My second drumming session with our friend Francis Gaspar was an experience of freedom. For some minutes I did not mind not being in control. I even allowed my body to move with the rhythm.

But better yet was the freedom I experience moving from the intellectual thoughts to what would pass as mundane thoughts but expanded. My thoughts went beyond my aches and pains to embrace with compassion the people around me. I felt I was one with the security guards of Grand Towers for whom my husband and I were hosting a party.

It was a good Christmas experience celebrating with a friend from SJDDIOS, with the happy sisters:Oding and Beng, with our adopted son, Marc, with our godchildren Marivic and Rois and of course with Bernice the wife of Francis.

A fitting quotation from Life Is a Gift says: Freedom means loving yourself enough to be true to yourself and trust your emotional guidance. It means not giving in to what is socially expected or what others demand of you or what the inner voices of fear exhort you to do nor feelings bound by past choices that are no longer serving you. It means making choices that express more of who you are. It means feeling your way into the flow. It means having faith in a loving cosmos.