{"id":15838,"date":"2016-11-16T18:36:09","date_gmt":"2016-11-16T23:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=15838"},"modified":"2016-11-16T18:36:09","modified_gmt":"2016-11-16T23:36:09","slug":"dragonfly-helps-breast-cancer-survivors-find-their-new-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/dragonfly-helps-breast-cancer-survivors-find-their-new-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"Dragonfly helps breast cancer survivors find their \u201cnew normal\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just going to carry on and get back to my world.\u201d
\nThat is the thought that went through Bonnie Robinson\u2019s mind when she finished breast cancer treatment. Taking about two weeks post-treatment for some rest, Ms. Robinson says she was \u201cdetermined to get her life back.\u201d
\nBut just what was that life after she fought cancer and won?
\n\u201cFinding your new normal sounds so easy,\u201d she says. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t the same because I wasn\u2019t the same. I needed help and support to find that new normal.\u201d
\nA few years earlier, neighbours Manon La Brecque and Laura Stornelli found themselves at a similar crossroads. Neighbours for nearly 15 years, the two York Region women helped each other through the treatment phase, but once it was all over, they found themselves asking, \u201cNow what?\u201d
\nThey joined forces to answer that very question with Dragonfly Wellness Retreat, a semi-annual weekend providing fellowship, support, and health options for women recovering from breast cancer.
\n\u201cThis is when I had the most questions,\u201d says Manon of being told to check back in at the hospital in a year following her treatment. \u201cI am facing all the side effects of treatments. Laura and I were exchanging information about, what do you do when starting up exercising again? What should I eat? How do we put our lives together? I realised we were fortunate enough to go through this together in some ways and I thought there must be women out there who are completely isolated.\u201d
\nFinding similar programs out there, but only in the city, the women came together to found something closer to home, laying the foundations for their program, which brings in experts and treatment providers for three day weekends, in Roaches Point.
\n\u201cDragonfly had changed my world,\u201d says Ms. Robinson. \u201cIt provided me with the glue to put back my shattered world.\u201d
\nIt recently provided the same support for local musician Bonnie Kraft, who began her cancer fight last year. Now a survivor, Ms. Kraft says she learned there was a significant gap in providing treatments to help women transition back into everyday life.
\n\u201cWhat these two women have created with their vision has made a positive difference in the lives of so many women,\u201d says Ms. Kraft. \u201cAs we struggle with the \u2018What now?\u2019 of post-treatment and all the challenges we might face along the way, the retreat was an absolutely amazing experience and words can\u2019t really express how much benefit I got from it.
\n\u201cThere was the emotional support, the learning, the connections, and the caring and compassionate atmosphere. All those I will cherish and carry with me into the future.\u201d
\nInitially, Ms. Kraft says going to a retreat \u201cin such closed quarters\u201d with women wasn\u2019t at all in her comfort zone. Guarded at home during her treatment as she didn\u2019t want to burden those she loved with \u201call my thoughts and day to day\u201d, she was not used to opening up. Once there, however, it was a different story.
\n\u201cDragonfly is a little bit more specific with the post-treatment needs,\u201d says Laura, noting the cancer centre at Southlake Regional Health Centre offers a transition program, but it is open to everyone. \u201cI don\u2019t want to talk about losing my breast and everything that that brings to the party in a room full of men, or people who will say, \u2018I don\u2019t get what she\u2019s talking about.\u2019 Women need a safe environment to open up about what this is going to do to my marriage, what this is going to do to my sex life, and the amount of young women we\u2019re seeing now [with breast cancer] would scare the crap out of you.\u201d
\nAdds Manon: \u201cWe have a lot of questions like what does it mean to survive this? What does it mean to continue living on a daily basis with the idea this cancer could always come back at any time? To deal with that on your own is very difficult. When we first created Dragonfly we wanted to inspire and empower women with information, with a community, with a tribe of breast cancer survivors.\u201d
\nThose were exactly the questions Ms. Robinson says she wanted answered. While she says the transition treatment she received at the hospital was \u201cfabulous\u201d she was left wondering how to live again \u201cwith the little cancer man on my shoulder.\u201d
\nNow, she\u2019s equipped. The former salesperson of medical equipment took things a step further and is now a fundraiser for Doane House Hospice in Newmarket.
\nA weekend at Dragonfly costs $150 per woman, with opportunities for full sponsorship if this cost is a burden. That $150 is about 25 per cent of what it actually costs, but costs are kept low by fundraisers keeping in mind the exorbitant costs faced by families when a loved one is battling cancer.
\nFunds are raised three times a year with yoga in March, a tea party event in May to coincide with Mother\u2019s Day and, just last month, a \u201cPink Your Drink\u201d fundraiser. Next month, there will be a fourth at the Aurora Cultural Centre, with beaded bracelets made by Dragonfly alumni, on December 10.
\n\u201cWe want to knock [the idea this is a spa weekend] right on its head at the outset,\u201d says Laura. \u201cThere are always one or two women who hold back with the sharing and the joining in until they feel a little bit more comfortable. I have women in my social circle that know exactly what I do with Dragonfly and they are like, \u2018It is not for me.\u2019 It is a personal choice. Some women want to get it off their chest and hear other women\u2019s experiences. Other women have it in their head that it is over and they\u2019re not going to be revisiting.
\n\u201cI just wish I could hit it home to them that we\u2019re not about all the horrible things that have happened over the last eight to 12 months. It is all about going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019m just going to carry on and get back to my world.\u201d
\nThat is the thought that went through Bonnie Robinson\u2019s mind when she finished breast cancer treatment. Taking about two weeks post-treatment for some rest, Ms. Robinson says she was \u201cdetermined to get her life back.\u201d
\nBut just what was that life after she fought cancer and won?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/2016-11-17-10.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-47s","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 17:28:57","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}