About Smith Farm Center for Healing and the Arts

At the core of our work is the belief that each of us harbors enormous powers of healing within. We also recognize that there are both new and time-tested techniques to enhance health and well-being- even in the midst of crisis. Our integrated approach of stress reduction and inner quiet, art-making and telling your story, supportive listening and loving community, healthy lifestyle choices and state-of-the-art medical care can birth simple yet profound changes that radically transform the experience of illness.

Our Cancer Help Program Residential Retreats provide one of the foundations of our work. Nestled in a lodge setting amidst the rolling hills just beyond Washington DC, participants and caregivers explore, educate, nourish, renew and reclaim their inner resources for healing. These weeklong residential retreats—designed in partnership with the internationally recognized Commonweal Cancer Help program developed by Dr. Michael Lerner and Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen—offer a spectacular year-round environment for integration, reflection and healing transformation.

We also offer range of day retreats, programs and workshops at our City Center in Washington, DC. These ongoing programs— easily accessible to residents of Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia— offer therapeutic yoga and meditation, cooking classes, support groups, book clubs, healing arts gallery events, workshops for healthcare professionals along with health, creativity, and nutrition programs. Our city location allows you to easily integrate the programs into your weekly schedule.

Our artist-in-residence programs in major medical centers foster healing in clinical settings for thousands of adults and their caregivers. Through music, movement, poetry, storytelling and writing artists work alongside individuals and families in infusion centers, waiting areas and hospital rooms to foster hope, encouragement, laughter, deep healing and renewal.

Barbara Smith Coleman--Visionary, artist, and founder of Smith Farm Center

"I hope Smith Farm will maintain a deep respect for people and that we make no one feel more alone because of our actions or attitudes. Truth - we tell the truth as best we are able to perceive it. We deliver what we promise and promise only what can be delivered. We are considerate and tolerant. We dream. We care for our gifts as a sacred trust and spend them more carefully than we would our own. We are ready for a change. We delight in a challenge. We laugh. We work to maintain our personal lives in a state of grace, so that this grace will be available to those in need of our service." – From a journal entry by Barbara Smith Coleman

Click here to view a Journal Entry from Barbara Smith Coleman

Michael Lerner--Smith Farm Center President and CEO

In cancer, there is no single right choice for all of us, but there are surely right choices for each of us. There are no certain courses of action, but there are certainly educated and wiser choices, as opposed to uneducated and more foolish ones. The skill is in the movement from ignorance toward knowledge and from knowledge toward wisdom. In wisdom, we choose what we are least likely to regret. Accepting the pain and sorrow inherent in the fate we have been given, we can seek also the beauty and the joy. – Michael Lerner

Michael is the author of Choices In Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Approaches to Cancer. He was awarded the MacArthur Prize Fellowship in 1984 for his work in the health field and was a special consultant for the Congressional Report on Unconventional Cancer Treatments.

Shanti Norris--Smith Farm Center Executive Director

We believe that, in addition to receiving the best medical care possible— engaging the resources of the patient in the healing process can have a profound affect on the experience of illness and healing. Our goal is to help people in the quest for meaning in their lives— to emphasize and enhance the joy of living over the fear of dying.

Our work calls us to serve all who can benefit from this life enhancing programs. To that end, we work to reach the medically underserved communities in the region. Working alongside our donors, alumni and sponsors we provide program scholarships and free and reduced fee events and to contribute to the communities we serve.

Smith Farm Center continues to create new opportunities for adults living with cancer to connect with inner resources for healing. We are constantly helping adults give voice to unspoken thoughts and healing images and combat stress and alienation, all through creative expressions that often profoundly affect body, mind and spirit.

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Retreats | Workshops | Health | Nutrition | Creativity | Support Groups | Artist-in-Residence Programs | Gallery

Smith Farm Center for Healing and the Arts is a Washington DC-based, non-denominational, 501(c)3 nonprofit. We welcome people of all races and religious traditions. Smith Farm Center has been awarded the Susan G. Komen Cancer Foundation Virginia Kelly Award for Excellence in Cancer Survivorship in 1997 and 1998, the 2004 Innovations Award by the Washington Cancer Institute at Washington Hospital Center and has been designated as a Catalogue for Philanthropy Charity. Smith Farm Center provides scholarship assistance for our programs on a needs basis, whenever possible.