From Shattered Shores to Sunrise Skies

Photo of a sunrise I took when I went back home in Agay-ay Philippines

They say a picture is worth a thousand words — but the sunrise photo I took in Agay-ay, my hometown in Southern Leyte, carries more than just words. It holds grief, survival, and a quiet kind of hope.

When I captured that moment, the sky was painted with soft gold and fiery orange, rising slowly above the stillness of the sea. It was beautiful — painfully beautiful — because it rose over the wreckage left behind by the storm that had taken almost everything.

Entire homes along the coast were swept away. Ours included. The place where laughter once echoed, where memories were built over years, was gone in a matter of hours. All that remained were fragments — pieces of wood, twisted metal, scattered belongings — and the silence that follows disaster.

I won’t lie. The sadness was overwhelming. Standing there, with my feet buried in the sand and my eyes fixed on the ruins, I felt hollow. How do you hold onto something that’s no longer there? How do you rebuild a life when the foundation itself has been washed away?

But then I looked up.

That sunrise — it wasn’t just a beautiful scene. It was a reminder. A quiet, gentle message that after every darkness, no matter how deep or long, light always returns.

We lost our house, but not our family. And that’s everything. We cried, but we also held each other closer. We mourned what was lost, but we survived — and survival is its own kind of grace.

Every time I look at that photo, I remember not just the storm, but the strength we found in each other. I remember that healing is slow, but possible. And I remember that the sun will always rise again — even after the fiercest night.