Doing For Others Offers Risks, Rewards
Kathy Blanch got her first taste of life as a healing, helping person in her 20s.
She, her first husband and their three young children moved to an Indian reservation in eastern Montana, where they ran a group home with nine foster children. The Native American children ranged from 2 to 17; Blanch, herself, was just 25.
“I did everything,” she says. “There are still a couple of those kids who call me. I guess that was the start of my adventures in helping people.”
Nearly 30 years later, Blanch is still at it. Only now, she’s opened her own counseling office.
“It’s the best thing I ever did,” she says, with the optimism that appears to be her trademark.
Blanch is no stranger to change. Or risk.
Her own first marriage was not a good choice, she says. “Well, I shouldn’t say that. I do have three wonderful children,” she says. And when those children were still young, their mother divorced and set off to earn her nursing degree.
Prior to opening her own counseling practice this summer, Blanch worked for 18 years as a nurse and administrator at Valley Hospital and Medical Center. This is a woman, mind you, who was hired by Valley Hospital as she was lying in bed, recovering from surgery.
“The head of nursing talked to me and told me that when I was ready, they would have a job for me. They just treated me like such a special human being right from the start,” Blanch said.
She watched - and helped - the hospital grow up. She says her time there was equivalent to a college education and more.
Blanch brings to her work a sense that our bodies and minds are connected more than most of us realize.
With patient after patient at Valley Hospital, Blanch saw that illness was accompanying emotional pain: the young girl who was anorexic and told Blanch that she was always, always afraid. The woman who fell sick every winter - and knew ahead of time that she would.
“Finally, the third year I said to her, ‘You’ve set yourself up to be sick. Why don’t you plan next winter to do something different?”’
And she did.
Colleagues at Valley Hospital say Blanch is missed there.
“She always had time for people, no matter where she was, no matter what group she was in,” said Kay Lewis, a vice president at Deaconess and Valley hospitals. “The staff really grieved when she left.”
In the three years since she left Valley Hospital, Blanch has studied under various psychologists and institutions. She has found several paths to the same goal: helping people realize that they have choices.
“I’ve always been interested in what else we could do, other than give a person a pill.”
As Blanch ascended through promotion after promotion at Valley Hospital, she found herself most drawn to the people side of her various duties. There she was, a nursing supervisor, a director and finally an assistant vice president: Budgets were not her thing. People and relationships were.
“I did not want to be a traditional psychologist or psychiatrist,” Blanch says. She sees a growing acceptance by traditional Western medicine of the mind-body beliefs and other less traditional medical approaches that she’s explored. Still, she expects that some doctors will never refer their patients to her. Others, particularly family doctors, already are sending her referrals.
Her children are grown and have children of their own. Blanch and her second husband, a pharmacist at Valley Hospital, have created a peaceful home in the Foothills - complete with sheep, ducks, dogs, bunnies. Even the deer come down from the hills to their land. They walk. They read. They sing.
Blanch is easing into the counseling. She leaves time for play. She takes Fridays off, except for a few special clients.
She offers free counseling to a certain number of clients who are referred to her through the Valley Center.
“I remember when it was just the children and me after the divorce, there was a psychologist in the Valley who helped us for free. We had no money,” she says.
“We wouldn’t have made it without him. I always said I would do the same thing for others when I could.”