Welcome to Summer! It is a time of family gatherings, celebrations, time outdoors, and if we’re lucky, vacation. For me, like many of you, nothing makes our experiences more special than enjoying them with family. Whether your defined family is through genetics and blood, selected by your heart and soul over time or both, family is perhaps the single most influential factor in our lives.

Through our families we learn love, compassion, and even the basics of how to walk, talk, and interact with others. We also learn throughout our lives just how important family is to our sense of belonging and our vision and definition of what we want and don’t want to be as individuals.

Recently, I had the opportunity to do some traveling in the Philippines. Part of why I like to travel so much is the deepening appreciation and understanding I develop about myself, my culture, and the greater world as a result. It’s always amazed me how I don’t realize what I take for granted or how my culture impacts my view of the world until I visit another culture.

For instance, here in the U.S. I’d describe my stature as fairly average. I’m 5’7, normal weight, and I’ve never considered myself to be a big boned individual. One afternoon, as I looked around me at all of the petite, beautiful people around me, I realized that in that moment, in my mind, I’d become a middle aged giant with enormous bones and stature. The experience made me laugh and realize for the first time just how much our view of ourselves can change simply by being within another culture.

I really relished my time in the Philippines. The people were among the most gracious, loving people I’ve ever met, and during my time there I felt a certain kinship with the people that I can’t really explain. I began to learn more about what their lives are like, ask a lot of questions about how they live, what they value, and what’s important to them.

From a professional perspective, the trip was also very rewarding. When I first created CoSozo, part of my desire was to be able to bring wellness information from different parts of the world to the U.S. I know there are healers and modalities being used in other parts of the world that we just don’t hear about. To be certain, the internet makes most information available today, but I wanted CoSozo to be able to highlight information about what’s happening in other parts of the world in the hopes that it can help individuals here who may be served by that information.

I did make a lot of contacts in the Philippines about healing modalities and what is happening there with wellness. But for this month’s edition, as our feature is family, that’s where I’ll focus.

In the Philippines, the family is paramount, followed closely by religion - more than 80% of the Filipino culture is Catholic. The generation above mine typically has enormously large families. It wasn’t uncommon to find people my age who had ten or more brothers and sisters. As I discovered while I was there, the importance of family, combined with the current economy and the focus on religion, has created some societal issues that are seriously impacting the average Filipino.

In the Philippines, they have been trying to get a bill passed since the mid 1980’s on reproductive health. The most current version is now before their legislative body and has caused quite a stir on a national level. President Aquino is for the bill, while the Catholic church is most decidedly against the bill.

While we were there, they were debating various aspects of the bill within their Senate, which was fascinating to watch. There are two major sides of the bill: President Aquino and the Senators who are for the bill and then the Catholic bishops and the Senators against the bill. Interestingly, Manny Pacquiao, who won his boxing championship against Shane Mosley the evening we landed, is a hugely popular national hero and he has sided with the Catholic church on the issue. Most of the average Filipinos I spoke with about the bill are for it.

The bill supports teaching sex education for children in grades 5 and above. The most contentious part of the bill involves providing contraceptives from both public and private sources. There are also a lot of emotions about whether the bill provides for or encourages abortion, an issue that sparks hot debate in our country as well.

For clarity, the bill does not in any way, shape, or form, allow for abortion. However, in the Catholic faith, particularly among traditional Catholics, contraceptive measures such as the birth control pill are viewed as abortifacient, or in other words, measures that interfere with conception, and are not supported. The decision to use contraception is serious and considered a mortal sin.

I read an article in the paper while I was there that really impacted me. In the article, a woman who has 13 children, was discussing her struggle to decide to go on contraception. The fifteen members of her family live in a 10 x 10 house, a typical dwelling for people who live in Manila where space is a premium. She’s a devout Catholic and, like many Filipinos, she and her husband struggle to earn just enough to pay for basic necessities.

Many Filipinos I met in Manila travelled up to three hours each way, six days a week, to work at jobs they were grateful to have. Most Filipinos earn just enough to pay for basic needs, and many if not most, live with their families much longer than we do here in the U.S. While I’m sure some of the cause for that decision to live with family centers around the importance they place on family, it is also born out of sheer survival. The average Filipino simply does not earn enough because the jobs don’t pay a lot. Regardless, those who have jobs are grateful to have them and think nothing of the long commutes, hours, or little pay. They are simply grateful to be earning money to contribute to feeding and housing the family.

So the woman from the article was faced with a very difficult decision - go on contraceptives and as a result, in her belief system, willingly commit her soul to hell for eternity or risk bringing a fourteenth child into the world to live with the rest of her family in poverty. I cannot imagine the heart wrenching conversations she had with herself and with her husband about how to resolve the situation.

Ultimately, the woman decided to go on contraceptives so they would not bring another child into the world. While I am not a Catholic and those issues are not inherent to my own belief systems, I have enormous compassion and empathy for her. The struggle to determine a choice that would mean less suffering for her family now versus being able to be with them for eternity is a struggle that’s hard for me to comprehend or imagine.

The article made me think of my own big, unconventional family - our joys and triumphs, challenges and tribulations. Our challenges aren’t like those I encountered in the Philippines, but our joys are absolutely the same. We love each other unconditionally. We know that although we may not always agree with one another or understand each other, at the end of the day, we will be there for one another. And, like the woman in the article, we will extend ourselves to one another, we will sacrifice for each other if needed to be sure that everyone has the best opportunity to live a life that is happy, loving, and safe. Enormous, profound, loving gifts that I hope we all enjoy!