The Seventh Sense

The Seventh Sense Care Collective Inc. is a nonprofit organization founded by Karen Bellone and Kirby Lee. It provides volunteer-driven compassionate community death care, steadfastly advocating for the deep connection and intersectionality of nature, life, and death, and committed to returning death to the family, back home, and within the community.

Their land-based Home for the Dying and Grief Refuge located in Clinton Corners, NY will offer a "home-away-from-home" for dying individuals who are unable or prefer not to die in their own homes, providing non-medical care through a combination of family members, volunteers, paid caregivers, and neighbors, often collaborating with medical-hospice providers in Dutchess County. The home is a member of the Omega Home Network, advocating for community homes for the dying.

The Collective is also offering their donation-based doula, grief support and caregiver respite services around the Hudson Valley. As Doulas, they offer emotional, physical, and spiritual support to those at the end of life, advocating for and accompanying the dying person and their circle of care, ensuring their wishes are met. They come from a place of love, compassion, and respect, bridging the gap with medical and non-medical care and offering ritual and ceremony for life’s transitions.

Their mission includes tending to the dying, as well as providing community resources and workshops around death, aging, grief, and caregiving. The collective is currently fundraising to open their home and conducting volunteer training, including building their Vigil Circle. 

Kirby Lee is a Doula and Conscious Caregiver for the dying. In these roles, she is a gentle companion, witness, and advocate. She is an activist in the community death care movement, believing it crucial for supporting our aging population amidst the caregiver crisis in the US. Kirby is also an advocate for death consciousness, seeing it as a means to be more present for life and our eventual death by connecting with the natural rhythms of our own cycles and nature’s cycles.

Before becoming a certified doula, Kirby spent years working as a companion and advocate for musicians. She traveled and lived with the communities she served, supporting the birth and transitions of projects and the wellness of the community. Kirby was especially passionate about collaborating with artists who used their platform to support social justice campaigns. Her journey into end-of-life care began with accompanying Elders in her teenage years and later working with an organization supporting sick and dying children while studying Psychology in college. Her work in supporting individuals dealing with grief, suicide, and mental health issues within the music community affirmed her calling. 

Kirby's path led her to Central Mexico, where she immersed herself in community death care, training alongside a team of doulas with the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation for two years. Recognizing the urgent need for this model in the US, she then moved to Clinton Corners, NY, to work with Karen Bellone in founding The Seventh Sense Care Collective Inc. Over the years, Kirby has trained with and learned from a number of death care workers, including Henry Fersko-Weiss, Deanna Cochran, Anne-Marie Keppel, Sarah Kerr, and Sage Mountain. Nature, her dreams, and the individuals she has accompanied through the dying process are Kirby's greatest teachers.

kirby@seventhsense.org



Karen Bellone, MFA, is a Certified End-of-Life Doula and Death Educator. She is the founder of The Seventh Sense in NY’s Hudson Valley, where she is an integral part of a worldwide community that is reigniting the wisdom of death within our modern lives. She is also founder of Exit Strategy for Dying, a monthly Death, Arts and Culture Readers supporting a resource hub to educate and refocus the narrative around death and grief through the lens of arts, culture, storytelling and innovation. Prior to embracing her passion for end-of-life work, Karen has had a long career as an award-winning filmmaker and internationally collected photographer. She received a BFA in Film Production from New York University, and did graduate work with the world-renowned Actors Studio, through their inaugural program at the New School for Social Research. 

After training and becoming certified with INELDA (International End of Life Doula Association), Karenworked with an innovative hospice in Los Angeles where her skills as a death doula were developed and broadened. In addition to working with patients in various stages of their life journeys, she was responsible for training the volunteer staff, nurses and other hospice and medical professionals to bring more understanding, humanity and compassion into their work with the dying. She spoke regularly with groups, such as the Alzheimer’s Project, about the role of the doula at end-of-life, and the space that can be held to bring about ‘a good death’. She believes strongly in the ability to demystify and assuage the fear that surrounds death in our culture and to foster safe passage for the dying, as well as to aid the families and loved ones through grief and bereavement. 

As a visual artist and storyteller, Karen acquired a multitude of skills throughout her career that unlocked a deep passion for the healing power of visual and auditory perception on human consciousness. She integrated these strengths and resources into tools to bring aid and comfort for those imminently facing their mortality. Working with somatic and sensory awareness, Karen utilizes visual, sound and meditation therapy, personalized guided imagery, and commemoration of the sacred in the form of ritual, legacy and memory work, in order to bring comfort - physically, emotionally, spiritually to celebrate and commemorate the life of the individual. In addition to her ongoing private practice, Karen is currently directing a feature film about living American artist Michelle Stuart, whose work also engages with the elemental and ineffable nature of existence.

Karen@theseventhsense.org

818-516-5939