Thank you for asking how I felt during those times,” said actress-ramp model Marina Benipayo when Lifestyle sought her for an interview a few weeks after actor Ricardo Cepeda, her partner of 13 years, was released following an 11-month incarceration.

“Whenever anyone would ask how Richard was, I would say, ‘He’s okay but we cannot talk about the case.’ But hardly anyone asked how I was. I keep saying that it’s good that I’m strong. What if this happened to someone with a weaker personality? Asking how someone is doing is really important,” said Benipayo.

Cepeda went to prison for alleged syndicated estafa but was released recently after posting bail.

Benipayo said she experienced what she thought could be the early stages of depression. She said that for several weeks, she saw a dark cloud hanging over her head, consistent with how most people diagnosed with depression would describe their situation.

“I’m not the type who would wallow in self-pity. I also don’t cry in public—I don’t even cry when I’m alone. I just noticed that a dark cloud was hovering, and it tried to play with my mind … It just gave me this really heavy feeling of self-doubt, self-pity, and loneliness,” she recalled.

Self-awareness

Benipayo said it helped that she took up postgraduate studies on guidance and counseling. This was partly because she wanted to understand herself better, she added. “I wasn’t able to finish my thesis but I finished all my subjects, so I’m highly familiar with the topic of depression. I told my brother about it. I said, ‘I want you to know that I can literally see it, that it’s slowly taking over my body but, thankfully, I can recognize, acknowledge, and manage it,’” she said.

“This is the reason kids resort to taking their own lives, or resort to drinking and taking drugs. The prefrontal cortex is not yet fully developed, and so what they do is embrace it. By the time they want to let go, it’s too late. They no longer know what’s right from wrong, and they just want the mental and emotional pain to go away. I’m not happy I felt it, but I learned so much about myself when it happened,” she pointed out.

Benipayo also dealt with Cepeda’s problem quite systematically. “When Richard called to say he was in detention, the first thing I thought of was that I had to protect his name,” she began.

She then uploaded a video on Tiktok informing her followers about what happened and denied Cepeda’s involvement in the case. Benipayo then talked with their children—her sons Mark and Joshua, and Cepeda’s daughters Sam and Sachi.

“I told them, ‘I want you to continue what you’re doing every day. Do not let what happened to Paps (Cepeda) affect you because this will eventually pass. It’s very important that you don’t talk to anyone about this if ever people try to contact you.’ I also talked with my other daughter Julie. I told them that I will take care of Paps.”

Exercise

Life is back to normal now, said Benipayo. “I’m not sure if that dark cloud will come back. Definitely, I experienced it because of what happened to Richard,” she said. “We both have strong personalities, but we’re also both introverts. When Richard returned, it took us a week to regain our strength. People kept asking us to have dinner with them, but we were just too tired to go out. The first thing we did together was to play badminton. Exercise helps the mind and body.”

During the early months of Cepeda’s incarceration, Benipayo said she took on live selling on TikTok as a diversion. “I did it until I got tired. There was a time when I would go live for two to three hours, twice a day,” she recalled. “But when Richard was already home, three hours seemed like forever. These days, I don’t even do it daily anymore. It seems like I’d been running on adrenaline the whole time.”

When Benipayo started live selling in March 2023, her followers would often ask her for fashion advice. “This was before I focused on bags. I showed how to sew tote bags when I first went live. People started asking for the link (to the yellow basket)—that ’s how I started with live selling,” she said.

Personal advocacy

Helping promote local bag factories became Benipayo’s advocacy. “Eventually, I realized that a lot of resellers would do livestream for bags from China, but none for our local factories. These factories cannot afford to pay celebrities to feature their bags, so I said I’d gladly do it for them,” she said.

She explained that a number of factories closed down when export and distribution were halted during the pandemic. The two factories she is currently promoting are among the very few that are still operating. “I decided to help them because if this industry dies, then we would all be buying bags abroad. Right now, I’ve managed to convince other affiliates to also feature their bags.”

She continued: “I cannot see why people fail to see the beauty of these handmade Pinoy bags, compared to those coming from China. When you purchase a locally made bag, you also support local workers. I have to slowly introduce the idea to them. I incorporated this during my live selling. It’s only through repetition that you can implant the idea to your audience. A lot of them recognize that now. I’m glad that their minds are now open.”