13/09/2026
๐๐๐๐ง๐จ๐ฅ๐ | ๐ฆ๐๐๐ก๐ฆ ๐ข๐ ๐ ๐ฉ๐ข๐๐๐
"Choosing to move forward-not because my past did not matter, but because it mattered enough to teach me something."
Ms. Mary Catherine Billones De La Torre knows what it feels like to be in a room and still feel like an outsider.
There is no empty chair to point to. No locked door. No sign that says you do not belong.
Sometimes, exclusion is quieter than that.
It is a conversation taking place a few feet away, moving too quickly to follow. It is laughter spreading across a room without knowing what started it. It is sitting among other students while a lesson continues, knowing the information is there but not always having a way to reach it.
Mary Catherine has known that kind of silence.
Born with a serious infection, she became ill as a baby and was treated with strong antibiotics that affected her hearing. As she grew older, her hearing and speech developed differently from those of other children, making communication one of the earliest barriers she had to navigate.
Around the age of five or six years old, she underwent speech therapy.
While Mary Catherine was learning to communicate, her mother, Maria Victoria Billones Dela Torre, was learning something else: how difficult it could be to find a place where her daughter could learn.
She searched through mainstream schools, including Doane Baptist School, Bethel Temple, Bethany, and Montessori School. Yet accessibility remained a challenge. There were no interpreters and limited understanding of what Mary Catherine needed to participate fully.
The problem was never that Mary Catherine did not want to learn. It was that learning was often presented in a language she could not yet access.
So she learned to watch.
She studied faces as expressions shifted, lips as they moved, hands as they gestured, and bodies as they turned toward one another. Pictures, actions, and demonstrations became lessons. When sound could not give her the answer, she searched for it with her eyes.
Her eyes became her first way of listening. But watching was not the same as communicating.
Mary Catherine struggled to translate her thoughts into words and often found herself misunderstood. She remembers sitting among people whose laughter filled the room, wanting to share in their joy but unable to enter the conversation.
โCommunication became my biggest challenge.โ
There was a particular loneliness in being present but unable to participate. Voices filled the air, yet hers seemed to have nowhere to land.
Eventually, Mary Catherine transferred to a special education school. There, she encountered something that would change not only how she communicated, but how she understood herself: Filipino Sign Language.
She learned it later than many Deaf people do. But when her hands finally found the language they had been searching for, the distance between her and the world began to close.
For the first time, she did not have to chase communication. She could reach for it.
She could tell someone what she was thinking, make a friend, follow a lesson, and join a conversation. Be understoodโand understand in return.
Her hands, once only a means of movement, became her voice.
And in finding that voice, Mary Catherine found something greater: a way to belong.
โLanguage is the key to confidence, identity, and hope,โ she said.
With FSL, Mary Catherine had finally found a way to speak. And with that voice came a quiet determination to build a future of her own.
She continued her studies at Central Philippine University. But university brought a familiar struggle in a different form.
Lectures moved quickly. Words filled the room and disappeared just as quickly, while accessible services and sign-language interpretation remained limited. She learned to gather what she couldโfrom notes, gestures, expressions, and whatever pieces of the lesson she could hold on to.
Sometimes, she could see the lesson happening without being able to fully reach it.
And there were days when that distance became unbearable.
Discouragement crept in. Exhaustion followed. There were moments when she wondered if continuing was worth the weight it demanded of her.
But her mother reminded her why she started. Dean Joel Ciriaco encouraged her to keep going. Ailen Teruel became another steady presence along the wayโone of the people who helped make the weight a little lighter.
So she stayed.
She continued because she believed education could change her future.
In October 2012, she graduated from Central Philippine University with a Bachelor in Special Education, becoming the universityโs first Deaf graduate.
The milestone carried more than a diploma.
It carried the memory of a child who had once watched other people communicate, a student who had struggled to access lessons, and a mother who had spent years searching for a place where her daughter could learn.
Then came another milestone.
In March 2015, Mary Catherine passed the Licensure Examination for Teachers, becoming the first Deaf LET passer in Iloilo City.
Her name was printed on the result.
Her hands were the ones that earned the title.
But she had not arrived there alone.
When lessons became difficult, Maria Victoria helped her understand them. When pages became overwhelming, she helped organize the notes. When the road forward seemed uncertain, she remained beside her.
She could not take the examination for her daughter.
What she could do was make sure Mary Catherine never had to face the journey without someone believing she could finish it.
And she did.
Maria Victoria had spent years helping her daughter find a way into classrooms. Now, Mary Catherine was ready to enter one of them as a teacher.
Skilled in Filipino Sign Language and American Sign Language, she worked as a teacher, lecturer, speaker, and advocate in programs promoting Deaf-centered and inclusive education. She taught at the Bible Institute for the Deaf in Valenzuela City, worked as a sign-language teacher, served as a lecturer at the Carl Balita Review Center in Manila, and participated in seminars, workshops, and community programs centered on sign language, disability awareness, and inclusion.
She entered the profession with a familiar hope: to help people understand.
But becoming a teacher did not mean she had finally reached an uncomplicated ending.
While teaching, she continued her education and pursued graduate studies at Central Philippine University. Her mother remained a steady source of support as she balanced advanced studies with the demands of teaching.
Then the profession began teaching her lessons she had not expected.
There were heavy responsibilities, stress, disappointment, and painful situations. At times, Mary Catherine did not feel emotionally or professionally supported.
For someone who had spent her childhood trying to be understood, becoming a teacher and struggling to feel understood in her own workplace carried an unexpected irony.
โThere were moments when I questioned myself and wondered whether I was really meant to continue teaching,โ she recalled.
Eventually, she made a difficult decision.
She left.
Not because teaching no longer mattered.
Not because the Deaf community no longer mattered.
And not because she had failed.
As she put it, โLeaving an unhealthy or painful environment does not mean that I have failed.โ
She eventually decided that she did not want to continue teaching in a school for students with hearing impairment. The decision did not erase her commitment to the Deaf community or the importance of Deaf education. Instead, it taught her something equally important: perseverance does not always mean staying.
Sometimes, it means knowing when to leave.
Mary Catherine chose an environment where she could remain motivated, confident, productive, and at peace.
Then her path brought her back to Central Philippine University.
Only this time, she was no longer sitting among students trying to understand the lesson.
She was standing in front of the classroom.
Today, Mary Catherine works as a part-time instructor at Central Philippine University, teaching American Sign Language and Filipino Sign Language in the College of Education.
The university that once challenged her access to education has become a place where she teaches communication to others.
The child who once needed a way to understand is now helping others understand.
But Mary Catherine does not tell her story as though every hardship was necessary or every closed door was secretly a blessing.
She remembers the loneliness, disappointment, struggle, and pain.
She carries them differently now.
โChoosing to move forwardโnot because my past did not matter, but because it mattered enough to teach me something,โ she reflected.
Those experiences shaped the way she understands inclusion.
For Mary Catherine, inclusion is not simply allowing someone to enter a classroom. It means giving that person the means to participate once they are inside.
It means communication.
Accessibility.
Respect.
Opportunity.
โAccessibility is not charityโit is justice,โ she emphasized.
She speaks of these not as abstract principles but as conditions that can determine whether a person feels seen, heard, and valued.
There were people who saw her disability before they saw her abilities. Mary Catherine learned not to measure herself through other peopleโs first impressions.
โMy value comes from who I am as a person, created by God with unique gifts and talents,โ she said.
Her faith has remained a quiet thread through her life.
It did not make every barrier disappear. It gave her strength to keep moving when she could not yet see what waited ahead.
Over time, faith also changed the way she viewed her past.
โInstead of asking, โWhy did this happen to me?โ I learned to ask, โHow can my experience help others?โโ
That question now shapes the work she does.
Mary Catherine hopes young Deaf people will understand that their futures are not determined by other peopleโs assumptions about them. She dreams of better access to education, qualified teachers, Filipino Sign Language, interpreters when needed, and communities where students can learn and dream without unnecessary barriers.
She also hopes hearing families, teachers, churches, workplaces, and communities will understand that inclusion begins with communication and respect.
Because she knows what happens when those things are missing.
Her challenges taught her patience, perseverance, courage, faith, and compassion.
As she puts it, โEvery closed door has led me toward a new opportunity.โ
Mary Catherineโs story began with a child trying to understand a world that could not always understand her.
She learned to watch.
Then she learned to sign.
Then she learned to teach.
Along the way, she became Central Philippine Universityโs first Deaf graduate and Iloilo Cityโs first Deaf LET passer. She entered the profession, encountered its difficulties, chose to leave an environment that was affecting her well-being, and eventually returned to the university where she had once struggled to access the classroom.
Only now, she stands at the front of the classroom.
The classroom is still full.
But this time, Mary Catherine is not missing.
She is the one teaching.
Feature by: Jabezella Baitan
Pubmat by: Vioncey Glindro
