Day 18 of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month - Tracy Councill, Art Therapist, R.I.P
Over the years, on many Fridays, I've written a sort of column on #CelebratingOthers here on this blog, and on my older blog for 10 years under QuiltsFromTheHeart. It always amazed me how wonderful, amazing, and diverse we as humans really are around the globe. Can you guess what my thoughts are after highlighting someone? It's the fact that people are good! We virtually all want the same things. The whole project has been one of the greatest blessings in my writing life.
Today's post will be a bit of a longer one, as I am celebrating a dear friend who lost her life earlier this month. She was the consummate champion of Childhood Cancer as an Art Therapist, but she is so much more. Most kids and families in the DC Metro area know her simply as Tracy.
I hope you will read this post to the end and see how much she meant to our family and thousands of others.
Tracy Councill was a force of nature. Because of that, this post took a large chunk of my day to write about what her life meant to me, my family, and the thousands of children she helped through her Art Therapy programs at Georgetown University Hospital and many others through her nonprofit, Tracy’s Kids. I'm thankful to sit in my hot seat and share a small piece of her through my family's lens.
Right now, I am so saddened. I am still trying to pull the dagger out of my heart after she passed from Ovarian Cancer on September 4, 2026. Two weeks before her death, she bounded down the front steps of her home, a block away from my daughter’s home in Richmond, VA, to take a two-mile walk with my family and me, including my 2-year-old grandson. She was bloated due to the steroids she was on at that time, but never complained. That’s her character we’ve come to know and love for three decades!
It was never about her while she worked in Art Therapy…it was always about the cancer kids and their siblings she was helping!
We walked and talked as usual. She was happy to get out of the house for a spell. She laughed. We stopped to take photos of the still blooming summer flowers (we both love to do that!).
I have to say, the Tomoff family were lucky to be in Tracy’s orbit since the day Ryan was diagnosed in 1996. Ryan was two, but could color with Tracy’s help on the little table and chairs she had in a small part of the Ped/Onc clinic. Olivia, age 4, was enthralled with Tracy, the art she worked on, and the dress-up closet Tracy provided for the kids to don the craziest outfits, head to toe. Olivia often exclaimed that she did not want to leave! Good thing on many days in the (before smartphones had traffic reports) late afternoons when traffic was heavy heading East, Olivia's request was answered. We stayed...and so did Tracy (with two daughters waiting for her at home).
Tracy was kind to everyone she met, bar none. I loved watching her talk to the kids in the clinic, and how sweet she was to a sibling, for example, who wanted no part of coloring or anything art-related. They eventually fell in "love" with Tracy, and they became budding artists while waiting for a sibling in the clinic with a long transfusion. It was a dance in all rhythms that Tracy perfected beyond measure.
Here is what I wrote about Tracy in Chapter 8 in The Focused Fight:
Art therapist Tracy Councill—now under the umbrella of Tracy’s Kids with Art Therapy, which has expanded to six hospitals in the Washington/Baltimore regions and beyond—and her interns from the George Washington Art Therapy programs helped our entire family on some of our darkest days. Her soft-spoken North Carolinian drawl was very soothing to us. She lovingly included Ryan, Olivia, and me in the many art projects she had going at any given time while we were in the clinic. When a pottery wheel was purchased through generous donations to her program, along with big fat chunks of clay, I was all in too! She even had a kiln to fire all the beautiful pottery coming off that wheel! All my Christmas gifts that year were made on that wheel (a departure from the hospital gift shop!).
While Ryan’s four to eight hours of transfusions were not unusual—we were always thankful we were in the clinic on those days as an outpatient instead of being “upstairs.” Tracy made every kid in the clinic feel special. Her kindness is exactly what any kid or parent needed more often than not. Her superpower was that she was attentive to every child she worked with each day—cancer patient or sibling. But her warm Southern drawl and compassionate ways were a welcome respite on some long, worrisome days in the clinic.
When Olivia was able to go with us to the clinic, she quickly figured out that she would be involved in an art project. She was always eager to get downtown, hurrying us out of the house. She then excelled at painting on a large easel, played dress-up with other siblings (there was a closet full of fun dress-up clothes and costumes), colored with the surplus of crayons, pencils, markers, and pens that all kids love to use, and even did some woodworking. Think of it as a mini Art 101 class—it was that good. One-hundred percent all Tracy…and the kids she loved to work with every single day.
Excerpt From
The Focused Fight
Terri Tomoff
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It’s not every day you come across a true human treasure like Tracy. I cannot stress this point enough, and thousands of people like me and my family are mourning her tragic death. I think it is so ironic that she helped so many kids and families for over three decades with their cancers, and then succumbed to her own cancer.
Don't you think this is injustice at the highest level?
I am beside myself. So is her family and the thousands of people in her orbit like us.
Not only that, Tracy was a terrific artist, speaker, humanitarian, teacher, mother, wife, friend to many, and so much more. I was honored when Matt Gerson, Founder and Chairman of Tracy’s Kids, asked me to write a testimonial about Tracy and the profound impact of her art therapy programs. I knew firsthand what she had given to children and families, and I was grateful for the opportunity to put some of that into words. In October 2022, Tracy received the prestigious Daughters of the American Revolution Founders Medal for Education. What a joy it was for many of us to be there to celebrate her for a change—the woman who had spent so many years celebrating, encouraging, and caring for everyone else.
More accolades are shared here in her obituary: Tracy Councill - An Extraordinary Woman
For almost 30 years, Tracy was woven into the fabric of our family’s cancer story, just like a quilt (Tracy also dabbled in quilting). When I close my eyes, I don’t see the awards, the nonprofit, the hospitals, or even the thousands of children whose lives she touched. I see Tracy sitting at that little table in the Georgetown clinic with two-year-old Ryan, patiently helping him to color or roll out a piece of clay. I see Olivia racing toward her and the art supplies and dress-up clothes. I hear that soft North Carolinian drawl that could somehow make a frightening day feel a little less frightening. She talked slowly and steadily, as only she could do, despite so much angst swirling above our heads.
And now, I see her bounding down those front steps in Richmond just two weeks before she died, ready to walk with us. I hope those images will stay with me forever. She laughed. She talked. She stopped to photograph flowers with me. And, you know what? On purpose, I didn’t take a photo of that last walk with her or any of us on that walk…because I usually take 'em. That unspoken respect for her was palpable that day.
On the flip side, how lucky were we to have one more walk together?
I love the fact that wonderful Tracy spent her life bringing color into places that could feel terribly dark, you know, like black clouds hanging overhead. She gave children permission to create, siblings a place to belong, and frightened parents a few moments to exhale. She didn’t cure their cancer. She did something else extraordinary: she helped them live while they were going through it.
There will never be another Tracy Councill, of course. But pieces of her are everywhere—in paintings and drawings from the kids and her own (they are all AMAZING!), plus gooey construction paper masterpieces, pottery in all shapes and sizes—even lopsided pinch pots that I gave away as Christmas presents one year, plus the kids' pottery and paintings that decorated the clinic and hospital hallways on certain days or weeks, and the quasi art shows shown in the Georgetown Lombardi’s entranceway.
The work of Tracy’s Kids lives on in thousands of families like mine who will never, ever forget what she gave us. That’s saying something. What an impact she made... all understated... It's the Tracy Way.
I will miss my friend more than these words can say.
Rest peacefully, dear Tracy. Thank you for bringing so much color into our lives. You were—and always will be—a true human treasure. 💛
My heart is filled with unyielding gratitude for you!
Terri 🎗
Photos: 1) Tracy from her family and her obituary; 2,3) - Tracy & Ryan -1997 &2022; 4,5,6) Olivia & Ryan in Georgetown's Peds Hem/Onc Clinic 1997; 7,8,9) Daughters of the American Revolution celebration for Tracy - 10/17/2022 with Marilyn Eichner and Patty Lubin.
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