BoomerGirl Diary

Detroit — She sits in front a brick fireplace inside of a house so old it came mail-ordered from a Sears Roebuck catalog.

She sits, fanning herself nonstop with a piece of white paper, as if she wants it to grow a battery and power itself.

It is one of those beautiful April evenings in Royal Oak, Mich., when neither heating nor air conditioning is needed _ either would disrupt the perfection.

But Cheryl Littlejohn feels hot. Way, way too hot.

"To me, it feels like 95 degrees," she says. "With 80 percent humidity."

That's what a year and a half of chemotherapy does to you. And 35 rounds of radiation.

And seven surgeries, she tells the 15 women clustered around her. What they do next makes Littlejohn put down her piece of paper.

These women, who all know what it's like to deal with cancer, to freak out about losing your hair, to feel fear and shock because of insidious cells replicating inside you, stretch out their hands toward Littlejohn. They pray.

"We are sending love and energy to you," says Silvia Williams, the group's facilitator. "And to the Father ... knowing you will be just fine."

At this, Littlejohn once again raises her fingers, which touch not paper but the tears that fall from her eyes.

"It's probably kind of cathartic for me," she says later of the group. "It's provided some internal healing."

Because of this group, she adds, "you don't have the fear of not being accepted. There are not going to be barriers."

No barriers because not only are these women bonded by cancer. They are also bonded by color.

Women of Color. That's the name of this group that includes Littlejohn, which meets on the third Wednesday of every month inside the 9,600-square-foot house that is Gilda's Club Metro Detroit.

Gilda's flung open its signature red door on Thursday for a 4-½-hour open house, its main event in honor of National Minority Cancer Awareness Week.

"I want Gilda's Club to be that mosaic of what metro Detroit is," says Joe Perry, executive director of Gilda's Club Metro Detroit. "You know, we are a community of African Americans and Asians and Middle Easterners and Caucasians and Native Americans. Gilda's Club should be that mosaic."

The Women of Color group, which totals 21 members, acted as the event's hostesses.

But it wasn't always like this.

When Williams was hired as an outreach coordinator at the nonprofit Gilda's Club two years ago, the Women of Color support group stood at three people _ including her. It did little beyond its monthly meetings.

Since then, Williams has built Women of Color's numbers primarily through one-on-one conversations.

"I feel a greater sense of support and connectedness, I really do," says Williams, who underwent a mastectomy after a breast cancer diagnosis 28 years ago. "It has broadened my outlook of what it means to be a survivor."

Women of Color has now grown to a cluster of women who have built a special intimacy based on shared experiences of gender, race and disease, not to mention sumptuous bowls of homemade vegetable soup, trays of turkey sandwiches and baskets of muffins they share during meetings.

What's more, they have gone beyond Gilda's Club and out into the communities, wearing their ketchup-red Gilda's Club T-shirts to churches and fitness walks and spreading the word of early screening and support.

African Americans and Latinos are less likely to receive early cancer screening than whites and African Americans are less likely to survive a cancer diagnosis then whites, according to studies published by the American Cancer Society. The group's willingness to share their stories outside of Gilda's has helped raise awareness about cancer in the black community and given more women the courage to attend support groups.

"They're helping reach out to the thousands of women of color who don't even know we exist," says Perry. "Their word of mouth and their outreach is a reason we're seeing our numbers grow."

Gilda's Club Metro Detroit, like more than 20 clubs nationwide, is named in memory of comedian and native Detroiter Gilda Radner. It's a free community of support groups and programs like yoga, knitting and guitar for families and people living with cancer. Gilda's Royal Oak, Mich., house, which opened 10 years ago, reaches 2,631 members today.

Seeking to broaden the group

Women of Color feels almost like a meeting of a black sorority.

It's a place where Frances Marberry, 42, of Detroit, who underwent surgery for breast cancer last month and dropped in last week for her first meeting, felt an "almost instant" bond.

It's a bond of sisterhood they would like to share with other women of color living with cancer.

Williams has been revving up her efforts to meet with Latino, Asian and Native American groups in an effort to diversify the group.

The women attribute a lower participation by ethnic minorities to fear, shame, a perception of weakness and a general discomfort of support groups, but say they would welcome anyone of color who wants to join them.

"Women of all color, not only African-American women, in those cultures, we don't talk about things like" cancer, says Elaine Rodgers, who lives in Detroit. "It's very hidden."

Angela Diuguid, 41, of Detroit went into emotional shock after a mammogram detected breast cancer. Despite breaking into spontaneous sobs, she says, "I thought support groups were something that white people did."

After feeling little relief, even after seeing a therapist, Diuguid found Gilda's Club in a stack of brochures, fondly remembered watching Radner on "Saturday Night Live" and spotted the Women of Color group.

Now she's involved not only in Women of Color but in Gilda's Diversity Committee, the "I'm Too Young for Breast Cancer Group" and the speakers bureau. She's also started working with the health ministry at her church, Fellowship Chapel in Detroit, and is starting a cancer support group there.

"She was kind of depressed," says Diuguid's husband, Rick, 55, before she found Women of Color. "I've seen her change. She's different from my wife. She's always been kind of laid-back and in the background, and the group has really empowered her and encouraged her to do more. With that group bonding, she just blew up, and I'm happy to see it. It's been uplifting."

All for one

In the Diuguid's church on Sunday, eight pews from the pulpit, Angela Diuguid did what she had never done before, and would have never done, were it not for the women of color from Gilda's standing beside her: Margaret Brown of Southfield, breast cancer survivor; Patricia Carr-McCoy of Detroit, uterine and lung cancer survivor; Williams of Southfield, breast cancer survivor; and Glenda King of Southfield, colon cancer survivor.

In front of hundreds, she told her breast cancer story and how a certain group of women had bolstered her.

"I want to let everyone know that the support is there," she told the congregation. "Regardless if you're black, white, female, male."

At one point in the church service, the women, all wearing their Gilda's Club T-shirts _ "Living with Cancer? Come as you are," they read _ rose together. A swaying wall of red, they sang along with the church's choir, the lyrics all the more poignant because of what the women share:

"I pray for you.

"You pray for me.

"I love you.

"I need you to survive."