On writing, wanting quietly, and finally leaving the notebook open.
NOVEMBER 5, 2026 · BY ELLIE
As a child, it was always hard for me to express myself out loud. Not the ordinary things. I could ask for water, answer a teacher, talk about random stories, and laugh at the right moments. But the things underneath—the hurt, the confusion, the small griefs children carry and don’t have names for—those stayed inside. I was raised thinking that showing even just a shred of pain was a sign of weakness.
So I learned early to fold it up and put it away, stored somewhere no one could see, somewhere it would never see the light of day. I got very good at it.
What I couldn’t say out loud, I wrote.
Random thoughts. Pains I didn’t want anyone to see. Doubts I was too afraid people could use to bring me down. Whatever needed to leave my body and had nowhere else to go. The page never asked me to explain myself or be less. It never judged. It just held what I gave it. I think writing was the first place I was ever fully honest, where I’d put the fears I couldn’t say out loud, and for the longest time, it was the only one.
So this isn’t new for me. It’s the same thing I’ve always done, with the door a little open.
For years, I’ve carried this idea of writing love letters to my daughters, telling them things I’ve never told anyone. But looking at it now, I don’t think it was ever only about a daughter.
Maybe, in some way, I was writing to the young girl who might be going through the things I went through alone. To the little version of me who had to navigate so many of her emotions on her own. And maybe I wanted to reach someone who might recognize herself in those things, too.
It took a while for me to open the door, not just to this, but to someone. It took years of being together before I could fully be vulnerable with the person I love.
And starting this took me four years. There was a different name. Launch dates came and went while I rewrote the same paragraph and moved furniture around a website no one could see yet. I kept telling myself that I was waiting for the right time, waiting for it to be ready. But I think, I was waiting until I was.
I’m not sure that day comes. So, I’m beginning anyway, quietly, little by little, scared to the bones, which is the only way I have ever known how to begin anything.
The same childhood that taught me to hide my pain taught me which wants were allowed.
Nobody sat me down and said it. I just learned it the way children learn everything important: by watching the adults’ faces. I learned that some wants make a room go still. I learned to say okay lang before anyone has asked if you are. I learned that wanting something beautiful, something that isn’t strictly necessary, has a name, and the name is maluho.
So I get very good at not wanting out loud, the same way I got good at not hurting out loud. I choose the cheaper one before anyone could see me look at the other. I become low-maintenance, no trouble, and I took up exactly as much space as I’ve been given and not one inch more.
It works for a long time. It might even be a kind of grace. But somewhere along the way I noticed I had stopped knowing what I actually liked. I had only ever practiced knowing what I could justify.
This journal is, in part, me trying to find out.
I write about class, the quiet kind. Not income brackets, but the invisible rules: who was taught what at the dinner table, which confidence is inherited and which has to be built by hand, why some of us still check the price on things we can now afford.
I write about healing, though I want to be honest about what that means. I am not writing from the other side of anything. Some of these essays were written on days I was sad for no reason I could name. I won’t dress those days up as lessons. Where something has resolved, I’ll say so. Where it hasn’t, I’ll say that too.
And I write about taste, which I’ve come to think has less to do with money than with attention. With noticing. With letting yourself keep the one good thing instead of five almost-right ones.
Some of it will be in Tagalog, because some things only sound true in the language you first felt them in. I won’t always translate. I think you’ll understand anyway.
You won’t find a version of me that has everything figured out. I’m not going to describe a morning routine I don’t keep or a peace I haven’t made.
You won’t find anything for sale in these first pages. For now, it’s just writing.
And you won’t find much of my face. Ellie is a softer front door, not a mask. The work is mine, and so are the stories. I’ve just found, as I always have, that I can tell them more honestly on the page than out loud.
If you were raised to want quietly, or to hurt quietly, I think you’ll recognize yourself here. Maybe you were the eldest, or the one who never asked, or the one everyone assumed was fine. Maybe you still say hindi na, okay na ako out of habit.
I don’t have a fix for any of that. What I have is the company of someone who knows the feeling, and a willingness to look at it slowly, with care, in good light.
If you’re her, or you used to be, this was written for you.
That’s all this is. A quiet beginning. The same notebook I’ve always kept, finally left open on the table.
Take your time here. There’s no rush. There never really was.
The Circle is a quiet note from Loved by Ellie — new essays, small observations, and things worth keeping.
On learning to become the person I kept looking for elsewhere.
A Note From You
If something here felt familiar, you’re welcome to leave a few words. I’d love to know what brought you here.