THE FOUNDATION FOR LIVING BEAUTY

The Foundation for Living Beauty aims to be a source of healing, education, and support for women with cancer. The team at Living Beauty works to address a common problem for many women on their cancer journey: the desire to combine their traditional medical treatment with more alternative treatment options that address all aspects of a patient’s life. We aim to offer support for our “Living Beauties” that gives them the tools and empowers them to aid in their continued healing no matter where they are on their cancer journey or what challenges they may be facing at any given time related to their cancer experience.

Our goal at The Foundation for Living Beauty is to provide a multi-tiered, wrap-around program approach to help women that are healing from cancer experience better health outcomes. A cancer diagnosis for many women can negatively affect all aspects of their lives including physical well-being, emotional health, self-esteem and community support. We aim to provide holistic wellness programs that address all of these issues that women may face along with their diagnosis. For example, two main issues that we have found that women face include isolation and depression. According to the American Cancer Society, women who feel isolated and are without a social support system experience a 40% chance of cancer recurrence and a 60% increased risk of dying from cancer. The Foundation for Living Beauty combats this by creating a safe space for women to create community and sisterhood. Our goal is to provide women with education, knowledge and skills that can help them with the side-effects that cancer treatment can bring and facilitates long term healing to reduce risk of isolation, depression and other overall health issues that negatively affect a woman’s ability to continue to thrive with a cancer diagnosis. Women battling cancer deserve the best chances for survival. Many do not have access to the resources to aid them on both the physical and emotional fronts of their journey. Living Beauties are provided with a vast array of programs like yoga4cancer, energy healing, plant-based nutrition, mindfulness, meditation, and more. The proper educational and nutritional support, modified physical activity and a dynamic socio-emotional support system are critical to improving their health outcomes, this sets us apart from cancer research organizations.

For the past 15 years, The Foundation for Living Beauty has been at the forefront of developing and providing holistic wellness activities and education for women with cancer. Facilitators at the top of their fields are invited to retreats to present workshops on their topic of expertise in relation to enhancing quality of life during the cancer journey. Living Beauty hosts more than 45 events per year, maintains a comprehensive database of outside resources, and awards grants to women experiencing financial hardship and food insecurity. In all, we have provided programs free of charge to over 2,500 women with cancer.
The organization is administered by four women who are dedicated to serving women with cancer. Executive Director Nancy Davidson brings more than 30 years' of nonprofit management experience to The Foundation for Living Beauty. The Board of Directors, made up of 12 professionals, community advocates and cancer patients and survivors, brings a wealth of talent and energy to the organization, driving fundraising efforts and program growth.

What started out as a small sisterhood that created healing energy for one another, has since
grown into a vibrant nonprofit organization focused on internal wellness and healing. Currently, more than 900 women with all types of cancer at many different points in their journey call The Foundation for Living Beauty home, and our staff provides more than 45 wellness opportunities per year for women to learn and build community with others. We have been at the forefront of holistic wellness and continue to create new opportunities for women. In the recent pandemic, the organization pivoted to online programming, enabling our Living Beauties to have wellness and support experiences from the safety of their homes. An added benefit is that now Living Beauty’s programs are more accessible to women from other geographic areas. When the organization returns to in-person programming, virtual programming will continue to be a resource to women from other parts of the country who want to experience what Living Beauty has to offer. We have launched an Expanding Our Boundaries c Our long-term goal is to create our own Wellness Center, where women can come to experience the wellness opportunities Living Beauty has to offer on a more continual basis.