A Hero's Journey: Likhaan Stories Series

A new year always brings with it the promise of hope for many things?eating better, sleeping more, exercising regularly, learning something completely new?the possibilities are endless. Yet we can never disentangle ourselves from the year prior lest we take a hard look and understand why our lives were such.

As we go forward and reach for the light of change, looming large is the utter destruction wrought by Typhoon Odette coupled with the COVID-19 virus that continues to humble the world. Yet further back in time in late 2013, Typhoon Yolanda was the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall in recorded history. The stories to follow are from almost a decade ago yet I am certain that they will echo in stories we will certainly hear from Typhoon Odette survivors.

Roberta Lopez Feliciano | Managing Director, ABS-CBN Foundation

Read. Be amazed. Know that hope pulls us forward as a coven of women conjure up wondrous stories materializing the hopes and tears of gratitude born of hardship, burnished by the specter of Typhoon Yolanda. They clawed through the debris of lives in six communities and roused memories of forgotten battles, sprinkled with thorny remembrances of difficulties, of naysayers.

And to put shape and form to all this was a master wizard, Carla M. Pacis, who decided that All should undertake The Hero’s Journey. Writers and communities alike took a leap of faith into the unknown and emerged different, self-aware, more solid perhaps in their step and determination; the others finding a view of life never seen, never uttered so plainly that it changed them too.

I hope that as you step into the reality of each community, you discover, as I did, a story of hope, and love, and resurrection, and the indomitable spirit of the Filipino.

–

These links to the individual stories will go live, one at time, beginning January 21, 2022.

Click the title to read:

After the Storm

By: Chichi F. Lizot

Date Published: 01/21/22

On Their Knees

By: Erlinda Enriquez Panlilio

Date Published: 01/22/22

Far from Ordinary

By: Risa Regala-Garcia

Date Published: 01/23/22