Women with breast cancer find open hearts, open minds at the YWCA Princeton’s support groups
By: Pat Summers
"I try not to weep. But I weep better here."
Her breast cancer diagnosis "was the scariest thing that was ever said to me." On a bright April day less than four months after her surgery, Anne sat in Bramwell House, home of the Princeton YWCA’s Breast Cancer Resource Center, and talked about what has dominated her life since she heard the diagnosis.
Her mother had died of breast cancer at 39. Anne and her two sisters, who all celebrated when they reached age 40, have been watchful, careful, vigilant. Then came her diagnosis.
A chef and teacher, Anne temporarily left her job for the surgery and the treatment afterward: three months of chemo, a few weeks off, then six weeks of radiation. She has kept up with her teaching, even though her classes happen to fall on nights when the chemo effects hit hard. Right now, she’s very tired.
Dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, she wears dangling turquoise earrings and a multi-colored print scarf tied around her head. Her eyes are a lively brown, and her face shows no sign of makeup.
Between the diagnosis and her date with a surgeon, Anne tried going on with life as usual. When she mentioned her news to the financial planner she and her husband were meeting with, he immediately opened his briefcase and handed her a pamphlet about the Breast Cancer Resource Center.
The week before Christmas, soon after surgery, she met Kara Stephenson, director of the BCRC. "Yes, family and friends listen. But here, just to be able to rant! Kara listened and told me it’s normal to feel the way I do."
Through her experiences with the BCRC, Anne has found "a great woman-to-woman network," one whose positive attitude is catching. "There’s a ‘new normal,’ and that’s what you go for," she says.
Not until she pep-talked a newer participant trying to make her feel better and boost her morale did Anne realize how fully she herself believes what she advises.
"You don’t know how many women have gone through this, or been touched by it, till you speak up away from here," she says. At a knitting session she told an acquaintance what was happening with her. That prompted a third woman to say she’d been there, 13 years ago, and to offer: "You’ll get through this."
"You have to rest and you have to eat, even when you don’t feel like it," Anne says. At first, she remembers, some food smells alone were enough to turn her off eating. She gradually worked into cottage cheese, cereal, macaroni and cheese, soup and citrus.
Three of Anne’s good friends went through breast cancer in the last decade or so. Remembering their treatment as much more debilitating, she says something now that would probably have surprised her last autumn: "If it has to happen to you, it’s better now than 10 years ago."
Looking back on her experiences, Anne observes, "It’s OK to be afraid, but you can’t let the fear take over. You’ll defeat yourself." And she urges other patients: "Go to a support group. Get as much help as you can."
Of the BCRC, she says, "There’s a comfort there. You don’t have to say anything just absorb it."
The "comfort" Anne refers to begins outside Bramwell House, the red frame building behind the Y complex. From the parking lot, you walk through a pleasant garden area, with benches and statues, to enter the building.
One entrance leads to a capacious living room, with a fireplace and Van Gogh’s "Starry Night" over the mantel. This far-from-clinical place is where the five different support groups meet.
Another entry leads into the office area for the BCRC’s staff of two. Kara Stephenson, director, and Lia Daniels, program assistant both on the job since early 2005 project genuine cheer and optimism. Their work area keeps up the spirit with its bright colors, especially shades of pink, the signature color for breast cancer.
In another room, cancer patients and survivors can be fitted for the prostheses and wigs the BCRC makes available. (This is the only such site in the immediate area.) When women come to Bramwell House for that reason, Ms. Stephenson’s sure to tell them about the support groups and other activities.
She’s intent on getting the word out about the BCRC, knowing that if doctors don’t tell their patients about support services available, they could go a long time without the help they need. Yet patients and survivors need to know that "you don’t have to make this journey alone."
"I encourage newcomers to try a support group twice," she says, pointing out that both the dynamics and the participants can change from one meeting to another. All but one group is run by a professional facilitator.
Two breast cancer support groups meet once a month, day or evening.
The young women’s breast cancer support group, for women under 45, meets one evening a month.
The advanced breast cancer support group, for women living with Stage IV breast cancer, meets two evenings a month.
The support circle, the BCRC’s newest group, meets one evening a month. Although this group offers support to spouses, parents, siblings, adult children and friends, husbands of breast cancer patients or survivors are the only ones who have attended so far.
"Family and friends are often left hanging," Ms. Stephenson says, "even though so much is expected of them." They may think they don’t or shouldn’t need support, when in reality they’re experiencing fear, guilt, anger and/or stress.
Mark, whose wife is a breast cancer survivor of about two years, searched for a while before finding the BCRC’s support circle. He remembers that "you reach a point where you can’t give anymore. You’ve got to get recharged."
His wife’s still part of a support group and he plans to stay with the circle because he keeps learning and hopes he might help someone else.
Carla, a cancer patient in her early 30s, says that in a support group "all your emotions are understood and shared and not judged. Your feelings can be validated and you can gain peace of mind because there are others out there in the same situation and they are survivors."
Facilitator Elsje Reiss says members get emotional support through the exchange of physical experiences. A person may feel lousy today and better tomorrow and it’s good for others to know that happens.
A clinical social worker, as are the other BCRC facilitators, Ms. Reiss says there’s a lot of laughter in the advanced group, "not a tone of doom and gloom." People can live a long time with many kinds of cancers these days, she adds, and this group is educational, besides being a place for sharing both despair and coping mechanisms.
What began in 1972 as a weekly aquatics therapy program (later adopted by the National YWCA) has grown into the Princeton Y’s Breast Cancer Resource Center. Funded by grants, private donations and fundraising, BCRC services are available to any breast cancer patient or survivor.
Besides the five support groups and a peer support network, there’s the wig and prosthesis bank, a resource library, newsletter and telephone helpline, a guest speaker series and a holistic wellness program. All offerings aim to help cancer patients and survivors, and their families and friends, live well and cope better.
Breast Cancer Resource Center of the YWCA Princeton. 59 Paul Robeson Place, Princeton. Breast cancer helpline: 609-497-2126. Office: 609-497-2100, ext. 346/349. Fax: 609-497-1211. E-mail: [email protected]. Web site: www.bcrcnj.org.

