Showing posts with label Music therapy. Show all posts

Thursday, July 16, 2015

A Circle of Hearts

Some days of our lives pass by like a sweet dream where you see nothing but beauty wherever you look; a dream, that is as long as a lifetime experience, bringing out the best in you, and yet as short as a fracture of a happy second in the book of your life.

A floes stream of new discovery and inspiration arises. You find yourself floating in space with smiles that lighten up a million stars away.

Smiles of Children, and teenagers manifesting love with colors and radiating the beauty of the pure nature of their being. They are unique, beautiful, positive, strong - willed and above all, they are challengers. They are young beautiful heroes. They sweep you of your feet easily to their background, and they force you to pay attention to those details of life which differentiate them from you. They force you to maximize you own potential, to become better than the average person that you are to make a conversation.

The second you lose yourself and let your actions speak and communicate your feelings and intentions, you will find out how useless the words can be, because you will be sure that the potency of your messages is delivered and served better than when we use our common verbal nonsense. You question yourself, who is more blessed? And who should be more graceful? You will learn to be natural simple and spontaneous, accepting and learning from everything.

While you can tell if their words are wrong or distorted or so far from normal because you have something to compare it to, you know how it’s SUPPOSED to sound like, but being open to a new world you will be able to see the ironic and amusing side of the events that you might not be somehow so familiar with. The dream will end, whether it will be repeated or not, we know now that we are all special cases and we are unique and we are all beautiful, and as every word has a symbol, like the heart or (pinky, index, thumb sign) that is used instead of the word “love”; every one of us has a symbol in this vast universe with one common thing that is a vibrant heart.

Thus we are all a circle of hearts ~

"Made with Leaf" art-based circle at Father Andeweg Institute for the Deaf - Jamhour on July 10th
Written by Hanane Tabet
Photography by : Hanane Tabet & Sandra El Heybe

Leafers since Summer 2014

Friday, December 5, 2014

Leafy Thank You Note!

Thank you for being such wonderful LEAVES for the past 2 years!

We promise we keep LEAFING !

Friday, October 3, 2014

Colors for the Eyes & Music for the Heart

Pairs of Leafy hands walk into Hariri hospital, into the onco-pediatric unit on Adha’s eve. Two of them respectively carry a guitar, another carries a basket full of muffins carefully baked and wrapped. The other hands carry crafts and colors.

I Leaf Art team walks between colorful walls they had painted previously.

Once the instruments are tuned and the smiles are on, strings are strummed and music takes over a place where silence reigns.

Hatem is four. He greets us with a shy smile on a pale face.

Notes start flowing as his smile widens. He chooses to color a butterfly and names her Amar. His happiness reaches its peak when the clown enters. The boy asks for faster music and dances as much as he can with a tube connected to his arm, but his feet can only hold him for a bit so we leave him to rest.

Houssein is five. He enjoys slower music and fewer people.

He chooses to color a horse and divides this task between all his leafy friends. He insists on the fact that the horse is a female and gives her the name of Amira.
There’s a smart look in his tired eyes and the way he talks, but soon his focus weakens and Leafers had to leave him with enough colors to draw more rainbows in his dreams.

On the way out, I Leaf Art team passes by the nursery department and spreads music for the heart and colors for the eyes not only to entertain, but to rebuild the fragile hope of beaten parents.

Written by Sama Beydoun

Leafer since Summer 2014

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Colors & Smiles

It takes one nice word to make her day, and one chemo therapy to break it down.

When talking about a 4 years old young girl, who has been battling cancer for more than two years, when doctors are telling her mom that there is no way back, they have lost hope, she instead draws a red butterfly, with wings wide open. She would smile to the camera, a smile that says: I will never surrender, see you soon.

This is Suzan, who taught us how to smile from pain, and how it’s important to have courage in the darkest days, to keep on going.

On the other side of the beautifully painted hallway, lies a room for a little fighter. Mohamad or “Hamoudi” as what he likes to be called.

You can hear his laughter all the way outside the cancer unit in the hospital, he would educate you, the moment you enter his room, how you should act around kids who have cancer: “don’t touch this. Don’t do that. No, you should wear gloves.”

He would comment on almost everything he sees, whether he liked it or not, he would express his thoughts and he would immediately speaks out his mind.

Hamoudi took advantage of all of I Leaf Art team, the way the team wanted things to happen. He refused but playing the guitar that was part of the entertainment taking place that day, and asking how he would synch the sounds. He then insisted to paint his own mask, and after all he invited the team to play along with his new toy, and pretended to be having dinner, sea food dinner in particular and even left space for leftovers!!

Right next to Hamoudi’s room, there is Alaa’, her right leg was removed due to a severe infection in her bones. However, she still wears the Harley Davidson scarf, dreaming that one day she would be able to go over Lebanon riding a motorcycle and feeling the wind blowing in her hair, she never lost hope, even as a teenager who have went through way too many surgeries and hard times, she lost all of her hair, yet, she never lost her spirit, and she is still aiming high, I Leaf Art team met her one day earlier to her final chemo therapy before she goes home, and she told them how excited she is to celebrate the Eid with her family, no she was not thinking about cancer or the chemo, she kept on thinking about the new clothes and the family gathering awaiting her in couple of days.

Blessed the soul of Soujoud, the little warrior who left us last week, the amazing girl who helped painting the cancer unit, to make it a slightly better place for those whom their battle is still going.

Written by Mariam Mohammad Mosleh

Leafer since 2013