One night was a Date Night for all of the couples, so we went to an amazing seafood restaurant in Carolina Beach, the dinners donated by that restaurant, Michael’s Seafood Restaurant. We played on the beach, we had family game nights after dinner, we went on a boat cruise, and we tried stand-up paddle-boarding or played at the park. And the recreation, oh the recreation! It was amazing. Aside from resting and relaxing, we rejuvenated just by being with others in a similar situation. We wanted to Live Stronger, Laugh Longer, and Love Deeper. The participants were there essentially for the same reasons even if our roles were different. The others were there simply because they felt called to be there, they want to do something, they wanted to minister to those of us with whatever form of breast cancer we have/had. Three of the volunteers, including Jeanine, are breast cancer survivors. And last, but certainly not least, these were the LPHOH volunteers who met our needs and also became our friends. These were the five children who were there, children who were able to meet and become friends with other kids whose moms have cancer, to know they’re not alone, to put that aside for a week and play and have fun. Incredibly loyal men, being our rocks as we go through our experiences with this disease, always being there for us and knowing what we need: rallying when we need to be rallied, comforting when we need to be comforted. These were also the men behind - or rather beside - the women. Most of the women are in advanced stages of the disease, one has another cancer she is fighting after the breast cancer she had two years ago, and another has Inflammatory Breast Cancer like I do, the “short stick,” so to speak, of breast cancers. These were women who had (now or previously) breast cancer - strong, beautiful women who weren’t at all defeated by the disease, but instead women who were fighting the disease and choosing LIFE every day, women who know what a gift every day is. We relaxed with our families and with other people in the same or a similar situation. We got time every day to rest, if we so chose, between lunch and dinner (we had lunch and dinner with the other members of the group). All of these were important to LPHOH’s inaugural beach retreat week at Kure Beach, NC. I thought of words that described LPHOH, and I came up with a lot of R words - Rest, Relaxation, Rejuvenation, Reconnection, and Recreation. In one sense, it’s one of those “you had to be there” things. but it’s hard to encapsulate a beach retreat week from LPHOH. When Jeanine Patten-Coble asked me to be a guest contributor on her blog, I started thinking about what I might write. The pioneers, the guinea pigs, the mavericks. We were the very first week ever of Little Pink Houses of Hope (LPHOH). This is the motto of Little Pink Houses of Hope, and we - meaning all the participants and all the volunteers - did just that in an incredible, even life-changing week from May 15-21, 2011. I asked one of our wonderful Little Pink Retreat Family Moms to write a guest blog for the first week of retreats.
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