When Really Literally Tío Benito was with Animal Synergy Rescue, he had the chance to meet Nina Simone in Baltimore. This is the Nina Simone originally from Tijuana, Mexico, by the way. The story is best told by Carla Naden, Director of Animal Synergy (who is also now her sister).
Please take it away Carla:
Nina and my mom – Busted is beautiful.
The tangible healing power of busted love nuggets…
Nina is a geriatric cocker spaniel who had lyme disease, a case of pyrometea, and a bunch of other busted ailments in her 20-pound body. She is from Tijuana then made her way into the San Diego System. My mom, Lucy, who lives in Baltimore, is a phenomenal woman who experienced the loss of a husband, my dad, Paul, and soon after sustained an injury to her hip. Who would’ve thought these two paths would cross and change each others’ lives forever? Magic is real but it only happens with action.
My amazing mother is very private and doesn’t desire to have her personal life shared with the social media world, but she approved the following message –
“The more you know.” She believes that Synergy has the potential to change the lives of both the animals in our communities and the people. She’s proof of this.
My mom hurt her hip in yoga and was unable to comfortably walk. Due to some doctoral negligence her hip only got worse and proper healing did not occur, leaving her vulnerable, sad and slightly pissed off. The sparkle that I had come to expect was dim and no matter what I did I couldn’t make it shine again. People may not know this but there’s a correlation in your brain between grief and chronic pain. My dad died within the past few years, leaving a huge hole in my family’s heart. (I run Synergy in his honor and to make my family proud, among other things). Even though I’m her daughter and we are so very close as a family I cannot heal her. And the idea of a pending surgery on the horizon was heavy and scary.
Two of my favorite people came together – Dra. Serrano Centro de Diagnostico Clinico Veterinario and her momma.They fostered and loved Nina Simone (now known as Nee), healing her medically and showing her love. They even suggested she could be a good fit for my mom, who had hinted about adopting a dog. She was uncertain because of her hip and her grief. But she’d always had a dog in the past. We had always rescued Danes and when my father became ill, that took priority so adopting a rescued, busted nugget fell off the table so to speak.
And now a family is made on the east coast and a part of my mom’s heart and body that was completely broken – and that I was unable to heal – is now on the mend. She’s walking (mom) much better, she’s getting stronger, she isn’t complaining about her legs and she has her sparkle back. This makes my heart so happy it’s basically shooting out invisible rainbows every time I hear my mom say the name, “Nee.”
My mom now walks about five times a day, she gets together with her other friends who have dogs, she calls me with all sorts of questions, she shares her worries and the funny things Nina Nee has done that day.
You never know what the future holds. It’s how life works. But this moment serves as a reminder that everything we do in Synergy is for reason. That these seemingly random acts really do have a purpose. I encourage all of you to support what we’re doing. And when I say what we are doing I mean loving madly and wanting to create positive change in this world.
This isn’t just another cliché about how animals heal. This is about the hesitations, the fear, the love, the sickness and the beauty that come from these animals. It’s about the bond between humans and animals, a bond that requires patience.
Things worth doing don’t happen overnight. I typically say to give anything 3.25 weeks to see if it really nurtures your soul in a way you could never have imagined. By this time, you forget all the preconceived notions you had at the beginning (this goes for everything in life). You let go of all the expectations. You just live and you love and you persevere through the fear. You transform because you didn’t give up. You become love.
Thank you, Nina!
“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered” F. Scott Fitzgerald
Nina – “Hey, new mom.”
Lucy – “Hey, geriatric daughter.”
Nina – “Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for opening your heart to an old gal like me… I was once forgotten and very sick.. Now I get to gaze at your incredibly beautiful face and know I am now and forevermore, safe.”
Nuff Said!
“So, Nina Simone changed my mom’s life. In a nutshell my mama was suffering tremendous grief from the loss of my father, as well as having a hip injury. Nina saved my mom and my mom saved Nina”
