Bring "Grand Exit: The Podcast" to Life

You know what we talk a lot about? Living: better, longer and with purpose. But, in most of our conversations, we’re missing – or rather, avoiding – a layer of living: dying, which is inevitable for all of us.

Talking about it won’t make it happen sooner (swear!). In fact, it may make it happen better. Why not make a Grand Exit?

Enter “the conversation” with Tamatha Thomas-Haase and Chelsea Leader Gold. Leave feeling more alive.

. . .

Tamatha is many things. One of those is that she's living like she’s dying because metastatic breast cancer tells her that the scans, tests and treatments won’t end until her life does. Three years ago, Tamatha joined the ranks of many women and became a camper at Campowerment -- the expert-led, transformational experience powered by play -- a gift she gave to herself to celebrate living through, and with, her first cancer diagnosis. After four days at camp, she left feeling cancer-free in mind, body and spirit.

Chelsea is Co-Founder and CEO of Campowerment, her family's business (and legacy). She ran that retreat days before her favorite person in the world — her “Grandy” — took her last breath.

Grandy schooled Chelsea, and her whole family, and the hundreds of people who held her dear, in how to live, die AND live on. She showed them that their "glory days" can come at any age (for her, it was her 80s), that life can and should be on their own terms...and so, too, should death. And that, when you live how you want to be remembered, living on (legacy) is natural, enlivening, connective and, quite frankly: hard NOT to do.

Shortly after the weekend Tamatha and Chelsea's paths converged in November of 2019, these two began a journey to create something meaningful: Grand Exit, conversation-starting conversations on living, dying & living on, for those who intend to be remembered. It was to start as a podcast!

Over the years, they've clocked hundreds of hours in reflective, stimulating and imaginative conversations; dozens of interviews with strangers and friends on their relationships to death, dying and legacy; and thousands of moments of absolute life-enhancing beauty in the friendship they formed along the way.

When the two began their journey after Tamatha's initial treatment for inflammatory breast cancer, Tamatha had no evidence of disease, but lived with the reality that the likelihood of recurrence was very high. In December of 2020, her cancer metastasized. Since, they've seen her cancer spread throughout her body, including to her brain. In the Spring of 2021, Tamatha's oncologist made it clear that she likely had until April 2022, which honestly made the podcast far less important than the relationship-building conversations themselves.

From (terrible) hospital stays and the side effects of ongoing treatment; to (gorgeous, dreamy) moves across the country; to planning a wedding and building a marriage; to planning a child's college visits and raising a teenager, Tamatha and Chelsea witnessed and supported each other through life's milestone moments, recording so much of the "messy bits," never knowing how long they had or, really, what it would take to make something of it to share.

Then, in May of 2022, they decided to take their own advice and make NOW the time to do the thing that leaves the legacy of their wildest dreams. They met in LA and recorded 10 podcast episodes -- what would (and with your help, WILL) become Season 1 of Grand Exit: The Podcast. (Spoiler: it.is.awesome.)

In it, the two of them, with a few incredible guests, laugh, cry, think out loud and take on the messy job of contemplating the life-death-legacy continuum, so you can turn them off and get started doing the same.

They're seeking to raise $10,000 to cover the costs of production and marketing, to get this absolute time capsule out into the world. It's how they intend to be remembered.

For context: We are contracting with a professional (and very special) podcast production studio that becomes a partner in preparing our (very extended and personal) narratives to share with the world. We decided *not* to self-produce because of the many times we have let life get in the way of bringing THIS to life, given all we are seeking to do with the time we have. We are so-o excited to give this project the talent it deserves, and appreciate anything you can do to help us make it happen.