Dear Nanay,
I am a high school student in Manila and I wanted to ask for your advice as a mother and a grandmother. You see, my parents do not like my boyfriend. They think he is not good enough for me. But I love him and I think we will get married. His family is very supportive of us so why can’t my family be supportive of us as well? — US AGAINST THE WORLD
Dear us against the world,
First of all, you are only in high school. Marriage should be the furthest thing from your mind! Finish your studies first and then you can start thinking about getting married.
With regard to your parents supporting your relationship, you have to realize that your parents only have your best interest in mind. They may be strict, especially because you are a girl, but you have to do your best to understand where they are coming from.
My suggestion would be to have a heart-to-heart talk with them. Do not get angry. Do not be so emotional. Try to be objective and calm. You have to tell them how you really feel and ask them how they feel. You need to open the lines of communication.
Depending on how the conversation goes, perhaps you can enter into some compromise agreements. If they let you go out with your boyfriend, perhaps you can promise better grades. Maybe you can say that if your performance drops below a certain level, then you will not go out until you can get your grades back up. When you spend time together, perhaps he can come to your house and you can stay there where your parents might be more comfortable because they can keep an eye on you.
Just remember that compromise is give and take. You cannot always keep asking like everyone owes you something. Good luck!
Sincerely,
Nanay
Hard work pays
Dear Nanay,
I read the letter sent by CD and your beautiful reply to her.
I just want to share that I have a similar experience with you where our family had to start from zero. When I first got married and had two little children, ages two and three, my husband and I decided that I should quit my job and stay home to help raise the kids. So I quit. While I was home we decided that I should do a business because I had extra time and could work whenever I wanted.
We entered into a food catering business. We invested our life savings into the business and lo and behold, we were surprised to find out that going into business was not that easy. It took time, money and, of course, a lot of hard work. But I kept telling myself that my main goal at home was to raise the kids and not to go into business. So in other words, I sort of neglected the business after its initial success.
To cut a long story short, it wasn’t long before we were losing money. We had too many people on salaries, we had too much equipment for our needs and not enough customers. We eventually closed shop and basically lost our life savings. I was very sad because I felt that I let my family down. My husband started drinking because he didn’t know how we would recover from our debts.
Finally one day we had a heart-to-heart talk and we decided to come up with a plan to get out of the situation. In other words we did not give up. We decided that I would go back to work so that our family income can be supplemented. We would cut back on expenses and vacations and try to save wherever we could.
This is what we did and it took three years of very hard work but we did it. We are out of debt and starting to save for the future again.
Just like what Nanay said, it is not the end of the world. For us I think we learned that maybe we are really not business people or entrepreneurs. I think we are more professionals so we will probably stay away from doing our own businesses. We are happier and more successful having professional careers. And just like Nanay said, the only secret is to never give up! We didn’t and now look where we are. It took a few years but we are back on the right track and happier than ever. — JO-AN
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