DiscoverBabaylan Bruha Book Club Podcast
Claim Ownership
57 Episodes
Reverse
Join us in this episode where we sit down with fellow kapwatid, Joe Corzo, on his personal and professional endeavors. Joe shares some of his latest projects and features, things he has done with music, and most importantly his story of overcoming challenges and wins, as he endures the journey as an aspiring and rising Pilipino-American actor in Hollywood!
📺🎙️…Don't forget to like and follow your ates on the YouChoobs & Instagrams, hah?! Maraming salamat sa iyong continued supporta!
🤎 links in bio 🤎
💋💋
Ingat Lagi-
Ate Ims & Ate Steph
—
#babaylan
#babaylanic
#babaylanbruha
#babaylanbruhahas
#babaylanbruhabookclub
#filipinx #filipinoamerican
#filipinxpodcasters #podcasts
#precolonialphilippines
#intergenerationalhealing
#decolonize #backfromthecrocodilesbelly
This episode was special because this was a first time for your babaylan brubrus (Ate Steph) were able to connect in-person with the esteemed @swiggle_mandela! In this episode, we touched a range of Swiggle’s experiences as a bi-racial person growing up & existing on the lands originally inhabited by First Nations including (but not limited to) the Multnomah, Wasco, Clackamas, Kalapuya, Chinook, & many others along the Columbia River— also known as Portland, Oregon. Tune into the tea on nature/animal intuition, entrepreneurial-ship, fatherhood, and of course his work as a performing rapper & community-recognized music artist.📺🎙️…& don’t forget to like and follow your ates on the YouChoobs & Instagrams, hah?!
🤎 links in bio 🤎
💋💋Ingat Lagi-Ate Ims & Ate Steph
#babaylan#babaylanic#babaylanbruha#babaylanbruhahas#babaylanbruhabookclub#filipinx #filipinoamerican#filipinxpodcasters #podcasts#precolonialphilippines#intergenerationalhealing #decolonize #backfromthecrocodilesbelly
In this conversation, we sat with the Manang Lauren, LMFT and her range of personal and professional knowledge. She is a therapist, intergenerational mental health cycle breaker & advocate, fitness coach, past life regression practitioner, & healer.
Please remember this is a passion project, and your Ates would appreciate your quick support! If you feel called to show us some love, hit the Like, Subscribe, and/or Comment(s) buttons, below!
You can also find us on Instagram: @BabaylanBruhaBookClub.
Maraming Salamat sa inyong lahat for your time, support, and consideration!
💋💋
Ingat Lagi-
Ate Ims & Ate Steph
-------
#babaylan
#babaylanic
#babaylanbruha
#babaylanbruhahas
#babaylanbruhabookclub
#filipinxpodcasters #filipinopodcast
#filipinoamerican #filampodcast
#decolonize #decolonizeyourmind
#filipinx #precolonialphilippines
Here goes episode 2, kapwatids! We were able to sit and speak with writer and music recording artist, Mark Teodosio, on his "The Realest Bayani" comic book creation process, dating life perspectives, rituals, & his own spiritual references.
Please remember this is a passion project, and your Ates would greatly appreciate your quick support! If you feel called to show us some love, hit the Like, Subscribe, SHARE, and/or Comment(s) buttons, below!
Maraming Salamat sa inyong lahat for your time, support, and consideration!
Instagram & YouTube: @BabaylanBruhaBookClub.
💋💋
Ingat Lagi-
Ate Ims & Ate Steph
In this two part chapter, through the guidance of Jane J. Alfonso, we explore the breakdown of historical colonialism in the Philippines. She highlights how Colonial Theory’s (Fanon, 1995) four phrases of colonization were catastrophically implied in the Philippines:
1) forced entry of a foreign group into geographic territory with the intention of exploiting the native people’s natural resources,
2) the establishment of a colonial society that is characterized by cultural imposition, cultural disintegration, and cultural re-creation of the native’s indigenous culture (all of which are intended to further create a contrast between the purportedly superior colonizers and the inferior colonized),
3) the portrayal of the colonized as wild and savage peoples that the colonizer has to police and tame, ‘in essence putting oppression and domination into practice’, and
4) the establishment of a race-based societal system in which the political, social, and economic institutions in a colony are designed to benefit the colonizer and subjugate the colonized.
From 1521, when the infamous Ferdinand Magellan claimed the islands for King Philip II, to the first Spanish settlements in 1565, and up to the infamous 1898 Treaty of Paris where the United States acquired the Philippines from Spain for 20 million dollars, ruled over for 50 years until “granted” independence in 1946 – it can be safe to say the Philippines and Filipinos across the diaspora have been through quite a lot! From fascinating terminologies that include but not limited to, Golden Legend (p. 134) to referencing the Thomasites (p. 136), Ate Jane, Ate Leny, and so many other researchers have paved the way with allowing us to think about how all of this colonization has affected the “diaspora consciousness” - framework to understand the Filipino/a/x American experience.
Ate Jane ends the chapter vulnerably sharing her relative Filipina-American story and how it ties into this interesting concept of the babaylan representing the healing counterpart to Maria Clara – an often referenced archetype of the catholic church’s Virgin Mary. With Mary supposedly representing purity, chastity, and the tragic disembodiment of what it means to be an authentically self-embodied Filipina. Through her psycho-somatic therapeutic insights, we are able to consider how generations of colonization have manifested in our own bodies, and how decolonizing is the way to healing. Her research, reflection, and recommendation serves as inspiration for us to continue the conversation around what it could mean to connect back with our mothers, the great mother, and the babaylan.
---------------------
(approximate timings):
1. INTRO @ 0.00
2. OPEN PRAYER @ 1:13 (intro is 1:13)
3. 90sec DECOLONIZE CHECK @ 3:39
4. BG CLIFF NOTES @ 10:01
5. VOCAB @ 16:42
6. QUOTES @ 29:08
7. END PRAYER @ 49:19
---------------------
Music by Dayana Capulong. (C) Dayana Capulong, 2022
This chapter was rich with information around the indigenous healers in the Panay Highlands of Western Visayas. Written by trained ethnomusicologist, Maria Christine Muyco, they bring us into a story collected by participant-observation learnings of these Panay Bukidnon (mountain people of Panay). Maria spent 2 years in 2003-2004 in the Panay Highlands specifically inquiring the process of this community’s types of healing rituals, always incorporating the Binanog, a dance practice that draws its inspiration from the local hawk-eagle called banog. The ideological aspects in Panay healing always aimed to achieve SIBOD - a mastery of structures and synchronizations that produces effectiveness, connectedness, and even transcendence. Through the Binanog dance, Maria first encountered the linkage between healing, movement, and spiritual interplay, and drew her attention to the synchronizations between healing and dancing and how each can realize a healer’s intention of bringing harmony to the body-spirit universe, otherwise known as kalibutan.
Through her work, Maria meets and speaks with several traditional healers, serruano, dalungdungan, the maarams, the babaylan. They included learning about how young healer Menchie Diaz-Caspillo stepped into her calling, Noning Lopez of Barangay Cabatangan in Lambunao (Iloilo), Violeta Damas from Barangay Taganhin, and an interview with Alfred Castor who knew a family with 7 adult babaylans. These interactions allowed Maria to discuss what defines a serruano , as they do not choose to be so at will, because powerful spirits or forces select them. Maria provides us with several vocabulary words utilized by the Panay Bukidnon to give insight of their perspectives of life from the origin of creation, to the understandings of various spirit beings that exist and can be seeing during times of the night, how the babaylan moved while she sat in ritual, why and how supplication of the spirits was essential, and overall prosing the theme of indigenous ways for bridging body-and-spiritual constituents that bring about healing for those who are in need.
---------------------
1. Grounding Prayer & @ 1:34
2. "90 second DECOLONIZING" Heart Check-in @ 5:16
3. BROWN GIRL CLIFF NOTES / Chapter Overview @ 13:03
4. Vocabulary Words @ 19:33
5. Quotes @ 39:22
6. Closing Prayer @ 1:00:10
We are talking about tattoos today! If you’ve been around the Filipinx diaspora decolonization online community, you may be familiar with Lane Wilcken, also known as Manong Lane.
***
Per Lane’s website, Lane is an artisan of ancient technology and art. He is widely recognized by the Filipino-American community as a "mambabatok," a cultural tattoo practitioner only using ancient hand-tapped tattoo techniques. He makes all his own tools, many of which are now extinct in the Philippines. Lane's practice is spiritual and includes meditation and prayer before composing batok (tattoo) arrangements according to the designs and symbols of a person's specific ethnic group and their personal experience. The actual application of the batok is done as ritual, with chants, food offerings and prayers as part of the process.
***
In this chapter, Manong Lane discusses the details of pre-colonial Philippine tattoos and their symbolism, as well as the stigmas tattoos currently face in modern western society vs. the originally deeply rooted, spiritual meaning of our ancestral markings.
When the first Spanish explorers arrived in our islands with Ferdinand Magellan in 1521, they originally called the archipelago, “Las Islas de los Pintados” which means, “The Islands of the Painted Ones” because of the abundance of tattooing they saw. Manong Lane highlights that in the western world perspective, the individual is the one who decides when they will be tattooed and what is tattooed on them. In the ancient Austronesian cultures (which includes the islands of Indonesia, the Philippines, Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia, Madagascar and Taiwan), the perspective towards tattooing was very different. Those choices are prerogative of the community and the tattoo practitioner, not the individual.
We further discuss our perspectives on the understandings that men and women received their tattoo markings with different reverence. For example, men had to “earn” their tattoos through requisite bravery, character and knowledge. In contrast, women were naturally "entitled" to receiving tattoos. In fact, women's tattoos displayed messages of the strength, procreative power, and spiritual receptivity she brought with her into the world. They also signified fertility and the bravery and strength needed to endure giving birth. It is also said that the more women had, the more beautiful she was!
---------------------
1. Grounding Prayer & @ 1min, 46sec
2. "90 second DECOLONIZING" Heart Check-in @ 3min, 46sec
3. BROWN GIRL CLIFF NOTES / Chapter Overview @ 11min, 36sec
4. Vocabulary Words @ 26min
5. Quotes @ 38min, 23sec
6. Closing Prayer @ 56min, 18sec
This chapter was juicy! We were truly guided by Michael Gonzalez’ words and 8 years of thesis research investigating the said debatable, 2 existing and paradoxical stories of the legendary Jose Rizal. Jose Rizal is formally known as a native reformist, physician, author of books-- a “renaissance man”, that was falsely implicated in an anti-colonial revolutionary plot and executed by the colonial Spanish authorities on December 30, 1896. Gonzalez’ work included understanding the national “official”, sometimes imaginary Jose Rizal; versus the perhaps “unofficial”/folklore (said to be told my peasants, laborers, and middle class Filipinos) version of Jose Rizal, deemed by the “Rizalistas”.
Rizalistas, a conglomeration of various groups (or sects) scattered all over the Philippines that see Rizal and the events surrounding his life as distinctly spiritual, sacred, and personal. Among some of these associations are the Sagrada Familiar, Watawat ng Lahi, Tres Persona Solo Dios, and the Kataastaasang Kapatiran Ng Litaw Na Katalinuhan. These groups have inconspicuous small churches and sanctuaries that dot the rural landscape along the Laguna and Quezon (Aurora) Provinces.
In addition, this chapter was rife with information on the transformation of the Philippine national anthem with colonization within the Philippines, which we discuss briefly. Another potential theory to consider through Gonzalez' writing, was the idea to consider if Jose Rizal was actually the pre-colonial Philippines interpretation of Jesus!?! Gonzalez felt like this concept along with his other works, lit a way for our Filipina/o/x cultural memory to keep unfolding, waiting to be retrieved and revealed for more research, theories, and perhaps action, to come.
---------------------
1. Grounding Prayer & @ 2min, 36sec
2. "90 second DECOLONIZING" Heart Check-in @ 4min, 51sec
3. Chapter Overview @ 13min, 56sec
4. Vocabulary Words 17min, 19sec
5. Quotes @ 26min, 51sec
6. Closing Prayer @ 46min, 14sec
In the second chapter of our current read: "Back from the Crodile's Belly", we have a conversation about Anting-Anting.
In her two year long research, Nenita Pambid Domingo sought to answer the question of whatever happened to the native God of the FIlipinos when the Spanish Catholic God and its host of angels vanquished the “heathens” and their gods?
Her research led her to the myth of Doctrine of Infinito Dios (or Infinite God) telling how the Three Persons in One God struggled against the Infinito Dios also known as Nuno (or ancestor). The Nuno said he could not be by any means be baptized by Jesus since the Nuno is Jesus’ forefather, the First and the only God who holds all the power and the well-spring of all the forces in the universe. In the end, the Infinito Dios (aka Nuno) finally succumbed to the wishes of Jesus, but only through his own power. And that was how Nuno, the ancestor, had supposedly come to be baptized, but actually not.
This myth and the oraciones (or power words) were put into symbols in the extant Infinito Dios amulet also known as an anting-anting.
Tune in as we talk about how the anting-anting evolved into a symbol of sovereign agency, fighting for freedom, and defending the motherland.
---
(approximate timings):
1. Grounding Prayer & @ 3min, 33 sec
2. "90 second DECOLONIZING" Check-in @ 5min, 30 sec
3. Brown Girl Cliff Notes @ 13 min, 20 sec
4. Vocabulary Words @ 19 min
5. Quotes @ 31 min
6. Closing Prayer @ @ 45 min, 30 sec
Welcome back, Kapwatids!
We SURE IS back, from the CROCODILE'S BELLY that was 2021, as we now enter 2022!
Thrilled to have you tuning in with us again!
WE OFFICIALLY OPEN UP SEASON 2 WITH OUR SECOND BOOK, "Back from the Crocodile's Belly", edited by Lily Mendoza & Leny Mendoza Stoebel. The first chapter segment of this three part book was written by Grace Nono, who journeyed to sit with Mumbaki, the Babaylan (indigenous priest, healer, oralist/auralist) among the people of the Ifugao province in the Cordillera Administrative Region of Northern Luzon, Northern PI.
This story comes from Mamerto “Lagitan” Tindongan, a now 65-year old mumbaki, wood sculptor, champion atlatlist (spear thrower), and healer. He is also an initiated PAQO and LAIKA, a 4th level priest and earth keeper, respectively, in the QUERO/Q’ERO (Native S. American) tradition. Grace’s story and photos capture the Lawet, a transition ceremony facilitated by multiple mumbaki’s to summon a deity responsible for ushering Lagitan’s father’s soul after his passing, Buwaya, who is known as a 7th generational Mumbaki. The Lawet was facilitate by Buwaya’s mentor, Huwan Candelario and assistance from Jose “Nabbud” Pagaddut, Buwaya’s nephew.
The intricacies of this chapter are stated through Lagitan’s “we have a compromise” - holding space to honor Buwaya’s wake in a mixed crowd of Christianized and the presence of many elders (even modernized, US-based Filipino/Filipinx, upholding the Baki ways).
---
(approximate timings):
1. Grounding Prayer & @ 2min
2. "90 second DECOLONIZING" Check-in @ 4min, 18sec
3. Chapter Overview @ 11min
4. Vocabulary Words 16min
5. Quotes @ 32min, 30sec
6. Closing Prayer @ 52min, 47sec
Happy Holy Days, Kapwatids!
In this final episode and study break of 2021, Imee & Stephanie discuss their experiences through the holidays.
We acknowledge various cultural holy days in different religions & spiritual beliefs, our younger church (& non-church) -related holiday years, & wrap up with energetic boundary tips as we navigate through this time of the year in spaces with loved ones, especially when you have differences.
***Don't forget - Babaylan Bruha Book Club is on YOUCHOOB too! Feel free to subscribe or leave us comments!
In this conversation, Imee & Stephanie take a study break to talk with another special guest. Rob Dalton is walking his life journey as a multi faceted being. From business professional and martial artist, to exploring the balance of divine masculine and feminine in the everyday, Rob is enthusiastic about experiencing the newness of what life may bring. (Fun fact: He is also Imee's husband!) As we sit with Rob, we dive into a discussion about the patriarchy vs. divine masculine, why perhaps men are less likely to seek emotional awareness, and his views on the modern day babaylan-ic experience.
***Don't forget - Babaylan Bruha Book Club is on YOUCHOOB too! Feel free to subscribe or leave us comments!
Last chapter of our first book! Kapwa, we did that!
As we close out this final chapter of BABAYLAN, we witness the conversational interview between Chato Basa, founder of Babaylan, a Philippine women’s network in Europe with Girlie Villariba, partner of Ed dela Torre author of Touching Ground, Taking Root, friend and activist. Their net-work together during a time where Filipino rights were nonexistent, & protection and resources were not accessible gave rise to brown feminism in Europe, where through collaboration with Genevieve Vaughan’s Global Fund for Women helped create support for victims of sexual exploitation, and various forms of discrimination work in Europe.
Ate Chato’s life story tells us how the eldest daughter from a poor and patriarchal family in Mindoro, Philippines followed the breadcrumbs of life - made her way through agricultural to clerical to government job positions that repositioned her into Italy, which exceeded her own expectations. Chato speaks of her work while in attendance of the United Nations conferences on Human Rights and Women’s Rights. Her lifelong successes and achievements are indications that connections are essential, and it truly does take a village to bring about sustainably impactful change.
***Don't forget - Babaylan Bruha Book Club is on YOUCHOOB too! Feel free to subscribe or leave us comments!
-------
(approximate timings):
1. Grounding Prayer & @ 2:36
2. "90 second DECOLONIZING" Heart Check-in @ 4:03
3. Chapter Overview 11:48
4. Vocabulary Words 15:03
5. Quotes @ 25:33
6. Closing Prayer @ 39:03
In this second-to-last chapter of our Babaylan: Filipinos & the Call of the Indigenous, we are met with recognizing the truth when people say, “less is more”. Perhaps via pakikiramdam (intuition), we knew this woman was an esteemed writer. Turns out she is an English professor at the University of Hawaii, and though she wrote only a 4 page memoir sharing her decolonizing journey, this chapter painted so much depth and expanded perceptions.
At the age of 11 years, Professor Minahal’s artistic inspiration was sparked & fueled into her adulthood, by a fictional mortal woman heroine Bolak Sonday, who dared to break past heteronormative standards and mainstream dualities. Despite being “Americanized” as a child, having parents who were inadvertent influencers to subscribe to the USA English-teacher-recommendations that her family must “lose their first language/accent” in obtaining jobs, it is refreshing to see such resiliency thrive.
Years later, Professor Minahal would become a queer artist to successfully combine poetry, dance, and music in her ‘before their words’ performance. In her piece, she narrates a poem accompanied by an erotically queer twist to the traditionally heterosexual muslim dance known as Singkil.
Professor Minahal’s boldness to interweave elements of traditional Filipino arts with her own imagination, is an inspiring legacy portraying how kapwa can attempt to heal and recover the aches of our lost culture in our own unique terms and expression, essentially - our own respective imaginations.
***Don't forget - Babaylan Bruha Book Club is on YOUCHOOB too!
Feel free to subscribe or leave us comments!
-------
(approximate timings):
1. Grounding Prayer & @ 2:03
2. Heart Check-in @ 4:06
3. Chapter Overview @ 6:08
4. Vocabulary Words @ 10:13
5. Quotes @ 24:26
6. Closing Prayer @ 46:43
This latest episode highlights the writings of Marjorie Light as she interviews a variety of celebrated Filipinx artists and creators in the Tongva land (city of Los Angeles) in California.
The work of these artists create intricate segues into dialogue that bridges the idea of indigenous Filipino culture and the contemporary pop culture we witness in current times.
Works discussed include English & Tagalog poetry by Irene Soriano, Filipino, Indonesian, & American dance and choreography by Tomas Tamayo, Dulce Capadocia’s “Singkil stories”, stage manager and playwright Lorely Trinidad, actor & poet Giovanni Oretega’s “Colonial Mentality” performance piece, hip hop artist Bambu, Jilly Canizares an orchestral arranger & the executive director of Fil-Am Arts - the 16+ years annual Festival of Philippine Arts and Culture (FPAC), singer & songwriter Janet Cruz, spoken word artist Johneric Concordia, painter Alfie Ebojo, & multidisciplinary artist Alison De La Cruz.
Ate Marjorie shares that artists are “redefining the landscape of Filipino American expression, evolving from copying Western culture or recreating Filipino arts from the Philippines to creating a new Filipino American culture by fusing these elements of multicultural traditions.”
The chapter ends with interviewing the individuals above, in regards to their thoughts on the concept of "decolonization".
Don't forget - Babaylan Bruha Book Club is on YOUCHOOB too! Feel free to subscribe or leave us comments!
-------
(approximate timings):
1. Grounding Prayer & @ 1:04
2. Heart Check-in @ 5:43
3. Chapter Overview @ 11:42
4. Vocabulary Words @ 15:53
5. Quotes @ 41:31
6. Closing Prayer @ 1:04:13
More than sixteen-times published poet and activist, Ate Eileen Tabrios walks us through the meta meaning of what it means to bring a poem into the world, and how that is to bring the world into the poem (citing her Conjuration #5 poem, p. 262).
Central Ilocos sur area born, Ate Eileen shares her knowledge & the story of the "Man-nawac" who healed her great grandmother.
Her passion for us to expand our consciousness through poems, having them call out to us, has led her to create several successful blog and publishing start ups. They are known as Meritage Press, for its publishing of "Pinoy Poetics", later citing other grass root FIlipinx publishers who do not discriminate publishing other non-Filipinx poets globally, such as T’Boli Press or Arkipelago Expressions.
Her call to action for us is to consider new, creative ways how we approach poetry, literature, and the arts - and that we practice "Kapwa" by continuously supporting each other.
-------
Don't forget - Babaylan Bruha Book Club is on YOUCHOOB too! Feel free to subscribe or leave us comments!
1. Grounding Prayer & @ 3:13
2. Heart Check-in @ 6:11
3. Chapter Overview @ 15:48
4. Vocabulary Words @ 20:48
*IMPROV PLAY: HAY NAKU POETICS BY IMEE & STEPH @ 45:44
6. Quotes @ 48:23
7. Closing Prayer @ 1:14.43
In this chapter, written by Michelle Bautista, we found her essay to be reigned with many paradoxical perspectives. The good, the bad, the not-good not-bad, the "just as is". Ate Michelle utilized types of food metaphors, as reference points for cultural fusions and fissions, that have created much dissonance and resonance for us / readers, while attempting to answer the question of “What does it mean to be a Filipino American?”
Don't forget - Babaylan Bruha Book Club is on YOUCHOOB too! Don't forget to subscribe or leave us comments!
-------
1. Grounding Prayer & @ 2min
2. Heart Check-in @ 5min
3. Chapter Overview @ 10min, 51sec
4. Vocabulary Words @ 14min, 29sec
5. Quotes @ 34min, 8sec
6. Closing Prayer @ 1hour, 10min
Tune in as we drop another episode with our beloved kapwatid, freestyle modern Babaylan Bruha, and multi-dimensional medium, Krisell Valenzuela!
We discuss Babaylan Bruha tings such as dreams, past lives, subconsciousness, intuition, spirit guides, and more! All while keeping the Babaylan Bruhaha’s vibes alive with reverence and laughter.
We invite you to subscribe or stay connected with us via YouTube and/or Instagram!
IG: @krisellcan.medium & @babaylanbruhabookclub
In this narrative, Karen Villanueva's succinct & specific opener caught our eyes and ears. It raised the questioning of the Filipinx conventionally conditioned life. Is it supposedly only about going to school, attending college to become a doctor/nurse/lawyer, then marry a (white) man, and settling down with a family?
In this chapter, we discuss how Ate Karen shares her immigration, assimilation, recognition, healing, and remembrance journey. She writes this piece while called back to live in the motherland; after having left her nursing profession, a marriage, a comfortable existence to follow her inner call to wholeness, which included healing generational grief in the family.
After spending time in places, workshops, centers, and practices - she speaks of living a life of what the Katipuneros called KALAYAAN, or Freedom, which she claims as the basis of her spiritual practice. In addition, we discuss how Ate Karen's wisdom translates an eastern medicine practice, MEDITATION into a Tagalog word: PANHINGALAY (pahinga = rest, stillness; hinga = breath; alay = offering, gift).
Don't forget - Babaylan Bruha Book Club is on YOUCHOOB too! Don't forget to subscribe or leave us comments!
-------
1. Grounding Prayer & @ 3min, 13sec
2. Heart Check-in @ 3min, 40sec
3. Chapter Overview @ 16min
4. Vocabulary Words @ 21min,10sec
5. Quotes @ 31min
6. Closing Prayer @ 1 hour, 25min, 3sec
“An important aspect of this ever-evolving quest for empowerment as a FIlipina-American, was developing the ability TO BRIDGE the PERCEIVED DICHOTOMIES of white = more, brown = less, and man = more, woman = less. It is from a place of transcending this compartmentalized framework that we can find the openness to welcome the fullness of possibility into our lives. The more forgiveness and acceptance I develop for myself, the more I have to offer others. And that, I think, is truly where empowerment lies".
- Ate Trisha Agbulos Cabeje, MA in Women’s Spirituality, Babaylan, Ch.8, pg. 234
-------
In this latest installment, we dissect the perspectives of what seems to be advice from an Ate/Elder/Boss Babe/Kapwatid, Trisha, regarding her own decolonizing journey. Like many of us, she was born into a Catholic household. Along her life's journey, she returned back to the Philippines and spent some time on the island of Mindinao, and developed a rich understanding of the T’boli people. This led to her psychological breakdown of the contrast and often conflict between the terms of being a Filipina AND an American.
We mention of the stereotypes that exist within the Filipina-American/Filipinx community, especially the work of recalling memories of cultural and gender subordination (i.e. Americanism vs. Filipinoism, Colorism, then Gender-ism).
Trisha "weaves" us into her inner- and under- standing the sacred feminine in the Philippines.
That recognizing the divinity within women AND men is key.
1. Grounding Prayer & @ 3min, 13sec
2. Heart Check-in @ 5 min, 50sec
3. Chapter Overview @ 9min, 17sec
T’boli women dream weaving discussion
@15min, 25sec
4. Vocabulary Words @ 24min, 5sec
5. Quotes @ 49min, 35sec
6. Closing Prayer @ 1hr, 10min, 45sec