By Melodie Berry, Gilda’s Club member
Hello, My Name is Melodie Berry. At 41, I had my first mammogram. Everyone told me I didn’t have to worry about anything because nobody gets breast cancer on their first mammogram and cancer doesn’t run in our family, so don’t worry! Surprise! I was the first one in our family with breast cancer on the first mammogram.
When I first got the diagnosis, it felt like a freight train hit me with the speed of a tornado because I had never been truly sick before. Fortunately, my diagnosis was caught early, but the stress of the treatments increased my mental health issues. When the world shut down and was falling apart during the pandemic, and everyone was freaking out, I wanted to increase my community.
I decided to explore art classes with Marc and Mallory and a whole new world opened up to me. It felt like a glimmering light started to appear during these dark challenging times. Mallory would direct the class to drawing small simple shapes and before you know it, it would manifest into a Bob Ross type scene.
This changed my perspective on how to deal with life and its hardships. The heaviness that cancer brings can be broken down into small shapes or bite size pieces of how to deal with the situations and take action towards it and not be so overwhelmed.
After experiencing this, I realized that Art was my new thing! I caught the art bug. And I signed up for more art classes.
Gilda’s Club offers treatment for the heart and the soul and picks up the baton where the health care system leaves off. I gained life lessons of going back to the small and simple basic steps, looking at situations through different perspectives and curiosity, and having fun with a fabulous community to move along with and walk beside me along my journey.