How It All Began

After being diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer, after surgeries and a year of chemotherapy, Anne Tonachel met several other women in Boston who shared this diagnosis. In 2007, a group of them traveled from New England to Montana to attend Camp Make a Dream. It was a deeply moving and helpful experience. Anne came back wondering why she had had to travel so far for this opportunity. 

That same year, when Robin Bray came to Boston for a second opinion about her own ovarian cancer treatment, she was assigned to stay with Anne and Dick through the Hospitality Homes organization. Separately from Anne, Robin had also attended Camp Make a Dream; they shared the frustration of having had to travel so far, and thus the desire to find a place to host a restorative retreat for women living with ovarian cancer closer to home, in New England. In successive conversations, they continued to flesh out this dream. 

Donald and Harriet Kennedy founded Camp Kieve on Lake Damariscotta in mid-coast Maine in 1926. Harriet subsequently died of ovarian cancer. Happy for the opportunity to honor her, the Kennedy family welcomed the emerging retreat, and Turning the Tide Ovarian Cancer Retreat was founded in 2011. That fall, 20 women gathered in the beautiful and nurturing environment next to the lake to share their experiences of living with the disease.

Robin was already quite ill and died not long after that first retreat. Since then, many people have stepped in to help in thoughtful, practical, good-humored, generous ways and to realize an annual retreat. Now a 501c3 organization, Turning the Tide Ovarian Cancer Retreats, Inc. is shepherded by a Board of Directors and fed by the many hearts and skilled hands of retreat participants and others beyond. The retreat itself continues to evolve while it also maintains and nurtures Anne’s initial vision: to create time and space away where women meet, connect, learn together, and support each other as part of a unique and life-giving community. 

Turning-theTide Ovarian Retreat is a tax-exempt non-profit organization.