Meeting the Cancer Survivors Group for the first time, North Bend resident Carl Hart joins the java line at Sawdust Coffee Company on a Saturday morning.

Asked what brings him here, Hart smiles and answers, “Cancer.”

He and the other survivors in the group—an informal bunch that meets every second Saturday of the month simply to talk about their experiences—take a positive, even lighthearted attitude to the potentially fatal common thread that draws them together.

Take Hart’s ‘short term’ goal, which helps him mentally battle stage four colorectal cancer.

“My goal is to see my granddaughter graduate from college,” he said. “That’s 15 years.”

Hart’s been through chemotherapy, radiation treatment, surgery—in some cases, multiple times.

“I’m going to beat it,” Hart says with finality.

“You have to be that way,” replies fellow survivor Bill Blakely. “Attitude is so important.”

Cancer Survivors aren’t a formal support group. Among the two-dozen-odd people from all parts of the Valley who regularly attend, there is no chairman, no fees, no printed agenda, no ‘steps.’

“There’s nothing here we can 12-step over,” Blakely said. “We can’t recover from any of this. It’s just what nature has tossed the dice to us.”

What there is, though, is frank, funny conversation. The survivors’ group gives people a way to share experiences outside their family, where spouses and children often treat them with kid gloves.

“They’ll ask, ‘What can I do for you?’” said Bobbie Jo Samuelson, a North Bend resident going through treatment for breast cancer. “I tell them, ‘Just make me laugh.’”

“It’s human nature: they want to take care of us,” said Lisa Newell, a North Bend resident who survived a three-year fight with breast cancer. She founded the group three years ago as way to meet and talk with others experiencing the same things she was.

With her family, Newell wants to be treated the “same as I was before I had cancer. I’m the same person.”

“It’s hard for me to be the biggest one in my family,” Samuelson said. “If it was one of my kids, I think I would have freaked out.”

Newell will occasionally joke about her situation, and “my family doesn’t always get my sense of humor.” But that humor is important.

“You want to be positive and uplifting,” Blakely said. “If you go in with a positive attitude, you get through things much better.”

Having someone else to share stories, or a joke or two, is far better than “doing it alone and being down and out,” Blakely said.

To Newell, you become a survivor the moment you find out you have cancer.

For survivors, birthdays become good again.

“It’s not just a number, it’s a milestone, it’s a goal line that you cross,” Blakely said.

The conversations do more than just provide empathy; the group has helped members get the courage to go through daunting treatments.

“You get strength from us,” Newell said. “A lot of us have been there. We are there.”

• The Cancer Survivors Coffee Group meets at 9 a.m. the second Saturday of each month at Sawdust Coffee Co., at the Factory Stores at North Bend.

For more information, contact Lisa Newell at newellvl@yahoo.com. The next meeting is Saturday, June 11.