LOOK: Chantelle Hernandez Pens Emotional Letter to Herself

There are moments in a career when applause, spotlights, and screens are replaced by something smaller, more personal: A letter. A reckoning. A pause.

Chantelle Hernandez, one of Philippine esports’ most familiar voices, wrote such a letter to herself to celebrate the anniversary of her journey.

It wasn’t a highlight reel or a list of wins. It was a confession, tender and unguarded, written in the language of gratitude, and shaped by her years of motion and memory:

“I celebrated my esports anniversary the other day, and ang dami kong realizations. But if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that the Lord has given me the chance to make mistakes, learn, and grow from them.

Life has truly been good.

The past few months have gone by so fast that I didn’t even realize we’re almost closing another year. I switched to Honor of Kings, tried courtside reporting, became a panel and desk analyst during playoffs, hosted the panel for the grand finals, and even hosted a fun run and the after-party. And now, nasa Malaysia ako to cover KNC. All these in a span of 2 months. These moments reignited that spark I once lost and reminded me to always strive for greatness and do things beyond imagination.

This year also allowed me to slow down and focus on myself, my family, and my friends. The people who ground me, remind me who I am, and keep me steady no matter how busy life gets. I’ve learned that growth doesn’t just happen in front of the camera or on stage.

It happens in the quiet moments, in taking care of your heart and the people who matter most.

Sobrang saya ko, as in. Naglalaro lang ako dati, and now I get to live a life I once only dreamed of.

Good job, ate girl, for always believing. Thank you to everyone who trusted me, supported me, and shared this journey with me. Wala ako dito kung hindi dahil sa inyo.

Your esports ate, still learning, still thankful.“

* * *

A Brief History of Chantelle Hernandez

Before the lights found her, she was a fan in the crowd. A voice swallowed by the roar of an MPL arena. Chantelle began as a gamer, then a dreamer, before she became one of the league’s first female casters. It was a fragile beginning, marked by doubt that asks more from you than you think you have.

“People forget that casters are also people who have emotions. We are free to do things that we want to, we are normal people who also want to achieve things in this short time that we are alive,” Chantelle once told ALL-STAR. 

“The greatest lesson I’ve learned in my esports career is pakikisama or getting along with people. Every day, you encounter different people. Every day, you can learn lessons and share lessons from different people and with different people,” she added.

She never imagined herself behind a mic, only that she loved the game. But love, in her case, was a persistence that carried her through the early noise of skeptics, the long nights that come with tournaments, and the silence that followed after. In the booth, she became steady, sharp, deliberate. The steady that made chaos sound like choreography.

In the years that followed, she found herself confronting the other kind of silence: of exhaustion, or the long season when faith in one’s self begins to thin. She spoke openly about depression, about being both strong and unsure. Those admissions didn’t make her smaller. They made her human. Years ago, this editor remembers watching a clip of Chantelle, bawling her eyes out because she thought she was gonna be booted out of her casting desk.

When she left MPL Philippines, she did so with grace. It was not really an exit because it felt like an evolution. She joined Honor of Kings‘ PKL, took on new stages and new visions for her craft, reclaiming versions of herself she had once set aside. In PKL, she is a caster, a host, an analyst, proof that reinvention is not the erasure of the past, but its continuation.

Chantelle’s name stands today not only for what she has achieved, but for what she represents: persistence, faith, and the audacity to believe that what once began as play could become a life’s work. In her anniversary letter, one can hear not just a celebration of where she is, but a whisper of where she’s going: Still learning, still thankful, and still, always, believing.

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