By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — October 4, 2026
The Life That Worked
For two years, my life worked.
That’s the simplest way to say it.
I came to the Philippines on September 5, 2023. We were married on October 10, 2023. From that point forward, despite every difference in language, culture, and expectation, life made sense. Not because those differences disappeared, but because there was someone there who knew how to hold both sides at once.
She did not ask me to become something I wasn’t. She did not ask me to abandon where I came from. She understood who I was, and she understood where we were, and she made those two things coexist without friction.
She was the bridge.
And because of that, I was happy.
Not surviving. Not adjusting. Not tolerating.
Happy.
What Was Lost
When she died on September 3, 2025, I did not just lose my wife.
I lost the structure that made everything else work.
The same environment remained. The same expectations remained. The same people remained. But the one person who made it all function—the one person who translated not just words, but meaning—was gone.
What had been smooth became abrasive. What had been understandable became confusing. What had been livable became something else entirely.
Nothing changed.
Except everything.
What They Call “The Way”
After she was gone, I began hearing a phrase more often.
“This is the Filipino way.”
I do not believe there is a single “Filipino way.” What I have encountered is something smaller, more local, and more specific. But the phrase is used as if it explains everything, as if it ends the conversation.
It does not.
What I have been shown under that label includes hesitation to seek medical treatment, reliance on unproven remedies, indirect communication around serious issues, and a tendency to avoid confrontation even when clarity is needed. I have seen decisions shaped more by expectation than by outcome.
And I have been told that this is what I should emulate.
Not understand.
Not work alongside.
Emulate.
The Cost of Delay
My wife developed stage 4 breast cancer before our first anniversary.
There were opportunities to act sooner. There were chances to pursue treatment earlier. Those chances were delayed. Other approaches were tried. Time was lost.
By the time decisions shifted toward more aggressive medical care, the situation had already advanced beyond recovery.
I am not writing this to assign blame to a culture, a country, or a people.
I am writing this because I watched it happen.
And I live with the result.
The Demand to Become
After her death, I was told—directly and indirectly—that I needed to be more Filipino.
I did not come here to erase myself.
I did not come here to replace my identity with another.
I came here to build a life with one person. And with her, that life worked—not because I became something else, but because we met in the middle.
That middle is gone now.
And in its place is a demand that I fully adopt a way of doing things that I have already seen, in some cases, lead to irreversible outcomes.
That is not something I can do.
The Difference Between Respect and Surrender
There is a difference between respecting where you are and surrendering who you are.
I respect the people around me. I respect the place I live. I respect the fact that I am not from here.
But respect is not the same as compliance.
And it is not the same as transformation.
I will not pretend that choices I believe are harmful are acceptable simply because they are familiar to others. I will not ignore what I have witnessed. I will not rewrite my understanding of cause and effect to make others comfortable.
That is not disrespect.
That is honesty.
What Remains
I am still here.
I am still writing.
I am still trying to raise a young man who lost his mother and is trying to make sense of a world that no longer looks the way it did.
I am still navigating a place that no longer feels the way it once did.
But I am not the same person I was when I arrived.
Because I know what it felt like when everything worked.
And I know what it cost when it didn’t.
The Truth
She did not ask me to become someone else.
She asked me to be myself in a place that was not my own, and she made that possible.
That is what made those two years what they were.
That is why they mattered.
That is why this hurts.
Final Note
I am not Filipino.
I am an American.
An American adventurer whose only weapons are words.
And this is one of them.
If you read this and it matters, help me keep it going: https://www.patreon.com/cw/WPSNews
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