#astigirl

[michido]

#23yearsofmarriage #asti #astiboy #astigirl #inthegarden #garden 😊❤️🍾 (at Planet Earth)

[michellebanayo]

(via Learn From the Astigirl Tweet Sering)

Tweet Sering was open and honest enough to let her readers take a peek at her life and I couldn’t thank her enough for that.  It can’t be helped but learn some wisdom when you hear another person’s story.  I wish I stumbled upon this book when I was younger.  I hope a lot of young girls will be able to read this and learn from someone who had been there and done that.  This book will make you ponder and look inside yourself.

[infaemous]

[kstwylah]

Tweet Sering's Ode to UP

"In U.P., I knew exactly who I was. And who I was in that school was someone I really liked and respected.

It seems fitting then that later on, as a wage earner assailed by self-doubt and annoying existential questions --- "is this what my life is about?", "What do I really,really want?" -- I would find reprieve in the place that first showed me my potential. Whenever the otherwise manageable undercurrent of indecision, confusion, and fear swelled into a great wave,  carrying me and then slamming me down on the shores of some desert island, I would be left with no other choice but to try to regain my bearings. During these times, I would pick myself up from my island of misery, skip work, and make my pilgrimage to U.P., as though to get in touch once again with the bold, uncompromising, spirited girl that I seemed to have left there.

It didn’t matter what I did during the visit: join the late Sunday afternoon crowd brisk walking, jogging, biking or skateboarding around the Academic Oval; share a slice of Devil’s Food Cake with an equally “lost and confused” U.P. alum friend or sibling (three younger sibs were undergrads at U.P., one took her master’s) at Chocolate Kiss Café; catch another wild performance by my never-say-die friend and iconic campus figure Romeo Lee; or just plant myself in one of the benches scattered around the campus like a village grouch, scowling at the carefree students who walked by and relishing my cynical old-timer mode as I mutter disdainfully, “Bagets.” The answers may not have come to me at that point, but always, during the course of my short visit, the school never failed to remind me of who I was and all I could be. The memories of my four fabulous years in U.P. would crowd around me like old, solid cheerleading friends recalling the moments in my college years where I was most proud of myself. And then the crippling doubts and fears would be replaced by an unshakeable confidence that, as that unofficial U.P. Humanities professor Bob Marley sagely sang, “Everything’s gonna be alright.” Relax lang, the vibe around me seemed to say. Aabot din tayo dyan. You already know you got it in you to make it.

And I would always trust that feeling. The strange, almost drug-induced powerful feeling that never once failed the past 18  years since I felt it.

Everything was gonna be alright.”

  By: Tweet Sering, "Finding my way, again and again..."

from:  “Astigirl: A grown up girl living on her own terms,” 2011

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Tweet's words describe in simple and resonating words what UP has been and will always be, for me. That is why I do not just have short visits at UP, I chose a work which locates me inside the Campus. Bound to walk, run and bike its streets, and bound to look at Oble. 

[iya-iyayow]

I wanted to do something that made me feel productive and useful, in my own terms. I wanted to do work that reflects who I am, that matters to me. One cannot afford to be genuinely altruistic—or authentically selfless—unless they first have a healthy self, to begin with—one that they nurture and protect; unless they are first, in other words, selfish. We cannot be a strong, healthy society—and we aren’t, that’s why we’re still in the Third World--unless we encourage everyone to be strong, healthy individuals.

-Tweet Sering