There is a song that says: “We are all different, we don’t want compassion, we want understanding.” My inner world – that’s how it is titled, like the album it is a part of – was born in the handwriting of Natividad Baldominos. She is also the one who gives him voice. In the case of the singer and founder of the NGO My voice for your smile – a non-profit association that welcomes children with diverse abilities –, that world has been built based on a long journey of courage and improvement. Briefer, but equally intense, is the one she shares with the journalist Joana Bonet, a new chapter of the series of 12 interviews Women and Travelers from Renfe.
“The lyrics of that song were born because a mother told me that she was tired of labels, of hearing ‘look at that child, he’s autistic’ when he goes out on the street.” In the end, all of us, whether or not we have special needs or disabilities, tend to put labels on ourselves. And then I told myself “let’s put an end to them, even if it’s with a song. My children, as I call them, sing it,” she says excitedly.
Those children (26, specifically) to whom he refers are those who go to the Milagro Center, in Guadalajara. A place that his NGO has created with a lot of effort and in the midst of a pandemic and thanks, also, to donations from companies and the solidarity work of many people. “We try to make children happy with the common thread of music and through leisure. Therapies and therapeutic techniques are applied to them, but always enjoying what they do,” he details.
Natividad learns many things from them. “Many times, I would love to see the world through his prism. We are used to doing it from a general perspective. As soon as someone stops being in that generality, it is strange. But none of that, it’s just another perspective, one more open and more wonderful. It is the perspective of innocence, which they never lose,” she says.
His foundation My voice for your smile also does its part in other organizations and gives concerts for the Association against Cancer, Cáritas or Manos Unidas. Financing is also obtained from the sale of the album. “I have tried to include everyone in it. There is a song for Alzheimer’s, another for children with special needs, another for caregivers… They are songs with heart.”
One of those songs, the most personal of all, was written the day his daughter was born. “At first, I couldn’t hold her in her arms. When I created the song, my daughter was lying next to me, in her crib, and I was in bed. I looked at her and sang to her how we met, how she was born,” she says. She didn’t give it to him until she turned 18. The force of life, she says in her title: the one that her daughter instilled in her to keep going.
Natividad Baldominos was 33 years old and pregnant. They had to bring her birth early, they performed a cesarean section, and then they forgot about her. She lost a lot of blood and she was out of breath, but they managed to recover her and bring her back to life. “There I was born again. My daughter was born, a little before me, and then I was born,” she says. But, in doing so, she developed a rare disease. Today, a card certifies the degree of disability of 88% of her.
“There is no medical record. My daughter had not been born and I had not been admitted to that hospital nor had I given birth,” she says. Compensation or moral and economic compensation did not arrive either, because the facts were never recognized.
Despite the pain, she did not hesitate to push forward. And she continues to do it. “After so many years, you learn to live with each new thing that appears to you every day, it is a learning experience. The worst days are when you open your eyes and say “I can’t get up today.” I haven’t been able to do it for six weeks because my body didn’t want to. But then you have many others in which it follows you, and you get up and say “well, today we have to take advantage.” And there is a motivation that never fails: “Music always heals the soul.”
It was, precisely, after seeing his mobility affected and, on some occasions, also his voice – he lost it for 27 days – when he decided to start building the project that is today his foundation. “I decided that I had to give my voice away to get the smiles and happiness of others.”
Inside, where her own inner world lives, and also outside, Natividad Baldominos will continue her journey. Sometimes by train. “As a cabin, it is prepared. “It’s the people who travel in it who perhaps aren’t.”
It is ignorance, according to the singer, that causes rejection or inappropriate behavior towards people with disabilities. “We still have a lot to learn. When we talk about inclusion, we should not only refer to the autistic child, with Down syndrome or cerebral palsy, but also to the child who wears glasses, the one who expresses himself less well or the one who stutters. “There has to be general inclusion.”
For all this social work she carries out, she was awarded the medal of Civil Merit by the Kings of Spain. A finishing touch to her fight, but not the end, because the personal battle and on behalf of others continues.
