Kintsugi Heroes
Kahlil Bagatsing · 55 min
At 40, Kahlil Bagatsing looked in the mirror weighing over 320 pounds, isolated and wishing he hadn't woken up — and chose to dismantle a lifetime of living for everyone else in order to finally find himself.
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At 40, Kahlil Bagatsing weighed over 320 pounds, isolated, and wishing he hadn't woken up. He was unrecognizable to himself, not because of a single catastrophic event, but because of a lifetime of small, slow choices made to please everyone else. Born in the Philippines to a multicultural family, Kahlil learned early to respect elders and follow instructions. He took the business degree his father chose, used his father's company as his master's thesis, and worked in the family business for decades, even as he felt it wasn't who he was. A 15-year volunteer stint with Make-A-Wish Foundation kept him alive, but it wasn't enough. When he finally looked in the mirror at 39, turning 40, he recognised he had become someone he didn't know and didn't like.
The fracture came wrapped in a simple but devastating realisation: he had spent his entire life lying to himself about what he wanted. He quit the family business with his savings and began a spiritual search, meditation retreats, ashrams, self-help books, silent monasteries. Then he discovered improv comedy in the Philippines and learned a principle that shifted everything: saying yes to adventure instead of playing it safe. He moved through San Francisco, took classes, said yes to things. But the deeper work was internal. He learned he could never love another person or build the partnership he wanted until he first learned to love himself. He had to stop the lie.
Today Kahlil works as a job coach with Upwardly Global, helping immigrants and refugees build careers in the US, the very work he had to learn for himself. He's married, grateful for his parents in a way that transformed his relationship with them, and he frames uncertainty not as fear but as one of three answers: yes, not yet, or something better. His healing became his purpose. He now shows others what it took him 40 years to discover: how to find yourself when you've spent a lifetime lost in everyone else's expectations.
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Kintsugi Heroes · Registered Australian not-for-profit · kintsugiheroes.com.au ↗