Shannon McGowan, 61; Aided Cancer Patients

Shannon McGowan, a cancer survivor who helped launch an international network of centers that provide free emotional support and education for cancer patients and their families, died Nov. 7 at her home in the Northern California community of Point Richmond. She was 61.

The Los Angeles native died of lung cancer after overcoming cervical cancer 20 years ago, said her daughter, Liz Behrens.

McGowan’s first battle with cancer led her to become a psychotherapist who, in 1982, joined with Harold Benjamin to open the first Wellness Community in Santa Monica. Eight years later, after moving to Northern California, she founded a Wellness Community in the San Francisco area.

The Wellness Community now has 21 centers across the country, as well as programs in Tokyo and Tel Aviv, which offer support groups, education and relaxation workshops designed to help cancer patients take an active role in their recovery in partnership with their doctors.

McGowan embodied this approach in her own battles with the disease. Told that she had six months to live after her diagnosis of lung cancer in 2000, she survived for four years, in large measure, her daughter said, because she chose to be “very active in her fight.” She found an oncologist in Chicago whose approach to her cancer -- a blend of Eastern and Western medicine -- met her needs, and she sought cutting-edge treatments as far away as Argentina.

“That was something she wanted to teach other cancer patients,” Behrens said, “to not be passive and just listen to what doctors say. She believed you have to fight for what you want. She died a fighter.”

McGowan was trained as a teacher at Cal State Northridge and taught kindergarten in local public schools for many years. She later was an interior designer and a yoga instructor.

She was 35 and the mother of two young children in 1977 when she learned she had cervical cancer. After a hysterectomy, her medical outlook was good but her marriage was failing. McGowan wound up getting a divorce.

“My former husband’s reaction was, ‘Go have the operation and don’t talk to me about it,’ ” she told the San Francisco Chronicle in a 1986 interview. “Some friends weren’t really supportive. A lot of people don’t know what to say, so they don’t say anything. They retreat, and the person with cancer feels deserted.”

McGowan joined a support group at the now-defunct Center for the Healing Arts in Los Angeles, one of the earliest holistic health centers in the country. There she met Benjamin, a lawyer interested in New Age therapies whose wife had breast cancer.

Four years later Benjamin invited her to help him establish the Wellness Community in an old yellow house in Santa Monica. The center opened in early 1982, offering programs that reflected Benjamin’s and McGowan’s belief in a mind-body connection. In addition to psychological support, stress management techniques and yoga were offered.

McGowan was the first program director for the Santa Monica Wellness Community. Described by associates as a gifted psychotherapist, she led support groups and was influential in expanding the services to include separate groups for family members of cancer patients. As a member of the organization’s national board of directors, she helped train staff and develop programs at other locations and opened the Wellness Community in San Francisco’s East Bay.

She also led groups for Commonweal, a nonprofit health and environmental research institute in Bolinas, Calif., that runs retreats for cancer patients, and helped create support programs at several Bay Area hospitals.

During her last fight with cancer, she continued to participate in the groups until a month before her death, even though the disease had spread throughout her body.

“I always asked her, ‘Don’t you think you’re scaring people? You’re fighting and not doing well,’ ” Behrens said. “She said, ‘No, it’s good for people to see that it’s OK, that you might not survive but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep on living and doing what you love.’ She wanted people to see that life doesn’t end when you get cancer.”

In addition to Behrens of Berkeley, McGowan is survived by sons John Behrens of San Francisco and Greg McGowan of San Luis Obispo; daughter Lisa Henley of Concord; and three grandchildren.