|
|
Nov. 24, 2006
Ma'agan: giving support for life
Cancer drop-in centre offers art, music and dance classes to survivors
in Jerusalem.
WENDY ELLIMAN ISRAEL PRESS SERVICE
The first time Jean Hazout went to pottery class early this summer,
she sat with a lump of clay in her hands and wondered what to do
with it. With a gentle prompt from the instructor, however, she
found herself molding the malleable material and, week by week,
making increasingly beautiful objects.
This article isn't, however, about how Hazout became an imaginative
potter – or an artist or a belly dancer – although she's
now an enthusiastic devotee of all three. It's about how the 51-year-old,
who'd had a breast removed six months before that first pottery
class and whose head was bald from weeks of aggressive chemotherapy,
was helped on her journey of recovery by Ma'agan, the Jerusalem
Support Centre in Jerusalem for People Living with Cancer.
"I see myself as a lucky person," said the British-born
Hazout, a mother of three adult daughters, who has lived in Israel
for the past 30 years. "I had an alert doctor whose persistence
diagnosed my breast cancer in time to treat it. I have a wonderfully
supportive husband. As a swimming and aqua aerobics instructor,
I'm physically strong. And I have Ma'agan."
Ma'agan, where the pottery, belly dancing and art classes take place,
was founded in 1999 by former New Yorker Shelly Abrahami, when a
close friend, diagnosed with cancer, was unable to find the emotional
and psychological support she craved. For Abrahami, herself an artist,
creative arts were an obvious route along which cancer victims and
their families could acquire powerful coping skills. She and her
friends brought their idea to the Jerusalem Foundation, as well
as to several health institutions and charitable funds. "Cancer
today is a disease to live with, not die from," she told them,
"but people need help to live with it." They heard her,
and the nonprofit institution that is Ma'agan was born.
"The Ma'agan team understands the needs of the men and women
who come to the centre and they know how to help them in a warm
and totally professional way," said Ella Mano Ben Yosef, projects
co-ordinator for the Jerusalem Foundation. "That's why we support
them."
"I first heard about Ma'agan from a friend soon after I was
diagnosed," said Hazout. "Although I hadn't drawn since
I was a child, I was coming home from chemotherapy and sketching
weird things – like my hand with the IV in it and a glass of
beer being pumped into my veins. So my first choice at Ma'agan was
an art class."
Art is one of more than 30 different workshops and support groups
offered daily free of charge at Ma'agan, a number that's doubled
since the centre moved into new premises in January 2006 –
a picturesque cottage in west Jerusalem. Cancer patients and their
families can choose music, drama and writing classes, body-soul
workshops (guided imagery, yoga, chi kung, holistic empowerment,
belly dancing) and a series of spiritual and practical support sessions
for groups, couples and for individuals in crisis. One of the most
recently introduced examines the cancer experience through interpretations
of biblical texts, Midrash, poetry, literature and prayer and a
"popcorn club" that, with a nod to laughter being the
best medicine, screens weekly comedies.
"I rang to find out the time of the art class, and went along,"
said Hazout. "That first time, I just sat there, one of about
a dozen women. No one spoke to me and I spoke to no one – but
it was totally comfortable. I felt at peace, and couldn't wait to
go again. Soon, I was working in glass and plaster, paper and paint,
and making beautiful things, like everyone else. In time, I asked
others in my group if they'd done art before they were ill. No one
had. We'd all discovered a new language for ourselves."
This is true for most of those who come to Ma'agan, according to
its executive director, Liat Nevo. Diagnosed with breast cancer
at age 33, Nevo came to Ma'agan four years ago for emotional support,
later volunteered there stuffing envelopes and was eventually appointed
its director.
"The warm, welcoming atmosphere and the different groups give
cancer victims tools for healing and coping," she said. "They
restore a sense of control, self-confidence and hope, encourage
an active and creative lifestyle, enhance self esteem and body image
and create a sense of belonging and shared experience."
With cancer recognized today as an illness that affects the spouses,
children and parents of patients as well as the patients themselves,
all are welcome at Ma'agan – "though in my three classes,
there's only one husband," said Hazout, "and he's not
mine!"
For the most part, it's the patients themselves (almost all of them
women) who support one another at Ma'agan, in the patient, compassionate
presence of its trained instructors and therapists.
"Sometimes, people will come without the strength even to pick
up a pen," said Hazout. "But they come anyway, because
they feel good here. We don't question one another. There's no need.
We're different ages and from different backgrounds – but we're
all going through the same thing, and we understand and accept one
another."
With her chemo and radiation therapy at an end late summer, and
her strength returning ("I'm walking three miles every other
day again"), Hazout cast her sights toward belly dancing.
"I'd thought of learning belly dancing before I got sick,"
she says. "So I was thrilled to find it at Ma'agan. It's very
hard, much harder than you'd think! And we're such an odd group.
There's me with my one breast, and another woman who doesn't have
any – and the teacher's trying to persuade us to bare our bellies!
We're still all covered up, but we'll get there in the end. I just
love it. I close my eyes, listen to the music, try to do what I've
been taught, and feel totally myself."
Hazout has gone back to work – but her schedule is carefully
organized around her Ma'agan classes. "I couldn't give any
of them up," she said. "Three years after my medical all-clear,
I'll have to start paying for them and, after five years, I'll have
to leave. But till then, nothing will keep me away."
^TOP
|
|
