La Voz de Galicia – September 15, 2017 →
I met Lua Awel in a New York coffee shop, and with her, I learned that there is a life, a way of communication, that I had never known before. Lua sat on her mother Ugia’s legs and under the attentive gaze of her father Pierrot. With her continuous movement, she traveled the surrounding sensorial universe most of us are unable to perceive.
They were coming from a therapy session that would be difficult to find in our Galician corner of the world: the world of NeuroMovement, coined by the Israeli-American therapist Anat Baniel. Following Moshé Feldenkrais, she developed her own technique around the power of movement in cerebral plasticity, the ABM method.
Ugia is the singer Ugia Pedreira (from Marful and Central Folque). But I had not known yet Ugia the mother, Lua’s mother, a beautiful girl with leukomalacia, microcephaly, and cerebral palsy.
Understanding the economic and emotional hardships that crossing the pond to find the best therapy for their daughter meant for them made me question what it really means to have a health service that works for all, one that is egalitarian, that accepts diversity. Lua, like all of our children, deserves to have the best procedures to develop her own life, and depending on philanthropy to forge ahead is, unfortunately, not a realistic option in Galicia.
In her blog, Músicas de Auel, Ugia narrates Lua’s experiences, her relationships with music and with words and she inquires, in this first-person narrative, the situation lived by families with dependent members.
To imagine a Galicia in which all children like Lua could have access to the best therapy, we have to begin by understanding diversity, incentivize philanthropy and support, without obstacles, dependent people.
