Feeling better, looking good

Starting this month, free Look Good Feel Better workshops will be held at the Canadian Cancer Society officer on Pinsent Drive in Grand Falls-Windsor.

While the workshops offer ways to help deal with the differences in appearances caused by the illness, it also allows the women to share their experiences with other women with similar stories.

“It’s a time that is taken away totally from the medical side of everything they are going through,” said Judi Todd, regional manager for Atlantic Canada with Look Good Feel Better. “And they will have professional women help them deal with all of the appearance-related side effects of their treatment. With that, they will also get the bonding experience of other women who are going through the same thing.

“At the end of the day they can feel comfortable, they don’t feel alone anymore. When you are going through that kind of journey, no matter how many other women are going through it, you feel very alone in your setting, in your situation. They go out feeling like they have made new friends.”

The heart of the program is a free two-hour, hands-on workshop that is held in 11 locations across the country.

“What we do is help women with cancer deal with the appearance related side effects of their illness,” Ms. Todd said. “They can expect two hours of fun.”

All the volunteers at the workshops are professionals in the cosmetics or hairdressing industry.

“We’re not teaching them how to be a make-up artist, for example, or how to be a hairdresser, we’re teaching them how to apply the skills they already have to women with cancer,” Ms. Todd said. “Of course, there are many levels to that because these women do need to be treated very gently, carefully and compassionately.”

She said the program has guiding principals which are followed.

“First of all we are non-medical,” Ms. Todd said. “We are not in anyway trying to dissuade women from obeying what their doctors have told them. We are free to the participant and we are product of brand neutral. We are not trying to sell them anything.”

Look Good Feel Better is the cancer charity of choice for the cosmetics industry and is completely supported and funded by the Canadian Cosmetic Toiletry and Fragrance Association (CCTFA).

Ms. Todd said a number of the companies involved in the CCTFA formed the CCTFA Foundation, which is the foundation that supplies the program with all of the free cosmetics they use to pack 12,000 kits a year for the participants.