Babaylan
by Isabella Medalle | From Issue One (Fall 2025)
Behind my eyelids, I meditate in colours. A gentle breath in and out; my diaphragm rising and falling with each exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide.
I start to detach my awareness from the overwhelming cacophony of modern life—cars backing up in driveways, trains screeching on metal tracks, the sounds of electricity buzzing in my apartment—and continue to focus on my breath.
I connect to the rich inner world of purples, indigoes, blues, greens, yellows, oranges, and reds that swirls before my eyes. My breathing becomes deeper and my state changes. The headphones around my ears begin to play heavy drumbeats and I suddenly hear wails in a mother tongue I have lost touch with. My chest becomes heavy as echoes of the past ripple through time, and I become lost in a reverie.
Born in Australia to Filipino parents, I was a child plagued by the perpetual feeling of existing within a third space. There, I was an inherent outsider. I was not Filipino enough as I could not speak my parents’ Cebuano language; and I was not Australian enough due to how I looked. This ache of otherness continued to torture my psyche for years.
Assimilation leading to destruction, a forest fire that erases identity and history to conform to western ideals. Shackled by preconceived notions of my personhood, I consistently ignored the fundamental truths of my being and carried this hurt within my heart wherever I went.
In my formative years, I stayed silent while family spoke in a language never taught to me and I withdrew inward, never daring to express my inner world.
As I got older, I hid behind a shield of self-deprecation to mask the pain I felt when others mocked my features or laughed at aspects of my family’s culture.
When I became an adult, the pangs of shame, humiliation, and embarrassment of my identity had taken its toll. My soul continued to float untethered with no ground beneath my feet. There was no safe harbour when I did not belong anywhere. Slowly and insidiously, the light within me began to fade away and I felt the darkness would last forever. But as the calm rolls in after a storm, the darkness makes way for something new to bloom. And rebirth happened when I moved to Canada.
My move initially signified a means of escape, a way to numb myself from the reality of the pain I had experienced in Australia. But as time went on and I reached a low point in my newfound home, a sense of overwhelming clarity hit me.
I couldn’t erase my past nor push my pain and hurt down any longer. With no established support network to turn to, I needed to confront my demons head on. I experienced a rupture in which I reassembled the fractured parts of myself to form something entirely new.
The path to healing was not linear, there were no shortcuts and there was complete discomfort in confronting these shadows. I experienced numerous setbacks but I kept persevering with reserves of inner strength I didn’t know I had. Over time, these small incremental changes began to form rings of hope around me, and I started to envision a brighter future. I was no longer a victim of an outdated narrative. Like a snake shedding its skin, a new version of me began to emerge.
I was now living in a place where I noticed many more faces that looked like mine. An established presence of Filipino culture was incredibly visible here in Canada. For someone who had felt out of place for so long, there was a quiet comfort to blending in. Without having to justify my existence at every turn, my nervous system started to relax.
My healing didn’t happen in isolation. I found love, and I realized how many years I had spent holding my breath. I experienced a newfound sense of safety and ease within a partner who saw me for who I was. The life we shared together, and the accumulation of positive experiences started to slacken the sharp coils that had been wound so tightly around my mind.
New doors started to open, and I found community through music. I found a choir that was a melting pot of cultures, and I made friends with people born here, others who had also immigrated and those who shared my Filipino identity and lived experiences.
The people I surrounded myself with saw the version of me who had started to heal, and the once dormant light within me started to flicker on.
As part of my healing journey, I started to feel closer to my parents through stories recounted over long phone calls. I realised I had taken every lechon, pancit and siopao my family cooked for granted when I lived in Australia. Now that these items were no longer home-made, I sought to find the connection to my roots through food, going to more Filipino restaurants and marveling at being able to buy so many Filipino ingredients at local stores.
My parents felt happiness at my evolving appreciation for our culture through food and I came to realize that the Philippines was the place where my fondest childhood memories lived.
Every few years, we would call the Philippines home for summer break and my happiest moments were being surrounded by family in Cebu who accepted me for who I was. A place where the mangoes were fresh, where the white sandy beaches and vibrant blue waters were heavenly, where the pace of life was different, where I would hear the palak-palak of my cousins slippers on air-conditioned mall floors, and I could eat spam and rice for breakfast in peace, no questions asked.
As if right on cue, my Filipino cousins immigrated to Canada and the excitement of having family in the same country made me realize how much I had missed it.
My wings started to unfurl as I rediscovered and embraced parts of me that had been pushed out and hidden away for far too long. I made space for joy and laughter, my inner self smiling from within, living each day in awe and feeling gratitude at how far I had come. I took care of my physical, mental, and spiritual self through daily practices and started to accept who I really was. A way to sew back the connective tissues that linked my ginhawa, my life force; to my kalag, my spirit.
In this process of recovering my sense of cultural identity, I found a word in a book that stirred something within my heart: Babaylan. Seeing the word felt like a homecoming, a tie between past, present, and future that I wanted to explore further.
Babaylan were often women in pre-colonial Filipino society who were respected by their communities for their inherent wisdom. They are often described as shamans, but they were healers, herbalists, conduits to nature and shepherds to other worlds beyond the physical realm and our materialist reality. I was initially intrigued by the supernatural aspects of the Babaylan, but this started to evolve into something much deeper as I kept diving in.
As someone who grew up with a fascination with the esoteric, the word Babaylan reminded me of stories my family had told me growing up: of Filipino folklore, superstition, personal anecdotes of unexplainable occurrences as well as the very real history of my Lola’s practice.
On a phone call with my dad, he told me about his mother’s role in her community.
My Lola was a well-known manghihilot in her neighbourhood in Cebu. Having been born by breech, her fate as a healer with the gift of hilot was sealed at birth.
People from all walks of life would come to her with their ailments and she would heal them using herbal remedies and her gift of hilot. I asked my dad how she did what she did, and he replied simply that she just knew.
In finding the connection between my Lola and the Babaylan, I heard a calling out from deep within my bones. A reclamation from within my spiritual being calling me to hear the voice of my own intuition, my own lineage and to trust the gifts I was born with. A subtle shift started happening within my soul. Guided by those who had come before me, I picked up the threads that they had left behind and started to weave a new path for myself.
Inspired by this inherited wisdom and knowledge, I have begun a new journey of gentle understanding, of finding my voice and making my mark on my corner of the world.I bring my awareness back to my body as I commune with nature. The beautiful soft glow of sunrise coming through my blinds, the gentle sounds of morning birdsong and the warmth on my skin as the temperature rises in my bedroom.
Exclaiming with the full force of my being. I am here.
Isabella Medalle is a Filipino-Australian-Canadian writer and artist.
Her work reflects her wide breadth of life experiences: from her upbringing in Australia, to her travels around the world and immigration to Canada, as well as her lived experience of being an Autistic woman with ADHD.
Within the wider community, she is part of an R&B and Gospel choir, volunteers with a range of organizations such as the Vancouver Writers Fest and is currently working on her debut novel, a memoir about her life as an Autistic/ADHD Filipino woman.
Her work can be found on Instagram: @isabellamedalle