Summary
Part of her healing journey has been helping others. She launched a nonprofit, [Nancy Novack]'s List, a year ago, and debuted her Web site, www.nancyslist.org, just two-and-a-half months ago. According to Novack's own unofficial mission statement, the purpose of Nancy's List is "to address die economic, physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual, and social challenges that our many neighbors face every day." Novack says of the site's uplifting images and pale lavender design, that she didn't want it to look like Craigslist; she has created something peaceful, elegant and inspiring for panicked people to turn to for support and information.
Novack is thrilled to announce two promising recent partnerships. First, the Sausalito Chamber of Commerce has agreed to offer members of Nancy's List gift cards and coupons for local restaurants. Novack believes strongly that "getting people to go out and be in a social environment" is a big deal. She also calls attention to the needs of women with cancer to get proper nutrition. "Often they're too tired to feed their families." In Novack's opinion, food-delivery services alone don't cut it, so she's pressing for more help from the community. "I love putting people together. I love making people's lives better," she emphasizes.The impulse to do this community outreach stemmed from Novack's experience of being in the hospital waiting room for courses of chemotherapy. Novack says she was always surrounded by friends, dressed up, wearing a different long, curly wig each time. She tried to make a party out of her treatment. But it haunted her, she says, to see the people going through it alone, folks who would wistfully look at her group of caregivers and want to be included, who looked scared but had no one to comfort them. Novack counsels many people with cancer now and sees this as part of her work; she says that people typically call her when they first get diagnosed and want to know what to do with themselves. "They're frantic," Novack says. Her vision for the site is that it will involve more and more of the community until the notion that "we're in this together" becomes widespread.See the full content of this document
Extract
List for Life
Nancy Novack almost didn't make it this far. The 64-year-old psychologist was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer four years ago after suffering symptoms that she thought indicated an appendicitis attack: stomach pain and bloating at the waistline. There is no stage 5. At Stanford Medical Center for surgery, her oncologist told h...
See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
