About

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Before

I had a plan for everything. Then motherhood arrived and changed the question entirely.

I used to have a plan for everything.

Career mapped out. Identity clear. Next steps accounted for. I spent five years as a financial

representative – client-facing, demanding, financially rewarding.

And quietly, persistently, empty.

I could do the work. I showed up every day. But if you had asked me to do it for free, I wouldn’t have.

And somewhere in that answer lived a truth I was too busy to face.

I told myself I would figure out what I really wanted eventually…

Then my daughter arrived in 2023.

And eventually ran out of time to wait.

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The Unraveling

When motherhood dissolved everything I thought I knew about myself — and I was navigating it alone.

Postpartum didn’t just change my schedule. It changed me.

The confidence, the clarity, the routines I had relied on — all of it dissolved quietly. My body felt unfamiliar. My identity felt blurry. The future I had always assumed was waiting for me felt like it had quietly closed its door.

And I was navigating all of it alone.

My husband was overseas. It was just me and my daughter — her needs, my healing, our quiet little world of two. There was no one to hand her to when I needed five minutes. No one noticed I hadn’t eaten a warm meal in three days. No one to ask if I was okay.

And the worst part was, I thought something was wrong with me.

I didn’t know that what I was feeling had a name. That it was not a personal failure. That it was not weakness or ingratitude or bad mothering.

It was matrescence, one of the most profound transitions a human being can go through. It can last years. And it is supposed to feel exactly like this.

Nobody told me that.

So I did what most of us do when we think we are the problem.

I tried harder.

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The Striving

I tried everything. Every attempt failed. Not because I was weak, but because none of it was built for the mom I was becoming.

I tried everything. Not all at once — but one attempt at a time, each one teaching me something the next one needed.

For my body — I thought about calorie counting. Intermittent fasting. Getting back to exercise as soon as possible. But I was breastfeeding. And my daughter’s nutrition came first. Every plan collapsed against that one non-negotiable reality.

For my inner world — I tried learning my way out of the fog. Journaling. Online courses. Articles. Podcasts. More content, more information, more input. Until I realized I wasn’t lacking knowledge. I was living in the knowing-doing gap — that space between what I knew would help and what I could actually keep. More learning was just a beautiful way of staying stuck.

For my sense of connection, I joined online communities. Wellness spaces. Entrepreneur circles. All of them good. None of them is quite right. I kept looking for a space that held all of it together — wellness, growth, purpose, the specific disorientation of being a mom in the middle of matrescence — and couldn’t find it.

Every attempt taught me something. But none of them gave me what I was actually looking for.

I just didn’t know yet what that was.

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The Turning Point:

Past midnight, a notebook, and one question that changed everything.

Then one night past midnight — when my daughter was finally sound asleep, and I couldn’t bring myself to sleep — I opened a notebook.

I gave my thoughts somewhere to go.

And somewhere in those pages, something quietly shifted.

I stopped trying to figure out what was wrong with me.

And started wondering — what if nothing is?

What if I was never the problem?

That question led to better ones.

What would I do even if no one paid me? What would I do even if no one clapped?

The answer came slowly. Through weeks of introspection and long, quiet days that were just me, my daughter, and the hum of our little world.

It came in the shape of a word.

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Ginhawa

The word that was always there — I just finally remembered it.

A Filipino word for breath, ease, relief — the feeling of exhaling after holding it together for too long.

The matatanda had been living it all along. The herb baths. The hilot. The mainit na sabaw. The ten days of rest. The insistence on warmth and stillness and being looked after.

They never called it wellness. They just called it alaga.

And the feeling that came from being cared for that way — maginhawa ang katawan, maginhawa ang loob — that was ginhawa. That had always been ginhawa.

I just needed to find my way back to it.

So I began building small rituals of alaga around the same three things the matatanda had always tended to without ever needing to name them:

🌿 Alaga sa Katawan — small rituals of alaga for the body that carries you ✨ Alaga sa Diwa — small rituals of alaga for the inner self that is still becoming 🌸 Alaga sa Kapwa — small rituals of alaga for the connections that heal you

This is not the wellness of biohacking or optimization or transformation reels.

This is wellness rooted in alaga. In the matatanda’s wisdom. In the understanding that you were never meant to fix yourself — only to tend to yourself, gently, again and again.

And slowly — not dramatically, not perfectly — something shifted.

Not productivity. Not a before and after. Just a quiet, steady feeling of being okay.

Of being, finally, a little more ginhawa than the day before.

That is ginhawa.

And that is what Daily Ginhawa is built around.

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Now

I am writing these letters from Italy, still becoming, just a few steps ahead on the same path you are on.

In June 2025, my daughter and I flew to Italy to finally be with my husband.

I am writing these letters from here now, from a life that looks very different from those early postpartum days alone at home.

But I want you to know something important.

I am still in matrescence. Still becoming. Still, some days, not fully recognizing the woman in the mirror.

I am not writing to you from the other side of a finished transformation.

I am writing from a few steps ahead on the same path you are on.

And that is exactly why I can say with my whole heart — what you are feeling makes complete sense. You are not broken. Small rituals of alaga work when the impressive programs don’t.

I built Daily Ginhawa alone, in the middle of my hardest season, with nothing but a journal and a quiet decision to give myself alaga.

You don’t need more than that either.

Because the dream I filed away for five years — to teach, to share, to reach through a screen and say I have been where you are, here is what I found — this is how it came true.

One small ritual at a time.

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If This Feels Familiar

You don’t need a finished version of yourself to begin. You just need one small ritual of alaga to come back to.

You don’t need to have it figured out.

You don’t need a plan. You don’t need to be ready. You don’t need a support system or a perfect morning or a husband who is home.

You just need one small ritual of alaga to come back to. Again and again. On good days and hard ones.

If your body feels heaviest — start with Alaga sa Katawan. If your inner world feels unclear — start with Alaga sa Diwa. If you feel disconnected and alone — start with Alaga sa Kapwa.

One root. One small ritual of alaga. That is enough.

That is where we begin.

With love,

Kristen

Writing to you from Italy, wherever you are reading this, I’m glad you found your way here. 🤍

Let’s be friends on Instagram: @kristencatapang →