By Shannon Cobb, President and CEO
Over Easter/Passover weekend, a hot water pipe burst at the seam in the wall behind the first floor kitchen counters at Ann’s Place. Nobody was present to see it fill up the kitchen, or watch it pour into the Olsen Hayes meeting room. The water silently filled the lobby, gathering room, library and spirituality room. It then rained down– destroying walls, ceilings and floors in the entire lower level, including the children’s room, the movement room, board room and the art room. After weeks of demolition, two full floors have been gutted in order to dry out the building and keep mold from growing.
There are positives in this bad news. Our clinicians and facilitators have already become experts at providing online programming. The vast majority of our services are offered on zoom including counseling, support groups, yoga, tai chi, speaker series, dance, and even horticulture therapy among others. We were able to switch in-person programming to online within hours of the flood.
We will rebuild our rooms again and this gives our experienced staff and volunteers an opportunity to look at each room to see how it can serve as an even better place of healing and care for those facing cancer.
One of our dreams was to have a special room where a counselor can meet with someone when they are losing their hair - to try on wigs and scarves, at this very emotional time. We now have an opportunity to build this thanks to the generosity of donors at our 2022 Fashion Show who raised over $30K for this room and other improvements! This new “Salon” will be a place our clients can feel beautiful again and we are so excited to roll it out this year.
We also want to reimagine our children’s room so we can have an interactive therapy room for kids of all ages. We have so many creative ideas for what would delight and help heal our youngest clients.
The activity and movement room will get a beautiful new yoga floor that didn’t exist a decade ago.
We have a lot of work ahead of us, but with the support in this incredible community, we will make it to the other side…and have a fresh coat of paint in the process!
There are a lot of similarities between what is happening to Ann’s Place and what our clients go through. One day they find some minor bump or pain – often hardly noticed… but it causes so much damage. Then, in order to rid their bodies of cancer, the doctors have to remove anything that could be a risk – making them feel gutted and disfigured.
What Ann’s Place does is to help them rebuild their life, to feel beautiful inside and out – and make sure nobody has to face cancer alone.
We are very grateful to the Ann’s Place supporters who walk on this journey with us and make the rebuilding of lives and our space possible.
We will keep our supporters updated in the coming months as we make progress forward. Thank you.