This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, you must emailinfo@hopeconnectionsforcancer.orgto register.
Join DC Metro Young Adult Cancer community partners: 2Unstoppable, Hope Connections, Life with Cancer and Smith Center for inspiration and support to help you stay active after diagnosis, during treatment, and long into survivorship.
About 2Unstoppable
2Unstoppable is a non-profit organization founded by two women with a personal history of Breast Cancer and who realized the many benefits of staying active during and after treatment. We now want to help other women on their cancer journeys experience a better quality of life and improved outcomes through exercise.
https://2unstoppable.org/about-1/
About Hope Connections
Our mission: To help people with cancer and their loved ones deal with the emotional and physical impact of cancer through participation in professionally facilitated programs of emotional support, education, wellness, and hope.
Life with Cancer, a program of the Inova Schar Cancer Institute, has become Northern Virginia’s leading cancer education and support organization. We offer a variety ofprograms and services for patients, survivors, and their family members to help individuals cope with cancer, its treatments, and survivorship in the best possible way.
This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, you must register here or by emailing carla@smithcenter.org
with Julie McCarter
In this creative workshop, you’ll have the opportunity to learn and practice mindfulness through the art of image making. In a series of photographic assignments, we’ll focus on our internal experience of the present moment, alongside the visual components of photography.
This workshop will give you the tools to develop your own “practice” of mindful image-making that will be both nourishing and life-balancing. you will also have the experience of creating images that reflect your unique vision/voice that is often deeply meaningful.
Join us to discover new ways of being, seeing and expressing with mindfulness and your camera.
Please select one meaningful object for the workshop. Any camera, including a cell phone, is perfect for this workshop.
Suggested Donation: $20
About Julie McCarter
Julie is a fine art photographer and therapist, offering workshops that blend her two worlds of creative expression and emotional wellness. She is based in the Greater Washington DC area. Her photographic work may be viewed at: http://juliefischermccarter.com
Contact email: jfm@juliefischermccarter.com
This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, you must register here or by emailing carla@smithcenter.org
with Jenn McRobbie
Going through cancer as a young adult is already tough, but do you sometimes feel like your family and friends just don’t understand what you’re dealing with? Are you feeling extra stress in your relationships as a result of your cancer experience? Join us for a presentation and discussion on how to better communicate and manage expectations with friends and family.
About Jenn McRobbie
Jenn McRobbie is a lifestyle and fitness coach, speaker and author. In 2013, Jenn was serving as a volunteer supporting cancer survivors as they worked to regain their fitness when she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 38. Jenn turned her intensely personal and vulnerable experience into a springboard for sharing a message of resilience and positivity. Her book, published in March 2015, is an Amazon best-selling book entitled, Why is She Acting So Weird? A Guide to Cultivating Closeness When a Friend is in Crisis. It is her treatise on empowering friends to rise and lift each other during crisis. Since the publishing of her book, Jenn has traveled the United States and Canada conducting workshops and speaking about her experiences in order to help survivors find common ground with their friends and family as they maneuver through a diagnosis together. In addition to being an advocate for cancer survivors and their friends and family, Jenn loves fitness. She believes that there is an intrinsic connection between physical wellness and mental wellbeing. Using a combination of fitness techniques, mindfulness, and her own experiences coming back after major surgeries, Jenn encourages people to focus on functional movement and corrective exercise. Her favorite past time is teaching classes at her local Orangetheory Fitness Studio.
This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, you must register here or by emailing carla@smithcenter.org
with Yael Flusberg, C-IAYT, E-RYT500, RMT, MS
Join Yael Flusberg in a physical and creative exploration of the connection between gratitude (Thanksgiving) and generosity (winter holidays).
Generosity is the capacity to give the best of ourselves to others. Generosity is an expression of gratitude for what we already have, even in the most challenging of times. In giving to others, we widen the circle of those we’re willing to connect to and care about, rather than closing in on ourselves and a few loved ones.
To put it simply: gratitude is about observation and appreciation, and generosity is about decisions and action. In this way, gratitude and generosity are similar to writing and yoga where our capacity to be present to our experience can either limit or expand the possibilities for skillful action.
In this workshop, we will intersperse movement with writing prompts to help us escape our habitual residence in the intellect, and assume a more graceful position in the realm of reflective presence, where deliberate decisions can be made. Participants should dress comfortably, practice on a yoga mat or thick carpet, and bring your favorite notebook and pen.
And, check out Yael’s contribution to CONNECT, Smith Center’s community-minded newsletter, called “Nurturing Resilience” on our YouTube channel!
Yael’s Gentle Yoga Class Meets Weekly on Tuesdays from 6:00pm – 7:15pm.
Suggested Donation for 1 Class: $10
Suggested Donation for 1 Month of Classes: $25
In addition, our yoga classes are listed with the National MS Society and we welcome patients and caregivers of those with multiple sclerosis to our gentle yoga classes.
Our programs are also open to the community, and tailored to meet the needs of people affected by cancer. Classes and workshops are free or low cost on a pay-as-you-can basis, ensuring that our programs are accessible to everyone.
About Yael Flusberg
Yael Flusberg first came to yoga hoping she could get rid of stuff, namely the ways life’s stresses and traumas had become painfully embodied. Fifteen years and thousands of layers of release later, yoga continues to teach her how to make strategic, creative, and life-nourishing choices. Trained as an integrative yoga therapist, Yael’s classes blend active with receptive states of being, and are both insightful and lighthearted. Off the mat, she is a coach, writer and energy therapist. Since 2005, Yael has taught yoga classes at area hospitals, libraries, workplaces, schools, and yoga studios. As an integrative yoga therapist (E-RYT500) she facilitates both group and individual yoga therapy sessions, working with people dealing with a variety of conditions including cancer, digestive disorders, diabetes, eating disorders, fibromyalgia, hypertension, mental health challenges (including depression, anxiety, grief and trauma), rheumatoid arthritis, scoliosis, and sports injuries. She currently teaches a weekly therapeutic class for people living with cancer and their caregivers on GW’s campus. More info: www.yaelflusberg.com
This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, you must register here or by emailing carla@smithcenter.org
with Julie McCarter
In this creative workshop, you’ll have the opportunity to learn and practice mindfulness through the art of image making. In a series of photographic assignments, we’ll focus on our internal experience of the present moment, alongside the visual components of photography.
This workshop will give you the tools to develop your own “practice” of mindful image-making that will be both nourishing and life-balancing. you will also have the experience of creating images that reflect your unique vision/voice that is often deeply meaningful.
Join us to discover new ways of being, seeing and expressing with mindfulness and your camera.
Please select one meaningful object for the workshop. Any camera, including a cell phone, is perfect for this workshop.
Suggested Donation: $20
About Julie McCarter
Julie is a fine art photographer and therapist, offering workshops that blend her two worlds of creative expression and emotional wellness. She is based in the Greater Washington DC area. Her photographic work may be viewed at: http://juliefischermccarter.com
Contact email: jfm@juliefischermccarter.com
This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, you must register here or by emailing carla@smithcenter.org
with Kunle Adewale & Kiersten Gallagher
Memorial Art: Home Based Studio Experience
Memorial Art is a home-based studio experience where participants can improvise with materials and create a personal and meaningful experience.
Kunle experiments with different art medias in his depiction of a violin.
Memorial Art allows participants to explore meaningful objects around them.
These objects may be relics, artifacts, photos of loved ones or places, and more.
Goal: To help artists reconnect to their happy place through the art making process
Materials/Objects:
Pencils, Crayons, Water-Colour, Acrylic Paints, Canvas, Paper, Cards, Paint Brushes, or whatever you have available.
Any other available materials you have at home.
Any meaningful objects you have at home. Examples include gifts from loves ones, family and friends, or objects that have spiritual and/or historical meaning.
Any picture. Examples include pictures of family members or any pictures that hold great meaning to you.
Art Forms:
Collage
Mixed Media
Painting
Assemblage
Wellness in the Time of COVID
This 6-month integrative wellness series, sponsored by The Washington Home, will be offered to caregivers, those who are critically ill, and those facing cancer-related challenges during this especially difficult time.
Outside the Lines is held Bi-Monthly on Wednesdays from 10:30am – 12:30pm.
Upcoming sessions:
October 7 (Wellness in the Time of COVID Series – with Kunle Adewale)
October 14 (Social Hour)
October 28 (The Barquitos de Papel Collective Archive)
November 4 & 18
December 2 & 16
Suggested donation: $10 per class
Our programs are open to the community, and tailored to meet the needs of people affected by cancer. Classes and workshops are free or low cost on a pay-as-you-can basis, ensuring that our programs are accessible to everyone.
About Kunle Adewale
Kunle Adewale, is an artist and a development practitioner by profession. He is a graduate of Fine and Applied Arts (Painting and Art History), from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. To hone his skills in leadership, he studied Civic Leadership at Tulane University, New Orleans. His penchant for utilizing arts within the healthcare system spurred him into participating in related professional courses such as: Arts in Health for Helping Professionals in Charlotte; Arts in Medicine at the University of Florida, United States, and Arts in Health Research Intensive, organised by Center for Arts in Medicine, University of Florida in collaboration with University College London.
Kunle did not stop there. In his quest for more knowledge in the field of Arts in Medicine, he also bagged certificates in: Understanding Dementia and Arts, from University College London (UCL) and, Medicine and The Arts: Humanising Healthcare, from University of Capetown, South Africa. He was one of the selected Atlantic Fellows for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI), University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Currently, he is part of a 1-year training programme on Dementia. To reduce the scale and impact of dementia, the 1-year programme brings together a powerful mix of perspectives, approaches, and skill sets from varying backgrounds and disciplines, including neurologists, social scientists, artists, and policymakers.
About Kiersten Gallagher
As the Cancer Support Program Director, Kiersten fully believes that through the arts we can expand our perspectives and explore new fulfilling ways of being. She invites you to make our space your own refuge, to circumvent your daily routine to spark creativity, to take time for introspection, and draw outside the lines.
This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, you must register here or by emailing carla@smithcenter.org
with Julie McCarter
In this creative workshop, you’ll have the opportunity to learn and practice mindfulness through the art of image making. In a series of photographic assignments, we’ll focus on our internal experience of the present moment, alongside the visual components of photography.
This workshop will give you the tools to develop your own “practice” of mindful image-making that will be both nourishing and life-balancing. you will also have the experience of creating images that reflect your unique vision/voice that is often deeply meaningful.
Join us to discover new ways of being, seeing and expressing with mindfulness and your camera.
Please select one meaningful object for the workshop. Any camera, including a cell phone, is perfect for this workshop.
Suggested Donation: $20
About Julie McCarter
Julie is a fine art photographer and therapist, offering workshops that blend her two worlds of creative expression and emotional wellness. She is based in the Greater Washington DC area. Her photographic work may be viewed at: http://juliefischermccarter.com
Kunle Adewale)
