How Asia Rose Simpson reminded me of a part of myself I thought I had lost
There are people you watch and admire.
And then there are people who somehow make you remember yourself.
That was my reaction the first time I really paid attention to Asia Rose Simpson, our Miss World Philippines 2026 representative.
Of course, she is beautiful. That much is obvious.
But it wasn’t her beauty that made me stop scrolling.
It was the way she speaks.
There is something about the way she expresses herself that feels unusually composed for someone so young. She doesn’t seem to be scrambling for words. She doesn’t sound like she is trying too hard to impress anyone. There is a quiet confidence in the way she gathers her thoughts and delivers them.
And somehow, watching her brought me back to a girl I haven’t seen in a very long time.
Me.
I used to play with words
When I was in high school and college, I loved English.
Not just using it.
Playing with it.
I loved discovering a new word and finding a way to fit it into a speech. I enjoyed making sentences more colorful, reaching for richer vocabulary, and finding just the right expression for what I wanted to say.
I joined oration contests.
I competed in impromptu speaking.
I found myself in literary competitions and other activities where words mattered.
I was one of those students English teachers loved to call on.
I was even one of the students who could get exempted from English remedial classes.
I remember that version of myself with a little tenderness now.
She was not afraid of words.
She collected them.
She carried them around like little treasures.
And when she stood in front of people, she knew how to use them.
Then life happened
Years passed.
I spent a good part of my adult life in broadcasting, which gave me an entirely different education in communication.
I learned how to work under pressure. I learned how to think on my feet. I learned how to coordinate programs, work with people, handle unexpected situations, and keep going when things didn’t go according to plan.
I loved broadcasting.
I still do.
But English wasn’t necessarily the first language we used every day.
In Philippine broadcasting, especially in the environments I worked in, Filipino and our local languages naturally took center stage.
And strangely enough, because I could never quite master my own tongue the way I wanted to, I often found myself using English anyway—even when I was anchoring or hosting a program.
English became familiar.
But over the years, I wasn’t exercising it in the same way I used to.
Especially not spontaneously.
Especially not out loud.
And language, like anything else, can get rusty when you don’t use it.
I could still write.
That part never really left me.
I could still think in English. I could still read. I could still understand complex ideas and put them on paper.
But speaking?
Sometimes I freeze.
Sometimes the word I know is right there somewhere in my head, but I can’t quite reach it.
I know what I want to say.
I just can’t seem to find the word quickly enough.
And that can be surprisingly humbling for someone who once loved words so much.
Then I started teaching again
This is one of the reasons my work as an English Communications Coach on Preply has become more meaningful to me than I initially realized.
I thought I was simply teaching English.
But somewhere along the way, I started rediscovering my own.
Every lesson gives me another opportunity to speak.
To explain.
To find words.
To listen carefully.
To formulate thoughts in real time.
To make mistakes.
To recover.
To keep talking.
And slowly, I realized something:
Maybe I don’t need to become the girl I used to be again.
Maybe I just need to reconnect with her.
The girl who loved words is still somewhere inside me.
She has simply been quiet for a while.
There is a difference between knowing and using
One of the most humbling things about language is that knowing something and being able to retrieve it effortlessly are two different things.
You can know hundreds—or thousands—of words and still stumble when you need one particular word in the middle of a conversation.
You can write beautifully and still freeze during a spontaneous discussion.
You can understand everything someone says and still need a few seconds to organize your own response.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve lost your ability.
Sometimes, you just need practice.
Your linguistic muscles need to wake up again.
And perhaps that is what I am doing now.
Waking mine up.
Watching Asia reminded me of that
This is why I find myself particularly drawn to Asia Rose Simpson.
Her official Miss World profile describes her as someone who enjoys reading, writing and poetry, and she hopes to become a published children’s book author and illustrator. She speaks English, Tagalog and Hiligaynon.
That combination of creativity, language, and purpose is something I recognize.
And perhaps what I admire most is the ease with which she seems to inhabit her voice.
During the Miss World Philippines finals, her answer about social media moved beyond a simple yes-or-no response. She connected the question to youth mental health and to her Sports, Emotional and Dance initiative, while also calling for responsible use of social media.
Now, as she represents the Philippines at Miss World in Vietnam, she is continuing to step into that international stage. And just this week, she secured an early place in the quarterfinals through the Asia & Oceania Head-to-Head Challenge.
But what fascinates me isn’t simply that she is winning.
It is how she carries herself while doing it.
There is something almost old-fashioned about the kind of presence I see in her.
Not old-fashioned in appearance.
Old-fashioned in the sense of being comfortable with words, ideas, books, conversation and thought.
An old soul, perhaps.
And maybe that’s why she feels strangely familiar to me.
Confidence isn’t always something you have
Sometimes, confidence is something you rebuild.
I think I am learning that now.
For years, I thought perhaps I had lost something.
Maybe I wasn’t as articulate as I used to be.
Maybe my vocabulary wasn’t as rich.
Maybe I wasn’t as quick.
Maybe those days of effortlessly producing words during an impromptu speech belonged to a younger version of me.
But what if they don’t?
What if those abilities are still there?
What if they simply need to be used again?
That is the lesson I am taking from this.
Not that I should compare myself to an eighteen-year-old beauty queen.
Goodness, no. 😂
She has her journey.
I have mine.
But sometimes another person’s light shines brightly enough to illuminate something in us that has been sitting in the dark.
And that is what Asia Rose Simpson has unexpectedly done for me.
She reminded me of the girl who loved English.
The girl who collected words.
The girl who stood in front of judges and audiences and somehow found something to say.
The girl her English teachers could count on.
The girl who entered literary contests and impromptu speeches.
The girl who didn’t have to think too hard about whether she was capable of speaking.
She simply spoke.
So, I am practicing again
Maybe this is my season of getting that girl back.
Not exactly as she was.
I’m older now.
I’ve lived more life.
I’ve made mistakes. I’ve worked in offices and studios. I’ve raised children. I’ve built businesses. I’ve experienced rejection and uncertainty. I’ve learned things that no classroom could have taught me.
Perhaps the words I have now can be richer because the life behind them is richer.
I just need to give them room to come out.
So I’m going to practice.
I’m going to speak more.
I’m going to keep teaching.
I’m going to read.
I’m going to listen to people who speak beautifully.
I’m going to allow myself to stumble without immediately deciding that I’ve lost something.
And when I freeze and have to search for a word, I’ll remind myself:
It isn’t gone.
It is simply waiting to be used again.
To the girl who loved words
I don’t know if Asia Rose Simpson will ever know that watching her speak made someone much older, somewhere in the Philippines, remember herself.
Probably not.
And that’s okay.
She is busy carrying the Philippines with her on an international stage, and I am simply one person watching from home, cheering her on.
But I want to say this anyway:
Thank you, Asia.
Thank you for reminding me that eloquence isn’t only something we admire in other people.
Sometimes it is something we once carried ourselves.
Sometimes it gets buried beneath years of life.
And sometimes, all it takes is hearing someone speak with confidence, intelligence and genuine love for words to make us look inward and say:
Wait.
She’s reminding me of someone.
I think I know her.
She used to be me.
And maybe, little by little, she still is.
Here’s to finding her again.
And here’s to using the words I’ve been saving all these years. ❤️
A little note from The Mari Effect
Maybe this is what rediscovering ourselves sometimes looks like.
Not becoming someone new.
Not going back to who we were.
But bringing the forgotten pieces of ourselves into the person we’ve become.
Sometimes, the next chapter isn’t about reinvention.
Sometimes, it’s about remembering.
