Was going through some files and came across this interview I did with the incredible Allena Gabosh, not long after my Breast Cancer diagnosis in 2020. Like me, Allena chose not to have reconstruction when she had surgery, and I was eager to hear what she had to share about that experience.

I hope you find value in this conversation, as Allena’s generosity and humor are all over it. Sadly, Allena passed in 2020. May she rest in power knowing she touched the lives and hearts of thousands….

From Allena’s Obituary:

After wandering the West Coast in the 1970s she settled in Washington. She was a phenomenal force in the Seattle area for decades.  Allena opened her first restaurant in Auburn, named Back Alley Jake’s in the early ‘90s; the same time she started organizing sex positive events. She was a partner and operator of Beyond the Edge Cafe on Capitol Hill in the mid ‘90s.

In spring of 1999, she was working as the Executive Director of the Lesbian Cancer Project when she was approached to be the Executive Director of a new organization, the Sex Positive Community Center, commonly called SPCC or “The Wet Spot”. Allena grew this organization and nurtured the communities that gathered and came into being around the Wet Spot. She played a vital role is the creation of many large events such as the Seattle Erotic Art Festival and Wet Spot in Paradise. In 2007, Allena shepherded the process of turning the Wet Spot into two organizations: the Center for Sex Positive Culture and the Pan Eros Foundation (neé Foundation for Sex Positive Culture) and was in a leadership capacity for both organizations until her retirement.