Raissa Laurel-Subijano: The Strength to Stand Again
When a blast took her legs, it could have ended her story. Instead, Raissa Laurel-Subijano found new meaning in survival—showing that resilience can be as powerful, and as beautiful, as grace itself.
For Filipino law students, there’s an annual time-honored tradition of meeting and greeting law students who have just wrapped up the final day of the bar exams, kicking off a celebratory end to the grueling licensure examinations—the bar salubong. On September 26, 2010, second-year law student Raissa Laurel stood along Taft Avenue, waiting with friends for others who had just finished their tests. At exactly 5 P.M., something exploded, and she was thrown into a scene of utter chaos and, ultimately, a journey that would completely change her, her life, and her own body.
“Tumalsik kami,” Laurel, now married and with the hyphenated name of Laurel-Subijano, tells us today. “I remember I was lying on the street. I was awake the whole time, super alert ako, to the point na pati yung bag ko, pinaabot ko pa [sa ibang tao].” As she lay feeling every single sensation that her body was subject to, Laurel-Subijano had a vision. “I was entering a courtroom in a wheelchair,” she recalls. “I believe that was God’s way of telling me that I would not be able to walk again using my own feet.”
Police would later inform them that a hand grenade had been thrown and had exploded on the exact spot Laurel-Subijano had been standing on (“Kumbaga, ako yung ‘X’ kung nasaan nag-land”). Laurel-Subijano was rushed to the nearby Philippine General Hospital, where it was discovered that major arteries had been damaged, and that the extent of her blood loss and injuries put her chances of survival at 20 percent. She was rushed into surgery, with her parents having to make the difficult decision to amputate both her legs to save her. She awoke the next day, in the ICU, intubated.
“Sabi ko, at least buhay,” Laurel-Subijano shares. Yet although she quietly accepted her fate, the road ahead was still long and very, very difficult. Three major surgeries, skin grafting, and a long journey of rehab and therapy awaited her.
Yet the thing with Laurel-Subijano, we notice, as she very matter-of-factly tells us her story, is her doggedness. While inside the hospital, she set small, everyday goals for herself, and managed to get discharged within a month. She started rehab immediately, learning how to live with limited mobility. By November, she was back in school, attending classes in a wheelchair. By December, she was able to stand and fit her new prosthetic legs.
Wilmark Jolindon
It’s an astonishing timeline, one that showcases Laurel-Subijano’s singlemindedness, and more importantly, her incredible strength. It’s even more awe-inspiring when you learn that, since then, she has finished law school, gone into public service, married her then-boyfriend at the time of the incident, birthed a son via normal delivery, and has lived as normal a life as possible—working out in the gym, doing Pilates, doing everyday errands. For Laurel-Subijano, her disability isn’t something that should hinder her. “I don’t limit myself. I can still do the things na kaya ng regular person, but of course, with modifications.”
She admits that there are times when she still questions why everything unfolded the way it did, but goes back to the old adage of “everything has a purpose. Pwede naman wala ako dito today, pero may purpose eh.”
Laurel-Subijano says that her goal, her purpose, is really to create more awareness for people with disabilities like her. “I wanted to be a lawyer because I wanted to be someone who would make a difference in this world,” she shares. “Sabi sa akin, be careful, be careful with what you pray for,” she finishes with a grin.
Art direction by Nicole Almero. Beauty direction by Ambrosia Concepcion. Makeup by Lala Flores, assisted by Raquel Rocha. Hair by Dale Mallari. Styling by Geno Espidol for Qurator, assisted by Jermainne Lagura.
