In this circle, it’s safe to unleash your most private, dangerous emotions in front of a group of women you have known only a short time.
Within this circle, it’s safe to say almost anything.
There is no painful emotional truth, no dysfunctional family saga you can’t share with your Noble Circle sisters. After all, you already share the most intimate of experiences: undergoing cancer treatment.
This is the Noble Circle Project, where “women learn they aren’t the only ones going through this,” explained Diane Butler-Hughes of Bellbrook, who co-founded the organization six years ago with seven other breast-cancer patients. “A friend told me once, ‘You’re over the cancer stuff now, why don’t you start scrapbooking?’” she recalled. “People expect you to get your life back in order immediately, but it’s not like that. Noble Circle is a way to express our deeper feelings. We understand; we’ve been there.”
Since its founding, 153 women in 11 groups have graduated from this groundbreaking program known for its holistic approach to women’s physical, emotional and spiritual healing. Twenty-seven have died, including, just last week, 45-year-old Michelle Hutchinson of Kettering, mother of three. The first line of her obituary listed her as “a beloved sister of The Noble Circle Project.”
Four of the founders also have died. “We feel spirits of the other founders with us very strongly. They’re up there, cheering us on,” said Irma Johnston, a Dayton psychologist who, like all the surviving co-founders, has remained actively involved in the Noble Circle Project. “The co-founders are all very proud of what we accomplished.”
In the process, they helped themselves. Co-founder Teri Hall of Bellbrook was the mother of two young sons, Riley and Austin — then only 5 and 7 — when she was diagnosed with breast cancer six years ago. “We were pretty open with them; there were no secrets,” Hall recalled. “We told them, ‘Mommy’s boob is sick, and we have to cut if off so she can get better.’”
In her private moments, it was much harder to keep her courage up: “I was very scared. I was afraid to die and not to see them grow up.”
The Noble Circle sisters draw inspiration from the group’s namesake, a Scottish woman named Allie Noble believed to have been the first woman to undergo surgery for breast cancer in 1830. She died three months later from an infection.
The name has a deeper significance as well. “All of the women in Noble Circle still have the same big issues in life — work and family and aging parents — and then we have this on top of it all,” Butler-Hughes said. “Yet all of us are helping other women. We are a positive group, and we have fun even though we have gone through a great deal of suffering. I find that very noble.”
March 20, 2009
Butler-Hughes is making the two-hour drive from her home in Bellbrook to the 250-acre Oakwood Retreat Center in Selma, Ind., where Group 11 of the Noble Circle sisters will spend an immersion weekend of sorts — meditating, learning about healthy, whole-grain foods, getting massages and reiki treatments and, most of all, getting to know one another in this rustic setting where middle-aged women are assigned roommates like college freshmen.
Rhonda Traylor, 43, of Huber Heights is trying not to be nervous; she’s trying to keep things in perspective. She is, after all, a teacher at a Dayton charter school for at-risk students: “What can I complain about when I have students who have been homeless since August?”
Clara Garza of Huber Heights is trying to keep her strength up. Recently, she started a new chemotherapy regimen. Her energy is low; her balding head is covered by a white turban. Yet she maintains her typically cheerful demeanor. “My reserves were gone,” she acknowledged, “and I needed to build those back up. One of the best ways to do that is by building a support network.”
Katie Thorp of Tipp City has been battling breast cancer for 15 years, yet at 42, she is one of the youngest women in the group. Those generational distinctions no longer mattered to her as they once might have. She had been cancer-free for many years, but learned last November that the cancer had metastasized to her bones. “That means it’s treatable, but not curable,” she said. “Your attitude and the things you do to empower yourself have a big impact. That’s what I really like about this group; it’s not about being sick, it’s about empowering yourself to be well.”
Having been a vegetarian since her diagnosis, Thorp loved the Noble Circle’s emphasis on healthy eating, whole foods and a vegetarian cuisine. Registered dietitian Shelly Knupp of Oakwood — herself a cancer survivor and veteran of Group 6 — volunteers tirelessly as the group’s dietary guru, and she’s on hand at the retreat to provide nutrition tips such as “avoid overcrowding your vegetables on the roasting pan.” Some of the women pull humorous faces at the sight of the shockingly green asparagus juice, but they brighten as they line up for a gourmet vegetarian feast — prepared by volunteers — that will become a hallmark of their weekly Thursday night meetings at One Lincoln Park in Kettering.
The emphasis on vegetarianism is practical: It is thought to lessen the cancer risk. But this isn’t a group that eschews traditional medicine. The therapy is designed to complement, not replace cancer treatments.
As they nibble on broccoli salad and sip carrot juice, the women talk about their lives. “I was diagnosed with cancer the first year of our marriage,” Butler-Hughes tells Garza. “We had no idea how hard it would be, but it has strengthened our marriage.”
Garza agrees. Her husband, Steven Semple, retired in order to devote himself to her recovery. He supported her decision to join the Noble Circle, too. “It’s too easy for your world to narrow down to treatment and side effects,” Garza observed. “With a network and a group like this, your possibilities open up.”
Sacred objects
The weekend wellness retreat is a microcosm of the 10-week session that will begin the following Thursday. Noble Circle co-founder Jan Lively of Kettering leads the women in the ancient Chinese healing art known as qigong, with everyone gathering in a circle and doing deep breathing exercises. “Pretend you’re little kids,” she intones in her soothing voice. “Wake up all the cells in your body and shake them out. Every cell in your body is waking up and smiling.”
Each of the weekly meetings begins with Lively leading qigong; each ends with Margaret Correale of Brookville, Noble Circle co-chair and graduate of Group 4, leading an intimate, no-holds-barred group therapy session known as a sharing circle. She introduces herself to this new group wearing a safari outfit — a precursor to the humor, irreverence and tough love she uses to lead the group.
“The whole purpose of the weekend is to get the women to open up,” noted Correale, now cancer-free, who was diagnosed with early-stage ovarian cancer in 2005 after a hysterectomy.
For the first sharing circle, Correale employs a powerful tool to break the ice. She asks each woman to bring a “sacred object,” something that has profound meaning in their lives.
For Correale it’s her sobriety token from Alcoholics Anonymous and pictures of her partner, Becky Lincoln. Thorp brings a heavily thumbed Bible, “because my faith has gotten me through this.” Traylor brings the “crazy quilt” her grandmother started and her mother finished after Grandma passed away. Correale can never predict what the specific objects will be, but she knows one thing: “Whatever it is, it’s all about the people in their lives. It’s never something materialistic.”
By the end of the weekend, the Group 11 members are already sharing intimate information with women who know the shorthand of cancer. Traylor asks Butler-Hughes about her “tram flap” surgery, a radical modified mastectomy Traylor is scheduled to undergo in June. “I have bad genetics,” Traylor confides to Thorp, her roommate. “I want to be as aggressive as I can.”
As Thorp leaves the weekend retreat, she notices something curious: “I spent the whole weekend with these women, and no one asked me what kind of cancer I had.”
‘Let yourself cry’
It is midway through their 10-week program, but facilitator Margaret Correale already has pegged the personality of Group 11: They’re spunky, but reflective.
They’re also full of fun. It’s hard to keep them from laughing, whether they’re checking out new kitchen gadgets with chef Carrie Walters from Dorothy Lane Market or gingerly passing around sexual aides during Terri Tassie’s “Sex After Cancer” presentation. But they sit in silence as psychologist Kathleen Avegno Bonie talks about “Coping with what is.”
She tells the women it’s OK to let go of relationships that cause more pain than pleasure, “to gently, lovingly let them go.”
And she tells them not to worry if they’re crying more than usual: “Let yourself cry — and breathe. Tears carry lots of toxins out of the body.”
The Noble Circle Project, recently incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is beginning to draw attention from other cities that hope to emulate its success. “This group offers women the whole package to help them to get in touch with the healing within them,” Bonie said. “That’s what makes it so powerful.”
Koe Hemmelgarn of Vandalia, a member of Group 2, continues to volunteer “to show another woman there is life with cancer. Through Noble Circle, I have been given the tools to live the best quality of life I can.”
Hemmelgarn leads the women in making friendship bracelets; each picks out a bead that represents her personality. Dottie Key of Springboro picks a bead “the colors of OSU, because I recently found a wonderful doctor there.” Sandra Drake of Kettering picks a blue iridescent bead because “it reminds me of Indian Lake, where my family has a cabin. Sharon Westbrook of Springboro picked a crystal bead because “it represents the essence of tears.”
Sisters forever
As the women prepare to graduate, to become part of the nearly 130 survivors who form the Noble Circle Alumni Group, they know a great deal about each other.
They know Key has “two grandbabies and it’s the best therapy in the world.”
They know that class clown Traylor — warm-hearted, effervescent — recently got a nonrenewal notice at the Dayton charter school where she taught “because my mouth is too big.”
They know who is having a rough time, and who has gone into remission.
Most of all, they know they are sisters forever.
“Normally, when you put a group like this together you have one or two people who are annoying, but there’s nobody like that in our group,” Thorp said. “Maybe it’s the level at which you bond. It’s at such a deeper level than we often allow, when you get to know an individual at the core.”
Traylor knows she’s never parting with her friendship bracelet.
She explains simply, “I need my sisters with me at all times.”
You can contact The Noble Circle Project at (937) 674-5566 or www.noblecircle.org.
»Coming Monday: Strengthening bonds after graduation.
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