Inside the Jersey Shore safe haven for women with cancer (2025)

When Barbara Stewart walked into the well-appointed, ocean blue, 10-bedroom house on Main Avenue in Ocean Grove, it was like nothing she’d ever seen before in her life.

In the home’s foyer is a crackling fireplace, its mantlepiece decorated with flowers and candles. Nearby, a circle of cushioned reading chairs surround a coffee table with a plate of cookies. Off to the right is a largely empty twilit room known as the sanctuary space, where guests participate in guided meditation and yoga. Beyond the living room is a large, bright kitchen with a long marble counter, where plant-based meals are prepared for guests.

There’s a tranquil, spa-like atmosphere to the home, known as Mary’s Place by the Sea.

For Stewart, who in December 2023 had just completed four rounds of radiation for breast cancer, “it was like I walked through the doors of heaven,” she said.

For 16 years, Mary’s Place By the Sea has brought together women with cancer from all over the country to Ocean Grove for an opportunity to participate in a wellness retreat that nurtures mind, body, and soul, free of charge.

In February, founder and executive director Michele Gannon was named one USA Today’s 2025 Women of the Year, a recognition of 61 women across the country who have made a significant impact in their communities. Fellow recipients include Olympian Ilona Maher and Senator Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois.

After being sidetracked by a sudden, short-term illness in 2009, Gannon, a mom of three from Interlaken, found herself wondering how women with life-threatening diseases like cancer find the time to take care of themselves.

“We as women don’t typically give ourselves permission to say, I just need a minute. We put ourselves last in everything,” said Gannon.

After thinking on it, Gannon said Mary came to her in a dream — hence the name, Mary’s Place by the Sea — and inspired her to create a place where women with cancer could go to catch their breath. Within the year, Mary’s Place, a non-denominational women’s-only cancer retreat, opened inside a rented bed and breakfast space in Ocean Grove, and soon outgrew it. The retreat relocated to a five-bedroom house on Broadway before opening the house it now occupies on Main Avenue in 2016.

The home, located two blocks away from Ocean Grove beach, can accommodate up to eight overnight guests at a time and is usually fully booked six days a week, year round. The home usually has about 50 to 60 women on a waitlist every month, said Gannon. It offers two different wellness options: overnight and day retreats.

Mary’s Place welcomes visitors for a two-night retreat offered Tuesday through Thursday or Friday through Sunday. Each overnight visitor gets a private bedroom and full bathroom, with linens and towels provided.

Retreats are available to women with a cancer diagnosis through two years post-treatment. Since the house is not a medical facility with medical staff, guests who require medical assistance on a daily basis are asked to bring a female caregiver for their retreat.

Booking a stay begins by filling out a reservation inquiry on the Mary’s Place website. Staff then directly call guests to schedule a retreat.

Visits are scheduled, at most, up to three months in advance. Women don’t need to meet any age, work, or financial requirements. They don’t need to be religious. And, critically, they don’t need to pay a dime. All retreats are free.

Mary’s Place runs entirely on donations, private and corporate, with an average contribution of $250, said Gannon.

“We have worked really hard to keep our program costs to a minimum by having many of our practitioners volunteer their services. That way when a donor is donating to Mary’s Place, they know that 75% of that dollar is going right to the guest,” said Gannon.

Mary’s Place is run by a nine-member board, a full time staff of seven, 80 house volunteers, and 55 practitioner volunteers that include licensed clinical social workers, yoga instructors, massage therapists, nutritionists, reiki healers, and more.

Guests begin their visits with coffee, tea, and a homemade breakfast, followed by personalized services, which include meditation, reiki, reflexology and oncology massages, and more.

They can also schedule brief counseling sessions, where licensed therapists help them process their feelings, learn coping skills, and give referrals for continued counseling.

Even a one-time counseling session can significantly help, said Patricia Hannah, a licensed clinical social worker and volunteer practitioner at Mary’s Place.

“It could be the woman’s first time being able to speak openly about her feelings with cancer and her resulting emotions. I think in many cultures women are the managers of emotion and so they’re often worried about burdening others with their own emotions. To have a safe space here for that, it can be a very cathartic release,” said Hannah.

Guests are also served lunch, and then are encouraged to walk into town for dinner, explore the boardwalk, or venture into Asbury Park.

While many women start out the day understandably timid and reserved, Program Manager Eleanor Schoenberger said there’s “a drastic change” in their behavior by the afternoon.

“They’re talking about friends, kids, jobs, brainstorming where they’re going to go for dinner. The walls start to come down almost immediately,” Schoenberger told NJ Advance Media. “By the end of it, they don’t want to leave. And it’s not just that they don’t want to leave Mary’s Place, but they don’t want to leave their new friends.”

Stewart, who lives in Woodbridge, is still in touch with the friends she met at Mary’s Place during a second stay in July 2024. The women regularly share updates about their life, cancer or otherwise, in a group chat.

“We share our recovery, we share our trips, we share new information. We’re there for each other,” said Stewart in an interview.

In addition to overnight retreats, Mary’s Place offers day retreats on Thursdays. Virtual services are also available to women with cancer at any point during and after treatment.

The nonprofit also has a support group which meets in person once every week from September to May and then graduates as a cohort at the end of the nine months.

“I have amazing human beings in my life, loving people who drove me to appointments and sat through my surgeries, but even with loving people in your life, cancer can make you feel really lonely,” said Patty Cash, a breast cancer survivor part of the 2024-25 Resilience Support Group class.

“To have people that really get your journey means a lot,” said Cash of Point Pleasant.

Sometimes she and the other women don’t even talk about cancer. They just get caught up talking about partners, children, vacations.

“I feel like I’ve become a patient in my life. You get this diagnosis and you get in the mood where even getting out of a chair is hard. But they got me moving again,” said Cash.

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Jackie Roman may be reached at jroman@njadvancemedia.com.