One of the things I appreciate most about Gilda’s Club is the space we hold for those impacted by cancer to experience their full range of emotions. Whether celebrating good news, sitting with uncertainty, or grieving a loss, we welcome and encourage everyone who walks through our red door to feel “all the feelings” –...

I’m hearing lots of post-pandemic predictions that we will take many of our newly adopted habits and newly learned skills with us into our “next normal”. We may like having a couple of weekly meetups via Zoom, rather than driving across town to attend a nighttime meeting (Can you even imagine?). We may be more...

By: Hayley Levy As Gilda’s Club’s namesake Gilda Radner used to say, “It’s always something!” Many of you have seen this phrase on our T-shirts and stickers, or perhaps you’ve read Gilda’s memoir It’s Always Something*; she used it for just about anything that came her way, including her cancer. Today, Gilda’s phrase has never been truer...

By: Allison Yonker, LMSW, Program Director What a year. For all the pivots, adjustments, and shuffling we’ve all had to do this year, at least one thing has remained the same. Gilda’s Club continues to create community, so no one has to face cancer alone. When we made the decision to suspend in-person activities at...

By Felice Apolinsky, LCSWProgram Director As I sit to write this, I am grieving the recent death of my precious father and beginning to process the final two weeks of his life, which I was thankfully able to spend alongside him in the hospital. Witnessing his incredibly gentle release, I am heartbroken while also filled...

We are 120 days into a novel way of doing everything: cancer support, volunteering, fundraising, committee meetings, relationship building, and leadership development. We are well past the shock of having to work remotely, and we are not handwringing about how long we will be working from home while offering virtual cancer support groups and activities...

Dear Gilda’s Club Community, As we begin the month of July, I have lyrics from the Three Degrees song “When Will I See You Again” (written by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff) playing in my head. It’s a great song, and though I imagine it is written about a relationship, the longing, yearning, and uncertainty...

By: Laura Alabed-Olsson Over the last 12 months, I’ve had the honor of working on an awareness campaign for Gilda’s Club, based on the premise that everyone has a cancer story. At a point in time when three out of four families are impacted by cancer – and given the range of cancer stories shared...

It began in December with an introduction from our board member Sharon Turner-Friley, MSW, Assistant Dean for Special Programs, Student Academic Affairs at Meharry Medical College. Next came the invitation for Felice to represent Gilda’s Club on a panel of experts teaching second-year medical students about end-of-life-issues and best practices for communicating with patients and their families; she joined colleagues from Alive Hospice and Meharry in the February event. Not surprisingly, the students asked...

It’s springtime and we are supposed to be feeling the rhythm of the season, the rhythm of the school year, the rhythm of the work-week-to-weekend…the rhythm of “life as usual.” But all of that has been suspended for now. The rules as we knew them have changed. Our societal guideposts have been moved and the uncertainty created by COVID-19 has left us all feeling a little untethered and a lot unsure. Yet, each day, we do our best to create some rhythm on which...