Hirsch Wellness Network

We offer those affected by cancer free arts and wellness classes! Beyond Diagnosis, a Journey Beckons; at Hirsch Wellness, Art Leads the Way

After losing her beloved artist mother to cancer as a child, Louise Grape fought her own first battle with the familial disease in her 30’s. By the time she had survived a second bout several years later, Louise found herself considering creativity and its therapeutic power to give voice to the profound emotions and experiences all cancer patients share. The disease itself and its treatment was one thing, she discovered, but after living through it one emerged from the cocoon of medical care into a strange and confusing world. The question of navigating this new realm galvanized Louise, first into reflection, then into action. “It made me realize that survivorship is not just going into a clinical setting, getting treated and going back out, because you’re changed forever,” she said in an interview in 2015. “So how do you readjust your life and who you are after that experience?”

Her answer was to create a community of programs and places where people whose lives had been turned upside down by illness could go and not be alone -- where they could express themselves, find new meaning, and process what the experience meant to them in a personal way among others who’d been through the same thing and understood. Where art could become a language of the heart that speaks its truth in colors, sounds, movement, laughter and, most of all, life.

“Our mission statement,” says Louise, “is the same today as it was when we started: ‘Hope and healing through creativity.’ There aren’t many of us who haven’t been touched by cancer in some way. I realized years ago that my mother used her painting as a healing tool, and I’ve learned that one of the ways to find empowerment, strength, joy and healing is through creativity. This is my mission.”

If she could look down today upon the flourishing non-profit cancer support organization that bears her name and serves hundreds of Piedmont Triad-area participants, Myrna Hirsch Grape would surely approve.