It was the year 2016 and I just got married. Part of me was very happy that I finally got hitched (I was 39), and part of me felt nostalgic that my colorful single life was over. As I was also about to turn 40, I did some self reflection and yearned to do something big and with social impact. So in wanting to capture my overseas life as a single Filipina, wanting to give back, making an impact and leaving a legacy, I thought of writing a book.
At first I wanted to write a fiction novel. But as I am not a trained writer but rather a systems auditor for most of my career, what came out were mostly recommendations, tips and checklists. Thanks to my audit and consulting background, telling people what to do or how to make things better is second nature to me. Only this time, the main topic is living overseas.
So I then shifted to writing a self-help book. At first I was writing for fun, then later on, it became more profound and really evolved into wanting to help others by sharing my knowledge and experience from years of living abroad.
I came up with the book title: The Overseas Fabulous Pinay: A modern-Filipina’s handbook on how to thrive abroad. With that, the concept of the Overseas Fabulous Pinay (Ovfabpinay in short) was born. I wanted something close to OFW- which is Overseas Filipino Workers and since I wanted to project a strong and positive feeling or image of a Filipina, I chose the word Fabulous, which essentially means extraordinary, wonderful.
The Overseas Fabulous Pinay is a global Filipina who is confident, sophisticated, responsible, proud to be Filipino and makes the Filipino people proud. Given that, the main objective of my book is to help Filipina women survive life overseas and be fabulous while doing it.
I continued writing my book but since I had a full time job, I was writing outside my normal work hours- mainly when I was commuting to/from work when I’m on the train, on weekends if I was not out, and during holidays when instead of reading a book while lounging by the pool or beach, I would be on my iphone or ipad typing away the chapters of my book. In general, my time to write was limited so it took a while for me to complete the book.
Fast forward to 2019 and I got pregnant. My husband and I were so delighted as we have been trying to conceive since we got married. Our baby was due on September of that year.
Still in progress with writing the last 3 chapters of my book, I hired an editor a few weeks after learning of my pregnancy as I really wanted to push myself to complete my book. My thought was, if I don’t at least finish writing my book, then I would probably not complete it once the baby arrives.
So my editor and I got cracking and completed the edited version of my book after 5 months, on August 30. My baby daughter shortly arrived on September 4, 2 weeks ahead of schedule.
A month after giving birth until the end of 2019, as I was still healing from my C-section surgery, getting used to perpetual exhaustion, sleep deprivation and breastfeeding, I navigated the self-publishing world and continued working on my author platform and my book’s production.
October was focused on brand development and proof reading, November on book cover design and internal layout design. By the end of November my social media pages were up. December and January saw me busy with the review of physical proofs and website development. By mid-January my website was up and I became a blogger. All through this time up to the actual book launch, I was doing the digital marketing of my book. I did all of these in between nursing sessions and sometimes in the wee hours of the morning. All the while when I was also learning to be a mom to my newborn daughter.
I self-published my book and launched it on Women’s day, March 8 of this year. It was surreal to say the least. I never dreamt of becoming an author and now I am one and a self-published one at that. Seeing my Amazon author page, my website, and my book advertised on various sites were just heartwarming and overwhelming at the same time. It’s still hard for me to believe that I wrote a book and produced it during my maternity leave. I feel very blessed to have worked with an amazing team who were flexible given my unique situation, and to have family and friends who were supportive all the way. I feel very honored to have this opportunity to make an impact.
With The Overseas Fabulous Pinay book, I hope for readers to realize that it takes a lot of sparkle and grit not just to survive but to actually thrive abroad. That living abroad is not easy but you CAN live a happy and fabulous life. And more importantly, that they now have a book that they can refer to, to guide them along the way.
My aim is that a reader’s quality of life improves because of my book. In that whatever phase she may be in, whether still contemplating to move abroad or already living overseas and still integrating in their host country, that either a question is answered, an issue is solved or a knowledge gap is filled. Then truly it will make me happy to learn that the book made an impact on someone’s life.
May my book find its way to those Filipinas who need it- to better equip them to life overseas and to make the most of their lives while living abroad, from an OFW to an Overseas Fabulous Pinay!
To learn more about The Overseas Fabulous Pinay book, please go to this link.
