This article has been edited since it first appeared in print.
Richmond Mayor Danny Avula (front row at left) visits Cancer Retreat Centers at Blanton House July 1.
Melissa Sullivan, who was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2018, says, “If I’m tied to a train track, and cancer is the train coming at me, cancer treatment is like Edward Scissorhands trying to get me off the track.”
The room erupts with laughter.
Dark? Certainly. Vivid? Viscerally. Relatable? To the five women seated around the kitchen table at Blanton House in Byrd Park, deeply.
The 1920s-era Colonial Revival mansion is now home to Cancer Retreat Centers, a nonprofit organization designed to provide holistic care to cancer patients in a comfortable environment at no cost. Previously the headquarters of Richmond’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities, the department still has offices in the building under a public-private partnership.
“Cancer treatment is wonderful, but it tears you apart,” says Amy Ngo, a young woman with metastatic breast cancer. “It’s rough. It’s very, very difficult. And not just physically, but psychologically, emotionally. That’s why something like this is so needed.”
At Blanton House, anyone affected by cancer — from those battling a Stage 4 diagnosis to those who spent time caring for a loved one with the disease — can come for healing.
“We are a wellness hub for the city,” founder Kristin Harris says.
Programs available at Blanton House include oncological-specific massage and acupuncture treatments, mindfulness meditation, yoga, music therapy, child care, and programs for children. More than anything, however, it is a place to connect with other people who understand the fight.
Every week on Tuesday and Thursday, the group Harris calls “our posse, open to all and always growing” meets at the house for “lunch bunch,” an informal gathering to talk and laugh about daily life.
Beth Lassiter, a young mother who was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer this spring, shared how crucial the group has been during an incredibly difficult time.
After having survived breast cancer, Lassiter had several good CT scans. Then, one Saturday morning, she received the results of a recent exam: metastasis to her liver and spine.
“I just about threw up, it was such a shock,” Lassiter recalls. “I’m saying really morbid things to my husband, and he doesn’t know how to handle it.”
Then, she continues, “I came here. I got the diagnosis on Saturday; I came here on Tuesday. I just knew, ‘I need support now.’”
“Anyone can come any day and say, ‘I need you guys today. Today’s hard.’ We instantly rally, because we know what that means,” Harris says.
“When I looked around the table on that first Tuesday, I said, ‘Oh, wow, these ladies are all doing well,’” Lassiter recalls. “Maybe this isn’t an immediate death sentence after all.”
An informal meeting at Cancer Retreat Centers
Good Intentions
The programs offered at Blanton House are rooted in evidence-based treatment. Access to different kinds of therapies — and being part of a community to guard against isolation — has been repeatedly proven to prolong life and improve outcomes for cancer patients.
Everything in the facility serves a purpose. Thanks in large part to donations from corporate partners, the space feels simultaneously cozy and luxe, mindful and grounded. Everything from the furniture to the color of the Chinese checkers pieces in the kids’ playroom has been selected intentionally: warm earth tones, natural wood and no colors that are deemed sterile or unnatural.
“You’d be amazed how often I’ve been in medical appointments for the past 14 years,” says Susan VanOrden-Robe, who has been battling metastatic breast cancer for more than a decade. “I’m thankful for that, because it means I’m alive. But the setting here is very nice. It’s calmer, it’s less medicinal.”
“A clinical setting can be extremely triggering,” Harris says. “A lot of patients walk into an oncology unit and feel nauseated just from the smell, just from association.”
But at Blanton House, Ngo says, “I actually like being here. Usually, when you’re at a kitchen table, you’re amongst your family or friends in your home. It’s a little unusual to have a kitchen table in a cancer center.
“In our conversations, we talk about what we did over the weekend, we get to know each other more. It’s not just cancer talk.”
But having cancer in common means being able to understand one another’s unique problems, says VanOrden-Robe. “We can all relate to what brain fog and exhaustion really mean, but this gives us positivity and hope. I can recognize the bad. But good exists.”
Kristin Harris, founder of Cancer Retreat Centers, shows Mayor Danny Avula around Blanton House in Byrd Park, the nonprofit’s new home.
‘Divine Tailwind’
Harris, the visionary behind Cancer Retreat Centers, has been living with Stage 4 breast cancer for nearly 10 years.
She is also relentlessly bubbly and remarkably capable. Adds Chris Frelke, the city’s parks director, “She always has this disposition. It is quite clearly incredible.”
Frelke has been slowly moving his staff out of Blanton House, with an eye on relocating the department’s headquarters to Midtown Green (the former Bon Secours Training Center) on Leigh Street.
“When I told some of my staff they had to move, they said, ‘We can’t do this,’” Frelke recounts. “So, I said, ‘Go meet Kristin. Once you meet with Kristin, tell me that you told her no.’”
“[One staffer] came back and was like, ‘Yeah, we’re moving,” Frelke says with a laugh.
The vibrance of Harris’ personality and the strength of Cancer Retreat Centers’ mission have brought together corporate partners and public officials alike. “The work Kristen is doing is not necessarily something in which Parks & Rec has expertise, but it does fall under the umbrella of Parks & Rec,” Frelke says. “We’re in the quality-of-life business, and what she’s doing is improving the quality of life for people.”
Even as Harris, Frelke and others involved with Cancer Retreat Centers plan to expand into South side and the East End — and look forward to a fundraising concert at Dogwood Dell in November — Harris refuses to take credit for what they are building. Instead, she says there’s a “divine tailwind” putting the right people in the right places. And for anyone interested in joining the family, all you have to do is knock on the door.
“This is our shared home,” Harris says. “You don’t even have to join; you just have to show up.”
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