“I’ve known about CMC for 20 years, because I’m a subscriber to Full Belly Organic Farm, which donates organic produce to CMC’s clients. However, what brought me to CMC’s space was an invitation in 2016 to co-create and to facilitate a workshop on cultural humility and cross-cultural interactions for CMC volunteer service providers.
CMC’s volunteers are a diverse group of talented, warm-hearted women who donate their time and talents to helping low-income women with cancer. What I like best about helping to provide diversity and inclusion training for the CMC volunteers is their sincere desire to become more culturally sensitive and inclusive so that the clients they serve can feel fully seen, heard, valued and included, and can concentrate fully on their own healing journeys.
The last time I entered the Clinic’s waiting area, I was surprised to feel as though I had entered from downtown Oakland, streetside, and a narrow urban hallway with closed doors on all sides, into a beautiful, healing space that felt like a rainforest glade filled with birdsong. It was startling to me how instantly I relaxed, just hearing these sounds so unexpectedly, and as I looked around, seeing the neat rows of herbal medicines in the room to the side, the comfortable, welcoming chairs in the waiting room, and the soothing artwork on the walls, I felt a deep sense of gratitude that this free clinic exists in the heart of a major city. Everything in the space is clean, homelike and comforting. It represents a vision of “treatment” for cancer that acknowledges the whole woman — her culture, spirituality, intellect, and physicality.”