It’s past midnight but my mind is wide awake.

My adrenaline is still up. I’m in the thick of editing work for 14 more stories for a book - an anthology of essays written by Filipina women at, or past midlife. It’s been quite a fascinating read, seeing how many others like me have successfully navigated the journey, triumphed over tragedy and loss, soared through a defining moment in their lives that changed them forever.

This morning, one of the book’s main coordinators asked me in an email (she was tasked to do the About the Editor’s page) “When did you know that you wanted to become a writer?” Her question made me stop for a moment. And then I told her that I had always wanted to become a writer for as far back as I could remember. The written word and I have carried a long-standing love affair that probably began when I was nine years old and losing myself in my books and journals.

The dream to become a writer was put on hold, I told her, to give way to my mother’s wishes that I pursue a degree in Business Management because it was what was practical and what my late father would have wanted. So off to college I went and successfully tucked up a Management degree under my belt. But writing was always there and I would do it on the side, surreptitiously. It had always been there - through my elementary, high school and college years — re-surfacing at every opportunity.

And then marriage and children came and so the writer had to give way once more to the demands of motherhood and wife-hood. However, the seeming simplicity of life was shattered when my son died in 1998. It was then, a few months later that the writer in me came alive once more.

The written word became my lifeline. A few months after Migi died, Good Housekeeping’s then Editor in-Chief, An Mercado-Alcantara, asked me to write a piece on losing a child. That piece, published in the November 1998 issue of GH was my saving grace. The story resonated in the hearts of so many mothers like myself. To this day, people come up to me and say that they cried buckets when they read my story. After the GH assignment, many other writing assignments followed. In a couple of years, I landed my dream job as reporter for the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Lifestyle section. That was followed by posts as EIC of a pioneering women’s inspirational magazine called “Me” under Mega Magazine Publishing, Inc. and then a regional post as EIC of “Health Today”. I like to say that when I lost my son, I found myself. To this day, I believe that this was Migi’s gift to me — he gave me a voice, and gave me back my sense of self.

Ten years. I look back and reflect of how and where the writing life has taken me and I cannot help but be amazed at how good God is. It is a life that has evolved, that has ebbed and flowed with the seasons of my own life.

And so today, I find myself working in a different genre — books and a column on parenting and of course, blogging. So just as a life evolves and re-invents itself, in the same way, the writing life and the writer, change. I review the last ten years and quietly wonder to myself what the next ten will bring. I’ve stopped making plans and instead I live this writing life on a day to day basis. I’ve found that I write best when I keep in God’s flow. Just as he has guided me in the last decade, I know that He will continue to guide my pen onto the next chapters of my writing life. The many gifts I have been given over the last ten years are all because of His graciousness and love. Who am I therefore, not to follow His lead?