01/04/2026
Nine years ago today, I landed in Dublin. 🇮🇪
April 1st, 2017. I came as a nurse. I arrived with a suitcase, a PPS number and GNIB application, and absolutely no idea that this small, rainy, magnificent island was going to become the place that made me who I am.
I had been drawing and writing with a pen my whole life. Since third grade, I was the girl who made the posters, the cards, the banners. But I had never called myself an artist. Not seriously. Not out loud.
Ireland changed that.
Somewhere between the early morning hospital shifts and the late evenings at my ikea bed tray with ink and paper, CalligraScriobh was born.
A name that holds two languages… just like I hold two worlds.
Nine years later, I left nursing to become a full-time artist. I brought multidisciplinary arts to Ireland’s inaugural Fashion Week events, the first in the history of this country.
And now I am preparing to carry Irish fashion and Irish craft across the Atlantic to Canada, to hopefully be part of Canada-Ireland 180 programme, marking 180 years since the Great Famine migration of 1847.
I think about that a lot. The people who left Ireland in 1847 carried hand-made things with them. Letters. Keepsakes. Objects made with love and brought across the ocean. That is what I want to do in 2027.
Bring something hand-made, made in Ireland, made with love…to the people who have kept Ireland alive in Canada for 180 years.
I did not come to Ireland from Ireland. I came from Manila. But this country gave me a home, a community, a craft, and a calling.
Nine years, Dublin. You changed me completely.
And I am only getting started. ✒️🇮🇪
