Softness as a Steel

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Taught to carry on

Always carry on

Rest is for the weak

Giving up is for those who have no backbone

So you bend forward 

Touch the floor with your forehead 

to please

Then bend inward

Crushing your heart 

Stiffling your soul 

Because what you needed was inconsequential 

You did this for years 

Mastered the game for others

Alienating all the versions of you

Until you walked through a long winded hallway

And a mirror reflected a version of you 

So mangled 

You do not recognize the eyes that stared back at you

You

But not really 

It’s all of them 

For them 

Always for them

In a spark of revolution 

An insurmountable repulsion

You spat at the reflection

Anger needed to be released

To give space to something else

Pieces fell down

The crashing sound was not that scary after all

Anger and shattered glass felt right

Tiptoeing on the shards 

To collect or to throw

You picked up a piece that once reflected your face 

Freckles and paleness

A beautiful conundrum of acceptance and othering 

One 

Another angular piece reflecting you wavy hair

Once tamed by chemicals to be accepted as beautiful now carries stories of women who lived before you

Untamable and resourceful

Two

This shard was tiny

But her eyes were mad

She was forgotten but now clearly reflected

She stared back and demanded to be recognized

You picked that tiny piece 

And slowly gathered 

Them

They

Because all the shards were all yours 

You decide which ones take the center of the mosaic

Not them

You

You decided 

You

And when the mosaic held

Your fingerprints across every shard

Your ancestors hummed in the quiet

Not with pride

But with recognition

Because you had done

What they were never allowed to do

You chose the pieces

You chose the shape

You chose the life

Softness intact

Steel awakened

You, whole

At last.

***

I caught myself writing poetry again.

The kind that never rhymes,

the kind that makes me wonder if it’s even poetry at all.

But maybe poetry isn’t about rhyme — maybe it’s about truth breaking loose in whatever shape it needs.

So here is one of those pieces.

One that arrived uninvited, but insisted on being written.

In the middle of the chaos, at a hospital reception hall.

When the Pebble Finally Hit the Water

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My book, A Pebble Cast in the Nordic Sea, is out in the world.

It feels unreal to say that sentence. Writing a book was one thing–living with it, doubting it, accepting it– but releasing it? That’s a different kind of vulnerability. It’s baring your soul to people who you might have only seen the performative version of you. It’s letting people you might have held less than 5-minute conversations to see the unglamorous version of you for the goal of owning your voice and to be a possible anchor for someone who might be feeling alone and see a mirror in the pages. It’s not mine anymore; it now belongs to the world.

It’s a mix of pride and peace with a thin thread of fear woven in. Pride, because this story carries my voice and the voices of women who had been silenced too long. Peace, because I finally let go. And fear, because releasing truth– especially lived truth–is never neat.

When I hold the printed pages now, I don’t see perfection. Oh, it is far from perfect. But there is stillness. I know the indecisiveness in certain parts and pages, but I can also remember how rebellion and the sheer audacity to dare won.

This memoir is not just mine–it’s a collective exhale. It is for the woman who left home and found both freedom, loneliness, to belong and be othered at the same time in another country. It’s for the woman who questions the rules she was told to obey. It’s for anyone who has ever stood at the edge of the unknown with shaking hands, steady eyes, and decided to leap anyway.

I wrote this hoping that someone, somewhere, will pick it up and feel less alone. That they’ll recognize themselves in the pages and think, maybe I was brave in ways the world didn’t see.

I’ve learned that once you release something honest, it no longer belongs only to you. It is now for everyone who finds a fragment of themselves inside it. And that in itself is beautiful. The real ripple–and I’m grateful it has begun.

Therese Marie Baba Christensen

To My Daughter, If Ever One Day

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By Therese Christensen

There was a time in my life when I worked in the field, supporting women who had survived violence. Some days were heavier than others—days when I’d find myself sitting alone in a café, trying to process what I had witnessed, feeling like the weight of their stories had followed me home.

Sometimes, I escaped into romance novels. I bought nearly a thousand Kindle books. It was a safe kind of escape—where endings were predictable, where love was uncomplicated, where everything turned out okay.

But there were days when even fiction couldn’t hold me. Days when the pain I carried wasn’t mine to tell, but still needed a place to go. I was bound by tavshedspligt—a confidentiality agreement—so I couldn’t speak the stories. I wrote instead.

I remember typing these words into the Notes app on my MacBook. At first, I thought I was writing to a future daughter. But really, I think I was writing to the women I had sat with—the girls they once were—before the harm, before the silence.

Maybe I just wanted someone, anyone, to whisper in their ear: You are enough.

🌿 A Note in Retrospect

Reading this again, years later, I notice lines that don’t sit quite right with me now. For instance, the phrase: “If he chooses you as a partner…” feels off. It implies that the woman is waiting to be chosen like her worth depends on someone else’s validation. And that’s not what I believe.

The truth is, I have always believed in a woman’s agency. That has never changed.

But when I wrote this, I was echoing the voices of women in survival mode. So many of them told me they felt lucky just to be the chosen girlfriend or wife. That kind of language can be painful to hear but it’s real. And when someone is in survival mode, logic doesn’t always reach them. What does is compassion. Understanding. A hand extended, not a lecture.

This poem wasn’t meant to be perfect. It was meant to be safe. A quiet offering to women who hadn’t yet remembered their own power– but who were always worthy of it.

To My Daughter, If Ever One Day

Baby,
I know you love him
but never make him your world.

I know you just want to be a good wife,
but never at the expense of forgetting your worth.

I know you value his input,
but never doubt your own capabilities.

I know you’re being understanding of his work,
but don’t forget—you have a life to live too.

You are his equal.
If he chooses you as a partner,
he should see you as one.

Pamper him if you must,
but know the difference between caring for a man
and raising one.

You are not his mother.
You are his wife.

There are things you cannot change about him.
Some lessons come too late to be learned.
So choose wisely.
Take your time.

Know him.
Know yourself.

Marriage is not a marathon.
It’s a daily commitment
to yourself,
to him,
to honoring what you’ve chosen
again, and again, and again.

But since it is a marathon,
you don’t step into it unprepared.
You train.
You rest.
You build your strength.
You know your pace.
You come into it whole
knowing you are bringing something worthy.

Because you are.
And if no one ever told you that
let this be the first time.

Closing Reflection

I wrote this from a place of both exhaustion and hope. And now, with more distance, I offer it again this time with gentleness for the women who are still finding their voices, and for those of us who are still unlearning what we were taught about love, power, and worth.

If this speaks to you, I hope you’ll hold onto it. Share it if it feels right. Or just let it sit quietly with you for a while.

We all deserve to be reminded that we are whole.

You Haven’t Seen Me Do It Yet

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She was the version of you that was a dreamer, the one who held the magazine in her hands and asked, What do these people do? The ones who wrote poetry.

Your brother was a year older than you. When he started high school at a new school, you stayed behind to finish grade school. One day, he came home with a school magazine, excited to show you all the new things about his school. You flipped through the first few pages absentmindedly—until you reached the literary section.

That’s where it happened.

Poetry, written by students. Words arranged in a way that felt like magic. Something inside you stirred, as if a hidden part of you had been awakened. You were twelve when the voices outside no longer mattered. You had already decided—you wanted to write. There was something powerful about it, something in the way words could transform a moment, a feeling, a life. It was enough to make you forget, for a while, about wanting to be a fighter pilot.

That magazine sat in your bedroom for so long, a quiet reminder of what you loved. But then the world outside began to rattle you. You saw what everyone else was doing, weighed reality against the uncertain path of a writer. Stability was what they all chased. Nursing, they said. So you can leave the country, build a future.

But in your heart, writing pulsed louder than reason. Still, the warnings came: There’s no money in it.

Yet you were never the type to listen, were you?

Decades later, during an online writing course, you were given a task: Picture a version of yourself who could help you push past the block that felt like a boulder in your writing process. It was an interesting exercise, but you hadn’t expected the realization that followed.

The 39-year-old you needed the 12-year-old you—the girl who was so sure about writing. She might not have been confident in other things, but she knew, without a doubt, that she could write.

Then the coach asked us to name that thing, that object we envisioned—something to carry with us whenever we needed it again.

I thought for a moment before answering.

“You,” I said. “Myself. All the versions of me.”

If there’s one thing both fantastic and dangerous about you, it’s that you tend to answer doubt with a simple, unwavering:

“Well, you haven’t seen me do it yet.”

Chapter 1, Part 2: Thrown Into a New Reality

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Standing in the middle of Copenhagen Airport, I was surrounded by a flood of arriving and departing passengers. My legs were frozen, my thoughts tangled. This was the farthest I’d ever been from home, and reality was setting in: I was completely on my own.

I had just survived my first international flight, a terrifying encounter with the National Bureau of Investigation, and the silent anxiety of pretending I had it all together. But now, the adrenaline was wearing off. The signs were in Danish. The people looked nothing like me. The air smelled different. Everything felt foreign.

My undiagnosed Autistic ADHD kicked in full force. The chaos of noise—announcements, luggage wheels, people rushing past—overwhelmed my senses. I didn’t know what a meltdown was back then, but I remember the symptoms clearly: dizziness, cold sweats, a racing heart. It was the same feeling I would later recognize as a panic attack.

But in that moment, I did what I had always done—I masked. I smiled and kept moving, even though I could barely read the signs.

There was something about how the air hit my face that morning—crisp, sharp, unfamiliar. The colors were different too. Cooler tones. Harsher light.

I wasn’t looking for anything familiar. I was too caught up in the difference—the way everything looked, sounded, even smelled. Strangely, the unfamiliarity soothed me. It felt like stepping into a world that didn’t expect me to belong, and for the first time, that felt like a kind of safety.

“Therese, what have you gotten yourself into?” I remember thinking.

Just then, like a beacon of light, I spotted a young man in a green shirt that read “ASK ME.”
I walked straight to him and asked how to get to my terminal for the domestic flight to Karup.

He kindly explained that I needed to take the free shuttle to Terminal 2, pointing outside.
“Across the street,” he said.

Still high from anxiety and confusion, I asked—very seriously—“Wouldn’t it be better if I just take a cab?”

He laughed. Gently. Not mean, just amused.

I took that laugh in both ways—with curiosity and confusion. Was there something I wasn’t seeing? Was I missing something crucial? I wasn’t angry, just uncertain.

That moment was my first taste of cultural difference, though I wouldn’t fully understand it until much later. I didn’t know then that Denmark is one of the most expensive countries in the world to take a taxi. That laugh wasn’t mocking, but it left me wondering what rules I hadn’t yet learned.

So I thanked him and stepped out of the terminal. The sunlight was bright, but not warm. It had a bite to it. Across the street, I spotted the shuttle stop—a small, glass-covered waiting area. Nothing fancy, just functional.

I stood there alone, soaking it all in. The quiet was surreal. No honking horns, no shouting vendors, no traffic rumbling in the background. Just stillness. A kind of silence that felt both comforting and intimidating. The air was clean, the surroundings orderly—so different from what I was used to. In that stillness, my thoughts felt louder, like they had nowhere to hide.

And then, right there, my suitcase betrayed me.

It popped open with a soft but very public thud, spilling out the organized chaos I had packed just days before—jeans, a sweater, my four pocketbooks (painstakingly chosen because of the limited space), and a folder containing my au pair contract.

My life scattered in front of the Hilton hotel entrance like an accidental overshare.

The bus driver gave me a look that felt like a ticking clock. I scrambled to gather everything.

This wasn’t home anymore.

I shoved the zipper closed and dragged my suitcase onto the shuttle. The seats were clean and stiff, and the windows offered a surreal view of manicured streets and pristine sidewalks.

As the shuttle pulled away, I looked out the window and took my first real breath since landing.

I whispered to myself, You did it.
Even though everything in me was saying, You have no idea what you’re doing.

When we arrived at Terminal 1, I reminded myself to act like I knew where I was going, that I belonged here, that this wasn’t my first rodeo. I repeated the mantra my best friend from high school used to say: “You gotta fake it until you make it.”

I followed the signs with my head up, shoulders back, trying to carry myself like someone who belonged—even if, inside, I was unraveling.

I remember thinking:
No one here knows me.
No one knows my name.
No one knows what I left behind.
No one knows what I’m afraid of.

And for the first time in my life,
I was truly alone.

But also—for the first time,
I was free.

It was the kind of freedom you feel right before you rappel down a cliff—feet on the edge, rope in hand, suspended between trust and terror.

💬 Coming next: Meeting my host family, the open-faced sandwich surprise, and learning what it really means to “start over.”

💙 Have you ever felt completely out of place but knew you had to keep going? I’d love to hear your story in the comments.

Foreword: Stories Had to Start Somewhere

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In 2008, a young woman of twenty-two years old dared to take the adventure of a lifetime. She left her country and ventured into something new. She was the first from her family to leave the safety of home. She relinquished connections and stability to test her boundaries and see how much further she could go until she broke. Armed with two pieces of luggage—one with her clothes and everything she thought she would need for eighteen months, and the other filled with idealism and naivety, wrapped in a sparkling smile and enthusiasm—she was ready to embrace everything new.

It was monumental.
It was freedom.
It was heartbreak, but it was also an awakening.

I always toyed with the idea of writing about my experience as a young Filipina migrant woman in Denmark. There are so many things I want to share. But I always decided against it because I thought it was too egotistical to write about oneself. I always had this little voice in my head questioning my own experience. How can I have the audacity to think that my experience is so unique that people would actually want to read my story? There are a million Filipino migrant women in the world—so why my story? This bugged me for years.

But then I realized—it was not about me. It was about the chance I was given to be in the middle of so many different lives, witnessing struggles and hurts that all mirrored one another. I was simply there, observing, feeling, and penning them. I could flesh out the experiences through my words and allow the pain and the struggle to be exposed for what they are, without glossing over the authenticity of a migrant’s experience. To open wounds so they wouldn’t fester on the inside. And to let my story speak for the ones who have been silent for too long.

Stories were written about us—we listened to what was told about us. But now, it’s time to reclaim the narrative, to tell the story from our own lenses and experience. Our stories. Our voices.

We are often seen as “the good” migrant community. Sometimes, we don’t want to challenge that perception because the consequences can be severe for those living abroad, supporting families back home. These consequences range from the instability of one’s right to stay in the country to the fear of losing one’s child after leaving an abusive relationship. There is the fear of being ostracized by the Filipino community for not fitting into the mold of the “good Filipina woman,” even from a continent away. And then there’s the looming fear of the hunger the family left behind might have to face at home.

She—the migrant woman—already juggles multiple identities: a good migrant, a woman, a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a survivor, an adventurer, liberated and shackled all at once. She has to play all these roles flawlessly, but who taught her that these are the rules?

We were taught to play by the rules.
We were taught to always obey authority.
We played by the rules, we obeyed authority, but we forgot that the game had changed.
The rules we learned didn’t apply to our current situation, and the authority we were told to respect crossed our boundaries. They took our “no’s” as “yes,” and our silence as acceptance and submission.

Yet, we still want to be the “good migrant.” The woman who gives her warmth and smile. But sometimes you can still be a “good migrant” who smiles—a smile wrapped with a meaningful “fuck you” to whoever thought of you as nothing more than a doormat.

They said I had good material to write a book. That my collated experience as a migrant woman working for migrant women would be enough to break the silence. But then I paused.

Silence.
Writing.
Thoughts in images flashed before my eyes so fast, like 200 km/h. Each frame a story demanding to be told.

Can I really do justice to their stories? Will my writing be good enough for even a slight change? In the safety of my own home, where I hug my boys to sleep each night and share a warm blanket with my husband, there is a fight. A fight beyond me, beyond my fears. A fight that I still burn for—a battle raging against patriarchy.

The current political climate in Denmark tends to erase the existence of these migrant women in subtle ways, smothering them into silence with policies that leave them vulnerable. Their narratives are wiped out, their experiences invalidated, as their silent cries are ignored.

I was at a conference in Cairo, talking to someone about our advocacy. He told me that he fully understood he wouldn’t see the impact of his work in his lifetime.

I replied,
“We are but a pebble—I’m not naïve to not consider that—but I believe in the ripple.”

This book is my pebble.
I’m casting it into the cold, still waters of the Nordic Sea, hoping for a ripple wide enough to shake the silence.

Chapter 1, Part 1: Young Idealist – The Beginning of a Journey

I was rocking my white ribbed tank top, blue low-rise jeans, a pair of brown suede boots, and a brown furry factory-defect Abercrombie and Fitch jacket. It was the most outrageous outfit to wear for an early summer morning in July 2008. But there I was, stepping onto Danish soil for the first time at Copenhagen International Airport—excited, nervous, and completely unaware of the whirlwind that lay ahead.

Inside my backpack was my passport, freshly stamped with a tourist visa for Denmark. But I wasn’t here to be a tourist. I was about to start a new life as an au pair for a Danish family in Jutland.

Getting here hadn’t been easy. Securing an au pair visa required navigating layers of bureaucracy back home in the Philippines. But the real adventure began long before I even boarded the plane.

I had been singled out by an agent from the National Bureau of Investigation during random checks for departing passengers at the airport. There were long lines of travelers queuing for early baggage drop-off, and as I stood there waiting, the agent spotted me.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Denmark,” I replied.

“Traveling as a tourist?”

“Yes,” I added, keeping my face neutral.

He nodded, then motioned for me to follow him to their office. That was the moment my fate for the day became uncertain.

Coming Next: Chapter 1, Part 2: Thrown Into a New Reality

My arrival in Denmark, navigating a foreign airport, and the moment I realized I was truly alone for the first time.

💬 Have you ever faced an unexpected obstacle just before a big life change? Share in the comments.

A Pebble Cast in the Nordic Sea – A Chronicle of Change

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This is a chronicle of change. A journey from one life to another, from familiar ground to uncertain paths. Some of these stories are mine. Some belong to the incredible women I have met—women whose names are not written here, but whose experiences have left a deep imprint on my life.

Each encounter has shaped the way I see the world:

The courage to leave everything behind.
The struggles and beauty of a new life.
The silent yet profound lessons I have learned from the strength of others.

This space is where I gather those moments—stories of leaving, of finding, of rebuilding. This is my attempt to make sense of it all, and perhaps, to find connection along the way.

💬 Join me. Read, share, and let’s start a conversation. What does resilience mean to you? Drop a comment—I’d love to hear your thoughts.

📌 Stay tuned for the first chapter, coming soon!

Resilience

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She Had Pink Hair and a Pink Sweater

She was around nine or ten when she approached me with a shy smile.

“Frederik speaks very good English for his age,” she said. “I’ve been around, heard him a couple of times, and I thought to myself, he’s really good.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You see, Frederik’s mother tongue is English.”

“Oh, that’s cool. Very cool.” She nodded.

I started walking, preoccupied with a lingering thought—had I set my parking timer? But then, from the corner of my eye, I noticed a pink jacket following me.

“I’m normally close to smaller kids because they ask for my help when someone bullies them, you know. I fight for them. And then the bullying stops. I’m good at fighting. Because when I was doing karate, I was bullied too.”

I stopped walking. I gave her my full attention. She smiled, and it broke my heart.

“Bullying someone is really not okay,” I said softly. “I’m sorry. What happened?”

She zipped and unzipped her pink jacket. Up and down. Up and down.

“They called me ‘gay’ and said I was ‘weird.’ They called me names, and it hurt, you know. I wasn’t really happy after that, so I left the club. I’m okay now. I’m alone sometimes, but I’m okay. I just walk around here during breaks.”

“Do you have friends here at school?” The mother in me was worried.

“I have a best friend. But when she’s not around, I just walk around alone.”

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out her magnetic marbles and offered them to Frederik. “Do you want to feel them?”

I stopped walking. She stopped at the same time.

I looked at her and said, “There is nothing wrong with being gay, you know. You get me? Nothing wrong.”

I received the most priceless smile—one that reached her eyes.

This small, innocent conversation with this little pink-haired protector of smaller humans now sits in the top five most genuine and insightful conversations I have ever had.

The stoned man on my street and the man who wore Tommy Hilfiger shirts and Nike shoes

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Life is still beautiful and I dare to live it

(This was an article/ piece I wrote nearly two years ago for MeToo)

I have weighed the consequences of writing this piece and how this will be taken by society with the current war on drugs in my country. There has been an on-going war targeting the drug addicts because they will eventually turn into the monsters that will rape you, rape your sister, your mother, your daughter. There is a prevalent “take the offensive rather than be sorry” sentiment. I have heard it, I’ve seen the news feed on some of my Facebook friends’ walls, and I am there, lost as to how we can be so easily fueled by fear because of the political spinners. We forget that there are monsters scarier that the ones high on drugs. There are scarier monsters lurking in their branded Tommy Hilfiger shirts and Nike Airs.

I was around 6 or 7 years-old when my Mom and aunt warned me to be home before sundown because there was a drug addict near our place sitting on an empty lot. A scary man who was always stoned and stared blankly. We normally passed him in the morning on my way to school and in the afternoon after school. Same spot, same oblivious, empty look. They told me he was a scary man, a crazy man. Stay away from him. So I stayed away from him. When walking on that road growing up, I made sure to cross the other street to avoid him. I associated scary and crazy with his red eyes and tattered clothes. Looking back, I think I made a total disservice to the rest of the respectable people who have no means to buy new clothes and are easily dismissed by society as the scary ones to be watched-out for.

Then, college came. No one told me to be careful of this other type. I was never ready for the monster who wore Tommy Hilfiger shirts and Air Jordans. He didn’t fit the bill. He flew right through my radar. My mom and aunt never warned me of his type. I was conditioned to protect myself when it came to the stoned man on my street, but had my guard down when I met the man with branded clothes. He was good looking, in the same college as I was so he can’t be bad right?Wrong.

The social consensus on what a rapist looks like and who the rapists are, had me doubting myself whether I was raped or not. There were doubts in my head, but there were also certain things that I was sure of when the raped happened.

I can close my eyes now after nearly 13 years and can still see that day vividly, where the younger version of me physically kept stopping him from touching me, yet where he repeatedly forced his way on me. I can clearly see me on the bed staring straight right through the ceiling with no eye contact whatsoever with him. I remember the feeling of being trapped, caged and not knowing where to go. So I allowed my mind to float. There was that moment of fight, flight and froze in me, a moment wherein I questioned his ownership of my body, who would believe me, the one who cried rape. All these thoughts capsuled in a minute or two.

I remember my white cotton underwear, with strawberry glitter print on the floor.

Innocence, taken from me without my consent.

I remember my white vest, long sleeves shirt and cargo pants. Those were not sexy clothes, as was/is commonly understood, but it happened. The rape happened.

In my current line of work assisting young women in Denmark as Au Pairs and women who are exposed to violence doing workshops on sexual consent, it is often that I encounter comments from the group, e.g. “If only she wore decent clothes she would never have been raped”. Or another: “If she stayed out of that alley and went home early she would have been safe”.

These comments are reflective of how rape culture is in our society. When the president of the country passes rape as a joke, be it Duterte or Trump, how do you expect society to behave?

Rape is seen as trivial. A side note. Women who went through the incident are seen as just too liberated for their own good.

“She should have stayed home”.

“See what happens when you don’t wear decent clothes?”.

I don’t blame them, but I now have the means to facilitate change and make them understand their tolerance towards something that should never be tolerated in the first place.

Society prompts us to not get raped, instead of stop raping. But there is a shift with men taking part in the dialogue of ending violence against women. There are survivors standing up, doing something remarkable. Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault against 31 women sparked a campaign called #MeToo. Social media erupted with #MeToo everywhere. Eleven countries and around and 4.7 million people used this hashtag in social media.

There are those who criticize the campaign as just public outrage without political backing, which will eventually die down.

I take a more positive outlook on this; I believe that when society as a whole takes this as a problem, without pitting women against men, something will happen. It slowly is happening with men doing #HowWillIChangeThis.

There was that sense of euphoria-healing when I slowly typed the word #MeToo on my Facebook wall. It was powerful to feel how it was to take back something that was forcefully, without regard, taken away from you by someone you trusted.

Thirteen years. That was how long it took for me to share my voice, which made me reflect on the women I came across in the project with #DannerDK who are not ready to come out from their abusive relationships.

Not because they want to stay, but because they are trapped.

Typing #MeToo was more than a hashtag for them. It was risky. It meant life and death for them, losing their children, risking their visas, shamed, devalued as a woman.

Theirs are the voices I still worry about. Theirs are the voices that the ones who were able to type #MeToo need to empower.

So that one day, in their own time, they can finally say #MeToo, then add #NoWomanLeftBehind.