I’ve been thinking a lot today about Punch-kun, the Japanese macaque monkey who went viral this week.
Rejected by his mother for reasons only she knows. Hand-raised by zookeepers. Given an IKEA orangutan plushy as a surrogate. People woke up crying over videos of him trying to be accepted by his troop. And honestly, I get it. I felt that immediate instinct to protect him. To scoop him up. To say, someone, please love this baby.
But I also wondered why Punch hit such a nerve.
Is it the mother-abandonment wound?
The fear of being unwanted?
The memory of being bullied, ignored, or lonely?
That feeling of pressing yourself against a stuffed animal at night because it can’t reject you, even if it can’t hug you back?
The zoo responded thoughtfully. They reminded people that while it looks painful, this is normal monkey behavior. They said:
“In order to integrate Punch into other Japanese monkey troops, we anticipated that this kind of challenge may arise… While Punch is scolded many times, no single monkey has shown serious aggression toward him. We would like you to support Punch’s effort rather than feel sorry for him.”
That line stopped me cold.
Support his effort rather than feel sorry for him.
It made me think about myself as a kid.
I was a weird kid. Awkward. Quiet (if you can believe that). A daydreamer. I drew a lot. Enjoyed my own company. Had exactly one good friend who lived across the street, and he was the kid who threw up in the cafeteria. So yes, we were both outcasts.
When he moved away, I was alone. New school. No friends. Poor social skills. Deep loneliness. I wanted connection, I just didn’t know how to get there.
In third grade, the school offered workshops, and one of them was literally called How to Make Friends. I’m 51 years old and I still remember the most important lesson from that class: Don’t be afraid to introduce yourself.
“Hi, my name is Vangie.”
That was me taking an active role in my own life. Trying. Showing up. Making an effort, even when it was uncomfortable. Even when I was scared and alone.
Eventually, I met my best friend growing up, Coleen Mande. She became one of the first members of my sacred, beloved community. She helped heal the loneliness. The feeling of being unwanted or invisible. Maybe the day those boys stole my shoes and threw them into the boys’ bathroom, she saw a little Punch who needed rescuing. (Yes, that actually happened.)
What we found was sisterhood. Support. Friendship. Community.
I wouldn’t be who I am today without her. I wouldn't be as cool. I know that. And she knows that, too.
And when I see Punch, I see myself. I see resilience. I see effort. I see someone trying to belong.
We don’t need to pity him.
We need to support his effort.
His resilience.
His mental strength.
His fortitude.
He, too, will find his beloved community.
Lenten Reflection:
“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” - John 13:34–35
Beloved community isn’t built on perfection or sameness. It’s built through effort, patience, and choosing love even when it’s awkward or slow.
Lent asks us to notice who is trying.
Who is showing up.
Who is reaching out, even when it costs them something.
This season invites us not just to feel compassion, but to practice it. Not to rescue people from discomfort, but to walk beside them as they grow.
Maybe the work isn’t to feel sorry.
Maybe the work is to support the effort.
That’s how beloved communities are made.
Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.
Today marks six years since my mother died.
“Are you happy?” I asked my mother.
“I’m happy if you’re happy,” she said.
It was one of the last fully coherent sentences she said to me. It was also what she said when I came out to her in my early twenties. Love, distilled. No theology degree. No conditions. Just love. Mothers teach us this first.
They carry us into the world, and in time, we carry them out. They feed us. They worry over us. They teach us what care looks like long before we have language for it. And even when their bodies fail, their love often remains clear. Death does not erase love. It rearranges it.
Grief becomes a kind of companionship. Love shifts from presence to memory, from voice to echo, from touch to responsibility. We live differently because they loved us.
I asked her if she was happy because I knew she was dying. I wanted to know if she felt she had lived a good life. Our relationship was complicated. Less so than my relationship with my father, but still layered. She loved me in ways that were always undeniable, even though she was a woman I didn’t fully know. What I do know is this: she lived for us. She worked hard. She sacrificed. She stayed in a marriage that betrayed her so that we would be okay. She loved him until his death, for us.
After my mother took her last breath and the funeral home took her body away, I got into a cab and went straight to the Dumaguete airport. I spent sixteen hours, which felt like a thousand, holding my grief inside my body. Holding the tears. Holding the greatest loss of my life so I could get home. Crossing oceans, continents, and time zones.
When I arrived, what followed was the deepest internal injury I’ve ever experienced. I had just spent three weeks watching the only woman I truly loved die in front of me. I came home to another bitter ending. And people wondered why I was so upset. Try not to have a complete breakdown in front of hundreds of strangers, traveling internationally, so you can get home, sleep in your own bed, and grieve your mother in a house you once shared with a woman you loved and planned a life with. Pain has a way of making reality unavoidable.
When people are given the opportunity to show kindness in the face of someone else’s suffering and instead choose cruelty, that tells you everything you need to know. As Maya Angelou said, when people show you who they are, believe them. My mother was dying and said, “I’m happy if you’re happy.” My ex waited three weeks for me to come home and then chose to tell me how much she hated me.
Both women were mothers. Only one chose love.
That contrast changed me. I could never intentionally hurt someone in that moment, knowing what I was experiencing with grief, and what it does to the body and the soul. Whatever love I had left for that woman disappeared in an instant. Not out of anger, but clarity.
Because of my mother, I know what love is supposed to feel like. And because of her, I know what love in action looks like.
And that was not it!
What hurt almost as much was realizing that some people around us couldn’t see it either. Or wouldn’t. That silence taught me something, too. Grief strips things down to their truth. It shows you who wants your healing and who can only tolerate you when you are whole, quiet, and convenient.
Be gentle with people’s hearts. The world can be unintentionally cruel, especially to the strong, quiet ones. Most people don’t know what others are carrying.
Years after my father died, when no one was controlling my mother or telling her how to live...
Me: “Are you happy?”
My mother: “I’m happy if you’re happy.”
Lenten Reflection:
Lent reminds me that life and death are not enemies. They are part of the same story. Endings make room for new beginnings, not by erasing what came before, but by carrying it forward.
May we live in ways that honor those who loved us into being.
May we care for one another as we were cared for.
May grief soften us, not harden us.
And may we trust that even in loss, love continues. “A humble and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17)
Grief does not disqualify us from love or from God. Tenderness is not something to fix. It is something to honor.
Lent asks us to sit with endings. With dust and breath. With the truth that life is finite and therefore precious. But Lent also reminds us that endings are never the whole story.
Lent asks: how will you live with what you’ve been given?
What does it mean to be happy in a world where people we love die? Where nothing is guaranteed? Where joy and sorrow are not opposites, but companions?
Maybe happiness isn’t constant joy.
Maybe it’s alignment.
Maybe it’s living in a way that honors the people who cared for us.
Maybe it’s choosing presence instead of numbing, connection instead of escape, love instead of fear.
Mothers don’t usually ask us to be perfect.
They ask us to be okay.
To be safe.
To be loved.
To love.
Today, I remember my mother.
I remember her love.
I remember her care.
I remember her.
Mahal Kita, mommy!
Six years ago, my life looked very different.
My mother was dying. I had just ended a long-term relationship. COVID was hovering at the edges of the world, not yet fully realized but already being felt in Asian countries. Everything felt unstable, heavy, and unfinished.
I think about that version of myself often. Not with judgment. With understanding.
Grief does strange things to people. It makes you reach for sensation when the sadness feels unbearable. There’s that scene in "High Fidelity," where Laura asks Rob to sleep with her after her father dies, not because it makes sense, but because the body wants to feel anything other than grief. I understand that now in a way I didn’t then.
When we were in the Philippines, my nephew and I ended up at a bar one night. We ran into a group of tourists. I met a man. Of course he was a scuba instructor. Of course he was Irish. Of course it was cliché. We made out. I almost went back to his hotel. And then I didn’t.
I was a responsible aunt. Or maybe just protected by the old saying that God looks out for fools and babies. I’ve probably been both at various points. Yes, I’m very gay. No, I’m not interested in unpacking the spectrum of sexuality here. That’s not the point.
The point is this: that wasn’t the first time I made questionable choices while drowning in grief. And it wasn’t the last. Grief doesn’t ask permission. It shows up in your body, your decisions, and in your longing to escape yourself for even a moment.
Six years ago, I wrote this:
"We are born of love; love is our mother.” – Rumi
"Our mom’s health has been declining quickly in the last six months. That is why my siblings and I have been in the Philippines. Not for vacation, but to see our mother. To tell her we love her.
We traveled 5,000 miles to kiss her, to say thank you. Thank you for your sacrifices, your strength, your resilience, your bravery. Thank you for loving us the best way you knew how. Thank you for letting us love you back.
Watching one parent die from a terminal illness is hard. Watching another forget who you are is something else entirely. Navigating a country where your language skills feel like a four-year-old’s, while handling culture, laws, and banking, is overwhelming.
We were sad. Frustrated. Exhausted. But we had each other.
My mother lived many lives. In the Philippines and in the U.S. She raised four stubborn children and, in her 60s, helped raise our nephew. Even in her weakest moments, she still made sure we ate. Because that’s what good Filipino mothers do. They feed you."
I read that now and feel tenderness for who I was. I was raw. Unmoored. Doing the best I could with a broken heart and a body carrying anticipatory grief.
Six years later, I am different.
Not untouched by grief. But more honest about it. More patient with myself. More aware of how loss lives in the body and leaks out sideways when it isn’t tended to.
I still miss my mother. That never goes away. But I carry her differently now. In how I show up. In how I care for people. In how I feed others. In how I try to choose presence over escape.
Grief didn’t make me weaker. It made me more human. It made me better.
And if I could tell my six-years-ago self anything, it would be this:
You’re not broken. You’re grieving. Be gentle. Stay. Let yourself feel it all.
I’m still learning.
Still healing.
Still loving.
And still grateful for the woman who taught me what love looks like, even at the end.
❤️❤️❤️
Lenten Reflection
Lent reminds me that God and Jesus are always in the margins. In grief. In confusion. In the moments we don’t recognize ourselves and make choices we don’t fully understand yet.
When you feel abandoned, maybe you aren’t. Maybe God is sitting beside you in the ache, not rushing you through it. Maybe Jesus is closer in the mess than in the moments when everything looks put together.
Lent doesn’t ask us to be perfect. It asks us to stay. To pay attention. To trust that even in wilderness seasons, we are not alone.
May these days be gentle.
May they be honest.
May they lead us toward wholeness, one small step at a time.
Take care of yourself. Take care of each other.
