The Oaxaca Project

by Jennifer Ludders

For most of April, I had the privilege of visiting the Oaxaca Project to see first-hand the transformative work Deborah Miller has been doing with kids who have cancer. Having lived in Mexico before and encountered dire conditions at public hospitals there previously, I was struck at how light the atmosphere was in the pediatric oncology ward when we walked in, especially considering the grave conditions of the children and the effects of this on their families.

Deborah explained to me that the atmosphere hadn’t always been this way. When she first began working in the ward almost five years ago, there was a dark, heavy feel to the place. When she got home, she used to have to shower immediately to shake it off. Now, however, it was quite different. When Deborah walked in, I noticed how the kids lit up. She moved around the ward like a vibrant bumblebee from flower to flower, spreading her nectar in the form of humor and love. In her wake, the kids were almost always left laughing. Their parents seemed relieved. It was quite a privilege to observe and I could easily understand what kept Deborah engaged and returning every day. My heart was captured by those amazing children after only a few minutes in their presence.

Deborah had warned me that working with kids with cancer is not an easy endeavor, and many good-intentioned people who are very sensitive just cannot handle it. Seeing the bald heads, the arms tied up to IVs, and knowing the slim recovery rate as a result of their grave illness – and especially the harsh effects of chemotherapy – I could understand why. I knew it would be a balancing act for me to offer an open, compassionate heart, while keeping those same heartstrings protected from being plucked too harshly by the uncertain circumstances. In addition to my heart, my mind would also be pestered for explanations as to how and why a divine loving universe could allow such tragedy to strike such young, beautiful children. In short, I too would need to do a lot of tapping!

As I have evolved spiritually and onto a professional healing path, I have come to appreciate greatly the mind-body-spirit connection. I believe that our emotional states – and particularly the suppression of certain feelings over time – are hugely influential in chronic illness. Louise Hay’s explanation of how childhood wounding and negative thought patterns eventually manifest in our bodies over time as chronic illness makes sense to me. But when it comes to children developing terminal illness, especially babies, this explanation seems much less satisfying. How do you explain it when Lupita, a 3-year-old girl with a devoted mother, gets Leukemia? Or happy-go-lucky five-year-old Mia develops a tumor in her stomach? Children who have barely had a chance to develop patterns in this lifetime and who still get cancer cause a gap in my understanding that naturally leads to broader, more complex spiritual questions.

On my first day at the hospital there were some 14 children on the ward. About eight of them were in beds and the rest on chairs in the outside area, with IVs attached to their arms, watching TV, mostly with their parents. I struck up a conversation with an 11-year-old boy who told me his name was Jesus. He was extremely articulate and had an incredible sweetness about him. I asked him if he had tapped with Deborah. “Oh yes! I do it all the time,” he told me. He said that tapping had helped him tremendously. Before he hadn’t been able to swallow his medicine, but tapping with Deborah changed that and now he has no problem with taking medicine.

He said he also uses it on his own when he’s feeling scared or nervous about different procedures and it helps him to calm him down. He told me in a rather matter-of-fact way that he had been extremely sick for a while, but was experiencing a lot of progress and feeling better. I was totally blown away by this child’s maturity and courage as he spoke. Deborah later told me that Jesus had been on the verge of death for about 6 days. All the staff, including her, were convinced that he was going to pass on. Instead, he made a miraculous recovery and is maintaining his resilience as he undergoes further treatment. It was humbling to be in his presence.

In the room with six beds, there were two little girls named Mia, both of whom were about the same age (five years old) and had similar gum-baring smiles. Mia 2, as I’ve begun calling her, loves Minnie Mouse. I asked her if I could tap with her and she nodded her head. I asked her how she was feeling. “Bien” she responded. How was her body feeling today? “Bien”. It didn’t take me long to realize that many of the children, even at a very young age, were not comfortable with expressing their feelings and had learned to pretend and say they were fine even when they weren’t. After tapping on what a great little girl she is and how intelligent and sweet and strong she is, she said that she had some sadness. Where was the sadness? In her eyes. What was the color of the sadness? Blue. So we tapped on that: “Even though I have this blue sadness in my eyes, I’m such a wonderful little girl…”

Then her mom appeared, interrupting and telling me that Mia had been feeling pain in her stomach. Was she still feeling pain? Yes, she told me – it was lime green. So we tapped on the lime colored pain in her tummy (which I later learned is where she has a tumor). Did she want to send it love or send it away? She wanted to send it far away. It didn’t take much tapping before she said that the pain was gone. How was the pain in her eyes? Gone, she told me. It was hard to know if it truly was gone or if she was just telling me what she thought I wanted to hear, but she did appear to be more at peace. It was certainly a beautiful interaction – the first of many I would have with this special little girl.