all it takes is one “I’ve always wanted to sleep with a MILF” to pop up in the chat window for me to unmatch someone.

The conversations are far less about sex than you think. We don’t gossip about who is sleeping with whom, or who is trying which toy or lube. Some things are surprisingly easier about sex when you’re a mum. If you’re not 17 and twisted up in shame, regular STI tests are just like dental appointments. Open communication about boundaries around safer sex (it’s 2026, we use condoms, not penicillin) are not especially difficult conversations if you’re used to having them.

Rather, complexities lie in emotional nuances. The fresh romance and excitement of a new partner (‘new relationship energy’ in the polyamorous lexicon) can feel threatening to a longtime union, especially when domestic life doesn’t leave much room for spontaneous passion.

On the flip side, the deep familiarity and intimacy of a long-lasting marriage (ours turns 19 this year, longer than the UK average of 13 years) can feel like a warm blanket and safe haven amidst the battlefield of modern dating.

Envy is a complicated feeling. My husband used to envy the adventures I had with my ex, while my ex sometimes envied the availability and domesticity I have with my husband. The gr ass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

Love is infinite, but time is a scarce resource. Yet who knows better how to stretch scarce resources than mothers? Mums are the masters of shared calendars already.

Rewriting the rules of commitment

My sense is that choosing polyamory after motherhood has enabled us to renegotiate the commitments we entered into earlier in life, after having gained more life experience. At least, it has for me.

Pressure to marry early means many of us entered into lifelong commitments before we really got the chance to discover what we wanted from relationships, sex, love, and life in general.

In my case, Filipinos live with our parents until marriage, often even after. Getting married, moving abroad with my husband, and starting my own home were all my first experiences of autonomy—of making decisions as an equal, and not having them made for me.

Only then did I have the room to ask myself: “Is this really what I want, or what I’ve been taught to want? Whose desires and expectations am I really fulfilling? Who am I living my life for?”

I was married in my twenties. How many of us really knew ourselves then? One of my female friends discovered her queerness later in life, and now has the chance to explore this while her husband dates other women.

With experience and maturity comes an intimate understanding not only of our bodies and desires, but also what we want out of our partners and relationships.

The question is: should the rules of a relationship stay exactly the same for a lifetime, or given room to change and grow with the people in it?

For many, the recourse might be divorce, or an ‘Eat Pray Love’ midlife escape.

For others, it’s this—rewriting the agreements of our marriage, giving it a flexibility and fluidity that can make space for all the versions of us we might become throughout our lives.

The invisible work of mothers: sharing the emotional load

Since coming into polyamory, I’ve learned that there are infinite ways to give and receive love, experience pleasure, and build a life—more options than we were taught were possible. Discovering what that is for each of us is a wild, wonderful journey.

Some of this knowledge came through trial and error, but if anyone is excellent at cleaning up, you can bet it’s mothers.

Sounds like too much work? As mothers, we’re already doing the work — creating social connections for our husbands and children, maintaining relationships, investing in community.

Women take on the emotional labour of helping our husbands and children express and process their feelings, and develop emotional and relational skills. But at what cost? Are we getting what we truly want for the emotional labor we put in—or are we simply doing it because as mothers, we’re expected to?

In my open marriage, my husband acquired emotional skills for himself as we learned to confront and deal with jealousy—not as if it was a personality type (‘Oh I couldn’t be in an open marriage, I’m a jealous person’, people often profess to me), but as an emotion just like grief or anger.

As a result, he and I leveled up relationship skills such as setting boundaries, emotional regulation, listening without judgment and conflict resolution.

We could not have survived the radical honesty that polyamory demands otherwise.

‘Think of the children!’ As mothers, we do

One thing that unites us is the fact that of all the loved ones, relationships and connections we might have, our children are the most important of all. Yet we face judgment from strangers who look at our lifestyle and cry: ‘Won’t someone please think of the children?’

I sometimes wonder what kind of behaviour they picture. Me dragging my child to bars with me on dates, or children tiptoeing around the naked bodies of orgy participants, picking out Lego blocks from piles of used condoms and sex toys?

The reality is far less X-rated, and more R—as in the three golden R’s of child-rearing here in the Netherlands: rust, reinheid, and regelmaat (calm, cleanliness, and routine). That means well-rested children in a peaceful environment, free of overstimulation.

My once-a-week ‘me time’ at my ex’s would be daddy-daughter time at home: their special time to order sushi, sketch together, watch a movie she’s picked out, or beat each other at Mario Kart.

When my husband went out on dates, she loved to read with me in bed with the electric blanket on until we fell asleep. Since turning 13, she likes to cocoon in her room, style outfits, or play the piano, developing her inner world, coming in for a cuddle before we turn in for the night.

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After my memoir was acquired by a publisher, I sat her down for a conversation about being in an open marriage and what that means. Her response surprised me, and I’ve dedicated a chapter to that in my book.

In that way, I’m honest about what’s going on, but keep it strictly PG. When she’s older either she’ll figure it out for herself, or she’ll know that she can come to me for a straight, judgment-free answer about this, or anything. Or she can read the book when she’s 25, as we’ve jokingly agreed.

In my open marriage, my husband and I both learned to build identities that don’t revolve solely around being a parent or spouse, while still savouring the joys of home and family.

This is what I aspire to for my daughter — that she becomes her own person in the world, with a strong sense of self apart from us, knowing she can always come home and be unconditionally loved.

Let motherhood be messy, let life be lived

For me, being a poly mum is not simply an unconventional sex life, but a personal choice to live in a way that is true to myself rather than beholden to the expectations of others. Free of shame, guilt or self-hatred, while honouring the commitments I have chosen in life.

This is what I hope trickles into

my daughter’s life as well: that she grows up seeing a mother living a life she loves, that holds Papa and her in its heart, but also has room for so much more.

It may be imperfect and messy, but that’s okay to show her, too, because I want her to live a life unburdened by the expectation of perfection.

Having come from a culture without divorce, I’ve seen enough women suffer under abusive husbands ‘for the children’, and bear the brunt of loveless, toxic marriages ‘for the children’.

From where I sit, all children want is a safe haven where they feel loved, seen, heard and understood. Neither monogamy nor marriage guarantees any of this for children. It’s not the institution that bequeaths security and stability, but we, as parents, who do.

As always, I love hearing from you. Hit reply to this email, leave a comment, or if you have a question for me—on anything from writing to publishing, marriage to non-monogamy, intimacy and relationships, to motherhood and life in Amsterdam—just click below to ask me.

Every month I’ll choose one question to reply to on my advice column, Ask Me How It Works.

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If you’re a mother or celebrating a mother today, Happy Mother’s Day!

I’m sending you warm hugs and a big bunch of virtual peonies (my favourite season!) from Amsterdam, until next time.

As the Dutch birthday greeting goes: Gefeliciteerd! Congratulations! We have a newly minted 13 year-old!

Thirteen is kind of a magical age, isn’t it? A lucky number (or unlucky, depending on your culture), the first gate in the passage through the teenage years. By a quirk of the Dutch language, tien (teen) first rears its head at the age of 10, giving our tieners the license to claim independence a full three years earlier than their English-speaking peers.

As a 13 year-old growing up in middle-class Manila in the late 90s, I was a sheltered Catholic school girl dependent on my mom, sister, or our family driver to get anywhere. Teased by my mom for being ‘boy crazy’, I blew all my money on imported Bop, Big Bopper and Tiger Beat magazines for the glossy pinups of Edward Furlong and Leonardo diCaprio that I ripped out, taped to my bedroom wall, and gazed up at with stars in my eyes every night.

Books and writing were woven into my 13 year-old life as naturally as eating and sleeping. I kept a clothbound diary inspired by Anne Frank, who lived in hiding just a few minutes by bicycle from where I live now. I spent hours perfecting my cursive and practicing my signature, which changed every few months, to the ire of the tellers at the Bank of the Philippine Islands, where Mom took me to get my first ATM card. I had a secret logbook filled with cringey fan-fiction featuring a revolving cast of celebrity crushes like MTV Asia’s VJ Danny McGill, with whom I actually believed I had a chance because (unlike Eddie and Leo) we at least lived on the same continent.

My daughter at 13 is already taller than I am, and leagues more independent. She makes more choices for herself than I did at her age: small ones, but hers nonetheless.

Every day, she wakes up at 7:00 to make her own breakfast and pack her own lunch, before she gets on her bike and cycles 25 minutes to school. She learned to cook alongside her Papa, whose love of cooking became her own early on.

While her classmates nosh on the standard Dutch boterham or broodje kaas (a slice of cheese between two pieces of white bread), she cycles through phases of obsession for weeks at a time. Noodles, kept piping hot in a stainless steel thermos, are a favourite: Papa’s ramen, kimchi stew with glass noodles, or onigiri, the stuffed Japanese rice cakes she perfected by making them for her primary school friends every Friday for the last two years.

In Amsterdam, a city of 120 nationalities, no one pokes fun at how her lunches smell or taste. She and her friends like to trade, and she often brings extra to share.

My daughter may not speak fluent Filipino, but at 13, she understands that food is social, and eating means sharing. Food is our native language, too.

When she gets home from school, she comes to find me for a hug. Depending on what time it is, how our day went, or the state we’re in, we either chat for a while or disappear into our own zones to decompress.

Her sanctuary is a cocoon lined with plushies and lit with a dim, warm glow from a Philips wake-up lamp that mimics the gradual dawning of the morning sun. With her big black headphones on, she spends her downtime with her K-pop idols on repeat, videocalling with her friends on Whatsapp, reading or drawing.

Sometimes I fret: ‘Are we leaving her alone too much?’

‘That’s what she wants,’ my husband reminds me.

Some evenings, she spends hours styling outfits for school before popping into our bedroom to show them off. Despite my pride in once being described by one of her friends as “slay”, my style cred has limits. She doesn’t ask for my opinion or advice (the completed OOTD is an FYI), but she loves it when I knock on her door and ask her for hers.

Her social life is organized into legions of Whatsapp group chats with complex substrates. She makes new friends through Whatsapp groups, filtered by interest or personal referral, before meeting them in person at school. This is fascinating to me.

Over dinner, she’ll make announcements such as: ‘J___ added me to a Whatsapp group where everyone is gay, lesbian or bisexual. But you don’t have to be to join.’ Or ‘Today I’m going to meet a new friend from the K-pop stans group.’

Most often, she’ll sketch, working on themes for weeks—eyes, hands, hair. Recently, she started teaching herself Korean, making her own practice tests and flash cards, and writing down her observations on language and pronunciation on a stack of powder blue Post-its.

For her birthday, she asked for a keyboard—and if she could skip formal lessons and just learn to play her favourite songs herself. We said yes to both.

When night fell on her birthday—after we celebrated with a Filipino breakfast and French gateaux, and she went to the fair with her friends, and we took her out to dinner at a ramen bar—she retreated into her room with her brand new white Yamaha Piaggero.

A contented silence enveloped our home, punctuated by the sound of a piano key—a pause—then another, her tentative fingers picking out a tune.

She is a melody figuring itself out in solitude, a song falling into place at its own pace, in its own rhythm, one note at a time.

My husband and daughter are early birds, but for me being up early is rare. One morning I wake at 6 a.m. It is the one of the first mornings after the attack on Iran, and the mainlining of news online renders me wired, restless, unable to go back to sleep.

I shuffle into the kitchen to find my daughter ready for school and sat down to breakfast a full hour earlier than normal. But this is not just breakfast. It is Ramadan, and this is suhoor, the pre-dawn meal taken to fortify one for the the day’s fasting.

She tells me that and her friends have decided to take turns fasting with the only Muslim girl in her class. ‘So she doesn’t have to fast alone,’ she says. Today is her turn.

The kids are alright, I think.

I put on a pot of coffee and sit with her. I ask after her other Muslim friends from primary school: if they’re fasting, if they talk about it, what they talk about. She understands that fasting is hard, that it is a challenging time for them. I tell her gently, ‘This might be a challenging time for them in other ways.’

This is how we begin to speak of war.

I hate that war is a reality we must speak of to our children, and that we live in a bubble so far removed from those who lose their children to the reality. But we don’t need to experience something directly to feel for those who do.

In the coming days she and her friends will speak of the war amongst themselves. It will filter into their consciousness through Tiktok and Youtube, into the background of their idyllic lives. And my child who fasted with her friend will say to me, It is so disrespectful that they have done that during Ramadan.

We have never spoken to her of solidarity, but at 13, she shows us that she understands.

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In my open marriage memoir, the final chapter, ‘What do you tell your daughter?’ is dedicated to the conversations we’ve had as she grows up. As her parent, I see it as my responsibility to understand what she knows—at every age—before attempting to add on a new layer.

When you’ve spoken to your daughter about your open marriage at age 11, then about breast cancer at age 12, the relationship develops a kind of resilience—a sensitivity to each other’s inner world, but also a capacity to touch on complex things together.

I know that she trusts me to be honest with her and to hold her through the difficult parts. I don’t take that trust for granted.

Emotional capacity is something that I think about a lot. After 15 years as immigrants in the Netherlands, our life here is finally a comfortable one, her childhood blissfully devoid of the struggle baked into our growing-up years in Manila.

My husband and I sometimes wonder if life might be too easy for her and how that might affect her character. From experience, we know that adversity builds resilience, but I draw the line at deliberately making my child’s life more difficult than it has to be. In time, the world will do it for her.

As her parents, I see it as our job to create the conditions for her to flourish, of which comfort is one. It is also our job to prevent that comfort (and privilege) from stunting her emotional growth or corroding her character. I sometimes wonder: are we shielding our child from adversity? How do we allow it to meet her in ways that are calibrated, rather than detrimental to her growth?

I think this is where conversations come in. Conversations allow us to touch on complex realities that already exist around us, sometimes without having to directly experience them.

I don’t want ours to be a family that avoids difficult truths or hides them from each other. The cost of false comfort is too great.

What if we never learn how to sit with discomfort, or how to deal with disappointment? How to hold each other accountable, or how to repair rupture?

In our language, Filipino, National Artist for Film Kidlat Tahimik calls this way of growing and learning kapa-kapa, or feeling our way through.

It is the same phrase that describes how we learn a song without reading notes: by listening, observing, and pausing before taking the next step forward. Feeling our way through, and finding that we can do a bit more, hold a bit more, than we did the last time.

It is this capacity that I hope to create for my daughter as she grows into the realities of her own swiftly changing world.

Here in Amsterdam, the cherry blossoms are in bloom (unlike 13 years ago, when it snowed on the day of my daughter’s birth). Chittering starlings swirl and shimmer across evening skies that now glow when they once were dark.

Life has been so hard on so many of us the last few weeks. Thank you for letting me share this snapshot of my daughter, this joy of my life, with you.

On the morning of the final surgery in the chapter of my life titled Breast Cancer, I woke up at peace.

The peace was light, golden, almost liquid in the way it poured over everything—the walls, the shutters, the bed—and permeated me. It was in the shower of kisses my husband rained on my face when he came into our bedroom to find me awake; in the soft-closing click of the front door as my daughter left for school; in the cat coming to curl up in a furry pool on my feet.

This peace was familiar. I remember being enveloped in this same peace on the eve of my mastectomy two years ago: a sense of surrender, that there was nothing left for me but show up. I would be cared for, held, and moved through. A protective mechanism of the mind, of the Divine, or both? Whatever it was, I was grateful and did not question it.

Light-headed from fasting (doctors’ orders: no food after midnight; only water, apple juice, tea or coffee with no milk after 9:00; and no liquids two hours before surgery), I moved unhurriedly, dreamily through a sequence that now felt familiar.

I had packed my hospital bag night before with my current read, AirPods, battery pack and charging cable, scrunchie and hairbrush, asthma meds, and a highly unnecessary three shades of lipstick.

Although today was meant to be a quick zip through Dagbehandeling (Day Treatment) with an early discharge, I included a change of clothes and underwear just in case.

Things had gone wrong too many times before for me not to be prepared.

I called my mom, replied to messages from my sister, best friend, fellow cancer survivor/personal trainer/giant buddy Fred, and my other bestie from Paris, who was on a motorcycle trip through Sri Lanka. Not everyone who had been through this two-year journey with me had made it to the end . But I had everyone and everything I needed.

I am painfully aware that not everyone gets to close this chapter the way I did. Not everyone gets to walk out of it with what I have.

I have enough, and so much more.

How does one end up having six surgeries despite detecting breast cancer at Stage 0?

The mastectomy was my choice. One week later, (2) a emergency necrotomy to excise a nipple that died post-op from lack of blood supply. The week after, an (3) emergency explantation of the expander, a temporary prosthesis that would have created a pocket for my reconstructed breast, but had gotten infected and was making me sick.

A summer in between, to breathe.

Four was the big one: a DIEP flap reconstruction, in which tissue and a major artery from my own belly was removed, shaped into a new breast, and installed in my chest. I chose this eight-hour surgery in lieu of a silicone implant. A win for body autonomy! The week after, (5) an emergency debridement of my navel, the second part of me to fail post-op due to poor blood flow.

A year in between, to live again.

Publications, celebrations, adventures, endings, me trying to keep up with the momentum of my own life after so much time immobilized by my own body.

This time, it’s a final round of cosmetic touchups, free for anything I wanted fixed. I thought I would never want to go back into surgery again, but the draw of closure is powerful.

The human mind craves closed loops, certainty, resolution. My emotional reality demanded corporeal proof.

The final version of my body would allow me to declare this chapter of my life over, a physical permission slip to move on for good.

Perusing the menu for surgery number six, I had choices to make.

Nipple reconstruction, areolas tattooed to colour-match, is popular among breast cancer survivors; about 30 to 50 percent of women who’ve had mastectomies in the UK have had them. It’s a no for me, dawg. The nipple I had was magic, and some kinds of magic can never be duplicated. Not even by science.

My new boob sported a patch of skin from my belly that had come along in its migration to my chest. It looked kind of like an eyepatch, which prompted my ex to nickname the new boob Pirate Boob. This skin island could be removed, leaving a clean, single-line scar instead of a large oval one.

‘What do most people do with it?’ I asked my plastic surgeon.

‘Most people remove it, but you’re not most people,’ she replied. I took that as a compliment, but decided Skin Island would go—and with it, Pirate Boob.

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The belly surgery had left behind two matching pointy flaps of skin on my hips, known in the biz as dog ears. No amount of working out would remove them, so I decided I wanted them gone, too.

Instead of a navel, I have a raised keloid scar. Trying to resolve the question of whether or not I wanted a new navel, I developed a minor obsession with navels. .

For a brief period last summer, humanity was reduced to a sea of midriffs. I glared at navels promenading down the beach in fascination and envy. I read a novel where a woman’s navel was described with such lyrical desire, it made me die a little inside not to have one.

Yet I couldn’t imagine what a new navel would look like. I couldn’t feel even slightly tickled to get to choose between an innie or an outtie (how many of us are ever given that choice?). I only wanted the one I had lost, and was now irretrievable.

After a summer of intense navel-gazing, I concluded that my present scar resembles a botched navel piercing, which allows me to ‘pass’ in our society of navel-havers… if no one looks too closely. And you know what? No one does. That takes real intimacy—and I don’t hand out those passes so freely anymore.

Perhaps there are parts of us we believe we cannot live without, until we have to.

Perhaps the gift of acceptance is realizing that we never needed them for longer than we had them.

That in the end, all that is really lost to us is history.

And that sometimes, scars are all that’s left of the soft places where familiarity once lived.

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The hospital scheduled my surgery for the 17^th of February, Lunar New Year. The cosmic timing made me cackle out loud with delight.

Of course my surgery would coincide with the end of the Year of the Wood Snake. The Chinese Zodiac celebrated the end of a year of slow, enforced shedding, of transformation, casting off the skins we’ve outgrown—beliefs, habits, relationships—to clear the path for the Year of the Fire Horse, a year of action, momentum, and growth at speed.

The astrology girlies of the Internet couldn’t have chosen a more auspicious moment for me to slither out of this skin and leave behind this part of my life for good. As the day drew closer, every Instagram post and Thread seemed to be chanting at me: THE FINAL SHED! THE FINAL SHED!

But is any transformation ever the last one?

The moment they wheeled me into the theatre and I saw the cold white glare of the many-headed surgical lamp on the ceiling, my body’s response was involuntary. I started to shake and the vale of tears that had waited two years for release streamed down my face.

Lifted onto the table, left arm with the hospital bracelet outstretched. Would you like me to do the callout, the assisting surgeon asked as I hiccuped and wept.

No, I said, even though I had to force the words out. I can do it. I know it well enough.

My plastic surgeon drew close and took my right hand. I looked up into the brown eyes above the blue mask and apologized for my tears. I’m sorry, I blubbered. It’s just that I’ve done this so many times. We’ve done this so many times.

I know, she said. And you’ve done so well. This will be the last time.

I had to believe her. I wanted to. Did I have any other choice?

I’m going to take good care of you, she promised.

You always do, I said.

With a deep breath, I began the final litany.

Ik ben Deepa Catherine Arevalo Paul. Geboren op zes en twintig oktober, negentien een en tachtig. Vandaag hier voor een dermolipectomie—I tripped over the word—op de linker borst, en een dog-ears correctie.

Goed zo, murmured the voice to my right.

The OR nurse took my left hand and pressed it between both of hers. In surgery prep, she’d told me that she’d been to the Philippines, gone diving in Cebu. Shall we think together now of being on a beach in Cebu? she said. I nodded as the oxygen mask settled over my face, grateful for this kindness.

Sand between my toes. A mouthful of mango. A red sun sinking into a golden sea, before everything went dark.

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Will we ever really know if it’s the last time?

As my husband helped me unwind the compression binder from my hips and wriggle out of my pyjamas, as I prepared to step into the shower for the first time after surgery, I wondered:

How many times have we done this?

How many times have I peeled away the tatters of an old skin, surveyed the ravages of an old self, and hoped that hot water and time would wash it all away?

How many times has this man sat outside this shower door, perched on the lip of this tub, waiting patiently for me with a fresh towel? How many times have I stepped out into the peace of his embrace, his gentle touch patting me dry in the places my wounds won’t allow me to reach, his presence holding me steady as I look into the mirror and face the shock of all that has been forever altered, ripped away, and left behind?

Day after day, for weeks, after childbirth. Day after day, for weeks, after a gallbladder surgery. Day after day, for months, after cancer.

How many more times will we do this?

How many more skins will we shed in this lifetime?

How many versions of ourselves have we yet to meet?

Will those we have chosen to witness our rebirths hold us gently as we writhe, again and again, out of the parts of us we have outgrown into the new ones that await? Will they look upon our future selves with as much love and recognition as our former ones?

It takes so much trust, and so much tenderness.

Here, at one of a thousand sheddings, I am thankful for all I have chosen, all I have been given, and all that remains.

I would love to know: have you felt what it’s like to shed? Who was there to hold you? What were you happy to leave behind?

The photographs I’ve shared in this post are a record of the skin I shed. The full gallery includes more sensitive images, so if you’d like to see them, or read the story of my collaboration with Meander, or simply support my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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I surprised my mother on Christmas Eve.

It took her a few heartbeats to register that I was really there, standing by the front door with my husband and daughter, holding a tray of food that my sister, my accomplice in this heist, had ordered for our traditional Noche Buena meal.

Then an elated shriek as her eyes sparkled to life, her dimples deepened, and her face lit up with a pure joy that made the scheming, secret-keeping, and nearly sixteen hours of flying time all worth it. When I hugged her fragile frame, she didn’t want to let go.

We totally pulled it off. Mom hadn’t the slightest clue that I was coming home to the Philippines for Christmas. Somewhere between my DCIS diagnosis and losing my navel, she’d written off the possibility of seeing me this year. “Put your health first,” she’d insisted.

I didn’t tell Mom that the head of the plastic surgery department had cleared me to travel in October. That after two major operations and three unplanned ones, I was finally done, free of medical appointments and plastic surgeons and emergency room visits until my next check-up in March; that leaving the doctor’s office, I wondered why I didn’t feel more celebratory. Didn’t everyone call breast cancer a battle; did this not make me a victorious warrior? But I didn’t feel euphoric or triumphant, just… numb. Flat. Depleted.

Yet weeks before my flight, I pined for home with an acute longing I hadn’t felt in years. I had come to see Christmas in Manila as a cacophony of traffic jams, social obligations, and heightened emotions, but now I didn’t care. I was hungry for it all: the traffic, the noise, the activity. This year will be different, I said to myself. This year is different.

Of course, each homecoming is different, because we are never the same. I returned home a woman changed.

And for the first time, my boyfriend came home with me.

The two of us had been tiptoeing around the idea for years. He had never been to Asia; what better reason to go, and who better to give him the real local experience? Some nights we gazed at the vintage-style map on his wall, eyes drawn to my side of the world, and the wish would express itself in wistful feelers and careful nudges. Bringing him to the Philippines was a pipe dream that was almost too audacious to dream together.

Shared dreams were not a built-in feature of our relationship. Our love was puzzled together from bits of borrowed time: one night a week off from husband and family, then a first attempt at camping for two nights, until we negotiated our way up to longer adventures, an endeavour that took time, patience, and trust. But traveling halfway around the planet needed more than that.

It took five years and cancer for me to finally feel like I could ask for that time; not for romantic reasons, but for myself. And it took five years to reach a milestone that most couples might tick off in their first year of the relationship. Then again, he and I aren’t like most couples.

This year was different. I needed the extended stay home; I wanted to gift myself a trip of dreams to mark the end of a year of nightmares. My family couldn’t extend their stay—my daughter had school, my husband his work—but my boyfriend could join me. So he did.

There is something deeply vulnerable about revealing the place you call home to someone you love, especially if it lies on the other side of a vast cultural divide.

With a husband from the same country and culture, I had skipped this step; now it was time for the big reveal to my European boyfriend. From a distance, the Philippines appears to many Westerners as a tropical paradise, but those of us who have left—those of us it has hurt—are intimately acquainted with the reality behind the fantasy.

I drove my boyfriend to exasperation with a hundred warnings meant to ‘manage expectations.’ Manila traffic is beyond comprehension. It takes forever to get anywhere. Stop asking about insurance for the car, no one in the Philippines has any. Flights are always delayed, our airports are the worst. Your fair skin will burn in our sun. I’m serious about the traffic. ’I’m sure I’m going to love it!’ he insisted, trotting out the Irish national motto: ‘It’ll be grand!’

He’s saying that now because he has no idea, I thought. Now he’s going to see why I’m the way I am. Now he’s going to see why I’m crazy.

As a low-profile control freak, I felt personally responsible for ensuring that his experience was perfect, which added a whole new layer of neurosis to my already roiling mix of emotions.

On top of all that, he was going to meet my mother.

*

There should have been no reason for me to worry. Two years ago, my mother’s response to my coming out as polyamorous, with a boyfriend, had both blown me away and reassured me.

But I wasn’t the only one who’d changed since my last homecoming. After the delight of my Christmas Eve surprise faded, I was confronted with just how much my mother had, too.

There are words that explain the changes in her, but that I don’t want to use. Doctors’ words, damning words, words that make it too real and me too disloyal to commit to paper and in public, words that my sister and I still struggle to accept, words that my mother refuses to return to the doctors to confirm. Maybe you know the words, or know someone who lives with them.

I had never dreamed that I would be able to introduce my boyfriend to my mother. I had never believed that it would really happen. And I never imagined that when it finally did, he would no longer meet the mother I’d always known. For this time, coming home meant having to accept that that mother might already be gone.

How I wished he’d met her before, in an unspecified then: somewhere between the height of her powers and the unnoticed beginning of her decline, anytime but now.

But she was here, and now, so was he. He’d come halfway around the world to meet her where she was, as she was.

Though I sprang the news on Mom last minute (one surprise at a time, Deepa), she never resisted, no questions asked. The day after Christmas, I outlined the plan in a rush—husband and daughter would fly back after two weeks, and boyfriend would fly in for another two weeks, giving me a full month back home split between the loves of my life.

Her eyebrows shot up in surprise, but I could see a kind of mischievous delight in her expression. Perhaps she recognized a bit of herself in me then, for when it came to ambitious gambits, she was always the original; perhaps the apple learned watching the tree.

He really wants to meet you, and I want you to meet him, I said.

Of course! she said, holding her hand to her chest in mock scandal. As if it would be unthinkable for her not to meet him, and not, as so many other mothers might have felt, the other way around.

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I could confess how uncharacteristically quiet I was when Mom and he finally came face to face, and how I could tell she was nervous, too. I could write about how she surprised me by telling him stories I’d never heard before; or how he dialed up the Irish charm 200% so that she never had a chance; or how he made her laugh so hard that food fell out of her mouth (a fact he’s particularly proud of).

I could how describe how scared I was when she began to ramble, but how he just listened, with a gentleness I rarely see from this kinetic whirlwind of a man, and with a patience that moved me.

Or I could just tell you that when my boyfriend met my mother, I saw two open-hearted people welcoming each other with genuine warmth and acceptance, two empaths meeting on a heart level. With no other reason to have met than that I loved them both, and that they each knew how much I loved the other.

I saw proof that love exists beyond logic, and that love makes improbable connections possible.

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t’s been two weeks since I came home the other way round: back to the calm and structure of Amsterdam, which I need as much as I do the color and chaos of my islands.

I started out with the intention to write something entirely different about my homecoming. I might have written a travelogue to spirit you away to warm shores and tropical waters, a voluptuously described escape in the dead of winter.

I might have written about sailing the seas on on a boat as my ancestors might have done, unplugged from the world and attuned to my body; about nights under the moon and stories by the fire; about slinging jokes and singing songs in my native tongue with voices who knew not just all the words, but all the feelings.

I might have written about one spectacular day after another, a liquid loop of pastel sunrises and show-stopping sunsets. Or how much it healed me to experience a string of good days that I could rely on. Or how all those days gave me back my ability to trust that life is more than a series of disasters waiting to happen.

I might have written about taking my boyfriend to the church where I was married 17 years ago, or to the university where I met my husband, or the midnight drive by the Catholic school where the Church had attempted (and clearly failed) to mold me into a good girl.

Who knows, I still might write about those things.

But I left Amsterdam with a suitcase filled with presents and returned laden with gifts of another kind. Those that fill you up, then can’t help but spill over.

The gift of seeing someone you love fall in love with where you’re from.

Of love, expressed in new and previously unimagined ways.

Of acceptance.

Of home.

No longer depleted, I can share again, and this is what I wanted to share with you.

Sending you much love from Amsterdam, until next time.

By the time you read this, I will be undergoing a breast reconstruction procedure called a DIEP (deep inferior epigastric perforator) flap surgery. My lower belly will be sliced from hip to hip, and a chunk of fat and skin used, together with its blood supply from an accompanying vein called a perforator, to create a replacement breast for the one I lost.

The perforator will be detached from my abdomen and reconnected, thanks to the modern marvel of microsurgery, to a blood vessel in my chest.

No silicone, no worries about implant leaks or recalls, just a warm, natural-feeling, hopefully permanent new boob that will age with me, from my very own tissue.

The operation will be done by two plastic surgeons working simultaneously for 6-10 hours, with a 5-day hospital stay and 6-8 weeks’ recovery time, although my surgeon has told me it really takes about three months to feel normal again.

It’s like a boob job and a tummy tuck in one! some people around me have said, and I guess it’s true.

Lucky you! they add, in a well-meaning attempt to point out the silver lining of a pre-cancer diagnosis and complicated mastectomy, which I’ve written about in previous posts.

Lucky me, because well, don’t all women want to get rid of that pooch?

I have feelings about this.

Because to my surprise, the prospect of finally being rid of my belly, fulfilling the most fervent wish of my adolescent self, doesn’t fill me with joy.

In her brilliant essay collection Girlhood, memoirist Melissa Febos shares a prompt she assigns to her creative writing students: write a love letter to the part (or parts) of your body with which you have the most fraught relationship.

On the eve of losing a body part I’ve love-hated, mostly hated for most of my adult life, I wrote a love letter to my belly.

And I’m sharing it with you.

Dear Belly,

I can’t believe I’m saying goodbye to you after 42 years.

The first thing that wants to break loose from me is a rush of apologies. For all the time we lost, and all the time I wasted wishing you didn’t exist.

I’m sorry for all the years I hated you. I’m sorry for all the years I didn’t know better, when my feelings for you were drowned out and shaped by all the voices that taught me to hate you. For all the times I was ashamed of you, instead of accepting you as vital to my wholeness as any other part of me.

Do you remember when we first met? When I think back, I realize never got the chance to know you on my own terms. Throughout my girlhood I am certain that many people called my attention to you, for by the time I reached my teens I had already built up an implicit understanding of you as ugly, linking your existence with my shame.

One of my earliest memories of you is shopping at Corso Marconi for discount Italian clothing with my mom and sister back in Manila in the 90s. I remember trying on a long, slinky black Italian dress that looked and felt amazing on me—almost too hot for a seventeen year-old. In my mind’s eye I knew I looked good in it, but my eyes fell on you and I immediately negated myself.

I thought to myself: I look great, but—, the but being the way you jutted forward, forever the obstacle to unreachable perfection, thwarting my path to the beautiful, skinny me I could be if not for you.

My mother bought me the dress anyway, but I would only work up the courage to wear it once or twice. I remember wearing that slinky black dress to my first public engagement as a Glee Club trainee, Ramon Cruz and Emilie Tenorio’s wedding at Santuario de San Antonio. Immediately I was punished for my boldness when A——, a senior alumnus, called you out. Ano ba yang puson mo, Deepa! he cackled, all three hundred pounds of him, in front of everyone. Para kang nanganak! (“What kind of belly is that, Deepa! It’s like you just gave birth!”)

I burned with shame. I wanted to disappear. And I hated you, not him. It would take me decades to realize that his hatred for his own body then simply needed an outlet, and he had found a target at the bottom of the pecking order who wouldn’t fight back. And I didn’t. I wasn’t brave enough.

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I’m sorry for all the ways I tried to hide you. All the times I tried on pants, skirts, and shorts in countless fitting rooms, and wished you weren’t there. All the long t-shirts, peplum tops, the shirts I never tucked in so they could fall over you, the strategically draped dresses, the swimsuits I never bought because I feared that baring you would invite the ridicule of others.

Most of all, I am sorry for the way my mind became conditioned to automatically contort itself in the relentless subterfuge of your concealment.

Everything changed when I became truly aware of you—not through the gaze or voices of others, but through the touch of another.

The first time you were squeezed by a lover’s hands—with the force of desire, in the throes of pleasure—transformed how I saw and experienced you. It transformed how I saw and experienced myself. Suddenly, you were a part of me that could be desired, and I became a woman who could be desired not in spite of you, but with you… perhaps even because of you.

From then on, you ceased being a part of me that had to be ignored by men to get to what they really wanted, and became essential to the exploration and expression of my own sexuality and desire.

From then on, I understood that my entire body could, and must, be included in the pleasure of sex—and not only the bits of me that men had been conditioned to lust after.

I loved getting to know you then. We could finally relax, stop sucking it in, and take up space. You were the gateway for me to love and cherish the rest of my body as I had never been taught to love it.

With my daughter, my appreciation of you grew even deeper.

The touch of her tiny chubby hands on the marks of her birth; the expression of pure contentment on her face when she lies on your softness, her ear pressed to the gurgles and rumbles beneath your surface; even the silly and endearing nickname she gave you—all of these showed me an unconditional love for you that is so pure, so genuine, that I can’t help but be caught up in it.

Becoming a witness to her love for both of us completed the picture of what it means to truly love you.

I learned to love you even more through yoga, bodywork and breathwork.

I know that when my breath drops deep into you, I feel the calmest and safest I can be in my body. Thank you for being the sanctuary of my breath, the seat of my intuition, and the home of my peace.

The love I have for you today is hard-won and far from perfect, but it is real and I treasure it. My voice is stronger than the voices of my past, and in listening to my own chorus of self-love I have learned to embrace the way you bring fullness, dimension and depth to my curves.

I’ve learned to override the tiny voice that chimes ‘but’ when I’m shopping or fitting on clothes and see you jutting out in a way I was taught to find ugly and shameful.

I’ve learned to cradle your weight against the tops of my thighs in every yoga pose that brings you close to me, instead of seeing you as an obstacle to achieving perfection in that pose.

And I’ve learned to ignore that moment of embarrassment at the fleshy, floppy sound of you slapping against a lover’s body when I’m on top, lean into it, and just ride fucking harder.

I’m so glad we had that final week in Crete together. It was a last-minute hurrah with my family and boyfriend, but in a way it was also a last hurrah with you. I loved seeing you in the sun, knowing I looked and felt absolutely smoking in the tiny, belly-baring string bikinis I never had the courage to wear.

In a way I’m glad that you have been with me all my life, waiting for this crucial moment to be called into play and give way to the change that needs to take place.

When I really think about it, isn’t it a wonder and a miracle that I’ve always carried the raw material of my own rebirth? That everything I need to bridge my old self to the new one that awaits has always been with me?

And in a way I’m glad that part of you will always be with me, just in a new place and form. That the best and most skilled hands will handle you, and care for you as you deserve. That the smaller, flatter belly that emerges will still be you, not better or worse, only different. And that we have a whole lifetime ahead of us to discover, appreciate, and love each other anew.

I love you so much, my belly. I can never express enough gratitude for everything you’ve done and will do for me. Thank you for making this new me possible.

With squeezes, jiggles, and kisses,

Deepa

Thank you for reading! Please send me all your good vibes for a successful surgery and a smooth recovery. In return, I leave you this playlist from a wonderful little cafe in Crete where I enjoyed a delectably foamy iced cappuccino, people-watched, and wrote morning pages every day.

Listening to it has made summer last just that little bit longer for me; I hope it does for you too. See you on the other side.

I am a hunter, and my prey is elusive.

I am wounded and slow; my prey is swift and seemingly inexhaustible.

I am fallibly, vulnerably, painfully human, and my prey is a shapeshifter.

Over the last five weeks, I have tried many, many times to sit down and write about this experience called recovery, and failed.

There are moments I think I almost have it in my grasp — that I almost have the words to throw over it like a snare, a net woven of meaning. In a wild flash of hope, I can almost taste the triumph of capture, and I think: if I can capture this experience, then maybe somehow, I can control it.

But suddenly the day shifts, the night turns, and some unpredictable-but-not-improbable event unravels in my body. The world slides out from under me again; the story changes.

The thing I thought I had within my reach wriggles out of my grasp like a slippery eel, grows wings and beats me back, shifting shape as it escapes, leaving me empty-handed and powerless.

Suddenly all the words I have are the wrong ones, my tools useless and ineffectual.

And suddenly I’m so very tired, because now all that’s left is to wait.

And chase. And wait. Again, and yet again.

I had hoped to write to you today with something concrete, and polished, like so many essays on Substack. Something full of gratitude and optimism, jaunty and energetic, that would show you how well I’m doing despite everything that’s happened. Something that reminds me of what I sound like, in the same way the selfies and stories I’ve been sharing on Instagram help me recognize myself, and remind me: hey look, I’m still me. Here’s proof.

But this came out. Maybe this is what I really want to say about my recovery.

In On Things, an excellent newsletter on curiosity, creativity and aliveness, Madeleine Dore shares a piece of writing advice from Walt Whitman.

“The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment—to put things down without deliberation—without worrying about their style—without waiting for a fit time or place.”

So here I am, writing from the gush. It might be a mess, but it is nothing but real.

I cannot write a story while I am still living it.

Perhaps the meaning-making is best left to later. Let’s just try the facts, shall we?

On June 10^th, three months after my diagnosis with DCIS, a non-invasive type of early breast cancer, I underwent a lateral mastectomy and sentinel lymph node removal. After one night in the hospital, doped up on painkillers, I floated home in a bubble of calm. It might have been the morphine, but I’d like to attribute the peace to a sense of surrender — of giving myself over to the experience, allowing myself to be held by the people around me.

One week later, the plastic surgeon in charge of my post-op care and eventual reconstruction pronounced my nipple dead. Necrosis, it’s called, tissue death from lack of blood supply. It would have to be surgically removed to prevent infection. Into the operating room I went, under general anesthesia again, not knowing how much of it would be saved. I woke up, and it was gone.

In the midst of all this I received good news: the pathology results have come back. Part of the DCIS was found to have become invasive cancer. It would have spread, but it’s all gone now. We got everything. The margins are clear. You’re all clear.

This outcome should have been celebrated, for was this not the point of the whole exercise? Instead it was swallowed up in the grief of watching a part of me I love and adore die slowly, then disappear all at once.

Just the facts, ma’am, if you please.

Removing dead tissue wasn’t enough. Within days I had a raging infection that a knock-your-socks-off course of antibiotics couldn’t fix. One week later I was back in surgery under general anesthesia for the third time in as many weeks. Again, I had no way of knowing what would happen until I woke up.

My tissue expander— a temporary prosthetic designed to gradually stretch my skin and create a pocket for a new breast, had to come out—and my insides were far too infected to put a new one back in.

The plan for reconstruction, like all my plans, would have to change.

I love to say: time is a construct, but what it is now, is total mindfuckery.

In my head I’ve been in bed recovering for five weeks. But in my body, it’s only been two weeks since my last surgery. Different parts of me are healing at different rates. The closest I can compare it to is giving birth, only that different parts of the baby have come out at different times, which makes it rather complicated to measure its age in weeks.

I didn’t expect recovery to be linear, but I didn’t foresee multiple setbacks, either. Complications wear you down. Each one pushed me further and further into survival mode, where my lizard brain on high alert saw everything as a disaster waiting to happen. After three surgeries in three weeks, resilience reaches an all-time low. When you become a delicate medical situation, you don’t have a lot of tools to refuel the engine.

Now I’m climbing out of the wreckage — slowly, but (as I am told at my weekly checkups) surely. I am cautiously approaching the end of one solid week without a major surgery or trip to the emergency room. I can, and am encouraged to, go on a sunny holiday in August. Touchstones of normalcy are within my grasp, and I reach for them with gratitude and a growing sense of optimism.

My biggest challenges at the moment are keeping a rein on my impatience; regaining a sense of safety, trust that things are going to be okay; and rebuilding my resilience.

Some days patience is the biggest struggle, for while the whole world tells you to slow down, no one has the time to slow down with you.

Got any hacks for how to become more patient, like, now? Please send them. I’ll wait.

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Thank you for piecing together the fragments with me. I hope you are having a much better start to the summer than I am, and it brings you all that you need: whether pleasure or adventure, patience or resilience, calm and healing, or a little bit of everything.

Here in Amsterdam, a characteristically unpredictable Dutch summer has lavished us with gloomy days of lashing wind and rained-out barbecues. I don’t mind — it’s good for cocooning and not feeling like I’m missing out on much. Deep in the mud and mess hide tiny sprouts of hope, stubbornly growing.

See you here again soon. With better news. I promise.

“So, what’s your book about?”

It’s not the first time I’ve been asked this. As far as questions go, this is one of the easy ones.

But it’s the first time I’ve been asked while lying topless, face down on a kind of hydraulic hospital bed or full-body length exam table raised to shoulder height, my left breast dangling through a circular opening in the middle, between two metal plates that grip my flesh like a vise and beam X-rays to a nearby screen.

So please excuse me if this time, the answer takes a moment to give.

Trying to keep the rest of my body as still as possible, I turn my head towards the source of the question: a nurse with dark fringe, blue eyes, and soft lines etched around a smiling mouth. “Call me J_____,” she says, supplying a Dutch name, “or Jess. Is Jess easier?”

Cheerful, seasoned and efficient, Nurse J lays her blue-gloved hands on the cold flesh of my bare back. Her touch warms and calms me.

This is just like getting a Brazilian, I tell myself as the metal plates flatten my flesh. They ask you questions to distract you from the pain.

The progression is familiar by now. What do you do — a writer, what do you write — a book, how exciting — what is your book about?

Nurse J’s blue eyes widen when I give her the standard line. It’s a well-practiced answer to an easy question and flows right out of me. After all, I’ve been telling people for nearly four years that I am writing a book about being in an open marriage. It comes up everywhere, all the time: on dating apps, at a book club, in conversation with friends, among strangers.

The book feels inextricable from who I am now, melded into my identity, which is maybe not the healthiest of relationships. After all, I can’t make this book my whole personality. Or have I already, and is it too late?

Behind me, on the other side of the room, radiologist-in-training W. (youthful face, cornsilk ponytail, barely-there glasses) is busy with the mammogram images. The sounds of her shuffling and activity stop for a beat. I can tell I have her attention. It’s like I have eyes in the back of my head.

Surely this is above and beyond the call of duty. My debut is a year away from publication, yet here I am half-naked and supine, waiting for a radiologist to slide a stainless-steel needle into my breast, doing freaking book promotion during a stereotactic biopsy. And I can’t help it.

More questions come; I don’t mind. I mean, what else have I got to do around here? Chatter might relax me. Every muscle in my body is tense, on high alert and primed for resistance against the imminent invasion of an unseen enemy.

So I answer Nurse J.’s questions. The satisfaction of her curiosity is the least I can give in return for the kindness of her touch.

Yes, I live with my husband.

No, the man in the waiting room is my boyfriend.

My daughter is sick today, and my husband had to stay home with her.

Yes, they know each other.

Yes, they’ve been taking turns bringing me to these appointments.

Yes, I’m a very lucky woman.

If nurse and trainee are the opening act, the male radiologist is the rockstar, appearing at the last second. The stage is set with local anesthesia, so I feel nothing when he launches into his performance, sliding a hollow needle into my breast and turning it clockwise. Once they have filled five miniscule chambers filled with cells from my body, both needle and doctor make a smooth exit.

I’m a very lucky woman.

Nurse J. explains that these chambers now contain some of the microscopic calcifications scattered throughout my breast, which will be sent to a pathologist for examination. The micro-calcifications look no bigger than white pinpricks, even when magnified onscreen. They appear so insignificant that I feel foolish for going through all this trouble for these tiny specks.

I’m a very lucky woman.

The biopsy takes 30 minutes, including 15 minutes of compression—10 by the machine, five minutes by hand—to stanch the bleeding from the puncture. When it is over, Trainee W. makes two cups of coffee for me and my boyfriend, who is finally allowed into the room. “Get ready, he’s going to have a billion questions,” I warn Nurse J, who pretends to hide behind the exam table.

I sit up to sip my coffee; the bed is lowered so I can hop off. After I am dressed, Trainee W grabs a notepad. “Wait, what’s the title of your book?” she asks. “Is it in English or in Dutch?” I give her both. Ask Me How It Works; Vraag Maar Hoe Het Werkt.

“Is it really only available next year? Can I not pre-order it now? Why does it take so long?” she asks. My boyfriend and I exchange glances. Oh, if I had a Euro for every time someone asked me that question.

“Set a reminder on your phone,” he quips. “March 2025. One year from now.”

“Oh, I will!” W says, and we all laugh.

Before leaving, I thank Nurse J. “You are an angel,” I tell her. She seems surprised. Then, with a smile, she says, “So are you.”

I pause, combing my mind for any questions I might have. There are none.

The questions come later. During the first call.

Answers filter to me as if from a distance. Precursor. Breast cancer. Recommend removal. 12mm. Breast-saving surgery. Closer look. Another mammogram. This afternoon.

I obey immediately, willing my body to yield the answers the specialists need for their group consultation. Here in the Netherlands, consensus is a national value; they will decide on next steps together. In a daze, I hop on the tram across town to another hospital, where there is no laughing Nurse J. This second mammogram is done in minutes.

I disintegrate in my husband’s arms when I reach home.

The second call comes two days later (Happy International Women’s Day!).

I have more questions; they have longer answers.

Yes, the precursor has a name. DCIS—ductal carcinoma in situ.

Atypical cells located in the milk ducts. They usually remain there instead of metastasizing, into surrounding tissue or into the bloodstream. Among younger women, sometimes it is better can just wait and see; because of my age, surgery is recommended. I wonder: am I young? Am I old?

Later I find other answers online, on my own: Early. Non-invasive. Responsible for about 20 percent of breast cancers.

Yes, an MRI is necessary.  To determine if there is anything else; to define the exact size and area before surgery. Yes, they can prescribe medication for my claustrophobia.

No, it would be better to discuss the MRI results in person than over the phone. Yes, they insist. Yes, they can schedule an appointment on Friday morning, so I can be home when my daughter comes home from school on her 11^th birthday.

During the MRI, I close my eyes and pretend the machine sounds are techno beats on a dance floor. I am so sedated I fall asleep for the last four minutes. Though the Oxazepam has stripped me of my entire personality for 6 to 10 hours, this is a relief. I take it to mean I am neither anxious nor neurotic enough for benzos.

The first appointment with Dr. R (Botticelli oval face, gentle brown eyes) gives me answers. But they are not the ones I hoped for.

The MRI has revealed more of the DCIS—the pre-cancer, also known as Stage 0 breast cancer—than the 1,2cm area first found in the mammogram. It is more than twice as large as they thought—5cm. Within this area is another revelation: a new lesion of 1,6cm.

She cannot answer any questions about what this untested lesion might be. Another biopsy is scheduled. After that, we will know what it is, what it responds to, how fast it might be growing. We cannot discuss options until we know more.

But now the questions are relentless, hammering inside my mind for release. So I ask. And ask some more.

Even when Dr. R’s expression grows guarded. Even when she cautions, this is already a lot to absorb. Even after she says, we should stop here.

Words leak out onto the table between us, a mess I cannot clean up. Chemotherapy, radiation, hormones. Drip, drip, drip.

“So, if surgery is definitely recommended,” I say slowly, pulling mental levers like an addict at a slot machine, “and the area is now bigger than you expected, then is a breast-conserving surgery still an option?

For a heartbeat she hesitates. I wonder if she regrets being duty-bound to answer this question. When she replies, her answer is circumspect. “No,” she says, “because of the size of the area, a breast-conserving surgery would no longer be an option.”

For a brief, absurd moment, I am proud of myself for figuring out the one question that elicits a definite response. For reading between the lines of her answer. It is only when I grasp what I stand to lose, that I curse my own curiosity.

Because now I am in over my head, overwhelmed by all the answers I asked for, yet drowning in all the answers I do not have.

“I think I’ve hit my limit,” I say, barely able to form the words.

The appointment ends.

Walking out into the early spring sunshine on my husband’s arm, I barely register the sun’s warmth or his presence. I escape to an impregnable within, somewhere deeper than all the questions — why, why me, why now, what did I do, what will happen now, why, why, why — where no answers can reach me.

This draft has been sitting in a folder for nearly three months.

March was shutdown: the freeze response of shock, resistance and denial. April was paralysing fear: an insatiable hunger for both reassurance and distraction, a flight response. I wish I could say that this month has brought acceptance. But that would make me look better than I am and stronger than I really feel.

Instead, the gift of May has been agency. Choice. Action. You might call it a fight response, but I don’t want to see my body—or what has been found in my body—as the enemy. Corny as it sounds, I’m a lover, not a fighter.

Since I was diagnosed with DCIS, I’ve had more medical appointments than I can count, and devoured more medical journals than I can keep track of. But I still don’t have all the answers. Instead I’ve had to accept that I can never really know everything.

To move from paralysis into action, I have had to trust myself and the people around me enough to forge forward into the unknown, which means choosing the least shitty option from an array of shitty options. Instead of railing against the shitty options I’ve been presented, I choose to recognize that even having options is a privilege.

Many women who have faced this crisis have had treatment thrust upon them. Because I believe that agency is power, I have to believe that being able to choose my own treatment pathway according to what is most important to me, is a gift, even if the path I’ve chosen is neither the easiest nor the shortest.

In June I will undergo a lateral mastectomy, followed by a delayed reconstruction that will use tissue from my abdomen, rather than a silicone implant, to replace my left breast. Making this choice was surprisingly quick, a clear, sharp gut instinct; accepting it is the struggle. How this choice will unfold in my day-to-day life and how it will reshape me is unknown. I must learn to accept that, too.

All I know—that I remind myself of daily since my diagnosis—is that I have a home, a loving family, a wonderful boyfriend, amazing friends, an abundance of support and love. I have an income, a career, a future, a book coming out in March, a dream-come-true unfolding right before me, and an incredible team behind me. I have the best people around me that I can trust to hold me when I need to fall apart. I’m neither ill nor fighting for survival—my body is still capable of what it did yesterday, and the day before that.

All I know is that I wake up each day and I’m alive. Not just living, but fully alive.

These are the answers to my heart’s unspoken questions.

These are all the answers I need, for now.

Here in Amsterdam, purple thistles and yellow buttercups dip their heads towards me as I pedal down sunny paths on my bicycle.

The full-on lushness of spring as it peaks into summer inspires me to live as much as I can, in spite of it all. For life always finds a way to spring up between the cracks.

As always, I love hearing from you. Ask me anything, and I’ll do my best to answer—whether in an email, comment, or my next letter.

Maybe go easy on me —I’ve had quite enough of the tough questions for now.

I have a problem with letting go. Mainly: letting go is hard.

Much as I hate to admit it, I’ve inherited a matrilineal tendency to hoard. Just as my grandmother refused to let go of Christmas wrapping paper and Lily’s Peanut Butter jars, and my mother refuses to let go of, well, pretty much anything, I hung on to as many of my daughter’s baby things as I could, for longer than I should have.

Clothes ages 0 to 8, shoes, books, toys, bottles, monitor, strollers and cribs (plural), bedding, high chair—I shoved it all into every nook and cranny possible, pushing the storage capacity of our modest Amsterdam flat to its limit, for almost a decade.

Each time I stuffed something into a closet that groaned in protest, I told myself: this will come in handy when I have another baby. But the second baby never came.

After countless conversations—when we would dance towards the possibility, then scurry away from it—my husband and I decided that life was full enough with just the three of us. We didn’t need another child for our family to feel perfect and complete. I had never been possessed by the biological compulsion to have another baby, as a number of my friends had. I had gotten over the guilt of being “selfish,” as I would have been labeled in my culture, for not providing my poor solitary child with a playmate that shared her DNA.

Over the years, doubt had crystallized into certainty. Our daughter was it.

Now all I needed to do was get rid of all her stuff.

I wish I’d been more disciplined about decluttering—doing a little at a time, instead of holding on to so much for so long. The task had grown into a mammoth, both in physical bulk and emotional weight. Each time I attempted to face it, sadness would suck me in like a whirlpool.

It was my boyfriend who came up with the idea of photographing my daughter’s treasures.

“If you like, we can bring some of her things into the studio and take pictures of them,” he offered. “That way, you can keep the pictures and look back at the memories anytime. Then it makes it easier to let the actual stuff go.”

I loved the idea, and I loved him for suggesting it.

Perhaps that’s the first step.

Whatever it is that you need to let go of: share it.

Then, allow others to contribute. Get people involved. The right ones.

How do you know they’re the right ones? The right people bring energy.

Energy is essential for the process of transformation: of navigating the unknown without a clear outcome, of turning something difficult into something beautiful.

While my husband and I sorted through eight years of childhood possessions, he built a set by cutting shapes out of plywood and painting them in bright, powdery-soft colors. We enlisted a dear friend who was a seasoned stylist and fellow artistic spirit, to arrange the clothes and toys into artful layouts.

On shoot day, he helped me haul six bags of baby things into the studio and left. Piled on tables and spread out on the floor, all the stuff I’d hung on to looked like a mountain of goodbyes I didn’t want to climb, a landscape of farewells I wasn’t ready to traverse.

Our stylist held aloft her industrial-strength garment steamer like Gandalf brandishing his staff. “I have a plan,” she announced, her voice ringing with purpose and authority. “We’re going to make four or five pictures.”

This sounded wise. They were professionals who worked on commercial shoots, where five images was a reasonable and expected target for a workday.

“Then the pictures… are going to have sub-pictures…” she trailed off, her voice becoming as small and sly as a crafty elf. I burst out laughing.

It was a day of laughing and crying like a crazy lady. Whenever I picked up a garment to steam it, memories would blur my vision.

The pink Hello Kitty raincoat she wore for our first picnic at the cherry blossom park, when a photojournalist thought she was Japanese and snapped her picture for Het Parool. The tiny Spanish patent leather shoes with grosgrain laces, bought on her third birthday in Madrid. The cheap yapping dog, a surprise from a babysitter in Riga, that became an obsession.

A memory in every sweater, sock and soft toy. Her childhood in my hands.

The right people understand. When my tears started flowing, our stylist came over to give me a hug. “Nobody told me it would be this hard,” I said.

“Oh, lieverd. You know what else nobody tells you?” she said. “That after you’re done with your kids, you have to start with your parents.”

Plans unravel when you’re having fun: we ended up with 18 pictures and one GIF.  “We never get to just play like this at work,” our stylist said.

As a stylist, she was a wonder to watch, a blend of experience, instinct, and imagination at work. She took her time to compose each layout: allowing colors and objects to speak to her, attending to each detail with precision and focus, touching each object with tenderness and care.

Then there’s my boyfriend.

More than just a photographer, he is a builder and maker. His sets were a self-contained world where toys and books come alive, coats and shoes dance, and everything is possible.

Then he gave this world a glow that touched each object, as worn and chewed-up as some of them were, so that everyone can see what I already know. That every one of these things is precious and loved.

Love made visible. For it is love, more than skill or talent, that makes everything beautiful and special in our eyes.

Do you see it? Tell me if you do, I can’t be the only one.

That day we turned memories into sets, layouts, compositions, light, color, photographs. Sadness into play. Childhood into art.

It’s magic, really. The magic of transformation.

The magic of letting go.

Parenting is the one area in my life where the momentum of letting go is relentless. It can happen bit by bit and yet knock you completely off guard. I still remember what it was like to bring home my week-old baby from the hospital and wonder where my newborn had gone.

I let go of the baby over and over again, as she grew into a child before my eyes. Now I must let go of the child that baby has become.

My daughter turns 10 today. In the Netherlands, a child becomes a teenager (tiener) at 10 (tien). Far too early by my reckoning, but what can you do?

These photographs were shot in October of 2021. Unsurprisingly, I hung on to them for too long. But I’ve finally started to give away the clothes. Clear space. Choose a few favorites to keep. And now, share what we made.

After all, I’ll always have the memories—and the pictures, just as he said.

So, how do you let go of a childhood?

With creativity, playfulness and imagination.

With magic.

With love.

Has creativity helped you let go of something? Have you ever transformed something difficult into something beautiful? What was it, and how was that process for you? I would love to hear about it.

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So much gratitude to my co-schemer and fashion fairy. I love you both.

Meet yourself at the mountain lodge, high above the valley.

Where not a single stick of furniture, fiber of comfort—from the heavy woollen djellabas hanging in each room, to the woven rugs cushioning cold bare floors—or grain of rice has arrived here by accident, only by choice and by mule.

Where the frigid night air, thinned by mountain heights, heated by glowing embers, sipped in shallow breaths, is sweeter than any wine and more intoxicating than any spirit.

Where high stone walls, adorned with scrolls of iron and shutters of wood, crown the head of an ageless monarch, impassive and immovable, eternally watchful over its kingdom below.

Meet yourself at the mountain lodge, where all your life’s paths converge as travelers round an evening fire.

In faces aglow in the candlelight by which you break your bread, see the journeys you have taken, the roads left behind you, the paths left unchosen, and the unexplored horizons that stretch ahead.

In voices that echo off gleaming tables laid with red clay cups of salt and spice, with painted jugs of fresh spring water, hear the stories you might have told and the stories you have lived.

See yourself:

In the curly-haired child tugging on the fringes of its mother’s scarf and basking in the warm glow of its father’s delight, begging for one more game or one more story, squealing in victory and pouting in defeat.

In the young lovers with hands entwined under the table, gripping each other with the urgency of those about to tumble into the abyss of love.

In the new bride and groom, their gazes sweet as honey, their futures as radiant as the moon that rises over the mountain peaks and fills the valley with silver.

In the young mother with the weary smile, the grace of her shoulders sloped by care, her eyes full of the desires of her children but that flick about the room, searching the shadows for the solitude that the mountain promised but that she cannot find.

In the couple with the lined faces and gray temples, sensible clothing and sturdy shoes, gentle in their manner and comfortable in their silence, who look upon the children with the mist of loss in their eyes, remembering.

In the wealthy pair with the booming voice and jangling bracelets, who lived other lives and loved other loves one other, delirious with the delight of starting over and paralyzed by the fear of failing once more.

Smile at them in recognition. Nod towards them in greeting. For in each of them is the traveler you once were, could have been, and may still yet become.

Then turn towards the face of your companion, and think back to the peaks and valleys you have traversed together.

And be at ease in the knowledge that for the rest of the unknown paths of your life, this is the face you wish to always be by your side.

The idea for this came to me at the Kasbah du Toubkal, a trekking lodge-turned-boutique eco hotel in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco, which we booked as an anniversary treat, and a magical place to start the New Year.

I didn’t anticipate that the Kasbah would be 1,800 meters above sea level, that the only way up was by foot, or that I would be recovering from an acute lung infection. So, wheezing and burning with embarrassment, I was loaded onto a mule along with our suitcases, and that was a very interesting way to start 2023 indeed.

Upon arriving at the Kasbah, I looked out onto Jbel Toubkal, the highest mountain in North Africa, I dissolved into tears and couldn’t stop. Relief? Release? A difficult season? A heavy year? I don’t know. The last time I remember doing something like that was crying into the sea in Lefkada, our first overseas trip after all the lockdowns.

Maybe I had to be emptied, before I could receive what the mountain had to give.

Now that our daughter is old enough to linger in the solitary pleasure of reading in a hot bath, Marlon and I were free to share a sneaky smoke on the balcony as the sun dipped behind the highest peak—talking, just talking, going deep in a way domestic routine rarely allows.

In those moments of intimacy, we found the grace to acknowledge that we had let other things take us away from each other in the past year. He his work, I my other relationship. I am proud of the work we have both done, individually and as a unit, to be able to have conversations like these without resentment or rancor.

It was good to know that we always find our way back to each other—and that after 15 years, we still want to.

Our last day in the mountain lodge was the 38th anniversary of my father’s death.

That night, I dreamt of a blackbird perched on a branch of the walnut tree in front of our wooden balcony. It hopped up on my finger, resting a moment before flying away.

The next morning, a quick search yielded a multitude of meanings for the symbol of a blackbird. But the one that appealed to me most was from African culture. To ancient Egyptians, the blackbird represented rebirth and regeneration, its migrational patterns symbolic of death and birth. Its yearly return was a comfort that death was not the end of life, and that the cycle of life was eternal and self-renewing.

I thought to myself: How short our time together, before you flew away. But also: A good omen for the start of a new year.

Here in Amsterdam, close-to-freezing temperatures make us hopeful for snow, but the humid North Sea air flings us slushy wet clumps instead. Hope is eternal; thankfully, slush is not.

Take care, see you soon. At the mountain lodge, in dreams, or anywhere you like.

Seven years into my open marriage, nearly three years into my relationship with my boyfriend, and two years into the writing of my book, I decided: it’s time.

Having The Talk with Mom was on my to-do list for my first homecoming since the pandemic, along with “stock up on barako coffee” and “book El Nido getaway.”

If the book takes off—and I not only hope it will, but now have enough confidence in myself to believe that it will—she’s going to need to know. And I wanted her to hear it from me.

First of all: what you should know about my mom

My mom is 73, Filipina, and a Pisces. Widowed at age 36, retired but constantly managing, project-ing, doing, she is the certified cat lady of her community, caring for an ever-growing number of strays that drives my sister crazy.

My mom is not tech-savvy. She doesn’t know her own Hotmail password, let alone that I have an email newsletter. Though I’ve lived overseas for 15 years, she still can’t find the answer or volume buttons on whatever platform we use to call (we’ve gone through Skype, Viber, FaceTime and Whatsapp) and she still asks me what time it is when I call her. She browses my Instagram posts and stories only infrequently, so I’m not sure how much of my life she’s seen or absorbed.

What my mom is, is unconventional.

We went to Catholic schools and attended Sunday mass because Mom felt it was the right background to give her daughters. But her own beliefs flowed along alternative paths. She was doing New Age spirituality long before it was hip to be witchy on Instagram and Tiktok: crystals, moonbathing, spells, Tarot, astrology, angels, you name it.

Our house was the hangout of hippies, gay psychics and crystal shop owners, where sandalwood incense mingled with fresh flowers and holy water, on an altar where Ganesh danced around Saint Michael and the Sacred Heart. If the cult of yoga had found its way to Manila when Mom was at the peak of her powers, I’m positive she would have hopped onboard. She has always been more spiritual than religious, more intuitive than moralistic.

My mom is also non-judgmental.

When I went on my first date with a boy at age 15, Mom was the first to hear about it. I remember coming home to her at the door, barefoot and smiling, before we sat together on the stairs and I spilled my heart out. There wasn’t much to tell: he brought me to the Ateneo Grade School fair, then asked his mom for money to take me out to dinner at Angelino’s. (Oh, tender youth!) We didn’t even kiss or hold hands. Later, when there was more to tell, there would also be more to hide. But I knew I could talk to her about anything, even if I didn’t always choose to.

My mother drives me crazy in many ways. Our relationship is far from perfect. But I have always felt safe with her. It is a kind of trust and openness that I hope to cultivate with my own daughter.

Through many milestones that would faze a Filipina mother, Mom met them all with the same non-judgmental attitude. My first visit to my husband in Singapore (which implied that we were having—gasp! Scandal!—pre-marital sex). My first tattoo. (She objected to the second, but I was already married and living abroad. What could she do, ground me?) My instantaneous, unusual connection with Marcelo. Talking to her about that, I became aware that she believed such deep connections could exist beyond the bond spouses share, without threatening it.

When I came home to the Philippines for the first time in nearly three years, I was unsettled by the toll the pandemic had taken on Mom’s health—physical, emotional, and mental. Some of her responses and behaviors struck me as unpredictable and alarming. To a child, any change in a parent is a cause for alarm.

Was she the same mother I had left behind in 2019? Or had I just become a whole other daughter? Could I trust in our bond after all this time and distance, even though both she and I had become almost completely different people?

Jam-packed days, flaring tempers, oscillating emotions, and fatigue quickly caught up to both of us. I was freaking out as we approached the end of our three weeks back home. I didn’t know exactly what I would say, or how to start. I only knew we needed a short interlude of quiet, stress-free time alone, an activity to provide neutral ground, and an opening.

What you should also know about Mom is that she is my style icon, with the eye of an aesthete and the heart of an artist. Her love for clothing and accessories means that our family of women has always bonded over them.

My childhood was filled with countless visits to the fabric store and after-school shopping sprees at Benetton and Cinderella. In my college years, we modeled clothes for each other, dipping into each other’s closets on the daily so that classmates commented on how I never seemed to repeat an outfit.

Whenever I fly home, a complete summer wardrobe sits waiting for me and my daughter, shopped by Mom to feel closer to us in our absence.

Clothes are Mom’s love language, guilty pleasure and safe zone. So it wasn’t surprising that we found each other there, three days before I was to fly back to Amsterdam.

I was repacking for the homeward journey when Mom came in with some offering or other: a thrifted Hermes scarf, a chunky string of barok pearls. She sat on the bed as I made room in my suitcase for her gifts.

Then she noticed two shirts on top of my pile. “Oh, is this the barong you found?”

For a summer wedding upon our return, my husband wanted to wear a traditional Filipino garment called a barong Tagalog—a loose-fitting formal shirt for men, made of fine, translucent jusi or pineapple silk to keep cool in the tropical heat. Coming across a selection at SM Kultura, he bought one for himself, and I decided to buy one for my boyfriend.

Like the men in my life, the two garments couldn’t be more different. My husband’s was earth-toned and elegant with subtle traditional embroidery, while my boyfriend’s was dip-dyed in bright turquoise and handpainted with graphic patterns.

Mom noticed. “And whose is this?” she asked, one hand on the turquoise silk.

There it was. She gave me the opening. Now I had to take the leap.

“Mom, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Then I was winging it: no strategy or script, only years of trust and safety inscribed into my body, written with the blood that flows through her veins and mine.

No matter what happened next, no matter how she reacted, something in me knew I would always be her daughter, and she would always be my mother.

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“For the past six—no, seven years, Marlon and I have had an… understanding.”

She waited.

“We’re still happily married, very much so, we just have an understanding that we can… see other people sometimes.”

Then my mother took the words right out of my mouth.

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “The two of you love each other, you’re committed to each other, but you have”—she began to gesture, loose and wavy, rummaging through a formless ether with her hands—“you have other people in your lives, I don’t know what you call it, basta—“

“An open marriage,” I said, astounded.

“Yes, I don’t know, basta, you’re… you’re…” she said, impatient now, looking around as if the word was in the atmosphere, on the bed, in the half-open suitcase.

“You’re free!” she finished.

I’m free.

“I know you, Deepa. I can feel you,” she said. “Even if I don’t know, I know.”

From then on, the rest was easy. I told her that the turquoise barong was for my boyfriend. She asked if he was married or single, and if our daughter knew. Even more remarkable, she said started feeling something was different about three years ago, (which is about the time that he and I met) but didn’t want to ask.

She said: “As long as you’re happy and your relationships let you be you—let you be more of who you are—then I’m happy for you.”

Then the tears came: tears of relief and appreciation for this woman who saw me, understood me, knew me. For all we want—as children of our parents, and as humans making our way in this life—to be seen, heard and known for who we truly are.

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If you are polyamorous and/or queer and were hoping for advice on how to handle your own coming-out conversation, I’m sorry that this is a bit thin on wisdom. I’m not very strategic about most things; I feel my way through, and I don’t always get it right.

It helps to wait for the right time and moment. What that looks or feels like for you depends on your person, your relationship with them, and the world you share. Just trust that no moment is unsalvageable: more moments will come after that, every one of them a chance for something new.

All I have is gratitude for the way it turned out, knowing that not everyone is so lucky. I wish more of us were.

All I have is my own story.

And one remarkable mother.

That was a long one. Thank you for reading!

If you’re in Amsterdam on 30th of November, I’d like to invite you to Body Electric Presents Vol. 3, a night of music, poetry, and spoken word at Toekomstmuziek in the Houthavens. I’m reading excerpts from my book, so please come! Get your tickets on Eventbrite now.

Here in Amsterdam, winter’s first real kick has me pulling on the woolies and longing for lingering, lazy mornings in the warm cocoon of a duvet. But we soldier on, even as the darkening days—and our bodies—urge us to slow down.

Life is out there, and I want to live it.

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1.

The first time they met was on the street where I live.

One was going glamping with me—our first trip together—with the carefully negotiated permission of the other, who would stay home, and tend to work and house and child, while I was away.

One was going to swing by for me in his van before we drove down to Drenthe together. The other, seeing me struggle with my bags—I would only be away for two nights, but I was an inexperienced camper and hadn’t learned how to pack light—turned to me and said: “Do you want me to help you bring your stuff downstairs?”

“Are you sure?” I said, raising an eyebrow.

He shrugged and said, “Sure, why not.”

We had talked about this meeting many times, and agreed it was long overdue.

“It feels absurd not to have met him yet, when he’s so clearly a part of your life,” he’d said.

We’d pictured beers at our neighborhood bar, or when the bars closed down again, at the park or on the side of some canal somewhere, preferably in the sunshine, feet dangling over the water.

We hadn’t pictured it like this at all, unfolding awkwardly on the street next to a double-parked van that held a guitar, scrap firewood and photography gear. But that was how it happened. Life is funny that way.

One hopped out of the driver’s seat while the other loaded my bags into the back of the van, sidestepping bicycles that whizzed past him on the street.

Then, the men in my life exchanged wide smiles, nervous laughter, tight-gripped handshakes. Having never imagined that this moment would ever come to pass, I watched, secretly thrilled, awed at the life I had made, that somehow made this possible.

It’s really happening, I remember thinking to myself. Wild.

One said, “Finally, a face to the name,” boggling my mind as to how he’d never searched for the face of the other on social media in all the time we’d been together. The other said, “Take care of her,” because he is always protective of me that way.

Mentions of the long-overdue beer were made, or perhaps coffee, followed by rapid head-bobbing and still more nervous laughter.

And I loved them both for it.

Before I got into the van with one, I hugged the other, whispering, “Thank you, I love you.”

He hugged me back. “This is so awkward! I love you too. Have fun.”

2.

The second time was when one helped me carry bags, again—this time, bags of clothes and toys and baby things —into a photography studio.

The clothes and toys and baby things belonged to the child I have with one, while the photography studio belonged to the other.

“It feels like you should drop by the shoot,” I had said to one as we sorted through them together, after the other had come up with the idea. “These are our memories, our daughter, our life.”

“I think you’re right,” he replied.

So there he was, and there they were. Material for a shoot carried in by one, concept carried out by the other.

And I loved them both for it.

One stood with a cup of coffee watching the other do his thing: rigging and testing, focusing and firing, cable-snaking and light-making. It was possibly less awkward than the first time, for there was enough to keep all three of us busy.

I remember being aware of how I oriented myself in the space, making a conscious effort to stay equidistant between them, never too close to one or the other for too long.

I don’t know exactly why: to help both feel at ease? To show no preference or favor towards one or the other?

One left, the other stayed. An amiable goodbye, a quick kiss, forgotten house keys, a mad rush. Then we, all three of us, got to work.

3.

The third time was a celebration.

It had been postponed several times, but turned out to be well worth the wait. There were pearlescent balloons trailing silvery tails from the ceiling, a ball pit in the bathtub. Adobo and lumpia on banana leaves spread out over the table, two kinds each of rum, whiskey and gin at the bar.

One brought a magnificent slow roast pork belly out of the oven; the other brought a cloud of pastel balloons and a rainbow cape designed for joyous twirling.

This time, dancing bodies filled any spaces that might have been awkward. Music and laughter filled any silences that might have been uncomfortable. Everything flowed like wine in the warm, glowing blur of candlelight.

Without really interacting, the men in my life orbit each other in this ever-shifting space that I call my life. Seeing them together, inhabiting the same space with a comfortable ease, showing up and being present for me, made me feel loved and special in a way that few other things in my life have.

And I love them both for it.

I have no grand ambitions to kitchen-table-this and non-hierarchical-that. I don’t need my husband and my boyfriend to be best friends or even buddies.

For this—knowing that this all works, that we are all loved, happy and growing—is already more than I had hoped for.

A 40th birthday gift that could never have been bought in any store, and a self that I could never have imagined becoming at 40.

The click of a button, a flash of light, a slick tongue of film. This moment—a slice of time in the life I never knew I wanted—is sealed instantly in paper and emulsion, in meaning and memory.

Three days later, I find Instax snapshots in odd places: in the tub, on the fridge, propped up against books, stashed in drawers. I know which ones I will treasure most.

Thank you for reading. You won’t believe how much self-censoring I had to get over to publish this piece! Writing it came so easily, even playfully, but convincing myself that I don’t need anyone’s permission to share it was another matter.

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I read a lot of brave writing this week. So I figured: if women out there are writing about their sexual assault at the hands of police, their polyamorous Thanksgiving dinners, their liberation from child marriage and a cult, then I can write about a goddamn birthday party.

Here in Amsterdam, the trees are almost bare and every waking morning feels like a struggle . But the lights in the windows across the canal twinkle warmly at night, and I have a dozen bottles of wine left over from my 40th birthday celebration.

I’m going to enjoy my late November pleasures; I hope you do, too.

See you in two weeks!

After we returned from Greece, a post I shared on Instagram went kinda viral. 

I have a complicated relationship with Instagram recently. My growth and reach on the app has all but flatlined—something a lot of Instagram creators aren’t happy about, but something I’m not willing to boost by resorting to cutesy Tiktok-like reels, or other like-baiting tactics. Too old, too done with performing cuteness. But I digress.

So when this post with my thoughts on body image as a mother suddenly started getting way more likes, views and saves than any of my posts in the last year, I sat up and took notice.

It was definitely being shared, except thanks to EU data privacy laws, I couldn’t tell exactly who and how many people were sharing it. 

And I was suddenly getting new followers. Lots of them. 

But instead of making me thrilled, it made me kind of… nervous. 

Most of my new followers were a specific demographic. They were Filipina moms… just like me. That meant my post was doing the rounds in small, tight-knit communities of Filipina moms… just like me. 

So now you’re thinking… well, that’s great, right? You’re a Filipina mom. That’s totally your audience.  

It made me nervous because… well, I’m going to tell you a secret. 

You see, I’m not like the other Filipina moms. 

When the mom squad started following me, my first thought was Oh wow! This is awesome! but my second thought was Uh-oh. 

Wait till they find out about me.

They’re not going to like me. 

It shouldn’t be so confronting. After all, I’ve had lots of experience being different. 

I’ve been not like the others since birth. Born half Indian into a homogenous society where 98.8 percent of the population is ethnically Filipino (my totally unscientific estimate, don’t quote me), I was always the different one, teased for my name and for all the offensive stereotypes of Indians that persist among Filipinos. (I won’t bore you with them.) 

I was not like the others in high school. Growing up in a strictly religious, gender-segregated private school system, at the age of 15 I was among the first in my all-girls Catholic school to have a boyfriend, and one of the very few to have close male friends. Que horror! 

I was not like the others when I attended a wealthy, elite university as a poor student on a full scholarship and a quarterly stipend. 

I was not like the others when I finished my degree late because I went on concert tours in Europe with my university choir. 

I feel even more acutely not like the others as a Filipina-Indian immigrant in the Netherlands.

In many, if not most of my interactions, I increase diversity just by walking into the room. But also, I’m short—I’m 1,56m (a squosh under 5’2”) in a country where the average height for women is 1,67m (5’6”). Nothing in this country is made for my proportions—not bikes, supermarket shelves, or mirrors in public restrooms. Not even my own toilet in my own house. My feet don’t touch the floor when I sit down.

I am not like the others because I am in a happy, loving, committed relationship that also happens to be consensually non-monogamous.

I am a very rare bird: a wife and a mother, with both a husband and a boyfriend. And occasional lovers on the side. (Clutch those pearls, baby. You know you want to.) I don’t know that there are many of our kind. And I don’t know that any of us are Filipina. 

Then there are the myriad other tiny things that make me different, i.e. weird. Like the fact that I love to suck on ketchup packets and eat instant noodles raw. Or that I can’t sleep with the doors open or the lights completely off. Or that I can only push off on my bike with my right foot.

So, I’m used to being different. 

In fact, I’m pretty sure you haven’t met anyone like me. And I love that about me. 

One of the greatest lessons my mother taught me is this: what makes me different makes me special. 

But the truth is, it also makes me fear being unliked, rejected, and judged. 

It leaves me vulnerable. And that is scary.

This week, I acknowledged the fact of my open marriage to my Instagram audience of over 12,000—something I’ve been sweating over for a long time. 

You see, in the summer of 2018 I wrote an essay about being in an open marriage. Then I shoved it into a drawer for two years, never finishing it, fearful that it would expose me. 

Since then, my fucks have fluttered away like the pages of a calendar in a stiff wind. And now I’m turning that essay (which I did finish, with the help of my amazing writing coach) into a book.

If this book is to have any chance of making it into readers’ hands, I need to completely rewrite my relationship with vulnerability. As with guilt, shame, judgment, and that hard-wired need to be liked and accepted. 

It’s easier said than done. Every time I think I peel away another layer, I find another one lurking beneath. Like some kind of vulnerability onion.

If you’ve been reading these letters for a while, you know enough about me to know why I’m different. But I haven’t given away all my secrets yet. What would be the fun in that? There’s more to reveal, so I hope you stick around for the unpeeling. I promise it won’t be boring. I’ll try to make it less like an onion, and more like chocolate. 

I bet there’s something that’s different about you too. Something that makes you not like the others, but that you love—secretly or not-so-secretly—about yourself. 

So tell me.

What makes you not like the others?

What makes you different?

Let’s celebrate our differences together. Because what helps me stay brave and true to myself is knowing that there are many of us who are also different. 

And the more of each other we find, look up to, and hold in each other’s care, the easier and more joyful being not like the others will be. 

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Here in Amsterdam we’re having an unexpectedly beautiful September, and the last hot glimmers of summer are calling me away.

See you in two weeks! 

Fed up with the miserable, rainy, non-summer in Amsterdam, I escaped with my family to the Greek island of Lefkada for 10 glorious days.

Transiting through the airport and getting on a plane for the first time in 18 months felt almost normal, but for our masks and the requirement that we present our proof of vaccination. It was a small price to pay in order to, at last, be able to fly away .

On Lefkada, it was easy to forget about everything: the pandemic, the news, my plans to work on my book for an hour every day. The searing 38-degree heat burned away the last bits of my withering resolve and cauterized my restless mind, forcing me to constantly process the nonstop sensory stimuli the island flung at me.

Stop thinking, said the island. Feel. Feel. Feel.

So I did.

It was exactly what I needed after a year of assessing nonstop risk, filtering constantly changing information, and wrestling with anxiety, stress, panic, fear, and brain fog.

All the experiences of the past year finally had room to breathe. They began to come together in my mind, forming new connections and revealing new pathways.

A clearing. A crystallization. A landing.

Watching my daughter in the sea, I tried not think about home, the Philippines. When I try to explain to our friends why we can’t go home yet, why we can’t just hop on a plane and hug our families like all of Europe, the US and UK did this summer, how shameless corruption has exacerbated the crisis so that we won’t be able to go home for a very long time, they just don’t get it.

Being half-dolphin, lithe and happy in the waves, my husband and I hope our daughter inherits our love for the sea. Until we can teach her to swim in our native waters, these islands and this sea will have to do.

Like flicking an off switch for my brain, the sea sparkled in the sun and caught my eye. For a moment, I glimpsed the effortless grace of bodies momentarily suspended in a translucent swell.

I recognized it for what it was: an invitation to joy.

I plunged in.

The thing I love to do most in the sea is face away from the shore, float on my back, and lose my gaze in the horizon. Being supported by the waves and surrounded by blue calms me in a way nothing else can.

Reunited with the sea after almost two years, I let her hold me in her arms and sing to me.

I released my tears into her vastness and cried.

Below the surface of the water, I could hear the white stones on the seabed rolling with tide. I love this sound: the gentle clatter of small pebbles and large smooth rocks being moved and shaped endlessly, a duet of earth and sea.

When I had enough of this music, I allowed myself to be carried by the tide, biding my time one wave at a time, until I landed on the pebbly shore on the tips of my toes.

Man, you should have seen me. Perfect dismount! I wished there was a jury holding up scorecards for this kind of thing. No struggle, just grace.

After scorching days at the beach cooled into lavender nights, my husband and I began to speak about things we hadn’t allowed ourselves to think about for a year.

Dreams. Purpose. Possibility. Growth. Changes. Big ones. Scary ones.

I think of my husband as a rock, and I the agitating tide. It takes a lot to get him moving.

But beneath the surface, I can hear the big rocks in motion at last. And it sounds like music to my ears.

Coming home from Paradise, I did something for myself that I’ve never done before. I blocked off a week in my calendar to simply allow myself to land.

That meant saying no to work (sorry, clients) and the pleasant distractions of social life (sorry, friends). I promised that I would only work on the book, clean my house, and focus on myself and my loved ones.

I’ve kept that promise, and it has been the best. I have more clarity and energy than I would if I’d just dove back in trying to catch up, making up for lost time and placate my own guilt about being away.

The pleasures and lessons of the island need time to land in my body. Just as I need time to land in my own life. No struggle, just grace.

In this season of re-entry, have you allowed yourself permission to land? How was it?

If not, what would permission to land look like for you?

Or did you plunge in and let the tide sweep you away? If so, that’s okay too.

Thank you for reading! I’m glad to be back to writing Letters by Deepa, with some exciting ideas for the coming months.

I would love to hear about your summer, anything that’s on your mind, or whatever would like to ask me. So don’t be shy, hit reply.

While I was away, I read books about pleasure and bodies, which made me think of my own. Maybe what I posted on Instagram will resonate with you. And maybe I’ll write more on that in the next letter.

See you in two weeks!

The Dutch have a word for it: huidhonger. 

Skin hunger: the need for physical touch, especially in those who are alone for a long time, such as in quarantine or self-isolation.

The word sits between huidcontact (skin-to-skin contact) and huisquarantine (home quarantine) in the Coronawoordenboek, an online list of Dutch words invented to describe this strange new reality. 

I wonder why the word fascinates me, for while others are languishing in loneliness, I am never alone.

I have all the affection I could possibly want: a child who rains wet kisses on my face every morning, a husband who enfolds me in his arms at night, when we fall asleep with limbs entwined, exchanging breaths. They look to me for security, lean on me for strength, and hold me tight for relief from stress and anxiety. 

Huidhonger. The longing for physical contact in isolation. I don’t know what that’s like.

But he does. 

I haven’t been touched by another human being in months, he tells me over the phone. He, who thrives on affection and gives of it with such joy and abandon. I just miss people! And hugs! 

Meanwhile, I am drowning in my family’s touch, engulfed by their need. My body is a well of comfort they draw from at all hours of the day. I give them everything I have; is there any other choice? 

To break the unrelenting sameness of our days, we agree to meet for a long walk in a silent, empty city. It’s the first time I see anyone outside my family—anyone in real life, in fact, beyond the protective screen of a phone or laptop—and the first time I see him with a full beard since we met last winter. We escape a crowded park for quiet side streets, stealing through secret courtyards where spring’s first magnolias bloom for no one. 

The distance makes me tense and guarded; 1,5 meters is wider than most people think. How strange it is to want to be close together, yet force ourselves to remain apart. Does he notice how I kept dancing around him? Darting ahead, stepping to the side, falling behind, my feet tracing invisible lines around the space between us, policing boundaries on a sunset stroll that feels both like a dangerous risk and an exquisite freedom. 

We return to the park, lingering at our bicycle locks as the evening fades from rose gold to dull lilac. I wonder whether the curls of his beard might feel soft and fine or bristly and coarse under my fingertips.

Before we say goodbye he asks: What about you? What do you miss most about normal life? 

My answer is immediate. Sweaty stranger bodies.

He is almost visibly repelled, which makes me laugh. I don’t share that with you at all.

I know, I say. That’s just me.

They come for me that night, the sweaty stranger bodies.

They shake me awake at four in the morning with a craving for that dark pounding womb, where dancing shadows once flung the salt of their sweat onto my lips, where ecstatic specters once crushed the musk of their skin into my nostrils, on smoky pulsating nights I thought would never end but now may never have again. They wrench me from bed and drag me to the living room couch, where I scour my phone for all the videos I’ve ever secretly filmed in clubs. I play and replay every last one until sunrise, listening for the command of the bass and the murmur of shared secrets swirling above layered rhythms.

I search for myself on distant dance floors where my freedom was boundless and absolute, in another life, when my body was my own and access to it was only mine to give or withhold. 

I try to lose myself in everything I’d forgotten I’d lost, until he reminded me that I had lost it. 

In the end I fail, because oblivion can’t be found in a flickering screen. And because hunger, once awakened, will never be satisfied with anything other than what it wants. 

The next morning I send him a photo I took of him at the park. 

Quarantine beard, week five, I write. Don’t shave it off just yet. 

Why not? 

So I can push your face down and feel it between my legs.

For a split second after I hit send, I feel guilty. Shouldn’t I be content with what I have in such abundance?

Yet what I long for is not affection nor contact nor touch, but permission. To be allowed to shed the weight of my skin and granted the freedom to slip into another, even if only for a night.

Huidhonger demands to be fed, even if it craves the same thing for different reasons. Perhaps, in some safe space between our swiftly shifting worlds, two hungers might find a way to satisfy one another.

His reply pings on my phone.

When I wrote Huidhonger

I wrote this in the earliest days of the pandemic, when the experience of being sealed off in our homes and domestic lives was bizarre, new and fraught with anxiety. I was also undergoing serious withdrawal from the ecstatic communion, intensity and freedom that I found on the dance floor.

I envy writers who’ve actually had the time and mental space to write about their experiences of the pandemic during the pandemic. How…?!?! Because I’m only starting to make sense of mine now, as we slowly emerge from it.

I’m still understanding how the pandemic affected my personal autonomy, sexuality and relationships, and in turn, how my personal autonomy, sexuality and relationships helped me cope with the pandemic. As a wife and mother in a polyamorous relationship, I’m in an unusual position, so there is plenty to reflect on.

I think I’ll be in here, trying to understand it for a long while.

Why I’m sharing Huidhonger now

Shortly after I published my post-pandemic reflections, the reopening of nightlife in the Netherlands —combined with the spread of the Delta variant and a low vaccination rate among youth—closed down the thing I had been looking forward to the most (apart from traveling and seeing family again), which was returning to the dance floor for the very experience that I wrote about in Huidhonger.

And so I find myself back in that space of craving. How are we back here again, one year later?

Perhaps this is another kind of dance: a dance with the unknown. Perhaps we can all learn to find our freedom, dancing as long as the music plays.

Thank you for reading!

As always, I love to hear your thoughts, reflections, and questions. I do always feel a little vulnerable after sharing work that is intense and personal, so I would be happy to receive a reply from you.

Letters by Deepa will take a break for the month of August. See you in September with new adventures, stories and reflections. Have a beautiful summer and stay safe!

For the first time that week, our child-free, post-bedtime hours weren’t occupied by fatigue, work, or household management—shopping for a new oven, clearing the dishwasher, folding the never-ending laundry. After raiding the fridge, we settled on the couch to dedicate our evening to Netflix and mindless snacking, which is a rarer pleasure for us than you might think. 

About 10 minutes into Shadow & Bone, he asked me: “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” I mumbled, my mouth full of truffle salami. 

“Ask permission to eat our food.” 

“I don’t ask permission to eat our food,” I said.

“Yes, you do,” he insisted, chuckling. “Before we sat down in front of the TV, you opened the ref and asked me if you could have some of the truffle salami.”

“I did? I do?”

“All the time,” he said. He’s been married to me for 14 years, so he must know what he’s talking about. 

“Well… yeah. You bought it,” I pointed out. 

“It doesn’t matter who bought it! It’s our money, in our house, in our refrigerator. It’s our food,” he said. “We all have a right to it. You don’t need to ask. So why do you?” 

When someone stops to point out a quirk or habit of ours that we’ve never noticed before, that’s so automatic to our way of being, it can be amusing or downright confronting. Why do any of us do the weird things we do?  

I thought back. Then I remembered.

My university years in Manila were a period of severe financial upheaval for my family. My mom had been blindsided by a string of shady characters and bad investments, forcing us to move around and downsize constantly and rapidly. By my second year, it became clear we couldn’t afford to pay the hefty tuition fees for my private (and elite) Jesuit university, so I applied for a scholarship and got it.

In my third year, I had to apply for a stipend from the Ateneo Alumni Association of California just so I could commute to school and eat every day. If I tell you the dollar amount I had to live off for a whole semester, you might laugh. But I stretched that check for months. 

My sister, who is five years older than me, started working as an account manager in a high-stress advertising job. She assumed as much the financial responsibility her first paltry starting salary of PhP 8,500 (EUR 147—yep that’s it, not missing any digits) would allow. She started paying the bills plus the rent on a small but dismal apartment, and giving me whatever extra cash she could spare for school. 

I could tell you much more about these trying years (or save it for future essays and newsletters), but all you need to know is that being poor in Manila is very, very tough and we were very, very stressed. My mom, sister and I are close and love each other fiercely, but the stress of poverty is real. Sometimes it felt as though we were constantly at each other’s throats over the smallest things. 

One of our tiny consolations—and sources of conflict—was chocolate.

We are a family of sweet-toothed women for whom chocolate has been a lifelong luxury. In our years of plenty, there was always imported chocolate from Mom’s travels, cool and rich and tempting and foreign, in the refrigerator: Godiva bonbons from Brussels, Lindt dark chocolate thins from Switzerland or various European airports.

In our years of famine, we turned to Meiji Dark from Japan and Ritter Sport Praline from Germany, which you could only somehow find in select branches of Mercury Drugstore. 

BUT.

Woe be to you if you touched a bar of chocolate that you hadn’t bought yourself. Breaking off a square of a Ritter or Meiji bar sitting innocently in the fridge was enough to trigger World War III. 

The unspoken rule formed quickly: DON’T TOUCH MY CHOCOLATE. 

In particular, my sister and I would have the most spectacular fights over chocolate. And with good reason. She was 25. That bar of imported chocolate was one of the few joys she had after a long day at a high-pressure job, in a tough life with heavy financial responsibility. I couldn’t contribute to the household income just yet, but I could leave her chocolate the fuck alone and show some fucking respect. 

But sometimes, if I asked, I could get a square. 

Then my sister and I would nibble on our chocolate together in satisfied silence, reading cheap paperback books in our shitty beds, before another day of the Manila grind on a shoestring budget.

A lifetime later, in which I own my own home in Amsterdam and have a family of my own, I still ask permission before taking food from my own refrigerator. 

Especially if I know it’s a treat that someone else loves.

My husband loves his savory snacks—sausages, pates, terrines—and I don’t, so they’re mostly safe. But if I have a craving for anything he likes, I can’t slice a sausage until he tells me it’s okay. My daughter likes to have a piece of fruit with her bedtime story each night; when I take a banana from the fruit bowl for a mid-afternoon snack, I feel a twinge of guilt, like I’m stealing from my own child. 

I still need permission. 

I’m still waiting for someone to tell me it’s okay. 

It made me wonder: what else in my life am I waiting for permission for? 

I find myself bound by leftovers of old constraints, as if unaware that they no longer confine me. Patterns of thinking and behavior created by conditions that no longer exist. Relics of a time that no longer has any power over me.

Upon closer inspection, I realize I feel I still need permission for a lot of things in my life. 

• I ask for my husband’s approval for particular outfits (with creative questions that drive him mad, such as: “Does this make me look like a pillowcase? A wrestler? A washing machine?”) 

• I thought the internet would tear me a new one for admitting that I have both an open marriage and a boyfriend, but the silence was actually… surprisingly deafening. I realize now that I was not only anticipating judgment, but also waiting for permission. Why?

• I have a list of Substack topics I’d like to write about, but that feel too… out there. Mostly about relationships, intimacy and sexuality. But whose permission am I really waiting for? 

I received a kind reply from a reader about my Zoom sex party essay. It reads:

“I feel the joy and the envy that you allow yourself to flourish and write about everything.”

I do allow myself quite some freedoms, yes. How did I become so free about some things, yet remain so constrained by others? So maybe I’m doing a good job already? 

How about you, dear reader? 

• What are you still asking permission for?

• What have you stopped asking permission for?

• Whose permission are you waiting for? 

Thank you for reading and pondering with me. 

My sister’s birthday is on the 8th of June. I love her dearly and am forever indebted to her for carrying us through those most difficult years.

Here in Amsterdam, the endless rain of May has given way to the glorious sunshine of June. Restaurants, bars, cafes, museums, and cinemas are fully open as of this weekend. I get my vaccine today; we have booked a summer holiday in Greece.

There is a vitality and optimism in the air that I, and many of us, have missed and longed for. It feels like… a kind of permission to hope, dream, and roam again. I am living for it. 

Eat the damn chocolate. Enjoy it. And see you in two weeks!

The first rush of euphoria at the sheer beauty natural of our spot—oh wow, I didn’t think it would be this pretty!—had yet to subside. Our eyes were still freshly dazzled by the mirror reflection of blue skies in a small, placid lake ringed with reeds like thin green spears. Our ears were still enchanted by birdsong all around us, a surround sound concert echoing from trees bursting with the bright new lushness of spring. 

It was then that he asked me: “You must tell me what this is like for you.”

This? What, camping? Oh, sorry, I mean glamping.

I didn’t have to set up the tent myself, and a nature campsite in Drenthe wasn’t exactly the great wild outdoors, but this definitely counted as a first. I’d never gone camping before.

I had always expressed resistance, even scorn at the idea of camping (or camper vans). Why on earth would I want to put myself through such torture? 

Trevor Noah sums up my feelings about camping: what white people want to do on vacation, black (and I might add brown) people are generally trying to escape. 

Having grown up in the Philippines, for me the concept of camping is intertwined with the memory of hardship. Let me tell you: people who have busted their asses to escape hardship don’t really want to go back there for a good time. 

No, we want the comfort we’ve worked for, so we can take a break from our daily lives of struggling for every single little thing. So give us our breakfast in bed, our freestanding bathtubs and fluffy duvets, our turn-down, wake-up, butler service. (I know you can have all this and the great outdoors; I’ve seen it on Instagram.)

I never imagined this trip would happen, for more reasons than one (and I’ll tell you the other in a minute). But here we were.

As we set about organizing supplies, fetching water, and preparing dinner over a coal fire, he seemed pleased at how I was holding up. 

“What, did you expect me to be a princess?” I retorted. “I know how to do these things, okay? I just haven’t had to do or feel or even think about any of this in a very long time.”

And it was true. I knew, just as naturally as breathing, how to cook over a coal fire, blowing gently on the coals and knowing when the meat needed to be turned; 

how to wash myself from a plastic bucket, clean dishes with rationed water; and obtain water from a communal source; 

how to walk in the rain, or with bare feet on dirt paths; 

and especially, how to while away the hours without electricity. 

“Camping feels like familiar things,” I told him, “unfolding in an unfamiliar setting.” 

It reminded me of growing up in the 90s, when Metro Manila suffered debilitating daily 8-12 hour rotating power outages, which we called brownouts (named after the effect of dimming incandescent lights). My late childhood was marked by long, torturous, sleepless summers with no refrigeration or airconditioning, no TV or radio, and little relief from heat or boredom. 

We had nothing but our voices, guitars, and passed-around, worn-out copies of Songhits and Jingle, cheap newsprint magazines with songs and guitar chords; a pack of cards for pusoy dos, a kind of bastard poker; ghost stories and study sessions by the light of old gas lamps; candlelit dinners without the romance. 

So I know how to live with just the basics. Except it wasn’t a holiday, it was just life.

This way of being was familiar to me, even if the environment was not. Even if my skin was misted with rain instead of sweat; even if I was surrounded by flowers and birds I didn’t recognize; even if the trees kept their names secret from me. 

In those days by the lake, I felt a familiar self reawakening, even as a new one was finding her feet.

This self with the wild unwashed hair, the earth between her toes, the open-mouthed wonder at the changing sky—I knew her well. Perhaps even missed her.

The trees taught me their lessons, though their names are still a mystery to me. The campfire carved faces into pieces of wood, giving us characters for bedtime stories. 

And when we fell asleep, it was to the drumbeat of rain on the roof of the teepee, loud and close to my ear like the tropical storms of my childhood. The rain slid down the wet slopes of the tent like streams carved into a canvas mountain, forming muddy puddles on the ground where we found our shoes, belts and socks the next morning. 

But hey, the firewood was dry, because I had remembered to stash it under the plastic camping table.

I told you, I know how to do these things.

I never imagined this trip would happen, but I’m happy it did. I never expected I’d ever want to go camping at all, or enjoy it so much.

And I certainly never expected to it to be, at this stage in my life, something I would do with someone I call my boyfriend. 

But perhaps that is another story, for another time. 

I want to thank you for your kind, sincere responses to my last Letter, which contained a rather risky piece I wrote about sexuality in the pandemic. After reading your replies, I feel encouraged to write more honestly, vulnerably and vividly. I feel… free.

I was today years old when I found out why we had those brownouts in the 90s.

Oh, and here’s the campsite in Drenthe we went to. Highly recommended for a gentle introduction to the glamping life.

Have you recently had an experience that reawakened an old version of yourself? What was it, and who were you?

As always, I love to read your thoughts, so hit that reply button. Also, what would you like to know, or read more of from me? I’m dying to know.

And if you like what you read, please feel free to share it with someone. 

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This is my cherished memory of the first time we met. It’s a long one, but I hope you enjoy the ride. Where else have we got to go, anyway? 

— 

It was spring, and I was in Paris to see choir friends from Manila who had come to sing at the Cathedrale Notre Dame. Any excuse was a good excuse to hop on the train to Paris for the weekend.

Arriving at the Gare du Nord with my backpack on my shoulders and time on my hands, I wanted to explore Paris with my camera. But this time, I didn’t want to visit my usual haunts. I wanted something new and different, something I hadn’t seen or done before.

As I often do, I turned to Instagram for inspiration, scrolling through the profiles of Paris-based photographers. On a whim, I decided to message five of them, introducing myself as an Instagrammer from Amsterdam. I loved their photos, I said, and by any chance would they be free for a cup of coffee and a stroll this afternoon?

No replies, except for a Brazilian photographer named Marcelo. I knew him only from the photos he had posted on Instagram. He had an eye for colorful murals and street scenes, and we had exchanged comments on each other’s photos in the past.

Welcome to Paris! He wrote. Yes! Let’s meet!

A black-bearded charcoal lightning bolt

Within an hour, Marcelo arrived up on a Velib in front of a supermarket on the Canal St. Martin, where we had agreed to meet.

He was a lightning bolt rendered in charcoal strokes: a thick shock of black hair that kept falling into his eyes, a full black beard, dressed head to toe in black—t-shirt, skinny jeans, army boots—with a black camera bag over his shoulder. Warmth and energy radiated from him, so intense the air around him was almost crackling with it.

After sitting down to dangle our feet over the canal, it quickly became clear that Marcelo didn’t speak much English. Oh no, how do I get out of this without seeming rude? was one of my first thoughts. 

But he had just bought a 50mm lens for his Nikon before coming to meet me. His excitement about the new lens was infectious, even magnetic.

And there was something about the way his hazel eyes lit up when he recognized me, or how he greeted me with a quick and ready hug, as if we were old friends instead of meeting for the first time.

Soon we were stringing together bits of English, Portuguese, Spanish, and sign language into an animated chat that ended up lasting nearly six hours.

As we walked along the Canal St-Martin towards the Quai de la Loire, he pointed out a building where the firefighters of Paris studied and trained. In the summer, he said, the firemen threw a huge party, an all-night rager. Marcelo loved to party. 

Indifferent to partying, I nodded politely until he added: “The pompiers of Paris are beautiful men. They take off the shirt, they party all night.”

I stopped in my tracks. “Did you say shirtless firemen?”

He laughed. “Oui!”

I booked a train ticket for a return trip to Paris three months later. 

The night before I left Amsterdam to return to Paris, I received a message from Marcelo. He had mixed up his dates—and I had missed the firemen’s party! 

“The pompiers have the party last week,” he said, apologizing. “But tomorrow have another party called Possession. Is very good party. Techno party. Very strong party.”

Curiosity made me click on the Facebook link he sent. The profile photo was of an open-mouthed nun clutching a black cross, her eyes bleeding black tears and rolling up white in her skull.

Yikes. Nothing could have been further from the sweaty, shirtless French firemen of my dreams.

I tried to decline. “Um, this isn’t really my scene,” I told him. But I’d already paid for my train tickets and my hotel room, and we both knew it.

“So it looks like I’m going to a techno party called Possession,” I told my husband the day I left for Paris. “I hate techno.”

He laughed, but quickly turned serious. “Stay safe, babe. Send me Marcelo’s last name and phone number please,” he said. “And have fun. I’ll see you on Monday.”

Concrete dreams in your mind’s eye

I arrived at the Quai de la Rapee before midnight. Stone steps led me below street level to the banks of the Seine, where Marcelo greeted me with a tight hug.

Smiling, he led me towards a massive barge that pounded with what sounded less like music than a battle between very large pieces of heavy machinery. I did not like the sound of it at all.

The barge turned out to be a club called Concrete, filled with pale French students dressed in black.

We were joined by Ananda, whom Marcelo had met through his extensive network of Brazilians in Paris. Young, skinny, with frizzy hair and a wide, metal-studded smile, Ananda was as warm and friendly as Marcelo. It was her first time in Europe and her last night in Paris; she was flying back to Brazil the next day.

For the first hour or so, the three of us wandered around Concrete as people slowly trickled in. I helped Marcelo put on black eyeliner; the effect on him was stunning. 

Close to one in the morning, he decided it was time. “MD,” he said to me. “We talk this before?” 

We had. Back when we had first met, it was Marcelo who had brought up MD, a pure form of the active ingredient in Ecstasy. I’d only heard of party drugs, but had never tried them. 

My only experience with any kind of mind-altering substance had been when I moved to the Netherlands and lit my first joint. Having never learned how to smoke cigarettes, I ended up only coughing and getting sleepy, not high. I’d felt let down by my first brush with drugs, and decided that I wasn’t missing much.

I had asked Marcelo what it was like. “Everybody beautiful,” he said, closing his eyes, spreading his arms and lifting his face to the sky. “Have no problems. Love everybody.”

I was skeptical; it sounded hokey. But something about the bliss in his expression, his openness in that moment stayed with me, and I thought: Okay, I’m in.

He slipped something hard and conical into each of our hands. A swig of water, a hard swallow. The effect on Ananda was almost instantaneous: tossing her hair and winding her hips, the girl moved like a snake into the thick of the dancing.

Marcelo did not dance. What he did at parties was walk. He wove through the crowd continuously and seemed to know everyone. People were drawn to him, wanting to touch his beard or pull him close for a chat.

As I followed in his wake, I felt as if something was missing. It was Marcelo’s scene, but not mine; I didn’t find the music appealing at all. A beautiful young boy stopped to ask me what I was studying. I thought it was hilarious at first, but then I just felt old. What was I doing here? 

With Ananda lost in the crowd, Marcelo and I moved to the side, leaning on the railing of the top deck overlooking the Seine. He asked me how I was doing.

“I don’t think this will have any effect on me,” I said. “I think I might just go home.”

The words had scarcely left my lips when everything went soft. Whoosh, like the world breathing out a sigh.

At that very moment, the city lights reflected on the Seine coalesced into giant four-pointed stars that blazed more brightly than anything I had ever seen. Fierce and dazzling in their brilliance, the stars on the river were so enormous, they almost looked cartoon-like.

“You feel something!” Marcelo said.

When I finally dared answer, it seemed like aeons later. “The lights—the lights,” I whispered. “They’re so beautiful.” 

Marcelo embraced me; the most natural thing to do was embrace him back.

The Seine was on fire, and so was I.  

Placing his hands on my shoulders, Marcelo urged me into the crowd. “Go, go, go!”

The music spoke to me, and I began to listen. The bass became a command, and I obeyed. 

It began as a beating of a thousand hearts under the soles of my feet, bleeding into my veins from the ground up, gaining momentum as it pounded through me, coursing up  my legs, my spine, my hips, my shoulders, bursting through the tips of my fingers as I threw my hands up in the air, every single muscle in my body animated by the relentless rhythm.

I piled my sweat-matted hair on top of my head with one hand. Behind me, Marcelo leaned in close and blew lightly across my nape. Each of the tiny hairs on the back of my neck became palm trees caught in a humid breeze, swaying in the prelude to a tropical storm. 

His hands settled over my shoulders, giving them a quick tight squeeze. Heat radiated from his palms deep into my shoulders, pulling me deep into a warm bath. 

I closed my eyes and let myself sink deeper into the soup of sights, sounds and sensations. I could have stayed in one spot all night taking it all in.

But Marcelo was too restless. “I need walk,” he said. “Walk, talk, people. I need this.” 

I said I would come with him. “Walk,” he told me. “Talk to every people. Look all in the eyes.”

And I did. 

For the first time, I realized how much I had always shunned eye contact, how I shut out strangers by never looking them in the eye. Maybe I had been protecting myself. Maybe I had been afraid of what I would see. But now I was ready. My eyes were open. And I wanted to see everything.

I wanted to remember it all—how colors melted together the way you would mix watercolors by shifting paper while it was still wet, the paint flowing and sliding together into new hues. 

How sound penetrated every available texture, every hidden corner, until the shadows themselves seemed to pulsate with life. 

How light captivated me: the glint of the strobe light dancing on a silver earring, the slick sheen of sweat covering every exposed inch of skin.

I had never seen any of these people before in my life, but I felt that I knew them all, and that they knew me. A stranger brushed my arm with the glowing tip of a lit cigarette, but I barely noticed.

I brought out a small folding fan from my purse and fanned the dancers around me. They leaned closer, sighing with pleasure and relief at the cool breeze. I lent the fan to a girl who squeezed my face with her hands when she gave it back, saying Merci, jolie, with a soft kiss on my cheek.

Lost in the pounding music, my mind was completely quiet. My thoughts disappeared to make space for the enormous rush of new stimuli. I had never realized how loud the roar in my head had been until it had been shut off.

For the first time, in the midst of a writhing crowd, I knew what it was like to be absolutely at peace with myself.

Dawn broke over the Seine, turning the dark waters rosy gold, when I decided to return to my hotel room. I found Marcelo with a group of Brazilians and told him I was leaving. He gave me a fierce, tight hug, which I returned. Then he took my face in both of his hands and kissed me on the lips.

At that moment, I was incapable of guessing, analyzing, or overthinking what this meant.  I simply accepted it for what it was: a definitive end to a night like no other.

A year later, Marcelo sent me a photo from the very spot where we had stood. In the fuzzy smartphone photo, there were no larger-than-life cartoon supernovas, only distant echoes of digital noise . The flat, burned-out pixels transmitted none of the afterglow of that one incandescent night. 

But the stars had set something alight in me that night: a spark that now, alive and burning, would never go out. 

“Always when I come, I stop here and I remember you. Always,” he wrote. “Good night, ma cherie. Come here in your dreams.”

—

Thank you so much for joining me on a midnight adventure in Paris.

Concrete closed in the summer of 2019, but you can still find Marcelo on Instagram.

As always, I love reading your thoughts, ideas, and burning questions, so write me! Has an encounter with a random stranger changed your life? Please tell me about it. I am dying to know.

If you like what you read, please share it with someone. Especially if it’s someone who misses Paris or dancing, like I do.

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I am working up the courage to tell you about my first book. I’m finding it more difficult than I thought to be vulnerable. But I’m getting there.

Perhaps the next letter will be the one. See you in two weeks!

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And that is: removing the achterzitje, the child seat made of gray molded plastic that’s mounted on the back of my bicycle, on which my daughter has been a passenger for six years. I promised myself I’d do it when she turned 8, and it’s time.

Deepa on two wheels: a brief history

You might wonder why I say this is a relief. Well, unlike the Dutch, I wasn’t born with a bicycle between my legs. 

My first bicycle was a gift from my mom for my fifth birthday. It was princessy pink, with white rubber handlebar grips and white training wheels that kept me well-supported on my five-minute bike rides to the playground. The quiet streets of our gated community reflected nothing of the chaos of real-life Manila traffic (in which anyone who cycles surely has a death wish), and I was happy and safe as could be on my little baby bike.

However, removing the back wheels at age 8 was a disaster. By this age I’d learned to stick only to things I was good at, which explains why I’m great at writing and socializing, and suck at ball sports and math. 

With cycling in Manila being a purely recreational and optional activity, I gave up after my umpteenth scraped knee. Who needed this sh*t anyway? 

Me, apparently—21 years later, when my husband signed a job offer that would relocate us to the Netherlands, cycling culture capital of the world. 

“Maybe I should learn how to bike?” I ventured. 

“Great idea! But if you want us to stay married, I can’t teach you,” he replied. 

Fortunately for my marriage, I found an ad in the local newspaper (what’s that, Auntie? asks Gen Z) that proclaimed: “Learn how to bike in 4 hours or less!” Leaving it to the professionals seemed the smart thing to do.

Under the firm hand of good-humored, unflappable Uncle Edmund, I spent three afternoons cycling in circles on the ground floor of an HDB complex in Bukit Timah, where he owned a bicycle store. As advertised, I could move around on my own by the end of the third session, just under four hours.

I felt triumphant. No longer did I have to be embarrassed that the student after me was four years old. At the age of 29, I was a professionally trained cyclist! 

I envisioned a glorious two-wheeled future awaiting me in Amsterdam. I would be virtually indistinguishable from the Dutch on their bikes, gliding effortlessly past windmills and cheese farms with a basket of tulips between my handlebars. 

It turns out that cycling around the ground floor of an apartment building is nothing like cycling in the crazy, busy streets of Amsterdam, where a cyclist must have the speed and survival instincts of a shark.

Short legs, a weak core, almost nonexistent coordination and balance, and an inability to push off with either foot (I can only push off with my left, please don’t ask me why), and asthma make me a slow, nervous cyclist. My bicycle works hard to compensate for my quirks: it has smaller tires, a double kickstand for stability, handbrakes instead of the widely used backpedal ones, the lowest possible adult-size frame I could find, and a saddle that’s lowered all the way down.

Nothing fills me with anxiety like a drawbridge going up in the city; I’m convinced that one day I will be trampled under the wheels of Amsterdammers raring to be the first over the bridge when it comes down, like the running of the bulls in Pamplona. 

I soon realized that I was less a professionally trained cyclist than a collection of weaknesses on two wheels.

Then I had a baby.

I’ve got all I need, right here in the passenger seat 

She was close to one year old when I felt confident enough to put her on a front seat, after a few practice rounds in the park.

For the first year and a half, it all went quite well. It was so easy to just plop her in and take her with me everywhere. She loved it. I wondered what kind of impressions of the world she was forming, and if she would remember any of this.

I loved arriving home to find her fast asleep in the front seat, mouth open in a tiny O, cheeks streaked pink from the cold. I never fell with her on the bike, not even once. Uncle Edmund would be proud.

We switched over to the rear seat when she was two, almost three years old. By this time, her little Dutch friends were toddling along on their loopfiets, walking bikes or balance bikes. However, she would have none of it. 

My daughter showed an innate mistrust of wheeled transport that might very well be genetic. She refused to even look at the second-hand pink loopfiets we bought her at age two, and barely touched her first bike, bought at age four, except for a few photo ops.

Smart cookie that she was, she realized Mama and Papa might just find it faster and easier to carry her around on the back seat forever, and simply decided she didn’t have to exert much effort to learn.

Meanwhile, I watched Dutch mothers cycle alongside their children, robust miniature versions of themselves who already displaced confidence and athleticism on their little wheels. I admired how strong and capable those mothers seemed, especially when they would reach down, clamp a firm hand on their child’s shoulder, and shepherd them swiftly through four-way intersections and across busy streets. How did they do it?

Dutch parents seemed able to magically transmit speed, grace and sureness through the surface of their palms—qualities I myself never possessed and might never be able to give my daughter. 

I dreaded the day I would have to attempt the firm-hand-guiding-maneuver myself and fail, and my daughter would see and know.

So the gray back seat remained fixed to my bicycle, as did my now not-so-little passenger. 

Learning to ride on her own two wheels    

My daughter was around 5 or 6 when she started becoming too heavy for me, which is hard to admit in a nation where people routinely transport washing machines by bike. 

One afternoon when the wind and rain were particularly brutal (it always is during school runs), my asthma kicked in. I was wheezing by the time we got to our street. “Anak, you really need to learn to cycle by yourself,” I gasped. “I can’t do this anymore.”

Crushed by my own admission, frustrated at myself, and physically exhausted by the effort, I went to lie down as soon as we arrived. After a while she crept up to me holding a drawing she’d made of a heart with wings. It said, “I love you very much, Mama.” Naturally, I cried.

That she loves me in spite of my limitations, and despite what I can’t do for her, is the wonder of the pure unconditional love of a child. 

I still wonder why she gave the heart wings. To help the wheels along, I suppose. 

My husband, who was always the better athlete and more competent cyclist, took over her education, looping a towel around her chest and holding up the ends while she biked around the playground without training wheels. When she found her balance—so easily, much more quickly than I did—cue the waterworks. My baby was growing up!

During lockdown, cycling through the neighborhood with Papa replaced gym class. By the time she turned 7, we began cycling to and from school most days. Then, to violin lessons and cooking classes, both further from home and along busier roads. 

With every ride, her confidence grows. From napping in the front to absent-minded babbling in the back, she rides beside me now with an increasing awareness of the world around her, humming a tune as she does.

Rolling from childhood into the future 

Taking the back seat off my bike is a matter of safety—she is way past the age and weight limit for this seat—but it is also a bittersweet moment.

It is an acknowledgment of my daughter’s growing independence, and acceptance of my own limitations and vulnerabilities as a mother. It is a conscious and necessary act of stepping away, letting her grow into her own, and hoping for the best. 

I still sweat bullets at certain intersections. I can’t grab her by the collar to carry her through a crossing; it would only threaten my poor balance and we might both wipe out (my greatest fear). I still insist on a helmet; she’s the only kid in her class who wears one.

Last week one of her school friends came home with us to play at ours, and for the first time I had to shepherd two seven year-olds on bikes instead of one. From my position bringing up the rear, they looked like miniature teenagers, chattering away as they pedaled. 

In my mind’s eye, the road fell away and suddenly I saw my daughter’s future stretching into the distance. I could see her rolling away from me on two wheels, picking up speed, swift, sure and inevitable.

I saw her zipping down city streets with a hockey stick on her back and muddy socks up to her knees, like so many teenage Dutch girls; giggling with a girlfriend on the back, hopping off and jumping on at stoplights; pedaling alongside a boy with their fingers lightly entwined, her long black hair streaming behind her in the wind. 

I saw her cycling off to music festivals in the spring and to the beach in the summer, riding home from smoky clubs and crowded bars, coasting on autopilot even after a few beers, as all Amsterdammers do.

I saw her riding into her future, away from me, her baby bike, and her childhood, with a grace and confidence all her own. 

The gray child seat on the back of my bike hasn’t been used in months; mossy green dots are growing on the straps from rain and neglect. 

When I finally unscrew it from its mounting, I know my heart will feel heavy, even though my bike will feel so much lighter. 

Perhaps I’m going to need that heart with wings after all. 

It’s time.

Thank you so much for reading to the end!

As always, I love to know what you think, so hit that reply button. I am especially curious as to what your formative experiences of cycling may have been like, and if there’s anyone out there who is as bad a cyclist as I am!

And if you like what you read, please do share it with someone. 

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I have so many ideas about what to write next. I suppose I just have to pick one.

See you in two weeks!

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Since writing and recording Gold, I thought about searching for a specific moment that illustrates how far my relationship with my body has come since then, and reflects how I see myself today. 

It would have to be when I posed nude in front of the camera for the very first time. Sixteen year-old Deepa would have never dreamed that one day, her naked ass would end up in a museum and on public display in the streets of New York. 

From Paris to New York in a living photo 

In March 2018, Jamie Beck, co-creator of the cinemagraph and one of my favorite photographers and Instagram idols, posted a casting call. She was looking for women to pose for a series of cinemagraphs—living photos that combine a still image with video details moving in a seamless loop—to be exhibited at the International Center for Photography Museum in New York.

Squelching the nagging voice in my head—You’re too fat, she’s a professional photographer, she only works with models, there are tons of gorgeous girls out there, she’ll never pick you—I slid into Jamie’s DMs. And I sent nudes. 

(As a woman in the digital age, I happen to keep a handful of flattering nudes in my back pocket. Do you? You never know when they might come in handy, but they must be used with caution at all times.)

Out of the 250 women who replied, Jamie chose 24; I was one of them. Three days later, I was on a train to Paris, and ready to drop my clothes on set in front of Jamie and her husband and co-creator Kevin, who would capture it all on video. 

I expected that the act of posing nude would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, a revelation that would transform my entire relationship with my body. As it turns out, it wasn’t. 

To be sure, the experience was exhilarating, empowering, and exciting. 

As a former fat kid who’s struggled with my weight and self-image for most of my life, I will never forget seeing Jamie and Kevin getting all excited on set. Oh my God, perfect, that’s it, you look amazing, this is so beautiful, you’re a natural!

And when I traveled to New York for the opening in the spring, seeing myself naked in a museum was incomparable.

During the day, the cinemagraphs were displayed on screens inside the ICP Museum. At night, they were projected floor to ceiling from the windows, so that everyone on the street could see them. 

Many people walked on by, but others lingered. One girl who had stopped turned to me and asked, “Wow, aren’t they beautiful?” She didn’t recognize me, probably because I had my clothes on. 

Those moments huddled in my coat against the April night chill, watching total strangers looking at my naked form like a work of art, I’ll treasure all my life.

Am I addicted to taking my clothes off for the camera? 

After that first barrier was broken, I discovered that all it takes to cross that threshold again is a photographer I trust and respect, and a creative idea that excites me. I posed nude two more times after that, also for female photographers I admire.

In 2019, I collaborated with my friend Adrienne Wildeman for Huidgeschreven (“Written on Skin”), a series of portraits that explore what happens when you take away clothes and poses, and leave nothing but skin telling stories.

As Aad and I talked while shooting in my bedroom, I recalled the act of shedding my high school uniform, which I associated with being a good girl, and later a good wife, mother, and woman.  I wrote the word good on my naked body, to peel off all the expectations of “goodness” society imposes on me and instead, choose to be good on my own terms, in my own way.

And in 2020, in the midst of a global pandemic, Nikki de Poel (a.k.a. Satellite June) came over with her medium format film camera to shoot for her book Softer, which celebrates the softness of the female body and how it changes over time.

That brings my total nudie count so far to three. And those are just the legit ones—don’t forget about those nudes in my back pocket. 

Am I addicted to posing nude? Is this going to be a yearly thing? Am I going to take every single opportunity to drop my pants in front of the camera?

Probably not. But there is something inherently powerful about doing so.

Moment of truth: the photograph as mirror

What I’ve found is this: the moment of reckoning isn’t when you drop your clothes in front of the camera. Yes, it is confronting, because at that point the camera will see what it sees and there’s nothing more you can do about it. Even 200 squats won’t save you now!

There is the photograph—then there is the moment you see it for the first time. You see yourself from angles your bathroom mirror never shows you. You notice things you never did before.

A chorus of voices begins to talk all at once. They all sound like your voice, but they’re not. They are a collection of other people’s stories about you, messages you’ve heard from others all your life, disguising themselves as you. 

Here lies the greatest opportunity for grace, kindness, and liberation.

Recognize that these voices are not your own. Do not believe them. 

Wait for them to fade to silence. When the chaos settles, let the photograph speak.

Let it say what it wants to say to you. It may surprise you. 

Sit with it. Listen to it. Thank it. 

Perhaps this is why I pose nude: for the opportunity to I come face to face with myself, treat myself with kindness and love, and remind myself that I am beautiful just as I am. 

Photographic evidence of self-acceptance

To the photographer, each of these pictures is the realization of a creative vision. For me, it is a record—a beautiful, artistic record—of the shift that has already taken place inside me and has been unfolding for years. 

It is the result of all the love that has been poured into my body over a lifetime:

- of my husband’s unconditional acceptance of my body’s gradual expansion throughout 13 years of marriage;

- of the expression of sheer delight and contentment on my daughter’s face when I grant her permission to pull up my shirt and snuggle onto my bare, pale, jiggly belly;

- of lovers’ slow caresses on my striped thighs and loose skin;

and so much more.

It is a document that attests to my acceptance of my body. And some documents need to be renewed from time to time. 

It is proof of my willingness to be seen just as I am, and my refusal to let other people’s stories of me control me.

And it is an honor to have that evidence of my self-acceptance be so intimately entwined with an artist’s vision:to be clothed in their ideas, to be bathed in their light.

Win a copy of Softer by Nikki de Poel

Thank you so much for reading this far. As a gesture of gratitude for your time and attention, I’m giving away one copy of Nikki’s beautiful book Softer. 

To enter the giveaway, just reply to this letter before 12:00 CET on the 10th of March and answer the question: 

Would you ever pose naked for a photo? Why or why not? (Or if you have, I’d love to hear about it!)

I will draw a random winner and notify them after the 10th of March. This giveaway is only for subscribers of Letters by Deepa. If you haven’t yet, subscribe here:

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Jamie, Adrienne, and Nikki, thank you for your incredible vision, for the opportunity to be part of your body of work (pun not intended), and for the beautiful pictures. 

In the next issue of Letters by Deepa: I’m about to reach a motherhood milestone I’ve been both looking forward to and dreading.

See you in two weeks!

Cinemagraph courtesy of Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg.