Mavis Himes - Program Leader
As a member of Wellspring's first Professional Advisory Committee, Dr. Mavis Himes has been involved with Wellspring since its inception in 1992. For two years, she worked as the first program director, introducing and modifying many of the programs that still exist today, such as the children's group and the bereavement group. Mavis has led the metastatic and young adult support groups for over ten years and now she focuses on the short-term counselling program. When she is not at Wellspring, she is engaged full-time in her private practice as a psychoanalyst/psychologist.
Mavis is the author of The Sacred Body: A Therapist's Journey a book which describes her work at Wellspring and which she describes as her response to the question: Why do you work with cancer patients? Mavis generously makes a donation from the sale of each book to Wellspring.
"Working at Wellspring grounds me," says Mavis. "It gives me an appreciation of life." Mavis understands that everyone is touched by cancer, many of her own family members having been treated for cancer. Over the years, Mavis has become a fixture in the Wellspring community, a community she is proud to be a part of and which she believes to be important to the thousands of people Wellspring supports. She says that Wellspring is an organization she has seen first-hand filling a gap in the spectrum of cancer care.