Netanya Escote: Mga Mandirigma ng Lokal na Komunidad ng Kalusugan ꕤ Isang Serya ng Talang Dalisay Para sa HEARTH Summit Philippines

Welcome — to our first series of our interviews with community & wellness leaders in the Philippines, a interview series by Talang Dalisay for the upcoming HEARTH Summit Philippines! From people raised in the archipelago, to the diaspora, we are running this interview series until the LUNAS Pilipinas summit in January 14, to encourage our friends around the world to join in learning and de-stigmatizing Filipino culture on wellness & health starting with Siquijor Island.

- Name, age, where you are from, where you currently live

Hello! I am Netanya Escote, an organizer in community and environmental spaces. I am 22, born and raised in Macau SAR, and I moved to the Motherland in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. I don’t have a permanent address at the moment and am just traveling up and down the archipelago depending on where I may be needed.

- What started your personal wellness journey? Walk us through how this sparked in your life.

I must admit I have been a victim of the capitalisation and commodification in the wellness industry as a teenager. It wasn’t until I was working with direct communities and environmental spaces where I learned to hone the interconnectedness of the relationships that we depend on– a necessary understanding in the personal well being. In engaging with multigenerational peoples from around the world, particularly in the Global South to unravel the interdependence in the systems of nature, I was able to position myself in the grander scheme of life and learn how to be a healthy part of the ecosystems I have a part in.

- What are personal practices that you consistently have been carrying out that has been helping your wellbeing?

Practicing vulnerability and honesty within my communities such as The Balikbayan Collective (TBBC) has been essential in ensuring wellness across us all. There is so much room for our unarticulated nuances and identity conflicts that demands to take up space and be validated. Friends we meet along the way are encouraged to expand their capacity to hold space for one another’s lived experiences, interpretations, traumas, doubts, changes and polarities in order to walk towards radical empathy and love. To gracefully tend to every part of me, I aim to practice mindful relationships with my consumption– from media to meat and my expressions– from rage to love. There is a need to unlearn much of our conditioning and to meet ourselves as we really are– as products of our conditioning and the systems around us, in order to evolve into our best individual and communal selves.

The Balikbayan Collective

“Decolonizing resources + Re-indigenizing spaces For the Children of the Filipino Diaspora to Remember, Reroot and Reimagine.”

- Tell us about Balikbayan Collective and 30x30sea, your work in those spaces, and what you all aim to do collectively.

The Balikbayan Collective was co-dreamt by one of my best friends, Ylona dela Cruz, and myself. We experienced the joys of being seen, heard and held by each other when we shared our hurts and hopes as 1st generation Filipinos abroad. The resources and spaces we individually had were of great service when shared with one another, prompting us to prepare this on a larger scale for TBBC to be accessible to the rest of the children of the Filipino diaspora. We dream of days where more can co-imagine and co-create the very tools we need for our own collective liberation, in resistance to the hegemonic, capitalistic, and colonial forces around us. Through co-built community spaces (The Family Discord and the Pahinga Muna Tayo gatherings), and curated resources (The Bookshelf and Book Club) we support the processes of decolonization and re-indigenization in the global diaspora. We bridge them to mediums that help them remember ancestral wisdom, reroot to archipelagic ways of relating, and reimagine relationships having kapwa at the core– particularly focusing on the unity of the “self” with the spiritual realm and the natural ecosystems that carry us.

- What are current and future plans people could look forward to when involving our growing community of changemakers? How could people give back to spaces like your own (30x30sea, Balikbayan Collective)?

Ylona and I have been grateful to witness this global spirit widen its roots the past year and create pockets of community wherever it has been planted. We look forward to more passionate, curious and brave youth reclaiming their stories and the spaces they take up to propel the spirit of the balikbayan (one of true spiritual and embodied returning to the Source) beyond Ylona and I’s reach and imagination. When children of the diaspora lean into their innate curiosities towards belongingness, the voices of the ancestors, and calling of the land, they keep the fire ablaze and the mission very much alive.

- I loved the article you wrote, "Building Bridges & Boats While Dismantling the Empire." Could you give us a brief summary of it for people who haven't read it? What urged you to write this letter?

"Building Bridges and Boats While Dismantling the Empire" is my first public essay! It is a letter dedicated to other young diaspora communities calling us to reconsider our ways of defining and reclaiming the pluriversality in the “Filipino” identity. I grieve the disconnection we face with our ancestral roots, our systemic, internalized shame, and the narrow molds imposed by imperial forces. I grieve the hurt and confusions experienced by so many when trying to reconcile their polarities and differences with their parents and other kinds of Filipinos particularly in the mainland. The essay hopes to be an alarm but also a hug to fellow Filipinos that are working to resist the limiting definitions and standards held against us. My community was all over my first draft helping me reflect, debate, articulate, and celebrate our archipelagic diversities, ultimately expanding our capacity for care. It is an invitation to learn how to make space for new “hybrids” and chapters in our identities, urging us to build bridges that meet one another where we are as well as boats to navigate the oceans of our interconnectedness, ultimately still carrying the Motherland within us wherever and whoever we may be.

- How do you balance advocating for others' wellness aside from your own?

Even in advocating for community solidarity and wellness, I had to learn to also center radical rest as an act of defiance against the very systems that we are dismantling. Perhaps it has less to do with balance and more to do with making space for multiple, co-existing states within my one vessel. I hold space for the parts of myself that want to be rested or enraged. I choose to meet them as they must be met. When our vessels have reached their limit, we encourage our loved ones to further support us, acknowledging that this very interdependence is a sacred pillar in fighting for collective liberation, collective healing and collective mobilization.

- What would you say to encourage Filipinos to go out of their comfort zone to destigmatize mental health & wellness?

Radical rest and sacred rage are tools for liberation. To destigmatize mental health, we must confront colonial legacies that devalue emotional well-being, deny rest, prefer over-productivity and hyperindividualism. True mental health advocacy is political and spiritual—demanding spaces where rest is prioritized, and resistance is celebrated.