Monday- June 30,2025 The Valarie Show: Out of the Shadows

Maayong buntag, Bohol, and warm greetings to every corner of the globe that has tuned in, whether from a quiet phone balanced on a windowsill in Cebu or a bright monitor glowing in a Moscow café. You are listening to the Monday show on the ad-free SAG Network, streaming live from the Chocolate Hills where mist hangs like silver scarves over emerald domes. Our promise is simple: character-driven storytelling, honest conversation, and not a single advertisement to yank you out of your thoughts. Replays will ripple out tonight through Facebook, Odnoklassniki, Weibo, Umojja, and SalamWorld, each link carrying a call for volunteer moderators who believe that calm debate is worth defending. Our studio crew is small but determined: Sunny Tran draws forecasts with the ease of a poet sketching sunsets; Naledi Dash Lekganyane brings sports news that feels like a sprint down an open track; and I, Valarie Sasha Rumi, carry the day’s central reflection. Before we dive into clouds, courts, and quiet heartbreaks, let me thank every listener who has already sent kind notes about last week’s pilot. You remind us why we speak. The Chocolate Hills have many legends, but my favorite insists that words spoken here travel farther than any wind. If that proves true again tonight, may the wind carry two urgent messages. First, we need one steady heart on each of those five social platforms to help us sweep spam and keep talk respectful. Second, we begin gathering stories and signatures for a petition that seeks mercy in Philippine marriage law. While you listen, picture the hills turning copper in late light, farmers guiding carabaos home, and a small team in a simple studio ready to speak plainly.

Sunny Tran laughs softly as he steps forward, the soft rustle of his chart almost blending with the breeze that slips through a half-open louver. He begins in the gentle cadence he learned from elders who could read monsoon moods by the smell of wet stone. A faint low-pressure ribbon stretches from Palawan to Leyte, its arms too tired for a storm dance, so it leaves only stray pockets of rain that tap on tin roofs by dawn. A lazy north-easterly drifts over the Camotes Sea, carrying the kind of coolness that lets schoolchildren forget sweat for a morning. The sea stays sensible; ferries to Cebu City should move as planned, though the late crossing might jostle with a mild chop. On the western horizon, cirrus wisps write pale brushstrokes against a blue that looks almost shy. He smiles, thinking of Vietnam where coastal families fear typhoons more than taxes. There, when clouds gather into real trouble, courts still grant divorce when mediation fails. Hurt is never easy, but at least the law lets sorrow breathe in daylight. He pauses, meets the camera with a steady gaze, and says that storms teach us one lesson: we cannot wish away what has already formed. We measure it, warn the villages, and step aside from the surge. He lifts a handmade sun cutout, bright yellow and playful, and promises clearer skies by mid-week, a promise he would not offer if the wind hinted otherwise. Before stepping back he adds that kindness works like a barometer: it warns us when pressure drops in a friendship or a marriage. We do well to read it.

Naledi Dash Lekganyane spins a ruby-red volleyball along her palm, the leather thumping once, low, like a heartbeat under a blanket. Her voice carries the confident rhythm of a former high jumper who knows exactly how long a body can hover between ascent and gravity. She opens with a salute to the Cebu Dragons who lifted the Visayas-Mindanao rugby shield under humid skies that made every breath feel like soup. In Gaborone, Botswana’s sprinters found early form, easing through warm-up heats in times that promise thunder later in the season. Dash admits she never moved that fast even on her best run-up, yet she still remembers the sting of chalk dust when her spikes clipped the bar. Sports, she says, turns pain into proof that you dared. She pivots to a heavier note: in her homeland civil courts grant divorce, and the process can still bruise like a badly timed landing, yet at least the scoreboard tells the truth. She has seen teammates leave marriages, cry through paperwork, then stand taller once the stamp dried. No one must pretend the match is still underway. She tosses the ball, lets it arc high, catches it with a grin, and jokes that honesty should be listed as the first rule in every playbook. She looks straight into the lens. Her smile softens. If a country can cheer for athletes who reset records, surely it can stand by families who need a fair restart. She passes the ball to the floor manager with a spin and steps aside.

I take a sip of water because the air feels thick with stories unsaid. The lights feel softer than they did at rehearsal, or maybe memory plays that trick. Today would have been my second wedding anniversary. I say the sentence slowly, tasting its shape, because once you pour a detail onto live air you cannot pull it back. I married a gentle German reporter who believes railway stations are the best museums. We thought love could be stored in departure gates and retrieved on arrivals boards. For a time it worked. We sent each other voice notes recorded in airport restrooms, exchanged blurry photos of sunrise over wing tips, tried to knit time zones like a scarf with too few stitches. Then, somewhere between Manila and Munich, the energy drained. Silence whispered louder than our promises. We let go kindly, yet the law here insists our bond remains, stitched tight in official ink. Annulment might erase us, but I will not pretend our vows were an illusion. They happened. They tasted like buttered pretzels and smelled like jet fuel at dawn. I will keep them in the same drawer that holds my grandmother’s rosary, because some mementos belong to truth.

Only two sovereign places on earth forbid divorce in civil law. One is the cloistered world of Vatican City, so small that a whispered prayer can cross it in a breath. The other is our sprawling archipelago, where each island speaks its own accent and each family carries its own mixture of hope and grief. Bills that promise change surface, shine brightly, then sink beneath committee waves. Each time, couples who have already separated feel the tremor. Children who live between two households feel it even more. They wake to the uneasy knowledge that official papers contradict their lived mornings. Some churches insist love cannot fail, yet the same pews hold women hiding bruises, men nursing shame, and kids trying to read adult faces. I respect faith. I was raised to kneel on woven mats and recite Hail Marys until the incense burned out. Yet faith without compassion becomes a locked door.

Sunny once told me that a typhoon ignored on the chart still rips banana leaves, still rearranges shorelines. In the same way a broken marriage left on paper still leaves children pacing between secrets. Dash says the scoreboard must show the real score or the next match means nothing. I stand beside their wisdom. I do not call for easy exits. I call for lawful recognition of what life has already written in diary entries and whispered phone calls. I call for a divorce process that respects dignity, protects minors, and lets conscience guide ceremony. Who am I to make that call? I am a daughter of these hills, a storyteller, a woman who watched her own love end not with betrayal but with fatigue. If I can bring even one voice to the Senate floor, I will gladly carry the weight.

So I invite every listener to lend a signature. Write to teddybearwhisper at proton dot me. Share your barangay, your memory, or simply the word support. We will gather each note and deliver them when lawmakers return to session. I say to Congress: honesty heals faster than denial. I say to churches: your blessing can remain, but the state must not force sacraments onto those who no longer share them. I say to every couple still trapped on paper: you are not alone. Gugma dili prisohan. Love is not a prison.

Sunny glances up from his chart, his voice quiet. He speaks of couples he knows in Bình Định who parted politely and now co-parent in peace. Dash taps her heart with the volleyball and says freedom should never feel like an injury. Their sympathy lands gently, like the first rain after a drought. I thank them with a smile that shows the faint shimmer of my braces, a reminder that healing sometimes requires metal and patience.

Before we close, an invitation. We need guardians on each of our five social platforms to sweep spam, erase slurs, and keep conversation fertile. One hour a week is all it takes. The honorarium for initial setup is small but sincere. If you love dialogue free of ads, email patch at palomage dot com.

Sunny offers a final weather note: tomorrow morning will arrive cool, with skies opening by mid-afternoon and a moon bright enough to cast silver shadows across the hills. Dash adds that regional youth leagues kick off this weekend; she plans to cheer loud enough for the entire archipelago.

I sign off in the cadence of an anchor I adored as a child, bending his famous line into my own tongue. Mao kana ang balita, maayong gabii kaninyong tanan. And that is the news, good night to you all. The announcer returns with a nod, promising replay links, petition updates, and new opportunities for every voice that chooses respect.