“I LIKE how you reinvented yourself,” a friend said referring to my past life as the editor-in-chief of Sun.Star Davao and now spending time crocheting and helping (with a major boost from volunteers and friends) both children with cancer at the Southern Philippines Medical Center and persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) at the Davao City Female Jail.
I didn’t reinvent myself. Everything happened as if planned and I just walked into it, clueless but willing, and now there is the Healing Hearts Bears project...
Short intro: Healing Hearts Bears are crocheted teddy bears designed as healing companions of children with cancer at the Children’s Cancer Institute of the Southern Philippines Medical Center. It was “launched” on February 14, 2022 with the first batch of 53 crocheted bears made by eight volunteers — Dr. Joji Salvador, Tasha and Apple Sandique, Tonette Quintos, Yvonne Biyo, Alex Hao, Mercy Buenaventura, and myself. Several other volunteers have joined hence, crocheting during their free time, which is not everyday, so we just gather what we can and bring them over to SPMC. Among the active ones are Cynthia Iñigo Atienza and Ma. Antonieta Villarin.
That I didn’t even know how to crochet until October 2021 hints at how this story will unfold.
It started with sponsored contents that started appearing on my Facebook feeds about amigurumi, the Japanese art of crocheting dolls. The images were so cute and appearing every so often, I decided to learn to crochet after buying a set of patterns and realizing I didn’t understand what the patterns were saying.
By December 2021, I was already working on a Nativity Set when fellow Pranic healer Yvonne Biyo, who I dragged into my addiction, said she was sending tiny toys to the House of Hope for children with cancer. Me, being me, thought... “If you're gonna make something, make something big enough for the children to hug!”
Teddy bears! But what kind and what for? Being a Pranic healer and Arhatic Yoga practitioner, I thought, why not infuse the bears with healing energies and make them into the children’s healing companions? Inputting the guided meditation that is at the very foundation of Pranic healing — the Meditation on Twin Hearts — thus, the Healing Hearts Bears concept was born, December 24, 2021.
Each bear started with just a heart, but the final design now has a crown (on top of the head) and a heart — the twin hearts. In Pranic Healing, the heart chakra is the center for human love (love for family, friends, people and things close to us) and the crown chakra is the center for universal love. You can only activate your center for universal love if your heart chakra is activated. Meaning, it’s impossible to love the World if you do not love those around you. But that’s another long story about healing energies and blessing the Earth...
The idea about a healing companion in the form of a teddy bear caught on and a few friends and friends of friends responded to my call for volunteers.
But my idea of making something “big” wasn’t as big as my buddy Kublai Millan’s concept of BIG. He wanted something bigger. Thus, by March 30, 2022 the proposal to bring the bear-making to the Davao City Female Jail was discussed with Davao City Integrated Gender and Development Division’s point person Lorna Mandin. On April 12, Lorna accompanied us to the jail to meet with the Assistant Warden and the one in charge of livelihood programs, and by April 18, we had our first meeting with the chosen PDLs along with a bigger group whom we all requested to join us for the Meditation on Twin Hearts to cleanse the energies of the jail and allow the 20 chosen women to make bears capable of becoming real healing companions.
We’ve been going there every Monday hence, conducting the Meditation on Twin Hearts with the PDLs and collecting and paying for the bears the chosen crocheters are tasked to make. All these demand resources — for payment, for materials, for logistics, every single week. But somehow, we never run out. Friends are always around, physicalized angels all willing to contribute for the women and the children, and all because on December 24, 2021, I asked myself: “Why not?”, and several more joined in.
Was it a coincidence that it was Christmas Eve? As is often said, there are no coincidences in this world, just synchronicities. Interestingly, the amigurumi feeds stopped sometime in February and I noticed that because I haven’t been seeing cute dolls anymore. saestremera@gmail.com