The story behind the word, and what we’re trying to build around it. | Written by Balot Del Rosario, founder of Tawhay.
Tawhay is a Hiligaynon word that means serenity, but not the kind you find on a postcard. The word points to a specific quiet, the one that arrives after a long breath, when your shoulders finally drop and the noise inside settles. It’s a word I grew up around but didn’t think much about until I started looking for it on purpose.
A bit about me, since this is probably the first time we’re meeting. I’m Balot, and I’ve spent the last decade working at the intersection of wellness, psychology, and scent. My credentials include NAHA Level 2 aromatherapy certification, mindfulness teacher training, NLP practice, and grief coaching, and I’m currently finishing a master’s in developmental psychology. I run a small wellness studio in Bacolod City, raise two children with my husband, and write here when there’s something worth saying.
Before Tawhay, there was a life I worked very hard to build.
I came from a small town in Negros and carried big dreams early. I wanted meaningful work, a good career, a family, a home, and a life I could be proud of. For many years, I followed that map. I worked in corporate Manila for more than 15 years, built my career in marketing and communications, and found myself in rooms I once only imagined entering.
By my early thirties, many of the things I used to pray for were already in front of me.
Then life kept reminding me how short it really is.
I had two miscarriages. My husband had open-heart surgery in 2017. I lost my uterus in 2019. I lost my mom in an accident. I have lived with an autoimmune disorder and with the quiet knowledge that the body has limits, even when the mind wants to keep going. I was a wife, a mama, a daughter, a professional, and a woman trying to keep moving through things that changed me.
That is why Tawhay did not come out of failure. It came out of seeing life clearly.
I had work I was good at. I had a family I loved. I had responsibilities I was willing to carry. But I also knew, in a way I could no longer ignore, that achievement alone could not be the whole point. I did not want to spend my life only surviving the next deadline, the next task, the next crisis, the next version of myself that had to be strong. I wanted a life with more room to breathe.
I began reaching for small practices because that was what real life allowed. Maybe it was a calming scent before a hard day or a short meditation when I could not take a long one. I also went back to what I have always did when I was a kid: journal when I needed to hear myself think. Those small things did not erase grief, stress, illness, or responsibility. They helped me stay connected to myself while carrying them.
That was the beginning of Tawhay.
Over time, the different parts of my work started to connect more clearly. Aromatherapy gave me a way to understand the body. Mindfulness gave me a way to return to the present moment. Grief work gave language to loss. Coaching and developmental psychology helped me see people through the lens of growth, change, attachment, and the seasons of life. For a long time these felt like separate practices I happened to be trained in. After everything that had happened, I started seeing them as one practice with different doorways.
I did not want Tawhay to become another version of wellness that only works when life is quiet, organized, and spacious. Most of the wellness I had encountered seemed to assume a life I did not actually have, like something you see on Instagram: a life with long mornings, no children pulling on your sleeve or endlessly calling Mom, no autoimmune flares to plan around, no grief that surfaces at unexpected times. I wanted to build something that could be useful inside real days. The kind with deadlines, illness, appointments, school runs, emotional weather, and a list of things waiting to be done.
Tawhay Wellness is the space I created for that kind of care.
It is a small studio in Bacolod City, a scent-led practice, and a growing body of work rooted in aromatherapy, mindfulness, and psychology. Some people first meet Tawhay through our hand-blended aromatherapy products. Others come through classes, meditations, workshops, coaching, or the words I write here. At the center of all of it is the same intention. I want to help people make room for steadiness in a life that still asks a lot of them.
This blog is where I will write about the things Tawhay is built on. Scent and the way it shifts the body before the mind catches up. Self-care that is honest rather than aspirational. Motherhood, in its full and complicated form. Grief that does not follow a schedule. Burnout, nervous system support, and the small practices that help us come back to ourselves. Some of what I share will come from my training. A lot of it will come from my life.
I am not writing as someone who has mastered serenity. I am writing as someone who has had to look for it inside a full and sometimes difficult life. That is what Tawhay means to me. It is not a perfect calm. It is a place to return to.
You don’t have to become a new person to find Tawhay. You just need a little room, and we’re trying to help you make it.
Hope we see you here.