Five years ago today, my Grandy died while we all sat vigil around her, holding space for her journey with all we had.
It was the most surprising experience I had ever lived through. So many layers.
It merged a moment I had dreaded my whole life – the end of Grandy’s living – and with a moment I had never considered to be a moment in time at all: the one that began her legacy. Before then, I had never thought about the obvious simultaneous nature of those things.
My Grandy’s death on Nov 7, 2019 was wild, but almost as wild as its play-by-play – was its timing:
That same week that Grandy left her body, I met Tamatha Thomas-Haase at Campowerment.
At 47 years old, with contagious vibrancy, Tamatha was at camp celebrating her living (which was awesome) one year after being diagnosed with stage 3C triple negative, inflammatory breast cancer (which sucks).
In very little time after Grandy died, Tamatha and I, newly “camp friends,” struck up one of the best and most formative conversations of my life: a candid one that helped me process – and let me validate Tamatha’s belief – that life and legacy don’t connect without death (they simply can’t)…and let us begin to consider WTF we can do to get more…good…about our relationship to death and dying, so we can live more fully and define our legacy, now.
[^^^ this run-on sentence feels like an ode to the gigantic-ness of that first conversation!]
That one 2019 chat sparked another, and another and another and another. The collection of them not only shaped a cherished friendship across ages and stages, but also infused more life into our days, through COVID and beyond.
The practice of deep-diving about life and legacy, with death as the doorway, with each other actually inspired us to have real-er, richer, more imaginative conversations with the people who mattered most in our individual lives, way outside of our friendship.
And that’s how Grand Exit was born:
conversation-starting conversations about living, dying and living on. And that’s how it grew…amidst life with a metastatic diagnosis, a pandemic, breakups and make-ups, cross-country moves, parenting milestones and thousands of tender times.
Grand Exit is a podcast, for those who intend to be remembered (you??)
⚡ and those who prefer to skip small talk, to get to the heart of life’s matter
⚡ and those who’ve been dipping a toe in the shallow end of life’s pool but wonder what it feels like on the other side
⚡ and those who plan to die, or don’t (whatevs: you will, so plan or skip the planning: it’s comin’ for us all either way)
⚡ and those who have big wonders about life’s way.
Today, five years after we embarked on our first conversation the month that Grandy died; six years after Tamatha’s diagnosis; two years after we launched Grand Exit’s season 1…We are both alive to share SEASON 2 with you!!
We’d love for you to check out a preview – get a feel for what it’s like and what we’ll cover.
Click to listen 🎧 If that lil’ 2:30 clip sends you down the path we hope it does, go back to the beginning with our first-ever episode (shortcut here), and catch up on Season 1, your way.
And stay ready: subscribe to the podcast on your platform of choice, and Grand Exit’s emails (here) so you get notified when the first episode of Grand Exit Season 2 drops – the Thursday after next (Nov 21), wherever you listen to podcasts!
Thanks for letting us in to the precious time we all have here. We’d be honored to know what you think, how it lands, what it stirs up and what you may do with all that.
In Grandy’s magnificent legacy 🦩,
Chelsea – for me & my (out-of-this-world) camp friend Tamatha
P.S. For the live-ish updates as this all unfolds:
