Back home, Mary Jane Veloso begins rebuilding family ties

NUEVA, ECIJA, Philippines — Mary Jane Veloso woke up at 5 a.m. on Sunday, her first morning home in Natividad, Nueva Ecija, and for a moment, had to convince herself that it was real.

“Totoo ba ‘to, nasa bahay na ba talaga ako? (Is this real? Am I really home?)” she recalled thinking during a phone interview.

For nearly 17 years, waking before dawn meant something else. In prison, she had to get up at around 4:30 a.m. to pray and clean. 

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Now, she was waking up in a home of her own—a home she had helped make possible while she was thousands of kilometers away in Indonesia.

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READ: Mary Jane Veloso is finally free

There was “pinakbet” and grilled “tilapia” waiting for her, cooked by her sister-in-law.

“Sobrang saya ko po! Pag uwi dito sa amin puno ng kwentuhan (I’m so happy! When I got home, we spent the time catching up and talking),” Veloso shared.

It was, she said, different when the food was cooked by family.

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“Now I realize it was just pinakbet, but eating it with your family feels so good,” Veloso added.

After years of being separated from her family, it was the ordinary moments that made her freedom feel real.

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Reunion

The reunion with her two sons was another matter.

“Our reunion was so joyful. My children hugged me so tightly and kept kissing me. They said, ‘We missed you so much, Mama,” Veloso remarked.

Veloso said she missed being a mother—taking her older son to school, teaching him to read and write, and caring for her younger son, who was only a year old when she was imprisoned. She missed having them beside her, bathing them and watching them grow.

On Sunday, she teased her younger son about one thing he had once wanted from his mother.

“Baby Darren, halika, paliguan na kita (Baby Darren, come here, let me give you a bath),” she told him.

His answer made her laugh. “Mama, 17 na ako. Nahihiya na ako paliguan (Mom, I’m already 17. I’m too embarrassed to have you bathe me).”

But beneath the joke is the reality of the years Veloso lost.

She still does not know how to use a modern cellphone; the phone she knew before was a phone with a keypad, and Facebook had not yet become part of her life.

Veloso admitted that she no longer knows her sons as well as she once did.

“I don’t know my two sons that well anymore because they’ve grown up. I no longer know what they like or dislike,” she lamented.

Still, she believes there is still time to get to know her sons, guide them and rebuild their relationship. She has asked them to see her not only as their mother but also as a friend they can turn to when they have problems.

Veloso is also now a grandmother, with one grandchild through her older son.

She said she has likewise returned to a family much larger than the one she remembers.

READ: Indonesia exec: Veloso homecoming on Dec. 18

Search for truth

Among her nieces and nephews are about 16 children, many of whom have grown up while she was away.

Her return, in many ways, is therefore not simply a homecoming, it is a process of getting to know her own family again. She wants the truth.

Veloso said she has also reached a point where she can say she has forgiven the people she identifies as her recruiters.

But forgiveness, she said, does not mean abandoning the case against them.

“For now, I have forgiven my recruiters, but even though I have forgiven them, I still need to pursue the case,” Veloso said.

The Philippine government had previously said cases involving qualified trafficking, illegal recruitment and estafa had been filed in the country and that Veloso was a crucial witness.

On Sept. 25, President Marcos signed an absolute pardon for Veloso but for her, there is something she still wants to hear directly from the people she says recruited her.

“I want to hear directly from them that I did nothing wrong,” Veloso asserted.

According to her, she has already achieved the thing she prayed for most: being able to return home and live with her family. What remains is hearing the truth from the people whose actions she says led to her ordeal.

For Veloso, freedom is no longer simply the absence of prison walls. It is a chance to begin again.

“For me, freedom now means a new life filled with hope that God has given me,” Veloso said.

She added: “I will do everything I can to fulfill my role as a daughter to my parents and as a mother to my children. That is my prayer to God.”

Her next dream is not grand. She wants to lift her family out of poverty and experience a stable life together. 

Veloso was arrested in Indonesia in 2010 after authorities found 2.6 kilograms of heroin in a suitcase she was carrying. She was sentenced to death and was scheduled to be executed in 2015 but was granted a last-minute reprieve.

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She was transferred to Philippine custody in December 2024 under an agreement between Manila and Jakarta and has since been serving her sentence at the Correctional Institution for Women. /cb