The Story You Tell

At the end of 2021 Michelle asked to be used as a channel, to be of service. A few weeks later Typhoon Odette hit Siargao. Category five, winds over 200km/h, a three-metre storm surge straight through her house. She had finished building it that same year. Everything inside was gone, but the house was still standing, so she turned it into a community kitchen. For five months a team of local women who had lost their own homes cooked and served a thousand meals a day to families across north Siargao.
Michelle founded Kolekbibo in Burgos. It’s now a registered nonprofit and a social enterprise. There’s a maternal nutrition programme for pregnant and lactating mothers, nutrition programmes in elementary schools, and a vegetarian restaurant that gives the women full-time work and pays for the community projects. She says she has no background in nutrition and had never run a business of her own. She connects people and resources and lets things happen from there.
We talk about the first weeks after the typhoon, how UNICEF and Feed Philippines taught the team to cook for a thousand people, and the malnutrition in Caraga that was there long before the storm. We also talk about the illness that put her on life support last year and took her out of the business for months, what her body had been telling her for two years before that, and how the team ran things on their own while she recovered.
She shares the book she thinks everyone should read, and the truth she keeps coming back to, which is to find the joy.
I was at Kolekbibo in 2025 and volunteered in the kitchen and at the school feedings. Cooking with the ates, loading the pots into the multicab, seeing the kids when they spotted it coming. I heard parts of this story then. This is the first time I heard it from her.
Kolekbibo runs on donations and the restaurant.
The maternal nutrition programme, the school feedings, the wages for the ates. All of it is funded.
You can give to Nanay Bibo, or come and volunteer like I did ↓
 @kolekbibo
Hi, I am Vlora, I work with people on identity shifts through hypnosis, breathwork and somatic practice, 1:1 and on retreat. almamana.com · @almamana.life
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Nothing to Do But Listen (River of Sound Meditation, 7 min)
A short listening meditation. You lie down or sit, take a few slow breaths, and then you listen to whatever is around you. Traffic, birds, the fridge, people talking somewhere.
You don’t have to name any of it or push it away. Sounds come and they go. If your attention drifts off, you come back to listening.
In the last part we turn to the sounds inside you, your heartbeat and your breath.
Seven minutes. Use headphones if you have them.
More at almamana.com, or on Instagram @almamana.life.

Allegra is from the Philippines. She left, and she came back, and this conversation is about what happened in between.
We talk about why she fills her own cup first, and why nothing can flow out to anyone else if it’s empty. She tells me about the babaylan, the healers and mystical women of the Philippines, and why she holds the word healer with so much reverence that she won’t use it lightly. And she shares what it’s been like to build a life in Siargao: the pilates studio she opened there, and Vultun, which she runs with her husband.
Recorded in the Philippines, February 2025.
Find Allegra: instagram.com/shesferalHer studio: instagram.com/feral.studioVultun: instagram.com/vultun_
The Story You Tell is hosted by Vlora of Almamana. instagram.com/almamana.life

Most of the beliefs you live by, you never chose. You picked them up young, from people around you, and never questioned them again. They still decide what you think is possible for you.
In this episode we go to one of those beliefs and find out where it came from. Then you choose what you want in its place, and we give it to your subconscious instead.
10 minutes. Sit or lie down somewhere you won’t be disturbed. Headphones help. Don’t listen while driving or doing anything else that needs your attention.
You can listen to it as often as you like.
I work 1:1 and run retreats: https://www.almamana.com/
This recording is for relaxation and self-exploration. It isn’t therapy or medical treatment and it’s not a substitute for either. If you live with epilepsy, psychosis or a dissociative condition, or you’re currently in treatment for a mental health condition, please check with your doctor before using recordings like this. You stay in control throughout and can stop at any time.

Somebody has to drive the ship. Is it your ego, or your spirit?
Eve Eschner Hogan has spent close to thirty years guiding people through a labyrinth on Maui. She founded The Sacred Garden in Makawao, designed the labyrinths herself (one is a replica of the 800-year-old Chartres Cathedral pattern), and has kept the place free and open to the public every day since 2007. She's written several books about it, including The Spirit of the Labyrinth and The Way of the Winding Path.
Eve tells me about the turning point that changed the direction of her life, and what it taught her about listening to her own truth even when it was inconvenient. We get into the ego and the spirit, and which one is actually steering. Into self-observation, and why you can't change something you haven't noticed yet. And into what happens in the moment you catch yourself.
Eve: evehogan.com, Instagram @sacredgardenmauiMe: almamana.com, Instagram @almamana.life