Who I Build From

People often ask me,

“Who are you building this for?”

And I understand the question.

But I’ve never loved the framing.

Because I’m not building for anyone.

I’m building from.

From the part of me that was always a little too sensitive,

too quiet, too scattered, too soft-spoken to be taken seriously.

From the part of me that felt everything

but didn’t know how to speak it.

From the journals I filled with thoughts I didn’t know how to share.

From the tension of being Filipino, being gay, being emotional—

and not knowing how to hold all of it at once.

I’m building from the skipped words,

the shaky voice,

the deep breath before you try again.

I build from the kids I’ve worked with—

who ask questions bigger than the world gives them credit for.

From the youth who’ve never been taught that slowing down

can be an act of power.

I build from the version of me who dropped my Bachelor's Degree,

quit jobs, didn’t follow through—

not out of failure,

but because the thing I was meant to follow

hadn’t shown up yet.

I thought I was inconsistent.

Now I know I was composting.

And I build from everyone who feels like they’re in-between:

not healed, not broken, not thriving, not lost.

Just… becoming.

I’m not building a platform to save people.

I’m building rituals to return to.

Places where people can reflect, remember, and rewrite themselves.

Because I don’t want to design for an audience I can’t see.

I want to build from the lives I’ve touched,

and the life I’m still living.

Withering Gardens is not about solving problems.

It’s about making space—for tenderness, for contradiction, for quiet knowing.

It’s a container where your reflection isn’t judged or optimized.

It’s a place where your story can unfold slowly, without explanation.

I’m not the CEO who figured it all out.

I’m still mid-sentence.

Still soft.

Still learning how to lead without leaving myself behind.

But this?

This is what I know:

You don’t have to build for everyone.

You just have to build from truth.

And the right people will recognize it.

They always do.

— Jardine Faner