"I'm Still Growing Up" Dani Barretto on Healing and Raising Kids

Dani Barretto-Panlilio has never been someone who’s stayed in one lane. Having been born into not one, but two prominent families in show business, she has navigated much of her life in the full view of a largely unforgiving public.

Now 33, Dani has grown from Marjorie Barretto’s eldest daughter into a wife and mother of two, while building a career that has continued to evolve through the different seasons of her life. As the CEO of Wellness Whispers, she advocates for holistic well-being through her growing line of ready-to-drink supplements. As a content creator-turned-host of the Bare It All podcast, Dani creates a safe space for honest conversations about matters people often keep private. Yet, the biggest shift in Dani’s life has come with motherhood.

Becoming a parent has made her look back on her childhood in a different way, while also encouraging her to think more deliberately about the kind of family she wants to build with husband, Xavi Panlilio, and children Camilla “Millie” Marguerite, who’s celebrating her seventh birthday this September, and Riley Nicholas James, who’s turning 2 in October.

For Dani, motherhood was not just giving birth and learning to care for another person. It also forced her to look more closely at herself.

As a teenager, Dani struggled with low confidence and low self-esteem and dealt with what she describes as abandonment and attachment issues. When she became a mother, she finally began to understand love, including the importance of having a healthy relationship with herself.

“I think I had a different meaning of love before having kids,” she says. “I always say, when I became a mom, that was the time my life really started because it was the time I also got to know myself more, that I started to love and appreciate myself more,” she says.

She figured learning to love herself was also connected to becoming a better mother.

“That was the only time that love wasn’t only for myself, but it was doing things that I love so that I can love my kids better,” she explains. “I feel like kasi kung hindi mo talaga [kayang] mahalin ’yung sarili mo, mahirap mong mahalin ang ibang tao.”

This allowed Dani to look at the difficult parts of her childhood and work through them.

“I feel like a lot of my emotional traumas also healed when I became a mom because I can correct them now,” she continues.

Acknowledging that her experiences growing up can influence how she raises her own children, Dani remains mindful of the choices she makes for them.

“Everything that I knew that wasn’t right; now, I can do it my way because I had those experiences in my life. No regrets naman with whatever happened ’cause at least it still made me who I am today,” she declares.

Dani has always spoken openly about what she wishes had been different in her own childhood, but that awareness hasn’t erased her empathy for her mother. In fact, becoming a mom herself has given her a better understanding of just how young Marjorie was when she became a parent.

“My mom had me at 19, so I cannot fault her for the mistakes na nagawa niya in raising me because what do you know naman at 19, you know?” Dani muses.

Looking back, Dani realizes she and her mom essentially grew up together. “Every time my mom and I would talk about it, we would always say [this] because she was also still growing up,” she says.

Her mother didn’t have the chance to experience much of her own teenage life before becoming a parent, and she says her mother has always acknowledged the trial and error that came with raising her first child.

“She knew, and she apologized over and over again,” Dani shares. Ganu’n [naman] talaga pag eldest ka, eh. Ikaw yung lab rat. Guinea pig ka talaga,” Dani points out.

Although she speaks frankly, she doesn’t speak about those experiences with bitterness. “I never resented my mom,” she declares. Instead, becoming a mom at an older age has allowed Dani to apply what she had learned from her own upbringing.

“I became a mom at an age na alam ko na kung ano ’yung mga dapat at hindi dapat gawin as a parent,” she says.

And that doesn’t mean she believes there’s one correct way to raise kids. If anything, her experience has made her more accepting of the fact that every family is different.

“Kanya-kanya talaga tayo ng parenting,” she says. “Kaya don’t judge other parents. It’s different styles for different kinds of parents.”

At the same time, there are things from her childhood that Dani definitely wants to bring into her own family. Sometimes, she even catches herself becoming her mother.

“I feel like, sometimes, I sound like my mother. I act like my mother. Like, it comes naturally. Natatawa ako sa sarili ko!” she shares. “Sometimes, my siblings would say, ‘You sound like mom,’ or ‘You act like mom.’ Unconsciously, nadadala mo talaga ’yun.”

She remembers how her mom Marjorie wanted her and her siblings—Julia, Claudia, and Leon Barretto—to always be together. “That’s something that I want to be able to [teach] my kids kasi ganu’n ’yung nanay ko dati. I want them to grow up as close as we are.”

​This feels particularly relevant to many millennial parents’ approach to raising their own children: keeping the lessons but breaking the patterns they don’t want to repeat.

And, for Dani, this goes beyond her children. It also means doing this for herself.

When asked what she wants to change as she intentionally raises the next generation, her answer isn’t about creating a perfect family. Instead, she talks about the kind of home she wants to create.

“Less drama, more peaceful, less chaotic,” she shares. “Building my family is a chance for me to have something that I’ve always wanted.”

Dani also recognizes, however, that creating this kind of environment requires more than just deciding that she wants it. She has to continue working on herself, too.

She’s conscious of the possibility that the things she hadn’t worked through could eventually affect her children, and remains candid that there are parts of herself she needs to heal.

“As my family, as my kids are growing up, I’m also still growing up,” she says. “May sarili pa rin talaga akong growing and a lot of maturing that I still need to do, and that’s the most intentional thing I can do so I can be a better parent.”

For Dani, owning up to these shortcomings is the first step to protecting her children from having to carry them.

“I’m so afraid that if hindi ko ayusin [ang] sarili ko, baka mag-suffer ’yung mga kids ko in the future,” she says. “I don’t want them to resent me, and [for them to] say I didn’t work on it. I don’t want them to ever say I traumatized them.”

Dani’s willingness to learn became especially important when she and Xavi had their first child, Millie.

“I always knew that I was gonna be strict, but a balance of strict and cool,” she says. At this point, she had already spent years helping care for her younger siblings, whom she jokingly refers to as her “test children.”

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But welcoming Millie in 2019 made Dani realize that knowing what kind of parent she wanted to be wasn’t necessarily the same as knowing how to parent. After she and Xavi found out that Millie was on the autism spectrum, they had to rethink some of the things they thought they already knew.

“Iba kasi talaga ’yung pag-handle kapag may autism ’yung child mo, eh,” she says. This meant understanding that some familiar forms of discipline wouldn’t work for Millie.

“Hindi ka pwedeng sumigaw ’cause they get overwhelmed with noises. You cannot do ’yung nakasanayan nating mga pinapalo. That doesn’t work for kids with autism.”

Instead, they consciously moved away from this. “Talagang it has to be a lot of explaining, a lot of sitting down, a lot of soothing,” Dani continues.

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She admits it was hard on her and Xavi at first, but they had to adapt quickly for their daughter’s sake.

“Hindi pwede ’yung you were given the cards, then you just give up,” she reflects. “This was a challenge we were given, but accept agad.”

When she noticed that her daughter was having difficulty with speech, she wasn’t the kind of mom to wait and see if things would resolve themselves. Dani immediately thought about what could happen if they did nothing.

“Better to know than not at all, ’di ba?” Dani muses. “The thing is, whether or not you acknowledge it professionally, you’ll still deal with it in the end,” Xavi adds.

That’s why Dani and Xavi have always had Millie’s future in mind.

“Para akong nagkaro’n ng epiphany na kapag hindi namin ’to ginawan ng action ngayon, feel ko mas mahihirapan kami at mas mahihirapan [si Millie],” she says.

“That’s the worst thing for me—’yun ang pinakaayaw ko talaga—na nahihirapan ’yung anak ko. Lalo na nu’ng lumaki [na] siya nang konti, ta’s hindi niya ma-express ’yung emotions niya, hindi niya masabi,” she shares. “That was the most painful thing I ever had to see and had to go through. But if it was painful for me, it was more painful for [Millie]."

​The point wasn’t to attach a label to what might be different about their child or to dwell on it, but to make sure she has the right support for whatever she needs.

Being a mother may now be in Dani’s identity, but it hasn’t changed the other parts of who she is. She describes herself as a mother first, but she’s still a wife, a “professional yapper,” an entrepreneur, and a woman with ambitions of her own.

“Sa totoo lang, it’s so hard to do [all of] it,” she says. “[It requires] managing your time and effort. Kailangan talaga you choose to make an effort kasi kung hindi, may mag-sa-suffer talaga.”

“[Nu’ng] wala pa si Riley, the main priority was to reach a point [na] hindi ko na kailangan isipin [kung] paano babayaran ’yung mga kailangan sa buhay ni Millie kasi kaya ko i-provide,” she shares. “At the end of the day, ang sabi ko lang talaga sa sarili ko is that [gagawin ko] kung ano ’yung necessary.”

But providing for her children isn’t the only reason she’s working so hard. Dani also wants to prove to herself that she can do it. Yes, motherhood comes with responsibility, but it doesn’t mean completely losing her identity.

“You’re still your own person,” she says. “I have dreams of my own, and being a mother shouldn’t stop that. Hindi por que nanay ka na, dapat wala ka nang pangarap or give up mo na ’yung sarili mo. [Hahanapin] mo ’yun, eh, ’yung meron ka rin [para] sa sarili mo,” she says.

​While Dani strives to continue growing into her own, motherhood has truly become her center. “I feel like [I’ve] changed, of course, but [I’m] a mother first. Everything I do [now] is because of that,” she declares.

Ultimately, Dani and Xavi hope to give Millie and Riley a childhood they can fondly remember.

“I just want them to be great people, to be people who are a light to others,” Xavi says. He doesn’t need his kids to be the smartest or the strongest, but he wants them to grow up with good values—kindness, empathy, and integrity.

For Dani, it’s more personal. Asked what she hopes Millie and Riley will say about her 20 years from now, she only wants them to know that she tried.

“I hope that they’d say ‘My mom did her best,’” she says. “I hope they don’t resent me for working, for the times I missed or [times] I put myself first.”

More than anything, she only wishes they would eventually understand why she made those choices. “I hope that they’d understand that all of the things that I’ve done are always for them,” she says. “It’s always for me to be a better parent to them.”

​Dani’s children are growing up while she’s still growing, too. And despite all the thought she has put into motherhood, she knows there is still no guarantee that she will get everything right.

“But I really hope, I really hope that I do it right,” she says.

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Produced by the Smart Parenting Team

Editor-in-Chief: Ronna Capili Bonifacio

Asst. Managing Editor/Co-Producer and Interviewer: Em Cruz

Art Director: Yela Lao

Social Media: Justine Cruz

Multimedia Producer: Rheyabel Adel

Associate Publisher: Bettina Santos

Videographers: John Mariano, Micah Moleno

Shoot Assistant: CJ Gabaleo

Photographs by Belg Belgica

Makeup by Natasha Gerona

Hairstyle by Orianne Sy

Styling by Ashley Ibasco and Justin Mendoza of Styled by Cath (Cath Sobrevega)

Clothes from Baro Label, RAF, Chanel (for Dani), Freshwind, CinemaSun63 x Hamu (for Xavi), Gingersnaps, Hello Bubba and Sunnies Kids (for Millie and Riley)