ShareThisBlessings come in many forms.
Those who come to Harmony Hill Retreat Center on a hillside across from a canal often find them in the most unlikely sources -- the cancer diagnoses they thought were death sentences.
Time after time, over nearly 25 years, Harmony Hill founder Gretchen Schodde has seen the transformation. Someone arrives depressed and ill, makes friends, eats organic food, learns to meditate and to savor each moment of being alive. And whether it's after a three-day or a one-day retreat at the nonprofit center, cancer patients learn to give themselves quality of life -- sometimes for the first time ever.
Over the years, Harmony Hill -- there are only a few like it nationwide -- has become known as a place where people with cancer learn how to live, instead of resigning themselves to dying. It works so well, say alumni, that many of those with cancer find their illness in remission.
With the recent addition of $500,000 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and gifts by the Boeing Employees Community Fund, the retreat -- which is free to cancer patients -- is expanding to include another lodge for guests and a performance hall.
In addition to more room for the 425 cancer patients served annually, it means more space for other groups that rent the facility throughout the year and are the financial backbone of the organization, which raised $1.5 million in donations and rental fees last year in the midst of the recession. And it pushes Harmony Hill toward its six-year goal of being able to double the number of cancer patients served.
When Schodde rented a house on property near Union, Kitsap County, in the 1980s, she hoped to create a center for healing mind and body. She was one of the first nurse practitioners in the state and was feeling burned out after years of serving what was then the very rural community of Darrington. She longed for the dairy in Buckley where she was raised, or the peace she felt when visiting her grandfather's farm in Switzerland.
She was at St. Andrew's House, an Episcopal retreat on Hood Canal, and felt a deep connection to the site, the pale sunsets and quiet water, the fertile soil where vegetables thrived. She didn't want to leave.
While there, she learned the farmhouse next door was for rent and, although it was run-down, she took it over, living in one room and incorporating the rest as Harmony Hill, which began offering programs in 1986.
Sometime later, the Nordstrom family bought the property and gave Harmony Hill a no-fee, 40-year lease and donated money through the Seattle Foundation to build what is now called the Elmer and Katharine Nordstrom Great Hall.
It's one of a number of cozy white-and-blue-trimmed lodges and cottages for guests, flanked by flourishing gardens.
One of the most enthusiastic Harmony Hill supporters is former surgeon Claude DeShazo, who has written a book, "Renewal: Finding your path to self-healing in cancer," on the benefits of healing mind and body.
"Harmony Hill is an ideal environment for people contending with cancer," he said. "(It) nourishes the soul by letting visitors express their tribulations and aspirations. It is an ideal place for positive contacts. People who have much in common have much to share."
Schodde, 65, recently sat on a bench surrounded by nodding purple cone flowers in a garden designed by writer and board member Ann Lovejoy. It was Summerfest, when Harmony Hill alumni return, filled with stories about their lives. They strolled through the gardens, lifting leaves to admire fat green beans and plump berries, walked the labyrinth beneath the redwoods and sat on the porch of the lodge enjoying the view of the canal.
The progress from old rented farmhouse to picturesque seaside retreat still amazes Schodde.
"Sometimes, I just have to pinch myself to believe it."
Reach Nancy Bartley at nbartley(at)seattletimes.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com
Must credit The Seattle Times
