Westbury woman starts nonprofit to help Black women with breast cancer with free wellness retreats

Alexea Gaffney took an all-expense paid trip to an island in Belize in April with Esther Tambe and five other Black women. They shared early morning yoga, enjoyed massages and meditated under the moonlight on the sand in front of their hotel.

What brought the group together is breast cancer: Each is either in active treatment or a survivor, and all of them work with Black women fighting the disease.

The four-day event was sponsored by Tambe’s new nonprofit organization called Fight Through Flights, whose mission is to support the healing of Black women affected by breast cancer by providing free wellness retreats and travel experiences. Tambe, a 35-year-old dietitian from Westbury, and her sister, Alicia, a 33-year-old lawyer living in Washington, D.C., started the charity in August 2020 to honor their older sister, Maria, a nurse from Houston who died of breast cancer in 2019 at age 40.

“I’ve had everything — bilateral mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation,” says Gaffney, 41, who works as an infectious disease physician in Stony Brook and is the mother of an 11-year-old girl. “Even when your chemo is done, your hair has grown back and you don’t have to climb on a radiation table, you’re still very much enrolled in medical care.” Gaffney takes daily pills and has monthly injections into her belly as part of her long-term treatment. “To have a breather, to have all your delicious meals fresh and healthfully prepared for you, to arrive somewhere and be treated to a massage and breathe a sigh of relief, is just a beautiful thing.”

SISTER HOMAGE

Esther and Alicia Tambe chose to focus on gifting travel and wellness experiences to women nationwide because traveling was one thing the three sisters loved to do together, Esther says. The trio grew up in Westbury; Maria and Esther graduated from Hicksville High School and Alicia from Hicksville’s Holy Trinity. As adults living in different locales, the sisters would meet up to travel to Europe and to South America; their last trip was to Napa, California, in March 2019.

At the one-year mark of Maria’s death, Esther and Alicia wanted to do something more than cry. “What can we do to have her legacy live on?” they asked each other. “Knowing that travel brought her joy, we would like to give that to someone else,” Esther says.

The sisters focus on Black women because, for one, they are Black women themselves. Two, they find the disparities in breast cancer treatment and outcomes for Black women disturbing.

“As you look at statistics, they are alarming and frightening,” Tambe says. Black women may lack access to early detection and treatment, may be underrepresented in clinical trials, and may be more likely to have aggressive cancers like the triple negative breast cancer that killed Maria just one year after she was diagnosed. Black women have a 40% higher death rate from breast cancer than white women, and breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths among Black women, according to the American Cancer Society’s Breast Cancer Statistics 2022.

Valerie Burger, an oncology nurse, assistant vice president of operations at Northwell Health, and chair of the Long Island Board of Advisors of the American Cancer Society, applauded Fight Through Flight’s goal. “We know that the immune system responds to stress, and it also responds to relaxation. Your blood pressure goes down, your heart rate goes down, and your body has a chance to focus on healing,” she says.

REVVING UP

Because Fight Through Flights launched during the pandemic, flying women to the Caribbean islands had to be put on hold. The Tambes expanded Fight Through Flights’ offerings to programs they dubbed Roadtrip to Recovery, offering trips women could drive to within a few hours, and Staycation Serenity, sending spa services to the women’s houses. They also are running Room to Breathe, with a goal of giving 120 recipients a one-night stay in a hotel of their choice that costs less than $250 for the night, Tambe says. They are funded through small grants and donations, she says.

The sisters were featured in September on “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” during which the daytime TV talk show host presented the group with a 29-foot RV,  courtesy of Bish’s RV, that can sleep up to eight people. Tambe says Fight Through Flights hopes to park it at different RV parks to give trip recipients getaways in nature.

Shoni Brown, 43, a health and physical education teacher who lives in Freeport, benefited from a Roadtrip to Recovery in September of 2021. “They helped me plan a trip for my chemo-versary,” Brown says, marking five years after finishing chemotherapy.

'RELAX AND ENJOY'

Brown was treated to two nights at The French Manor, a stone chateau-style bed-and-breakfast in the Poconos. She took walks in nature and swam in the indoor saltwater pool. “I was able to relax and enjoy myself without thinking about cancer,” Brown says. She also received five sessions on Long Island with a personal trainer, a nutritionist and a therapist. Brown has continued on with the therapist, who is in her health care plan.

Once flying became an option, the Tambe sisters put together the leadership retreat to Belize — their secondary goal was for the women to brainstorm more ways to make life easier for Black women with breast cancer.

Gaffney says she thinks she was chosen because she has used her Instagram platform — @dralexea — to educate followers about her breast cancer journey. Gaffney was already following Fight Through Flights’ Instagram when she saw the group seeking Black women leaders for the retreat.

“As a mother, I would be hard pressed to pull that money out of my household to plan such a well-executed vacation," she says. "I think Fight Through Flights is a fantastic organization. It takes away that stress of being selfish. I’m allowed to just go and fully immerse myself in fun and self-care and have zero guilt about it.”

By Beth Whitehouse

beth.whitehouse@newsday.comBethWhitehouse1

Beth Whitehouse writes about families, parenting and great things to do with the kids on Long Island. She’s been a Newsday editor and shared a 1997 Newsday staff Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the crash of TWA Flight 800.