Why I Finally Stopped Arguing and Started Listening

 I used to think my husband was exaggerating about Yosemite.

The most beautiful place on earth? Really? I'd seen pictures. I'd been there. It was pretty, sure, but the most beautiful place?

No filter could capture what he sees
when he looks at this place.
No words can either. But standing here,
finally understanding why he loves it so much?
 That part I can feel. 📸

I didn't get it.

I think he finally stopped trying to convince me and just started showing me instead.

The Alien Learning To See

There are a lot of things I didn't understand when I married a foreigner and moved to California.

The language, obviously. I can speak English fine, but there's a difference between speaking it and feeling it. There's a gap between what I want to say and what actually comes out of my mouth. It makes communication hit or miss sometimes. He gets it. Or at least he's learned to.

The culture. The way Americans do things. The space everyone needs. The directness. The casual comfort with things I was raised to be anxious about.

The landscape. Manila is concrete and humidity and people pressed against you. This is... open. Wild. Indifferent to whether you're comfortable or not.

I'm the alien here. And for a long time, I was defensive about that.

But Yosemite? Yosemite is where I finally let him translate the world for me.

Excuse Me, I Lived 40 Years Somewhere Else

Somewhere between two worlds.

Here is something nobody tells you before you move to a new country at forty years old.

You don't just leave a place. You leave four decades of references. Four decades of songs that played on every radio, jokes that everyone got without explanation, history that was simply common knowledge because you breathed it every day. You leave the trivia. You leave the shared memory. You leave the thing that makes people in a room nod at the same time because they all grew up watching the same show, hearing the same names, knowing the same things without ever having to learn them on purpose.

And then you land somewhere new, and people forget you weren't there for any of it.

The Dog Knew

Eel River. Northern California.
Memorial Day.

We got there early.

That was my idea. This Pinay doesn't tan — or rather, this Pinay has been culturally programmed since birth to protect the Snow White skin that our version of beautiful demands, despite being blessed with perfectly lovely olive skin that I have spent decades trying to hide from the sun. The irony is not lost on me.

So. Early morning. Cool air. Empty river. Just us.

I bathed in bug spray like it was my Dolce and Gabbana Light Blue. Two doses. I inhaled it with the same devotion. Cough cough. Then the SPF 1000 — if that exists, I would find it — applied with the reverence of someone who has made peace with the fact that she will be the palest person at every outdoor gathering for the rest of her life.

We had the whole place to ourselves. Beach chairs. Umbrella. The cold clean water of the Eel River running past our legs while tiny trout and turtles moved through the current like they owned the place — which, to be fair, they did.

My husband tubed. He made me tube. What I thought was going to be gentle floating turned into what my nervous system registered as white water rafting. It was not white water rafting. But tell that to my heart rate.

By past noon the other campers started arriving. The peaceful morning was becoming a Sunday afternoon and I was watching the river the way you do when you're not ready to leave but know you should.

That's when I saw them.

Why I Wrote Sorry For Existing (And Why I Almost Didn't)

I have said sorry my entire life.

Sorry for taking up space. Sorry for having an opinion. Sorry for needing something. Sorry for existing in a way that might inconvenience someone else.

I said sorry so automatically and so often that it stopped meaning anything. It became punctuation. A reflex. A way of making myself smaller before anyone else could make me feel small first.

I didn't realize how deep it went until I started writing Sorry For Existing.

Unhealed. But Still Here.

Currently Catastrophizing-
A Coloring Journal for
Your Spiraling Thoughts.
Available on Amazon.
Search Dory Loomis.

I made ten books this year.

Coloring journals, mostly. With prompts inside. And sarcastic slogans. And opening letters that start with "Hi" and end with "with dark humor and genuine love."

Each one is about a different kind of pain.

Anxiety. Burnout. Grief. Toxic workplaces. People pleasing. Loneliness. ADHD. Caregiver exhaustion. Midlife identity. Digital overwhelm.

Ten books. Ten kinds of hurt. All of them mine at some point.

I didn't write them as a healed person looking back. I wrote them as someone still in the middle of it, trying to make something useful out of the mess. That's the only kind of writing I know how to do.

My 93-Year-Old Mother-in-Law Still Uses a VCR—And She Accidentally Inspired My Puzzle Book Business

Let me paint this for you.

My mother-in-law is 93.

Not cute 93. Not “aww she’s so sweet” 93.

Ninety-three with strong opinions. Ninety-three with a memory like a steel trap. Ninety-three with the posture of someone who survived actual world events and therefore does not care about your Wi-Fi issues.

She lives in assisted living, which still feels slightly illegal in my Filipino bones. In my culture, you take your elders in. Everyone under one roof. Privacy becomes a group project.

But she didn’t want to live with us.

She said it was for our privacy.

Which is generous.

But let’s be honest — it’s hers.

She’s French Canadian turned American. Independent in a way that doesn’t ask permission. She likes her quiet. Her routine. Her space. She didn’t make it to 93 by sharing a kitchen with anyone.

So she chose assisted living.

And she chose it on her terms.

She has one son — my husband.
One grandchild.

And then there’s me.

She doesn’t openly dislike me.

She just… evaluates me.

Sometimes she asks my husband, “How is she doing?”

And I can’t help but imagine the rest of the sentence floating in the air.

Oh. She’s still there? They’re still married? Well alright then.

It makes me laugh. It keeps me humble.

Now let’s talk about how she lives.

She does not stream.

She does not log in.

She does not subscribe.

She watches movies on a VCR.

Yes. A VCR.

I don’t know where she got it. I don’t know how it still works. But when that thing rewinds, it sounds like it’s preparing for takeoff. The whirring fills the room like it has something important to prove.

And music?

Vinyl records.

Not because it’s trendy. Not because it’s aesthetic.

Because that is the correct way to listen to music.

She lowers the needle with surgical precision. The soft crackle starts. Frank Sinatra fills the room. No Bluetooth. No algorithm. No “suggested for you.”

Just music. Real, warm, slightly scratchy music.

She calls my cellphone “that magic box.”

She calls the internet “the inter web.”

She trusts neither.

Tax season comes around and she gathers her documents, smooths them carefully, slides them into an envelope, and mails them to her accountant.

Her accountant is retired.

Retired-retired.

But every year those papers travel through the U.S. Postal Service like it’s 1962 and nobody has invented email.

“It’s safer,” she says.

I used to argue.

Now I don’t.

Because here’s what I’ve realized.

When your body starts taking things away from you — driving, balance, total independence — you hold tighter to what feels solid.

Paper feels solid.

Vinyl feels solid.

A VHS tape you can rewind yourself feels solid.

And then there are her puzzles.

Stacks of them.

Word searches. Crosswords. Sudoku.

When she leans over a puzzle book, something changes.

Her back straightens. Her eyes sharpen. She doesn’t want help. She doesn’t need help.

It’s just her and the page.

And she is powerful.

I’ve watched her circle words with firm, deliberate pressure — like she’s stamping proof of life.

I am still here.
I still think.
I still win.

The Things I Stopped Apologizing For After 50

Somewhere along the way, I realized I say sorry too much.

Sorry to bother you.
Sorry for the late reply.
Sorry to ask.
Sorry for existing with needs.

I don’t even know when that started.

Maybe it’s cultural. Maybe it’s being Filipino. Maybe it’s being Asian. Maybe it’s being a woman. Maybe it’s all of it mixed together like pancit noddles at a family party.

We apologize before we even speak.

“Sorry ha…”

For what?

Breathing?

Taking up space?

Having an opinion?

I used to apologize even when someone hurt me. I’d soften my tone. Shrink my reaction. Make it easier for them to not feel uncomfortable about what they did.

That stopped.