The Warrior Has a Child

People would never guess it just by looking at her, but Donita Roe has always been the adventurous type. s

In fact, Donita wears two titanium plates in her left wrist, the result of a snowboarding accident she sustained in December last year, when she vacationed in Lake Tahoe with her family. She had to have emergency surgery, but apparently even that hasn’t quelled Donita’s adventurous spirit one bit. This summer, she intends to go swimming with sharks and dolphins in Singapore.

"It’s so funny, because now, every time I go through metal detectors at an airport or a mall, I set them off," laughs the ex-MTV VJ, who was recently in Manila to attend a church-sponsored fund-raiser for the victims of the flooding in Quezon Province. While here, she guested on Daddy Di Do Du and Gary Valenciano’s 22nd anniversary in showbiz held on ASAP. She was also part of an Earth Day event sponsored by Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) and Petron in Tagaytay, and took the time to cut the ribbon at the formal opening of the Children’s House International Nursery School.

Donita has tried to pass on her adventurous spirit to her son Joshua Paul or JP, now nine and a half months old. At his young age, JP has already traveled a lot, both within Singapore and out of it. He accompanied his mother to Boracay for the wedding of her good friend, Giselle Tongi. He’s also been to the US to visit his mother’s relatives. Donita also brings him to Manila whenever she comes here to work.

As such, motherhood has proven to be Donita’s biggest adventure. She enjoys it so much that she doesn’t regret giving up her job to get married and become a mother. "I don’t regret it. I’m quite comfortable with where I’m at right now," says Donita.

When she’s not able to bring JP along on her trips to Manila, she can’t wait to get back to Singapore. In fact, she cut her stay in Manila short by a day just so she could get home to JP and husband Eric Villarama earlier than expected. While she was in Manila, Eric (who works as a motivational speaker and creative director of a youth program called Thumbs Up, of which Donita is the spokesperson) would bring JP to work. But Donita would call them on her cell phone several times a day. "I do that all the time," she laughs. "That’s why my phone bill is usually more expensive than my ticket!"

Donita has been out of the limelight since she decided to get married in 2003. "When I left MTV, I was prepared. When I announced my decision to get married, there was no question in my mind that it was the right thing to do. I’d weighed the pros and cons, and I was okay with it."

What she wasn’t prepared for was the reaction of her fans, both in Singapore and in Manila. People would write in, and log on to her website to leave messages, asking when she was coming back to MTV. Her replies of "I’m not" were always met with puzzled looks. "Why not?" the people wanted to know.

To Donita, the answer is simple: Success elsewhere can never compensate for failure at home. "Happiness is not so much making a name for yourself in the public eye than it is creating happiness at home. I would rather measure success not by the appreciation of men, but by whether or not I have won the favor of God and my family," she says.

She still goes to auditions and accepts work and projects–and eventually sees herself becoming more active in her career again once she loses "the last 15 pounds". She is set to star in a World War II epic called Seeds of Contention which is intended for international release. Produced by Leaudouce Films, the story was written by award-winning writer Ana Ramos, a US-based Filipina. For now, Donita’s focus is on her son. She proudly describes herself as a hands-on parent. Citing the Bible verse (in Proverbs 22:6) that says "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it", Donita spends as much time as she can with JP, especially now that he’s in his formative years. She and Eric never leave him with a yaya–"I’d rather that he be either with Mommy or Daddy," she says–and enjoy many activities with him, like reading to him every night.

Everyone knows that Donita is a devout born-again Christian–and those same Christian values that have defined her life now define her as a parent.

But what about her career? The answer comes swiftly. "A lot of people don’t even get the kind of opportunities that I’ve had, and I’m only 30 years old," says Donita, who still dreams of doing international movies, and maybe a TV show or a bi-monthly special that will allow her to fly back and forth between Manila and Singapore.

Indeed, for this Christian warrior turned mother, the battle is just beginning.