A Shared Lifeline
In Tacloban and later Cebu, ChangeStation became a lifeline.
A 3-day bootcamp was created to train around 50 volunteers into trauma-informed coaches—ordinary people becoming agents of emotional first aid. Alongside partners like Michael Carroll (one of the world’s most prominent NLP trainers, whose work in refining core NLP processes helped shape and strengthen the foundations of ChangeStation’s trauma and coaching intervention) and through what later became NLP in Action under the NLP Academy, the work deepened.
We didn’t just “help survivors.”
We entered homes.
We sat on floors.
We listened where people had stopped speaking.
We built safe spaces where stories could finally be released.
Survivors of the Typhoon said to us:
“Pagod na kami magkuwento.”
So the response changed:
We’re not here to make you tell your story. We’re here to help you feel safe again.
The Children who Taught Us What Resilience Means
In evacuation centers and temporary shelters, we created separate rooms for children.
Through play therapy, children were taught emotional regulation through games—slow, safe, human.
A 3-year-old boy who lost his playmates at sea, waking nightly in terror, finally slept without crying after a single session.
A young girl who survived a tragedy that took 32 members of her family—once catatonic—slowly reconnected with her only surviving brother. Later, she began
volunteering, saying:
“May dahilan ba’t ako nabuhay.”
And she began serving others before she was even fully healed herself.
The Girl on the Log & the birth of meaning
This was the girl who survived by clinging to a log while waves took everything else—including her family. She did not know how to swim. She did not know why she survived.
But in the silence after coaching, something changed.
Survival became purpose.
And grief became service.
PETER: when grief finds language
A father named Peter lost his wife and eldest son. He had two children left, but no direction left inside him.
Through a “second position” coaching process, he was guided to imagine his wife
speaking to him again:
“Tama na. May dalawa pa tayong anak. Alagaan mo sila.”
That imagined voice became a turning point—not as illusion, but as integration.
He began again.
