The Oaxaca Project

Belem is a delightful young lady recently diagnosed with leukemia. After 3 weeks in the hospital all she wanted to do was go home, be with her family and eat her mother’s home cooked meals especially her tortillas.

She was told that her blood sugar was up possibly at diabetic levels. This made her even sadder as her mother is diabetic. She felt she would be letting her mother down if she too were diabetic. Yet, she was hungry, losing weight and missing her home and family.

We tapped:
Even tho I’m sad and just want to go home, I’m a great young lady.
Even tho I’m so tired of the hospital and want to go home, I’m a wonderful girl.
Even tho I miss my mom very much, I am a good girl.

It’s ok to give up my mom’s wonderful tortillas for a few days so I can get my blood sugar back to normal.
I don’t want my mom to be disappointed in me.
I feel that if I have diabetes too I’ll disappoint her.
I don’t want to do that.
I love my mom.
Being in the hospital is the best place to make sure my blood sugar goes back to normal.
I want to get better sooner.
I choose to be ok here in the hospital for a few more days.

She calmed down.

I asked her what wasn’t sweet in her life. She doesn’t like how her mother is sad sometimes. I asked if she thought there was something in her mother’s life that wasn’t sweet either. I was making a correlation between diabetes (too much sugar in blood) and the need to make life sweeter than it was (due to lack of sweetness). We discovered some old patterns that her mother had learned that made her sad and feel life isn’t sweet or the life is hard.

We tapped:
Even tho my mom is sad and feels life isn’t always sweet, I’m a great young lady.
Even tho I sometimes feel like life isn’t sweet like when I have to stay in the hospital and I want to go home, I love myself.
Even tho my life isn’t always sweet, I’m a sweet young lady.

Life isn’t always sweet.
Sometimes life is hard.
I can make choices about how I feel.
I can feel like life is bitter and hard or I can choose to find the sweetness in it.
I can be happy. I can choose to be happy even while I’m in the hospital.
I can choose to look for the sweet things in life and enjoy them.
I can even talk to my body and let it know that I want to focus on the sweet things so that it doesn’t have to make too much sugar in my blood.
I can be happy wherever I am.
That is my gift to myself and my family – to break the old pattern that life is not sweet.
I can make life sweet with my attitude.

She perked up and gave me an incredible look. She said she can be happy all the time like me. I told her that I’m not always happy but that anytime something comes up I choose to look at it and figure out what to do to let myself feel better. Then I became happy again. She decided she’d like to give the gift of being happy to herself and her family.

A few days later Till Schilling and I arrived in the hospital with the TappyBears donated to the Oaxaca Project. I gave one to Belem. It warmed my heart to do so. When I gave her Tappy I said he is yours and he will be a reminder to you that every day can be sweet. She flashed me the biggest smile.

Deborah and Belem

Belem