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fil-in-the-gap

I am a Filipina in the diaspora, born in the heady sixties, raised during the repressive Marcos regime, this blog is about living and loving in the belly of the beast.

Mother

  • Anak ni Tapia in Milan!!

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  • Happy International Women’s Day!

    On this day of reckoning, when women all over the world should be celebrated and uplifted, when we commemorate the sacrifices of the women who came and fought injustice before us, I just want to sleep! I’ve been alternating between studying and working and this entails, well, mostly reading. When I encounter text-heavy material with Read more

  • Fill in the Blank

    I fill up spaces with plans for things I want to fill up my spaces with. I write it down, make it real, make it take up real space and then break the plans with things I did not plan on filling my spaces with. My 15-year old son talks to himself in his room, Read more

  • Do-it-with-joy

    The other day, my husband made me think. He was joking around as usual, but maybe there’s some truth to it. He said he is going to accompany our daughter to her cheerleading event not because it’s an obligation but because he wants to see her cheer, implying that I do things more out of a sense Read more

  • Are you awake?

    Just finished bingeing on Westworld by Michael Crichton. It makes me think about the idea of consciousness as something we develop as we mature. It’s waking up and staying awake, looking at ourselves in the mirror and understanding where we came from and how we got here. Sadly, some people never really get to this Read more

  • Pain

    I’ve been weaning myself off of Hydrocodon, a powerful narcotic that relieves one’s body of pain. The doctor said to take it every four hours after the surgery and “as needed.” You realize its power only after it wears off, and you are left immobilized by the sharp shooting pain in your injured body part. For awhile Read more

  • Night of the Living Moms

    Parenting, joyful as it is, can be an exhausting, and at times, a zombifying enterprise– particularly when you’re a mother who insists on having an identity beyond mom, mama, nanay, madre, who feels the need to create art, build your community, get your PhD, walk on a wire, and still have the time and energy Read more

  • Kuto!!!!

    I had a feeling he had them when I saw his hair — so dry and mangy, like he hadn’t washed it in days.  We had told him to shampoo his hair, then so beautiful and wavy, like Luis’s was when he was his age. He said he did. “I did,” he would automatically retort Read more