There is a story I heard years ago that I have never been able to shake. Not because it is a story about animals. But because it is a story about us.
The Hen Who Died Alone
A hen was bitten by a snake.
The poison burned through her, slow and certain. In agony, she dragged herself back to the henhouse — back to her own kind, to the family she had lived beside her whole life. She expected comfort. She expected company. She expected someone to stay.
Instead, they cast her out.
The poison might spread. That was the fear. So they expelled her — the bitten, the wounded, the one who needed them most — and watched her limp away into the cold.
She did not die quickly. She wandered. She cried — not from the bite, but from the abandonment. From the silence of those she had always called family. She dragged one leg through cold nights, a tear falling with every step, until she found a distant cave and collapsed inside it.
Time passed.
A hummingbird arrived at the henhouse with news: the hen was alive, but she had lost a leg. She was weak and needed help finding food.
The henhouse went still. And then came the excuses.
I am laying eggs.
I am looking for corn.
I am caring for my chicks.
One by one, they all refused.
The hummingbird returned to the cave. Without help.
Much later, the hummingbird came back with the news they had all secretly feared: the hen had died. Alone. With no one to bury her, no one to mourn her.
And then — something broke inside the henhouse.
Those laying eggs stopped. Those searching for corn left. Those caring for chicks forgot them, just for a moment. They all rushed to the cave together, crying and calling out her name, suddenly willing to cross any distance, suddenly full of love they had been too busy to offer when it mattered.
They found no hen.
Only a letter.
"In life, many times people won't cross the street to help you when you're alive, but they will cross the world to bury you when you die. And most of the tears at funerals are not from pain, but from remorse and regret."
The People Behind Every Policy
I have been in the insurance industry for nearly thirty years. I have sat across from widows who had nothing. I have watched families dissolve over money when grief had barely finished its first wave. I have seen children lose not just a parent but their entire future — their education, their home, their sense of safety — in a single season.
And I have also been there for the other kind of meeting. The one where a family is devastated, yes — but held. Where the loss is real but the collapse doesn't come. Where someone, months before they died, had the clarity and the love to make sure their family would not be abandoned.
The hen's story is not a fairy tale. It is a mirror.
How many Filipinos have reached out for help — quietly, in the form of debt, in the form of silence, in the form of "I'll be fine" — only to find that the people around them had their own eggs to lay, their own corn to find, their own chicks to tend?
I do not say this to condemn anyone. I say it because I know it is true, and pretending otherwise serves no one.
Life is uncertain. People are imperfect. And when the worst happens, the gap between love and presence — between caring and actually being there — can be devastating.
But what if there was something that never abandoned you? What if there was a safety net that did not need to overcome its own fear, its own schedule, its own hesitation?
That is what the right insurance coverage is.
The Safety Net That Never Leaves
Life insurance is not a product. It is a promise you make to the people you love — a promise that even in your absence, even if no one crosses the street, even if the regret comes too late — they will be okay.
It is the one thing in your life that will never run out of excuses.
It will not be laying eggs. It will not be looking for corn. It will not be too tired, too scared, too busy, or too late.
This is why I have dedicated my career to this work. Not because I sell policies. But because I have seen what a policy means at two in the morning when a family does not know how they will survive the next month. I have seen it be the only thing standing between a child and a life derailed before it began.
After nearly three decades — across insurance brokerage, bancassurance, life and non-life companies, in leadership roles at every level of this industry — I have never stopped believing that every Filipino family deserves this kind of security.
Don't Wait for the Hummingbird
The hen in that story did not expect to be bitten by a snake. Nobody does.
She did not expect to be cast out either. But she was.
And the hummingbird came — twice. Once with a chance to help. Once with the news that the chance was gone.
I do not know which visit you are on. But I know that the letter at the end of that cave was written for a reason: not to cause pain, but to stop it from happening again.
If you have a family that depends on you, if you have people who love you more than they are sometimes able to show, if you are the kind of person who quietly carries more than others know — please do not wait.
Get covered. Not for yourself. For the ones who will still be here when you are not.
Contact OneNetworx Insurance Agency today and let us help you find the life insurance coverage that truly fits your family — from the providers that matter most.
Call us, message us, or visit our office at 2/F The Genesis Block, Bahay Pare Road, Meycauayan City, Bulacan. We will walk with you every step of the way.
Because at OneNetworx, we believe you should never have to face it alone.
Angelo Villamejor is a GAMA Awardee and former financial wealth branch manager at a top Philippine life insurance company, with nearly 30 years of experience across insurance brokerage, bancassurance, and life and non-life insurance at leadership levels. He is the founder and principal of OneNetworx Insurance Agency OPC.
