Uyayi: A Lullaby Across Generations

A love letter to my children. A lantern for Filipino parents raising roots far from home.

I didn’t grow up knowing the words inip, gigil, sabik, or hiya.

I didn’t grow up knowing the lullabies of my mother and lola.

And until recently, I didn’t even know all the words to Bahay Kubo.

But now, I do. And now, I sing them. Not perfectly — but purposefully.

June is Filipino Heritage Month in our home — not because anyone told us to, but because I chose to make it so. It’s the month of our independence, and it’s when I pause to be more deliberate about reconnecting with a history I wasn’t raised to fully know — but which I now long to pass on.

I was raised in a tiny village in Fujairah, in a warm Filipino home where English was our first language. I learned Arabic and French in school. Filipino? That came much later. I didn’t truly embrace it until adulthood — when I was already a college student living in the Philippines, feeling like a foreigner in a place that was supposed to be “home.”

TFC (The Filipino Channel) only reached my hometown after I’d left for university. So I stumbled through the language, blinked at cultural nuances, and slowly gathered what I could. Now, I’m married to someone who speaks Bisaya — and I’m learning a whole new rhythm of being Filipino through him too. Our daughters are growing up hearing English, Filipino, and Bisaya in one day — and that messy, beautiful mix is our heritage now.

I didn’t grow up hearing uyayi lullabies. My mum sang Rock-a-Bye Baby to me. This year I finally memorised Bahay Kubo, and now I sing it to my daughters. My husband, in his own beautiful way, soothes them with his mother's Inahan sa Gugma. Neither are the lullabies I grew up with, but they're the ones our children will.

I don’t know what my lola sang to my mum, or what her mother sang to her before that. Those lullabies are lost to time — but oh, how I wish I knew. Imagine if I did?

Still, in the quiet moments, I like to think their voices linger somewhere in the wind, in the rhythm of a rocking chair, in the sweetness of the words I’m just now learning. I may never recover their songs, but I can offer my own. I can choose to sing in the language they might have used. I can begin a new uyayi — one that connects us across time, even if the melody is brand new.

. . .

To my children:

This is for you.

You might not remember every song I sing or every book I read aloud. But I hope you remember the feeling. 

That you belong. That your story began long before you were born. That there is beauty and fire and tenderness in the Filipino words we are still learning together.

To other parents, especially those raising Filipino kids far from the motherland:

If you’ve ever felt late to the party — late to the language, to the customs, to the understanding — this is for you too. We are not behind. We are building bridges. We are planting seeds. We are singing lullabies we’re only now learning, and that’s still a sacred, powerful thing.

Because here’s the truth:

We lose something every time a child grows up disconnected from their mother tongue.

Not just words, but worlds. We lose access to a history, a way of feeling, of thinking, of being. We lose stories, idioms, gestures, lullabies. We lose the quiet sense of I know where I come from.

I have a friend — French, Arab, Irish and Indian by heritage. A living tapestry of some of the world's oldest cultures. But she speaks only English. And what a loss that is — not just for her, but for all of us. All that language, all that richness, all that inheritance — cut off. A thread untied. A bridge never built.

And that’s what I ache for sometimes. When I hear teens speaking Filipino at the mall, I marvel. Inggit ako. They have Filipino schools now here in Dubai. Back in Fujairah, we didn’t. None of us did. Me and my childhood friends? All Inglishera. Going to university in the Philippines wasn’t just a shift in geography — it was a full-blown cultural collision.

I’ll be honest — Philippine politics is a mess. The drama, the corruption, the noise. It’s exhausting. That’s why I focus on what endures: our culture, our language, our heritage. The things our bayanis fought and died for — not for any party, but for the soul of our people. Especially Andres Bonifacio, whose name I carry through my father’s side. I don’t know if we’re related, but maybe that doesn’t matter. What matters is that I carry the spirit of what he fought for into how I raise my children.

We Filipinos are so good at adapting. Too good, sometimes. We’ve learned to let go of our customs, our languages, our own ways just to fit in, to make others comfortable, to makisama. And I say that not in judgment, but in deep understanding. Because for so long — through centuries of colonisation — we had to. Survival meant silence. Obedience. Blending in. And that mindset, those habits, those quiet surrenders? They got passed on too.

But we can do better.

We can be intentional. We can choose to reconnect. We can teach our children that they don’t have to choose between heritage and modernity — they can carry both with grace.

Choice. Intentionality. Purpose. Love.

Love for our children. Love for Inang Bayan.

Love for the ones who came before, and the ones who will come after.

Because as they say back home:

“Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan ay hindi makakarating sa paroroonan.”

He who does not look back to where he came from will never reach where he is going.

So maybe, at heart, I am Andres Bonifacio’s great-great-great-something.

Because I, too, am a rebolusyonaryo.

I fight back against what is easy and common — against forgetting, against convenience, against the quiet erosion of our soul as a people. I choose what is of value to me: to raise my children with strength, memory, and love for their heritage. To make sure that the blood our bayanis spilled was not in vain.

This is my front line. My battlefield.

Not in the halls of government, but in the hallways of my home.

Not with noise, but with nursery rhymes.

Not with fanfare, but with fierce, deliberate love.

And maybe that’s what gives me hope.

That even when the politics feel too loud, too lost, too far gone — 

There are still parents like us. Still homes like ours.

Still children learning to love Inang Bayan, one lullaby at a time.

. . .

This blog series begins with four words: Inip. Gigil. Sabik. Hiya.
Words I didn’t grow up with.
Words I now want to live by, love through, and pass on.
This is my uyayi. My lullaby.
May it travel across oceans and time, and find its way into your home, too.

. . .

P.S. I survived uni in the Philippines, culture shock and all — and these days, I can almost pass in Filipino circles here in Dubai without being clocked as the Inglishera I once so obviously was. Almost.