Elizabeth Sánchez: una historia de superación
En el hospital de Placetas donde Elizabeth Sánchez nació se fue la luz en el momento del parto. Aunque tuvo muchas dificultades para sobrevivir, sus padres lucharon por ella. Elizabeth cuenta su historia llena de desafíos en esta entrevista exclusiva realizada por Nitsy Grau para ADN Cuba.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 I was turning black, I was turning green.
00:02 I was going through such unusual things without knowing what was going to happen to that little girl.
00:10 If she lived or if she died.
00:12 I left the hospital on a Sunday of resurrection, practically dead.
00:19 The doctors tell my parents to take me home.
00:23 Actually, I wasn't going to live.
00:24 I was going to be a vegetable on top of a bed.
00:27 And if I lived, I was going to be a person who was going to have a lot of difficulties in life.
00:33 I went through school harassment in preschool.
00:37 Gratitude for understanding me, for saying yes.
00:43 Even the doctors and the science had told her that I was not going to live.
00:48 For always telling me that I was going to be able to be someone in the world.
00:52 And for never seeing me disabled.
00:55 [Music]
01:02 My name is Elizabeth Sanchez.
01:05 I am Cuban.
01:07 I am 30 years old.
01:09 And I have a beautiful story of overcoming.
01:13 [Music]
01:22 At the same moment that my mom was giving birth to me, the current in the hospital left.
01:28 As a result of that, I had three cardiac arrest.
01:34 I was in a coma for 28 days.
01:37 I had many endothracial tubes in my throat.
01:40 The left part of my body did not move it.
01:43 And I was missing a lot of oxygen.
01:46 That's why my skin changed color.
01:48 It got black, it got green.
01:50 And it was a time when my parents, nor the doctors, nor the outside, in which at that time I was fighting.
01:58 I understood why a being that had been waiting so long, with so many anxieties, was going through such unusual things.
02:07 Without knowing what was going to happen to that little girl.
02:12 If she lived or if she died.
02:14 In Cuba, in Placetas.
02:17 I left the hospital on a Sunday of resurrection.
02:23 Practically dead.
02:25 The doctors tell my parents to take me home.
02:29 And that I was not really going to live.
02:33 I was going to be a vegetable on a bed.
02:35 And if I lived, I was going to be a person who was going to have many difficulties in life.
02:41 My parents did not believe that.
02:44 On the contrary, they thanked me.
02:47 And they started studying, taking books.
02:51 And getting a little bit of how you can get a newborn baby forward.
02:58 That lacked oxygen at birth.
03:00 He did not have oxygen at the moment of birth.
03:02 How those parents can get that child or girl forward.
03:07 The first thing they did was to listen to classical music.
03:10 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
03:14 That calmed my convulsions a lot.
03:16 They passed me objects through my eyes.
03:18 Because my eyes were going back and I had my sight in white.
03:22 They passed me objects through my nose.
03:25 Because I had a very weak sense of smell.
03:27 They put me all kinds of smells.
03:29 Fruit smells, bad smell.
03:31 So that I could distinguish the two things.
03:35 After a year, I see a baby practically normal.
03:41 Happy.
03:42 I was living with my family, my grandparents, my cousins, my uncles.
03:47 I have always seen a family that I was always the desired girl.
03:52 The spoiled girl, the beloved girl.
03:55 And that my disability and my difference, they saw it.
04:01 It's not really a disability, because I don't feel disabled at all.
04:06 I see it as a difference that I am showing the world at this time.
04:10 And I think my difference has also been able to save my family, which was totally lost.
04:18 At least now I see it.
04:29 I am from Cuba, I am going to the Dominican Republic as a missionary.
04:33 We go out as missionaries.
04:35 I go out at four years old.
04:38 Imagine, happy.
04:40 For the people who are going to listen to us, that surely many of them are Cuban.
04:44 They are going to say, "Wow, she must go out to be happy."
04:48 Because she went out small.
04:50 And I was very happy that I went out with mom and dad.
04:54 My mom also waiting for my brother.
04:57 At school I was happy.
05:00 I actually, at that time, counted the days to start school and be able to see a different context of life for me.
05:07 And people outside my family.
05:10 I started school, I started a Christian school.
05:15 Happy that I was going to do the pre-school.
05:18 That I was going to have friends, I was going to see new teachers, I was going to learn.
05:24 And the opposite happened to me.
05:27 I went through school harassment in pre-school.
05:31 For me it was as if the world had slapped me.
05:37 And I didn't understand why it was doing it to me.
05:41 That's why my harassment hurt me more than my birth.
05:44 Because in my harassment, I already understood very well what was happening to me.
05:49 My parents left me in the classroom and I, like any happy girl, was going to learn.
05:56 And I said, "I'm going to learn, I'm going to do everything like my classmates."
06:00 But I noticed that I was lagging behind.
06:02 Mainly in math, in numbers.
06:05 And also in space orientation problems.
06:10 Which are actually my two problems.
06:12 And I said, "Oh, how strange that I can't learn at the same level as my classmates."
06:20 And that while I was still in pre-school, there are already children who know the multiplication tables.
06:26 And I still haven't learned them.
06:28 From the same moment I put my feet on the classroom, I already felt a bad life.
06:34 I don't know, but I feel like this when people are really talking to me calmly.
06:40 And they're really giving me that love that I need.
06:43 And when not.
06:44 It's something that I think God put in my life, whatever you want to call it.
06:49 But I'm sorry. I felt that this place was not in harmony with how they had raised me.
06:57 How they had taught me life.
07:00 I felt it like the dark stage of my life.
07:03 That's how I see it now.
07:05 The teacher calls all the boys to do the multiplication tables.
07:11 And I remember that I couldn't do it.
07:14 And she puts me in a chair to look at the wall.
07:17 She says, "Elisa, this is your punishment for not doing what I told you to do."
07:23 My stigma and my only problem is that I never saw my disability.
07:29 I didn't have the characteristics of a disabled child.
07:36 But I say that many times that shouldn't be seen.
07:39 Because many times, many people's disabilities are in their hearts because they don't understand those people.
07:46 And that was actually what happened to me.
07:49 How I first had to feel that heart failure of those people who didn't love me and didn't accept me.
07:58 Almost every day it was torture for me to go to school.
08:02 Because almost every day I would sit in a chair and look at the wall.
08:06 Or my classmates would lock me in the bathroom and turn off the lights.
08:10 That's why now I have a little bit of claustrophobia in small places.
08:14 And for me it was always a pain to go to a place where I wasn't loved.
08:21 And there was a moment in my life when I said, "Lord, send me a sign that I can be good."
08:27 Because I feel that if you brought me into this world, it was so that I could be good at something.
08:32 And thanks to that, I think I've been able to achieve what I've achieved.
08:37 My parents have always taught me that I have to love before I give pain.
08:48 Many people say, "Oh, it's very good to pay with the same currency."
08:52 No, many times not. Well, actually never.
08:55 I think that love throws away pain and throws away the bitterness and resentment of those people.
09:03 Now at this age, I'm 30, I've realized that those girls and that teacher who made me that pose
09:10 was because they were going through something bad in their family or friends' environment.
09:16 They thought they were going to be able to catch it with the weakest.
09:21 And now I feel it. Now I see that God has given me that strength so that I can be that light
09:29 that can illuminate all those people, boys and girls, who are now in these quiet moments and in a very dark place.
09:38 I tell you that I don't know how to read music. I do it all by ear.
09:47 And that's something that when I was in college, the teachers were like,
09:53 "How can this girl play so easily and not be able to read music?"
09:58 For me, it was happy because I said, "Finally, I've found something where I'm actually good."
10:08 I felt like I had won the lottery at that time.
10:11 I said, "Finally, there's something where people tell me I'm good at this."
10:18 I think those are things that many times people in the outside world, in which we live, don't understand.
10:24 But God had already given me that purpose in my life.
10:28 Having finished college, many people had told me that I wasn't going to be able to go.
10:38 Having finished my book, Viva el Milagro, which is a book in which I say that I undressed my soul,
10:46 I took out everything that I had inside for so many years, so much sadness and so much abomination,
10:54 that I wanted to put myself in.
10:57 And having finished my first CD, "Nace una Esperanza," which I won Best Album of the Year at the Redemption Award.
11:04 I feel like a person who is respected and loved, not for my work, but as a person.
11:12 And for what I'm now attracting to the world in which I'm being listened to.
11:18 I didn't know I sang opera.
11:25 I was even impressed because I didn't know.
11:30 I entered the University of Ciao Barrio University in 2012.
11:35 And I always wanted to sing, but I told my parents, "I want to sing, I need to sing well."
11:42 And still, at this age that I am, I still practice.
11:46 I have my teacher who still teaches me.
11:49 But at that time I was still very young.
11:52 And I said, "I have to prepare myself, I have to achieve it, and I will achieve it."
11:56 I met an exceptional teacher named Marinelle Cruz.
12:01 She was one of the first people who trusted me.
12:05 And she told me, "Elisabeth, you don't know what you really have inside.
12:09 When you know it, you will know how to channel it and work better."
12:16 And I said, "Of course, of course, with your help I will achieve it."
12:20 And so I am very happy that God, in every place and in everything He puts in my life,
12:27 always brings me an angel who is always helping me to exercise better what I am giving to the world.
12:34 My parents, thank God, have given me a normal life.
12:40 Because here where they see me, I live a normal life.
12:44 Of course, I don't know how to drive, but I live a normal life.
12:47 I walk, I run, I exercise, I talk to people.
12:52 They have always given me the right to be myself.
12:56 And so that I can also execute my own, and they tell me,
13:02 "If you did it wrong, don't worry, there will be a second chance."
13:07 I am very grateful for understanding me, for saying yes,
13:18 even though the doctors and the science told me that I was not going to live.
13:23 For always telling me that I was going to be able to be someone in the world.
13:27 And for never seeing me disabled.
13:30 For seeing me as a person who was going to achieve a lot in life,
13:35 and a person who was going to exercise what God commanded her to do in a normal way.
13:41 That is why every time I see that they close a door on me or tell me not to,
13:47 I see it as if it was not my moment, but that the second chance would come to me.
13:52 And that blessed me.
13:59 And never giving up in the face of adversity.
14:02 And knowing that bad times will come.
14:06 Because I had a moment in my life when everything was so bad,
14:09 that I said, "Lord, I will never get out of this darkness
14:15 in which the world has moved me and given me.
14:20 I will never get out."
14:22 Until I found His purpose.
14:26 When I found my purpose, I was able to get out of the darkness.
14:30 And that is what I want to tell the people who are watching us.
14:34 Find that great purpose that you have in your life,
14:38 so that you can get out of that darkness in which you are stuck.
14:42 Because when you find the purpose,
14:45 you will see that you will continue to help more people than you already are.
14:49 [Music]