Balikbayan: A Returning Home

Weeks 7-9 of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way

Have you found a place where you feel most at home?

I have often struggled with this question having moved more times than I can count as a child. In fact, I stage my major life events and growing up years based on the house I lived in at the time.

Every two years it seemed my address had changed. My parents, certified Jack and Jill of all trades, held multiple jobs at a time to raise our family of six. One unique income stream was that of a residential care provider, or home share provider.

This meant that our family home was shared with folks with a mental health diagnosis or developmental disability and my parents were responsible for managing their activities of daily living including medications, appointments, meals and much more. As a child this meant our home was always bustling with activity and action.

My mother, a realtor, and my father, a factory worker at the time, bought, flipped and sold homes to accommodate their clients. As children, we were along for the ride.

Hay ride with my family. Manitoba. 1994ish.

Perhaps as an effort to make sense and order of my shifting sense of home, I found solace in alone time whether that was reading, sketching, and eventually writing. Throughout my life, I’ve acquired piles of journals and spiral-bound notebooks (mostly picked up from the Dollarama) that withheld my inmost thoughts and raging feelings; too delicate to share with the outside world.

Writing as I have discovered over time became the place where I feel most at home.

In Tagalog, the term Balikbayan can be understood as:

• “balik” (to return, to go back)

• “bayan” (homeland)

To return home.

It was coined in the 1970s by the Marcos regime as an incentive for Filipinos who have gone abroad to return home and reinvest in the economy, culture and future of the Philippines.

For members and children of the Filipino diaspora like myself, Balikbayan boxes were our connection to a country we may have never step foot in and to people we only knew through stories and long-distance phone calls (shout out to prepraid long-distance phone cards, you the real MVP).

Over the last several months of engaging in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, this sense of home found in writing has been unfolding for me. I am excited to share that this fall, I will be participating in a 9-month writing cohort with the PAX Fellowship! It kicks off with an in-person retreat in Scottsdale, Arizona where I will meet my fellow fellows ;) and bring my family along for the ride.

I am raising money in support of this “journey home” - my writing journey - to cover tuition costs for the Fellowship and travel expenses for me and family to Arizona in September, a total of $2800 CAD. You can contribute financially by becoming a paid subscriber right here on Substack, or here through Stripe’s Buy Me A Coffee Platform of any amount.

Journey with me!

RGD