When Chicago native Jenna Benn Shersher was 29, she was living life to the fullest, enjoying a burgeoning career as associate regional director at the Anti-Defamation League as well as an active social life in the city. But that same year, 2010, she learned she had Grey Zone Lymphoma, a rare and aggressive type of blood cancer that affects only around 300 people worldwide.

The diagnosis changed everything for Shersher. While going through chemotherapy treatments, she lacked the energy to meet with friends or enjoy many of the things that once made her happy. “As a young adult facing cancer, I felt lonely and desperate for connection,” Shersher recalled. “In general, cancer is a very isolating experience. It forces you to turn inward and focus on what you need physically and emotionally.”

Just one year after her diagnosis, Shersher founded Twist Out Cancer, an organization that connects those struggling with the disease with the creative arts to provide support to patients and their families. Today, she is CEO of what has become an international nonprofit that has helped more than 250,000 individuals affected by cancer, in cities as far-flung as Philadelphia, Montreal and Tel Aviv.

“There is something about having your hands on art materials and being able to create,” said Shersher, who now lives in Bryn Mawr, Pa.

When coping with illness, group art therapy, she said, “allows for really interesting conversations with other people in the group, and it is an opportunity to confront some of the things that come up for you.” 

Musical instruments, paintbrushes and canvases may not be the first tools that come to mind when thinking about healing. Yet research over the years has shown that art therapy can help those struggling with disease and the resulting loss of self-worth feel more in control of their lives, relieve anxiety and depression and even help manage pain by moving the mental focus away from painful stimulus. Most recently, studies conducted by the National Institutes of Health in 2023 and 2024 found significant psychological benefits to creative arts therapy in cancer patients of all ages.

Shersher is one of several Jewish women who have drawn on their experiences with illness to develop therapy programs and rituals that incorporate visual arts and other forms of creativity.

Another is New York-based art therapist Nikki Fuchs Sausen, who has observed the benefits firsthand. As the founder of Paint With Me!, Sausen leads in-person and Zoom classes that guide participants through replicating the painting chosen for that event. Similar to classes at nationwide painting studios like Muse Paintbar or Pinot’s Palette, participants chat as they recreate a predetermined scene. Included among the Paint With Me! options are landscapes, still lifes and Jewish themes such as Jerusalem cityscapes and scenes of people lighting Shabbat candles.

Because they are recreating another’s art piece, this kind of activity is not strictly considered art therapy—generally defined as a discipline that encourages free self-expression through painting, drawing, sculpture and other art. Nevertheless, her clients find it therapeutic, Sausen said.

Her program, she added, “is step-by-step, so you are being taught what to do. It’s a creative outlet that is spelled out for you.” Plus, she said, being shown how and what to paint alleviates the anxiety of facing a blank canvas with no direction.

Sausen has led events all over the country, including a virtual program in March for Miami-based cancer survivors and those undergoing treatment. It was organized by the Greater Miami Jewish Federation and Sharsheret, a New Jersey-based Jewish breast cancer nonprofit.

Art therapy can extend beyond the visual arts. In her 2018 book, Dancing with Cancer: Using Transformational Art, Meditation and a Joyous Mindset to Face the Challenge, Israeli American author Judy Erel wrote that any creative or physical activity could be a source of joy.

From acting, baking and embroidery to yoga and tai chi, “just enjoy the doing,” emphasized Erel, a Herzliya resident, who passed away last year from multiple myeloma after battling the bone marrow cancer for 17 years.

An artist, poet and meditation guide, Erel had been diagnosed with cancer when she was 60. She chose to document her journey with drawings, journal entries and poetry as she underwent several rounds of chemotherapy and other treatments.

“Writing and drawing focused me in the present, and being present in my imagination seemed more real than the hospital room I was in,” Erel wrote. Before she received her diagnosis, she experienced debilitating back pain, a result of a collapsed vertebra eaten away by malignant cancer cells. As Erel began “drawing her pain,” she wrote, she felt that she became an observer, entering a calm, meditative zone that allowed her to feel lighter.

Even as she was managing her own illness, Erel ran art and meditation workshops, both in-person and through Facebook, to help others cope with their disease. Several of her guided meditations can still be found online.

Numerous art therapy programs are available throughout Israel, both virtual and in-person, including at the Hadassah Medical Organization. Currently, HMO employs three dedicated art therapists—two working full-time in the pediatric psychiatry department and one part-time serving adult psychology patients.

When Shersher of Twist Out Cancer was undergoing treatment, to lift her spirits, she recorded herself dancing the twist to Chubby Checker’s namesake song and posted the video on YouTube as part of a social media challenge.

Her dance video went viral, sparking an online following, and helped create a virtual community of cancer patients, survivors and caregivers. It also paved the way to the creation of Twist Out Cancer, which today sponsors several cancer-related arts programs. Among them are TwistShops, art therapy workshops that typically focus on the visual arts, and Brushes With Cancer, which pairs working artists with individuals impacted by cancer to create paintings, collages or sculptures and culminates in art exhibitions and auctions.

“Art has a way of expressing the depth of what words cannot capture,” said Charlotte Safrit, a breast cancer survivor and Brushes With Cancer participant from Allentown, Pa. “I wanted to be part of something that honored the stories that often go unheard. Stories that can fill the world with inspiration and hope. Stories that can heal.”

She paired with Chicago-based ceramicist Molly Stepansky, another cancer survivor who, like Safrit, was diagnosed when her children were very young. Their collaborative piece is called Just a Moment. A green stoneware clock that touches on mutual fears and new awareness of moments in time, it questions whether they will be alive for a child’s next birthday and showcases the determination to make “enough time for the small things that make life so important,” Stepansky wrote in her artist’s statement on the piece.

“Cancer takes and takes so much from us—our certainty, our time, our sense of control, sometimes it even takes our sense of self,” Safrit said. “But in the midst of trauma it can reveal something extraordinary—the resilience of the human spirit.” 

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Alexandra Lapkin Schwank is a freelance writer for several Jewish publications. She lives with her family in the Boston area.