“I was only five years old. To be honest, I have very few memories of my mom,” actress Bianca Umali admits, when we ask what she remembers most about her mother, who passed away from breast cancer when Umali was five. “I know her from the stories of my half-sister, and from videos, where her personality really came out,” Umali says with a smile. “She had a laugh that everyone would remember. My mom was really the life of the party.”
Josh Tolentino
Her mother, May, was also the reason Umali ventured into showbiz. “She dreamt of becoming an artist,” Umali shares. “My mom used to dance in this old TV show called Discorama.” At age two, Umali began appearing in TV commercials, and her mother was the driving force behind it. After her mother passed, Umali’s career continued to grow.
It’s a strange kind of grief to go through—not being able to recall the person you lost, but being aware of a vacuum that should have been filled with that person’s presence. And it was compounded by the fact that when Umali was 10, she also lost her father to a heart attack. Umali was raised, for the most part of her life, by her grandmother.
Reflecting on her grief, she says, “Usually, people lose parents when they are already adults, and it’s painful because they spend so much time with them growing up. In my case, because I lost them both at an early age, I didn’t realize until I was older that ‘Hey, wait a minute, I’m alone.’”
The pain, Umali says, actually “increases every year as I get older, because growing older, you experience a lot of things in which you should have a parent’s guidance. Your parents teach you things, explain things to you.” Umali didn’t have any of that, and although she had the guidance of her beloved lola, she “had no choice but to really face everything head on, and learn things in the hardest possible way.”
It’s a kind of grief that Umali says she doesn’t want any other child to experience, which led to her partnering with The Medical City for their breast cancer awareness campaign in 2023, a three-part video series called Babae sa Babae, and to her continuing to spread awareness on the importance of early detection and prioritizing women’s health.
Josh Tolentino
The mission, she says, is “not to let any other little girl experience what I went through.” Umali’s mother’s cancer was already at Stage 3 upon detection, and Umali witnessed her health deteriorate. “The point is to normalize, even for young girls, the importance of women’s health. I don’t want other children to lose their mothers just because women’s health care isn’t really understood.”
But Umali isn’t just lending her voice to the cause for other children and other families—it’s also for her own healing, and her own dreams. Being able to learn more about breast cancer sheds more light on what her mother went through. It also teaches Umali what she can do for herself, and her loved ones. Cancer, after all, can be genetic, and Umali worries about carrying those same genes.
Josh Tolentino
“I dream of being a mom and wife,” she shares. “The purpose of me carrying this advocacy is because I want to live a longer life for my future husband and children. That’s my way of filling that gap. I’m going to be a mom to my children—I’m going to be the mom that I wasn’t able to have.”
Makeup: Denise Go Ochoa, assisted by Janice Perdigon. Hair: Jerry Javier, assisted by Raymond Gatilago. Styling: Geno Espidol and Jermainne Lagura of Qurator. Special thanks to Sparkle GMA Artist Center and Hermès.
Frequently Asked Questions
Bianca Umali’s mother was diagnosed at Stage 3, meaning the cancer had already advanced before detection. This late-stage diagnosis is central to Umali’s advocacy for earlier screening and women’s health awareness in the Philippines.
Babae sa Babae is a three-part video series Bianca Umali produced with The Medical City in 2023 to promote breast cancer awareness and normalize early detection conversations among Filipino women.
Breast cancer has a known hereditary component. Women with a mother diagnosed carry elevated lifetime risk and are advised to seek genetic counseling and earlier screening timelines from an oncologist.
The Philippine Cancer Society recommends annual mammography from age 40 for average-risk women. Those with a family history should consult an oncologist about earlier screening and genetic risk assessment.
Childhood bereavement often involves delayed reckoning — the loss isn’t fully processed until adulthood, when milestones make the absence tangible. Bianca Umali describes it as grief that deepens each year without parental guidance.
