This year, I learned to love better.
Not in the pristine, storybook way. Instead, it was the kind of love that allows space for every emotion: joy, anger, sadness, and disappointment.
I learned to feel them all without letting them drag me into chaos.
Relationships, at times, feel like magnets. They pull and repel, locked in a dance of tension.
But I found a way to step out of that cycle. I became intentional. Steady. Like wood.
I chose when to lean in and when to step back.
This transformation helped me navigate one of my closest, most complicated relationships: the one with my dad.
A Strained Connection
My dad and I started the year distant.
We disagreed on things we were both passionate about. The strain between us grew.
Conversations became battles. Passion turned to frustration. Frustration turned to silence.
Then, earlier this year, he told me he had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. He was 74.
It was hard to process. I was grieving, not just for his health, but for the time we had lost.
I sent help for his medicine but stayed emotionally distant. I convinced myself I was “setting boundaries.”
In truth, I was protecting my pride. I was too hurt to reach out, to let my guard down.
But as the months went by, I felt a growing urgency.
Not because the pain had disappeared, but because I realized that no amount of waiting would fix things. It was a choice I had to make.
The Jollibee Brunch
In November, I made that choice.
I asked my dad to brunch. It felt like a small gesture, but it was heavy with meaning.
We met at Jollibee. As I sat across from him, I felt the familiar surge of anger rising, ready to remind me of every unresolved hurt.
Instead, I started with gratitude.
I thanked him, not for anything recent, but for everything he had done over the course of my life. I thanked him for becoming a dad again at 47, decades after my older brother was born.
I acknowledged how hard it must have been to raise me alone after separating from my mom.
I told him how much I appreciated the sacrifices he made. Giving up relationships. Stepping back from his social life. Making me his focus.
I wasn’t rehearsed. Once I let gratitude take the lead, the words flowed naturally.
I told him how those choices shaped me. How they allowed me to grow into someone who could love deeply, who could bring joy to others.
I let him know that I saw all of it. Not just what he did, but what it cost him.
The Shift
As I spoke, something changed.
The anger I had been carrying for years dissolved. Gratitude has a way of doing that, not by erasing the hurt, but by creating space for something bigger.
And then, my dad surprised me.
He apologized.
It was the most sincere apology I had ever heard from him. He acknowledged the ways he had hurt me, without defensiveness or excuses. For a moment, I was stunned. It was as if a door we had both kept locked had suddenly swung open.
We agreed on something fundamental that day: how we would love each other moving forward.
It would be through acceptance. By focusing on the joy we could bring to each other, rather than the wounds of the past.
Being Firm in Love
While the moment was healing, it wasn’t just about forgiveness. I took the opportunity to share where I was in my life.
I told my dad about the man I had become. How the people around me, at work, my friends, those who know me best, see me as a kind, loving person.
And then I told him that I wished he could see me that way too.
I wanted him to know that all the sacrifices he made weren’t in vain. That they had shaped me into someone others truly enjoy being around.
But I also gave him a choice.
I told him he could either continue to see me through the lens of the past, creating walls between us, or he could recognize the person I am now and the love I have to give. I told him I would prefer the latter.
I told him that I wanted to enjoy him, for however much time we still have.
I explained that my only wish this year was to create memories with him. That no disagreement, no regret, no past wound mattered more to me than the time we could still share.
I told him, as plainly as I could, that I wanted to spend this limited time we have respecting and enjoying each other.
The Lesson
This year, I learned that loving better doesn’t mean forgetting the past. It doesn’t mean avoiding the hard conversations.
It means showing up.
It means allowing space for the full spectrum of emotions without letting them control you.
It means making the choice to love—not because it’s easy, but because it matters.
Sitting across from my dad that day, I felt the weight of that choice.
And in choosing to love him—not perfectly, but honestly—I found something profound.
A love that holds space for everything: the pain, the joy, the differences, and the possibility of something new.
This year, I learned to love better.
It all started with brunch.