This breast cancer surgeon traded city life for a farm, where her patients gathered for her fifth wellness retreat

The Zillow listing for the nearly 40-acre property in rural Upper Bucks County read: If you’re looking for peace and quiet on a fantastic gentlemen’s farm for your family, guests, horses, cattle and pets, then look no further.

Farming, horses, cattle. None was in Monique Gary’s wheelhouse. Gary was born and raised in North and West Philadelphia. After becoming a breast surgeon and oncologist, she moved to a two-bedroom house in the city’s Chestnut Hill neighborhood. “I had a patio garden,” she said.

But she had envisioned buying a farm where she could host wellness retreats for her cancer patients. She wanted to grow her own fruits and vegetables and inspire her patients to embrace holistic healing. “Food is medicine,” she believed.

During the pandemic in 2020, Gary pulled up her Philly roots and bought the Zillow-listed farm. Just her. In a land of undulating one-lane roads, tractors, church ham dinners, horse stables and golden corn fields.

Her neighbors initially thought she was “nuts.” They didn’t think she’d last.

Gary, known to her patients as “Dr. Mo,” hosted her fifth biannual retreat this past weekend for cancer patients and survivors. About 50 women — diagnosed with breast, cervical, uterine and ovarian cancers — arrived at the farm on a sunny Saturday. Most were her patients. They parked on an old tennis court, with weeds growing through cracks, near a small orchard of peach and apple trees and patches of chokecherries, mulberries and raspberries.

“We want to celebrate our breast cancer survivors. We got some breasties in the house!,” Gary shouted into a microphone to whoops and cheers. “We’ve got survivors. We’ve got thrivers.”

“This is the place where you come with whatever you know, whatever you don’t, and you get your hands in the dirt,” 46-year-old Gary said. “You can experience different types of integrative wellness and figure out what works for you.”

With that, the guests broke away for a full day of free yoga, guided meditation and sound therapy, nature hikes, pond fishing, nutritional cooking demonstrations, a panel discussion on living well with cancer, and a workshop on sex and intimacy.

Gary is the medical director for Grand View Health/Penn Cancer Network’s cancer program. She’s also an adjunct associate professor at Dartmouth College and a medical adviser for the National LGBT Cancer Network and five other health advocacy organizations.

She puts on the daylong retreat with the help of volunteers, breakfast and lunch donations, fellow doctors and philanthropic support. They’re all part of a network working, as Gary puts it, “to democratize wellness.”

“There’s a lot of women who think wellness is a luxury and not a necessity,” said retreat volunteer Robin Evans, 67, a breast cancer survivor and advocate from Philadelphia.

The women who came to the retreat shared a collective appreciation for how Gary mixes medical treatments for cancer with a heavy dose of encouragement to be kind to themselves.

Barbara Matkowski first met Gary in 2020 after a mammogram found an eraser-sized tumor in her breast at age 59. Gary had hugged her and told her everything would be OK. “The compassion ― I just felt it,” Matkowski said, tearing up.

“She walks the journey with everybody,” Matkowski said.

Matkowski, who lives in Montgomery County, attended the panel discussion, entitled “Managing Your Health Outside of Cancer,” where Gary and two other panelists answered her questions about plant-based supplements.

Debra Kendrick, a 66-year-old breast cancer survivor from West Philadelphia, helped pick basil from the garden and learned how to make vegan pesto with garlic, walnuts and lemon.

Gloria Kittrels, 81, a retired Philadelphia schoolteacher with breast cancer who recently finished a round of radiation, opted for a chair instead of a mat during yoga on a grassy knoll overlooking a sun-glinting pond.

Kittrels, who also got a makeover, made the 45-minute trip from her Elkins Park home. The scenery stirred childhood memories growing up in Smyrna, Del. “It reminded me of a more rural simplistic life. It feels kind of comfortable,” she said.

She came looking for camaraderie and knowledge to better care for herself mentally, physically and spiritually.

Gary had told her patient, 75-year-old Kathy Moniot, to stay home and rest after her double mastectomy, performed by Gary four days before Saturday’s retreat. The Sellersville resident wouldn’t hear it. The retreat was her rest.

“I want to live. I love it here. This is living,” said Moniot, drawing a deep breath in the crisp fall air and gesturing toward the pastures.

Gary believes in blending traditional cancer treatment, such as chemo, radiation and sometimes surgery, with a holistic journey that takes practice, or “space and grace.”

“You don’t just park your car outside and then all of the sudden you are at Wellville,” Gary told panel attendees. “It’s a rinse, lather and repeat process.”

Not unlike Gary’s pilgrimage from self-described “Philly Girl” to farm steward.

The same family had owned the 38.76-acre farm for almost five decades. The five-bedroom, six-bathroom colonial farmhouse, built around 1879, came with a separate “caretaker’s cottage,” six sheds, a hay barn, horse stalls and sprawling fenced-in pastures, rimmed with untamed woods. The farm was originally listed for nearly $1.9 million — way out of Gary’s price range.

It also was larger than what Gary was looking for, but when she drove down the long driveway and saw the rolling valley and fields below, she knew, “This is the place.” The previous owners wanted a buyer who would give it new life and meaning; they reduced the price. The matriarch had a best friend with cancer who became one of Gary’s patients; the friend told her Gary treated her like family.

“That means you’re a part of my family. That’s how we knew we were supposed to sell you this place,” Gary recalled the matriarch telling her.

Gary named it Still Rise Farms because “the sunrises here are incredible, and it’s a place where you can be still and then get back up again.” Also, all her friends told her, `Oh my gosh, you’ve arrived. You’re a Black woman with a farm,’ and I said, `No, no, we’re still rising.’”

Tenant Dorothy Kozlowski, 73, a widow twice over, moved from rural Lackawanna County into the caretaker’s cottage on the farm about eight years ago. She feared she’d have to move when Gary came to look at it with a realtor.

Kozlowski sat in her car with her dog, Remington, as Gary walked through the one-bedroom, single-story cottage. Gary noted two American flags, neatly folded into triangles. The flags were presented to Kozlowski after her first husband, a firefighter, died in the line of duty and later, after her second husband, a Vietnam vet, died in 2013 of lung cancer from Agent Orange. On Gary’s way out, she approached Kozlowski and thanked her for her service. Kozlowski began to cry. People often thanked her husbands for their service. Never her.

“You gave your husbands,” Kozlowski said Gary told her.

“You stay,” Gary said. “You come with the farm.”

Gary told Kozlowski she was from Philly but always dreamed of living on a farm and creating a retreat and eventually “an institute for integrated wellness” for cancer patients, doctors and researchers.

“OK, but who’s coming with you? What do you know about maintaining a big house and a farm?,” Kozlowski remembered asking Gary, who said it was just her.

“I thought she was nuts, to be honest with you,” Kozlowski said.

Kozlowski and her son, a nurse who owns eight acres and a stable of horses not far away, said they’d teach her everything they knew about rural living, like how to order heating oil, add softeners to well water and what fertilizer to buy. Kozlowski’s son taught Gary how to ride a tractor.

Gary’s mother died of ovarian cancer when she was a little girl. Her grandmother, who then raised her, got breast cancer when Gary was about 12. Her grandmother had put herself through nursing school while raising eight kids, including Gary’s mom.

“I come from tough stuff,” Gary said.

» READ MORE: Breast cancer strikes young Black women at alarming rate

Gary still had her crying jags in her first year of farm living. Like when she tried to light the wood-burning stove in the living room and the entire house filled with smoke and black soot.

“I just sat there. I was like, `I can’t do this. I don’t know what I’m doing here,’” Gary said.

She’s since bonded with her neighbors, including the ones behind her who own 100 acres and grow corn and soy. They stopped by one day on their ATV to welcome her. “You all hunt?” she asked them. While she doesn’t, Gary target shoots as a hobby. She owns a .22 rifle, a 9mm SIG Sauer, a 12-gauge Benelli shotgun and a .357 Magnum she nicknamed “Peacock” because the pattern on the wooden grip reminds her of the bird.

Her neighbors, who hunt deer, leave venison for her. They also help mow her pastures with their tractor.

She’s learned how to order coyote urine on Amazon to keep the groundhogs from burrowing under her vegetable beds and snatching all the food.

Touring her farm on her Army green ATV, Gary pointed out where she plans to build a circular yoga studio with treatment rooms in a field where horses once grazed. In the pasture behind her house, she envisions a glass, A-frame structure, like a ski lodge, that will serve as a library where patients can review the latest research on cancer and integrative wellness. She’s looking for volunteers to help repair fences, draw up architectural designs, donate wood and help garden.

“There’s a lot people can do to be a part of this evolving story of teaching our collective communities how to heal — one acre at a time,” she said.