Carol Hart and Eva Cubby - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cancer Website

Cancer Council NSW acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land on which we live and work. We pay our respects to the elders past and present and extend that respect to all other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this website may contain images, voices or names of deceased persons in photographs, film, audio recordings or printed material.

I acknowledge

I do not accept. Go to cancercouncil.com.au instead

Carol Hart and Eva Cubby

The Coffs Harbour Women’s Yarning Circle

Health Workers Carol Hart and Eva Cubby run a support group in Coffs Harbour for Aboriginal women affected by cancer.

These yarning circles make people feel comfortable enough to share their stories and their journeys with us, not only with us, but with the group. And they feel safe to actually talk in there.

At Cancer Council, we know that Aboriginal people are 60% more likely to die from a cancer diagnosis than non-Aboriginal people.

So therefore it’s really important to us to make sure that we provide support programs and information about cancer.

Being able to offer Eva and Carroll an opportunity to do support group facilitator training has allowed them to bring the skills that they learnt from that training back into their community and apply it to the women’s yarning circle.

In Aboriginal communities, cancer is not talked about a lot, so just to get people to actually come along and talk about their cancer journey is a, you know, it’s a it’s a healing process as well.

These yarning circles make people feel comfortable enough to share their stories and their journeys with us, not only with us, but with the group. And they feel safe to actually talk in there.

We had a lady today that actually talked about her daughter for the first time in a group situation.

She said that this was the first place in which she’d had a space to be able to talk about the loss of her daughter.

It’s not just about them going through their cancer journey, but it’s also losing somebody close to them.

I think our group is going to be more of a support, not only for women that survive, but families that are going through the cancer journey as well. I’ve been involved in this community for a long time now, so yeah, I’ve got family up here as well. So just being a part of the community helps.

Where I come from, there’s no support whatsoever and that sort of driven me to want to do this and be a support person for those that are going through a rough time and just make their journey a lot easier.

It’s lovely to watch Eva and Carol use these skills from the training program within this setting and to watch women share really personal, intimate stories about loss and grief.

Every minute, every hour, every day, we’re providing a space that is culturally appropriate for women to come along and talk about their experience with cancer.