Blanche Colson got in touch with Debbie after listening to a previous episode with entrepreneur Peter Corbett on the topic of mortality, death and becoming a hospice volunteer. Blanche knew Peter through the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care and wanted to tell her own story about her evolving relationship with death. 

Blanche retired after a career in school administration in Eugene, OR. She’s an empty nester, having raised two children as a single parent, and was wondering what’s next when a near fatal car accident jolted her into realizing it was time to make a change. She wanted to get more comfortable with the mystery of death and our reluctance to talk about it so she moved from Eugene to New York to study at the Zen Center, where she met Peter. This is where Debbie challenges her on being ordinary, as not everyone would get on a plane and move to New York to study death and dying.

Through the Zen Center’s program, she learnt the basics of contemplative care: sitting at the bedside of the sick and dying, truly listening and resisting the impulse to save or rescue them. As part of the training, she volunteered at a geriatric center where the residents were wheelchair or bed bound and utterly dependent on the staff for their needs. 

You’ll hear her mention Chodo. Robert Chodo Campbell is a well-known Sensei or Buddhist teacher and the co-founder of NY’s Zen Center. He was Blanche’s mentor. 

Blanche mentions an intentional community.  It means a planned residential community designed around social cohesion and teamwork. Not a hippie commune exactly but definitely a place for the alternative-minded. She lived in an intentional community near Eugene for 20 years. And she chose Ganas, an intentional community on Staten Island, as her home in New York. Again not something that an ordinary person might do.

Finally, Blanche’s time at the Zen Center was only the first step in her journey to change the perception of death as dark, fearful and something we can’t talk about. Since this conversation she has officially started her training to become a death celebrant or death doula. 

Blanche pitched herself as an ordinary person, someone whose perspective is too often lacking on podcasts. But she’s really not ordinary at all. She’s brave and adventurous, just the kind of guest who should be on a Gap Year podcast.

What they talked about

• Why death as a topic is taboo
• What it means to be an ordinary person
• How her experience as an African American woman has affected her spirituality
• The unfairness of life for an African American woman
• How old people are tucked away
• Learning to really listen instead of wanting to fix other people’s suffering
• Learning how not to judge
• The advantage of spontaneity in making life changing decisions
• Her advice for ordinary people seeking to make a change: take the next step and forget about the big picture

Mentioned in the episode or useful links

• Let’s Talk About Death (Over Dinner)
• New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care
• Sensei Robert Chodo Campbell (Blanche’s mentor)
• Ganas community on Staten Island
• Definition of an intentional community
• The New York Center for Nonviolent Communication
• Death midwife or doula
• Blanche interviewed on the Far Out podcast on “reclaiming death and grief