Participants in this year’s Haliburton Highlands Challenge (HHC) removed musical notes, with first names written on them, from the walls and windows of Brooksong Retreat and Cancer Support Centre Oct. 6; and walked to the front of the centre’s downstairs room to place them in a binder.
The names represented people on Brooksong’s waiting list for a four-day cancer retreat. Those folks are now no longer on the list as the fifth annual HHC has raised more than $107,000 to fund their free attendance at a future retreat, similar to one Jenny Hill did in August.
Hill told people gathered for the challenge celebration Sunday, “that experience was absolutely transformative.” She said she was diagnosed with esophageal cancer about 18 months ago. She was in the process of early retirement to join the family business, “and that’s when our lives went upside down.”
She and her partner were “so shocked and stunned and unable to process,” they told nobody. “There we were at home, shocked, unable to seek out support because we were unable to process it ourselves.” During that phase, her massage therapist told her about Brooksong. She signed up for a retreat, with anxiety and apprehension. She feared she would not be able to talk about cancer and it would be uncomfortable.
Upon arrival, though, she said she had, “never encountered an experience that permitted so much space, so much respect, with facilitators that were attuned, responsive, working with us with metaphors, which is ultimately what enabled me to start to regain my voice; to be able to come to terms and acknowledge that, ‘okay, you do have cancer, you have a battle ahead of you, but you are not your cancer, you are far more than your cancer’.”
Executive director Barb Smith-Morrison said 17 teams, and more than 60 people, took part in this year’s challenge. She added there were more than 500 donors from Canada and the U.S. They exceeded their goal of $100,000, raising $107,160.45.
She said there are 240 people on their waitlist and, “this is why we got moving…” She said they can now move 43 people off of the list.
Jennifer Ramsdale is a board member, registered massage therapist for retreats, and now in active treatment for cancer. She attended the first-ever retreat at Brooksong, and another this past August.
She said of the first retreat, she and her husband “benefitted amazingly from being able to step out of our life and have a bit of time, and to have people who were in the same sorts of situations, who were able to listen and hold space for us, and really for each other.”
This summer’s retreat again gave her “a little bit of time, and space, to try to process what (her returned cancer) means, and what that is like in my story now.”
Find out more about Brooksong at brooksong.ca.
