If you haven’t been following my Twitter feed, you might not have known that for the past nine months, I’ve been waiting to be a Tita Noelle to my niece, Brooke Gabrielle Manahan. (Well, I’m her godmother, so it’s Ninang Noelle.)

From the first day my sister voiced her thought that her period was late I told her that she was pregnant. When it was confirmed with a pregnancy test and ultrasound, our excitement knew no bounds.

Michael and Marielle decided to name their daughter Brooke after the New Zealand singer Brooke Fraser. Apart from her professional solo recording career as a folk/pop singer, Ms. Fraser is also a singer and songwriter for the worship group Hillsong.

Our journey with little Brooke had its ups and downs, especially when we were told on her fifth month that the ultrasound had detected some congenital anomalies. We have a wonderful spiritual family at Victory Ortigas who came together with us and prayed with us throughout the next four months, helping strengthen our faith in God. An ultrasound at six months showed that Brooke was normal and we would have a healthy baby girl with us in three months’ time.

Last Thursday my sister and brother-in-law went for her weekly checkup; it’s S.O.P. that women at nine months’ pregnancy have to see their OB that regularly. When her OB (who is also our aunt) saw that she was already in early labor, Marielle was immediately scheduled for emergency caesarian section due to her pregnancy-induced high blood pressure, also known as pre-eclampsia. On February 2, 2012, my niece Brooke was born.

Baby Brooke wasn’t breathing when she was delivered, so the doctors attempted to resuscitate her, finally hooking her up to a respirator at the Newborn ICU. Still, it was clear to us that she wouldn’t live long. I thought she wouldn’t last the night. Then the first miracle happened: in the early hours of Friday morning, Brooke was taken off the respirator and started breathing on her own!

Marielle, after her CS, got up and walked earlier than we thought she would because of her desire to see her child. So despite the pain and discomfort, we all were able to go see Brooke and even dedicate her to the LORD. It was here that another miracle happened: Brooke turned her head toward her parents as she heard them speak to her. A one-day-old infant is not able to determine the location of sounds, so that was wonderful that she was able to acknowledge their presence. And as Michael and Marielle reached out to hold her in their arms, Brooke cried for the first time.

Since Brooke remained stable the rest of Friday until the evening, I went home to rest and to take care of some errands. I finished them quickly on Saturday and headed back to the hospital. Unfortunately, I went via Aurora Boulevard, which is where the Bourne Legacy was filming that day. While I was stuck in that traffic jam, I received news that Brooke had died.

It was hard being just a few kilometers away and missing seeing Brooke one last time. I was mad at myself because I had an opportunity to take another route, but didn’t. I was mad at the Bourne Legacy crew for screwing up traffic. I was mad at the MMDA for allowing use of Aurora Boulevard when they knew there were few alternate roads.

And then I got to the hospital where I found Brooke breathing and alive in her mother’s arms. Another miracle: she had been pronounced dead, but her heart and her breathing spontaneously began again.

She was touch-and-go, but every time Michael and Marielle held her, she rallied. God gave us 12 more hours with Brooke, allowing my grandparents time to fly in, to see her and hold her. And when we had all accepted that Brooke’s time was near, that’s when she went.

For three glorious days, I was Tita and Ninang Noelle to the bravest, strongest little girl I know. Although we’re sad now, I’ll see her again in Heaven.

Yesterday we held a memorial service in her memory, and during the worship time we had, we sang “Desert Song” by Hillsong (lead vocals by Brooke Fraser and Jill McLoghry). I wanted to put the song up here because it spoke to me so clearly:

This is my prayer in the desert
When all that’s within me feels dry
This is my prayer in my hunger and need
My God is the God who provides

This is my prayer in the fire
In weakness or trial or pain
There is a faith proved
Of more worth than gold
So refine me Lord through the flame

I will bring praise
I will bring praise
No weapon formed against me shall remain
I will rejoice
I will declare
God is my victory and He is here

When I did my research on “Desert Song”, I found that the singer, Jill, had lost her son Max a few weeks before she had to record the song. She went into premature labor and gave birth to him at 23 weeks old. They had only a full day with him before he went home to the LORD. Her response was to choose to worship God despite her sorrow and grief.

Thank you, Brooke Gabrielle Manahan. God used you mightily in touching so many people’s lives. And now I know that despite any circumstance, I can still worship God and praise Him.

This is my prayer in the harvest
When favour and providence flow
I know I’m filled to be emptied again
The seed I’ve received I will sow

My mom sounded alarm bells on my hair a few months ago. She told me it was getting thin on top, and my forehead looked wider and higher than it used to. (Receding hairline? NOOOOOOO!)

Since then I’ve been using a hair fall control shampoo and tonic from the dermatologist’s office. I don’t know if it’s just my imagination or if my hair has really begun to regain its thickness. However, it’s also made my hair feel more coarse. Weird!

Without knowing about my hair woes, Dove one day sent me a basket of goodies from their new Dove Damage Therapy line.

1. Nourishing Oil Care Nutri-Oil Serum: improves dull and frizzy hair without lustre and shine
2. Intense Repair Daily Treatment Conditioner: a conditioner plus treatment for stronger, smoother, and softer hair
3. Intense Repair Conditioner: to be used in tandem with
4. Intense Repair Shampoo: offers 9 times less split ends in just 3 washes
5. Intense Repair Overnight Treatment: restores depleted protein, to be used at least once a week
6. 2-Step Treatment: repairs hair exposed to frequent styling
7. Intense Repair Treatment Mask: weekly treatment that reconstructs the hair’s internal structure while protecting from damaging styling habits and environmental factors

All these bottles will certainly last me a long while! I’m about to use the treatment mask, just to deep-condition my hair. I’m not sure how different the daily treatment conditioner is from the regular conditioner, and the overnight treatment sounds like it does the same thing as the treatment mask (only that one is a serum and the other is a creme).

I’ve heard good things about it from other bloggers, like Nikki Tiu and Tara Cabullo. Let’s see if what worked for them will also work for me. Meanwhile, I’ve got to get into the shower. Later!

“And when we’re 27 or 87, I want us to be able to look back on the next couple of months and talk about how it was the best time of our lives.” — Quinn Fabray, on senior year

Some people wax poetic about how wonderful high school was and how it was the best time of their lives. I say, “WHAAAAAAAAT?”

Truth be told I didn’t have an idyllic school life as far as socials are concerned. Sure I was an A student, but I also wore glasses, grew into my boobs earlier than everyone else (so therefore looked fat), and felt very much like an outsider. It didn’t help that it was a small school (around 30 students in the entire high school section from first to fourth year), so I couldn’t just go sit with the geeks and nerds at another table.

Kids can be cruel. I don’t know what it is but there is this human impulse to exclude others, even for very shallow reasons. (I was excluded from a barkada just because my initial didn’t fit their acronym. WTH.)

The best part of my high school life is that it ended, and we all grew out of our awkwardness and pettiness. I’m actually great friends with people from high school now. But that’s because we’re different people now from who we were back then.

However, I’ve encountered people who live as if they’re still stuck in high school, forming cliques and gossiping about those who aren’t part of their in-crowd. It’s tough having gone through that once and to have to deal with it again since it brings back unpleasant memories and feelings of inadequacy.

And then I snap out of it because I realize I’m no longer in high school and I don’t have to stick around and deal with that sort of thing.

I’m going off to hang out with the geeks and nerds now.

In 2008, I had the pleasure of meeting a yoga teacher named Sherie Dyer. She had packed up her life and moved to the Philippines to help start a Bikram yoga studio, and at the time I interviewed her for the following article (that never made it to print) she believed she had settled in the Philippines for good.

Sadly it was not to be; she’d spent years traveling as a yoga teacher and student previously and I guess she just got itchy feet! Last I heard of her (she deleted her Facebook account), she was teaching Bikram yoga at a Pittsburgh studio, although she’s no longer on the website’s teacher list.

I recently remembered this article existed, and I’d like to share it with you.

(The following was written September 14, 2008.)

—

Yoga teacher Sherie Dyer fearlessly lives and breathes her chosen vocation in this country she’s adopted as her own.

It’s 5:25pm, shortly before the start of a yoga class at the Sundar Bikram Yoga studio in Greenhills. Students old and new talk in muted tones as they set up their mats and towels inside the heated room. They pause in anticipation of the teacher’s arrival. They know she’s coming by the sound of her voice steadily getting louder as she approaches the doorway.

In strides the teacher, and for a moment it seems she’s in the wrong place, like she would fit in better at a rock concert. Full-sleeve tattoos, a multitude of piercings, and a personality that’s bigger than her five-foot nine-point-five-inch body make her the antithesis of a stereotypical yoga teacher. But a yoga teacher is exactly who Sherie Dyer is.

“The stereotype is a small man in white loose pants and a beaded shirt,” she shares. “I bust that stereotype every day just being who I am.”

She’s a vegetarian, but takes time to cook delicious meat dishes for friends. She listens to loud rock music (her Myspace page lists musicians from the punk rock White Stripes to alternative rock superstars Radiohead), but quiets her mind with a steady diet of yoga. Who Sherie is can be a fascinating mix between what we often think are polar opposites.

Getting past the initial shock of how Sherie looks, one can see her deep understanding of how to coach her students through the 26 postures and two breathing exercises done in a heated room that make up Bikram’s beginner yoga class. Today, she takes time to explain how to constrict a muscle in the back of the throat so one can take deeper breaths. In the middle of class she stops to demonstrate the stages between Tree Pose to Toe Stand.

However she never allows the students to take it too seriously. She defuses tension and wakes up a sleepy class by poking good-natured fun at the students. One student has gained the moniker “Rainbow Butt” because she wears a rainbow-colored bikini bottom to class.  Today, a group of ladies Sherie has nicknamed the “Spunky Chipmunks” are raring to get into and out of each posture quickly.  “Don’t look so sad,” she tells today’s class as they come out of a difficult posture. “I know why you’re here so early. You’ve got plans tonight.”

Sherie has the confidence of someone completely at home in her element.  Not bad for an American who came to the Philippines little more than a year ago not knowing what to expect.

It didn’t take much persuasion from studio director Al Galang to get Sherie to become the head teacher of the Bikram Yoga Greenhills studio, which opened in November 2007. They had met and bonded during the nine-week teacher training in 2006 in Los Angeles, California, and had kept in touch afterwards over Myspace, a social networking website.

Sherie calls him her best friend, and recounts, “He emailed me and said, ‘I’m not running a business. I want to create something special here and you’re my first choice, please come out here and do this with me.’ I said, ‘Of course. Philippines – where is that?’”

Despite not knowing anything about the Philippines except that it was where Al came from, she got on a plane and never looked back. She now oversees Al and two other teachers at the studio, Thai import Betty Khumtong and homegrown talent Ginger Diaz.

“I had a reputation for being the renegade teacher, brought in to shake things up a bit, maybe scare people into shape,” Sherie says of her previous teaching experience, and she hasn’t eased up since she’s been here. She has regular meetings with the teachers to assess how they can all improve, and she practices three to four hours daily with them. “How can you teach if you don’t practice?” she explains.

Al is a firm believer in Sherie’s ability as head teacher. “When it comes to understanding the body, how to guide so many lost bodies at the same time, I couldn’t find a better teacher to teach students and teachers.” He affirms, “She has the best understanding of yoga among us.”

That comes from Sherie’s 16 years of yoga practice, a year spent in Bangalore, India studying raja, hatha, and bhakti yoga, and yearly intensive training with international yoga competition champions where she hones her form and technical mastery of postures. She says, “I started yoga when I was 14 [years old] to get out of a knee surgery.” The more she practiced, the more she wanted to know. “I’ve tried other forms of yoga. I like the discipline [of Bikram yoga]. And the postures are always the same, it’s how your body feels in them that changes. You keep learning about yourself.”

Sherie is not just a devoted student of yoga, but also a skilled teacher, using six years of medical school and her knowledge of body mapping (a way of looking at people’s bodies, which she learned in India) to help her perceive more about her students. “You’re telling a story about yourself,” she says to them. For example: “If a girl’s shoulders are hunched forward and she has big breasts, you know she has insecurities about her appearance.” How her students react to the challenges of the postures tells her when she can push them harder, and when to back off.

“You never know,” Sherie explains about trying to see deeper into a student’s mind. “What if that person’s grandmother just died?” Though she can be outspoken and “VERY honest” (her own emphasis), Sherie is always understanding of where people are in their lives.

Her students appreciate the way she teaches. Elizabeth Lacson, a regular student at the studio who practices alongside her husband Ricky, says, “Sherie is a gem, an endless source of inspiration.”

Ricky adds, “Sherie comes across to some as the ‘Hitler of the Hot Room,’ but that’s only because she sincerely wants to help each one of us become better at our practice. Her genuine concern stems from her passion for yoga, and her desire to share it with others.”

Yoga definitely is Sherie’s passion. Sherie says, “What yoga means to me is to be present — at all times at this point I focus on being present. This may be the breath, the posture, the person in front of me, perhaps their life and their pain. Only once we are truly present are we open to things like love, growth, relief, healing, change — and all the truth you can handle.”

After one year of teaching and practicing in the Philippines, Sherie is looking forward to helping the local yoga scene grow. Establishing a national yoga competition here is one of her goals, so the Philippines can participate in the Bishnu Ghosh Cup – the “Olympics of yoga.”  Barring that, she offers to compete for the country. “I’ll go compete somewhere, Bangkok maybe, just to make sure the Philippines is represented.”

Sherie and Al have also signed with Adidas as sports ambassadors, doing yoga demonstrations for the sportswear giant.  “They want to show off their clothes and promote yoga for athletes,” Sherie says. “We show what you can do with yoga. People see the poses, go home and try them.” She adds, tongue-in-cheek,”They fall out of the poses. Then they come take class with us.”

With a teacher like Sherie, that class will always be delivered with wisdom, self-awareness, and lots of humor.

So, the weekend I’m out of the country enjoying myself in Malaysia, a typhoon devastates Cagayan de Oro and other provinces. I was on BlackBerry Unlimited services with DiGi, a Malaysian provider, so I was able to read Twitter and keep up with the news. It didn’t quite hit home, though, until my friend Joel sent us some pictures over BBM.

I met Joel many years ago in Boracay. We go to the same church and are part of the same triathlon team, and I consider him one of the most level-headed sane guy friends a girl can ever find. He got married last year, and he and his wife Audrey relocated to CDO with her daughter, Nicole. According to Joel, there were so many business opportunites to be had in CDO and he was really excited to build a life there. They had just welcomed a baby daughter, Sandy, to their family a few weeks ago.

And then, Typhoon Sendong came.

Joel, Audrey, Nicole, and Sandy are fine, but the home they had so carefully made for themselves was brutally devastated in just a few hours of rain. And they’re not alone; many other CDO, Iligan, and Zamboanga residents escaped with just their lives — and some didn’t.

My friends and tri team are extending help to Joel and his family, but there is so much more to be done for others as well. If you’re still wondering how you can help, the Philippine Red Cross is accepting donations. You can also use your cellphone’s prepaid load or postpaid credit to send a donation. Text RED <AMOUNT> to 2899 (Globe) or 4143 (Smart). Denominations are 5/25/50/100/300/500/1000. You can also drop off donations in kind at any LBC branch nationwide. What people reallyneed now is clean drinking water.

Check out SendongRelief.org for more ways you can help. Natural disasters come at any time of the year, but this season is supposed to be a time of celebrating with loved ones and remembering that Christ was born to lay down his life for us. Let’s lay down our materialistic desires and donate now to save others’ lives.