First Birthday Reflections
September 2022
Dear Kaibigan,
The Giving Well turns one this month!! To our fellow September babies…HAPPY BIRTH MONTH AND BIRTHDAY!
A child’s first birthday for Filipinos is a momentous affair. Maybe this is the same in your culture or family? Turning one is a prestigious milestone that is envisioned and prophesied with as much zest as a 18th birthday debut or a wedding. The entire neighborhood and community of relatives, friends and coworkers are included in the celebratory affair. We have generations of rituals and superstitions that lead up to a child’s first birthday in hopes of bestowing that child with good health, prosperity and blessings before they even turn one year old. Some families have rituals post-first birthday, like waiting to cut their infant’s hair.
This cultural thoughtfulness and communal recognition over an infant’s life and wellbeing has inspired Laura and me to share our pride and celebration of The Giving Well’s first birthday with you!
If you’ve been following us from the beginning, you may remember that we dedicated The Giving Well for women and women of color with the intention to give to anyone the chance to develop their own wellness practice that integrates their cultural values. To be clear, the use of “woman” and “women” on our website and materials is meant to describe individuals who were socialized as and currently identify as women.
We publicly launched in September 2021, committed to informing you and others about the 10 dimensions that make up our wellness health, and to offering various activities for you to engage in each one. These 10 wellness dimensions are spiritual, environmental, social/relational, emotional, educational, financial, occupational, recreational, intellectual/mental, and physical.
I shared in my first four Kaibigan Letters to you – Wellness Process, Wellness through Community and Culture, Wellness Through Discovery, and Decolonization of Women – our intentions in sharing The Giving Well space and our hopes for your wellness process.
We also used, in our 2022 Wellness Workbook, the analogy of a pie being your wellness health and the 10 dimensions as slices of this pie that hold your ‘ingredients’, also known as your activities and proactive choices, that feed into your wellness to further deepen your understanding of our commitment and the concept of wellness as multi-dimensional.
One topic that keeps coming up in my conversation with Laura is the many social media posts related to hacking your life. The idea with ‘hacking’ is to increase efficiency and pursue simplicity. Yet, the hustle culture, as I mentioned in May’s kaibigan letter, make it challenging to prioritize your personal interests and separate yourself from work and other social demands.
I understand that many of us are constantly seeking a quick fix, an immediate solution, a fast change in living our lives. You may have already experienced that there is no hack when it comes to increasing your awareness about your values, interests and needs. Molding your identity and understanding yourself is a life-long, ongoing endeavor. Time and patience are essential in making meaningful changes in your lifestyle and decision-making process. Attempts to hack your self-awareness and creating change for efficiency’s sake is like swimming against the current of the water – you can end up exerting more energy without going as far as you’d hope.
The idea behind paying attention to our wellness health and actively investing in each dimension increases your self-awareness and does not include life hacks. Laura and I have intentionally asked you to question yourself and become curious about your life. The workbooks, the workshops, the meet and greets, our Pasalubong Shop, along with the journal prompts, the articles, the reflection questions, and the mindfulness activities that we leave in these letters and on each dedicated dimension page have been purposeful to encourage you to build on your self-attunement.
Kaibigan, Laura and I are very grateful to have shared The Giving Well space with you over the past 12 months. The Giving Well has an unwavering commitment, at our tender age of one, to empower, respect and honor you and all women of color.
It’s common amongst Filipinos for the birthday celebrant to treat those celebrating them. An offering of gratitude for the time together. This also means to me a sharing of personal blessings, including living through another year and embarking on a new beginning. Our treat for you as our expression of appreciation for staying connected with us is the release of the dimensions archive in phases over the next few months. Maybe you missed out on one of the 10 wellness dimensions. Perhaps a dimension wasn’t relevant for you when it was featured on our site and social media. Or you want to revisit them at your own pace.
Our pasalubong for this month is our birthday video and the archive of the four dimensions plus the ‘celebrations’ theme we explored from September 2021 – December 2021. You’ll have access to our dedicated pages and activities on Spiritual, Environmental, and Relational/Social dimensions.
To keep with our Giving Well custom, we ask you to reflect on:
Which of the dimensions have been intriguing for you?
Which ones have felt irrelevant?
Which ones have been a priority?
The importance of each dimension will change and shift for you in the upcoming months as you continue to evolve.
Which dimension(s) do you suspect will play a more significant role in your life between now and in 3 months?
In 6 months?
In 12 months?
In relation to ‘celebrations’, what can you celebrate about your life, wellness and character right now?
The archive is now available to you, and we hope you relish the time in getting to know yourself as you explore each dimension. Maraming salamat/thank you very much for supporting us. I say to you again the traditional Philippine greeting of Mabuhay!..long live. May you live with curiosity, patience, humility, and generosity for yourself and with others.
Happy beginnings,
Angel, on behalf of The Giving Well