“No one can really understand what a cancer patient is going through the way another cancer patient can.”

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© Lee Salem

Laura is a community person.  She loves being with other people.  So it was only fitting that when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988, she found her way to The Wellness Community. 

Laura was diagnosed when her daughters were only two and four.  The cancer had already spread to her lymph nodes.  She was an actress at the time and had just been cast in the mini-series Baby M.  Her husband – director/producer Jack Bender – was terribly worried about her, and was amazed when, a week after having all of her lymph nodes removed, she shot the mini-series.  Shortly after her mastectomy, Laura’s oncologist told her about TWC, and the first week she began chemo, she came to a Newcomer’s Meeting.  Laura has always felt that she has been “a part of the whole” whether in college, or the theater, at her daughters’ schools or working for a charity.  But when she was diagnosed with cancer, she felt truly isolated.  She had unequivocal support from friends and family, but as she says, “No one can really understand what a cancer patient is going through the way another cancer patient can.”  Laura likes to stress that TWC is not a “cancer community” - it is a WELLNESS community.  Her words say it best:

“While in our participant groups we may cry and complain and commiserate, there is also understanding, an empathy, a connection that can’t be found anywhere else.  Harold Benjamin (TWC’s founder) understood that, and he created an environment that promotes healing, not just recovery.  You may or may not recover from your disease; but you can heal no matter what the outcome.  You can enhance the quality of your life for as long as you have to live it – and that is one of the gifts you can find in having cancer.  Because none of us here knows how much time we have left on this earth, whether we have cancer or not – but every one of us has the opportunity to make every moment, every day count and mean something.”

Over the years, Laura has been a spokesperson for The Wellness Community.  She has spoken at dinners, gone on radio shows and even flew to Boston to help open a TWC there.  She is always quick to correct people when they mistakenly call TWC "The Wellness Center."  As she says, “A center is about a place – a community is about the people.” 

Harold Benjamin once gave her a piece of advice.  Laura was debating whether to go home to trick or treat with her daughters or stay at TWC to hear a guest speaker.  He asked how old her daughters were and when she replied three and five, he said, “Well, if I were you, I’d go with them, because” – and then he looked at his watch – “in about fifteen minutes they’re going to be eighteen and twenty.”  Laura went home.  “Harold knew the value of time,” Laura says. “No matter how much or how little you have, you make the most of it.”  Time has certainly passed since 1988 and Laura’s children are now past eighteen and twenty.  And Laura continues to be an inspiration.  Currently she is in rabbinical school and will be ordained in 2008.