Community is powerful

By Alice Yaker

From Executive Director's Blog

When a program sign-up of 30 women results in an attendance of 30 women, you realize that something really special must be happening. So it was when 30 SHARE ovarian cancer survivors, some as long term as 38 years and others as recent as February 2009, gathered at SHARE to meet each other.

After Annie, a five year survivor, introduced herself and her interest in bringing long term and current survivors together, the women introduced themselves. Each wore a name tag that described them as "Class of…." In chronological order, beginning with 38 years, each briefly spoke of her experience with ovarian cancer, how she came to SHARE and what she found when she arrived.

Some of the women spoke about their late stage diagnosis (including one woman who was diagnosed at stage 4) and others about how by accident, they were diagnosed at stage 1. Some spoke about the many recurrences they needed to deal with, sometimes as many as 3 or 4 over the course of several years; others about the difficulties of treatment. All spoke of their feelings of isolation and aloneness until they came to SHARE where they found a community of women who understood; who could provide information and help with making decisions; who could provide hope because it was apparent there was survivorship too.

I sat in this room and was struck by the life force within each of us to live our lives as well as we can for as long as is possible. I think that being in the company of survivors, even knowing that many women die of ovarian cancer, supports that life force. I am not a new age-y kind of person but this power of community is strong and I think impacts us in ways we don't really know or understand.

Posted October 6, 2009.