EMPOWER Oncology Support Group
Counselling Services
What is the EMPOWER Oncology Support Group?
This is a space built for one purpose: so you don't have to carry this alone, and you don't have to pretend to be okay while you carry it.
This is not a support group where you go around the room reciting stats. Not a place where you have to reassure everyone else that you're "doing great, all things considered." Here, you can say the thing you haven't said out loud anywhere else. You can be angry. You can be scared. You can laugh at something dark that no one else would find funny. (Our facilitator Dawn will!) You can sit in silence if that's what the day calls for.
What topics will be covered?
The body — pain, fatigue, changes in how you look and move, grief for the body you used to have
Telling people — how much to say, to whom, when, and the exhaustion of managing everyone else's reaction to your diagnosis
Guilt and anger — about the diagnosis itself, about how it's affecting the people around you, about why this happened
Fear — of treatment, of scans, of the future, of what's next
Planning ahead — including end-of-life thinking, at whatever pace feels right to you, with no pressure to go there before you're ready
The stuff no one else gets — the specific, personal, sometimes strange details of what this experience is actually like for you
What this Group is NOT
It isn't medical treatment or a replacement for your care team
It isn't a place where you're required to share
It isn't a place where positivity is the price of admission
It isn't group therapy with a curriculum — it's a room that holds space for whatever is needed
Upcoming Sessions
Wednesday October 21, 2026 @6PM
Wednesday November 18, 2026 @6PM
Wednesday December 16, 2026 @6PM
Dawn Taylor
Dawn is a trauma specialist who didn't learn this stuff from a textbook first — she learned it from living it. Before she was 18, she'd already survived deep depression, a broken back, sexual abuse, a severe eating disorder, a suicide attempt, and a brain aneurysm. Since then she's been through infertility, losing a parent, and the slow work of figuring out who she even was underneath it all.
None of that makes her an expert on your cancer. But it does mean she knows what it's like to sit inside something huge and scary and unfair, and to need a room where you don't have to pretend it's fine. She knows the exhaustion of managing everyone else's feelings about your bad news. She knows what it's like to be strong and completely wrecked in the same hour.
Dawn shows up as a survivor first, a facilitator second — with a stubborn belief that nobody should have to do the hardest thing they've ever done completely alone, and that there's still room for a laugh, a swear word, or a ridiculous tangent even in the middle of it.
You are not alone. You are not broken. And whatever you're feeling about this — it is not too much for this room