From left to right: board members Dan, Billee, Barbara, LiZhen with her baby Yexin, Nandita and Jeanne. Mark was with us online and in spirit! Photo taken by LiZhen’s partner, Kazu, who was there supporting us.
Dear community,
This isn’t one of our ordinary newsletters. This is a letter about hearing, and answering, a call to heartfelt service with SoULL.
A few months ago, our beloved and intrepid founder, Jeanne Denney, decided it was time to step back from the directorship. Not only was a period of rest necessary after many years of holding the center and building the school, it was also time for SoULL to move into the next stage of its development: to be held by community in shared leadership.
This summer, the board met to consider the future of SoULL. During that meeting in late June, Nandita and LiZhen heard the call to step forward. It was a moving and inspiring process (read the full story, told from Nandita’s perspective, on the blog).
We are delighted to announce Nandita Batheja and LiZhen Wang as the new co-directors of SoULL in training. With Jeanne’s mentorship and the board’s support, they are bringing wonderful new energy and ideas to our community. They are expanding our work into other communities, and with their help and guidance we will continue to offer a large conversation about life to an aching world.
Proudly,
The SoULL Board
Barbara, Billee, Dan, Jeanne, LiZhen & Nandita
A few words from Jeanne:
If you haven't been with me lately, you may be wondering why I am stepping away from the Directorship of SoULL. There are six simple answers. Eight years was a long time to stand in the fire at the center of a fledgling school. My health needs tending. My creative spirit needs feeding. SoULL needs new vision. I am turning my attention to writing. And…these roles should absolutely rotate!
I could not feel more proud to welcome Nandita and LiZhen to the tasks of loving and guiding SoULL as I take a few steps away and inward. I was more than amazed to witness them bravely answer their call to serve with love and integrity. These two women have enormous gifts: vision, wisdom and skills for doing the hard work of keeping SoULL growing. But their greatest qualifications are their love, the ability to hear and follow guidance, and their relationship itself.
Most important to me? I am clear that Nandita and LiZhen were chosen by something much larger than a board or their own egos. I know how difficult it is to stand in that flame! I thank them. I give them my full support and blessing as they step forward. I ask that you join me in encouraging them. Because leaders need to be held by a community every bit as much as they hold it.
Honestly…I am curious about your feelings. So if you are having any, please write or drop in for a conversation on November 9 where anything can come up: love and witness can be shared, questions answered, apologies requested and given (hey, I have not always been easy!), or…we can just hang out and laugh about the absurdity of being human!
I am still around. It is just…different.
Thank you LiZhen and Nandita! We will walk with you.
Answering the Call of SoULL - by Nandita
Ever since SoULL began in 2018, the question of its survival has been continual. Every year, potential students say, “This sounds amazing! I can’t do it this time. When will it be offered again?” And every year, we reply, “We don’t know if it will be offered again…”. Still, somehow it survived its first seven years of development, from its first official cohort in 2018 to its first graduating class of doulas in 2025. (You can read SoULL’s origin story on our website.)
Today, after all those years of uncertainty and faith, hundreds of students have come through SoULL’s doors. SoULL material has been taught in New York, Wisconsin, California, Mexico, Poland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, England, Bulgaria, and has touched many more geographies online. Like its own small forest, SoULL has come to life through webs of relationships, communities, ideas and expanding consciousness.
How does one steward the birth of a forest?
I have seen Jeanne’s weary yet glowing face many times during a SoULL weekend. It is so much work. And yet, as she has taught many of us: when you are really called to something, the energy will come from somewhere to carry you.
I am so grateful to Jeanne for answering the calling and founding this school of truly unusual life learning. I am also grateful to Andrea Pollak, who answered her personal call in 2021 to assist in the direction of SoULL with Jeanne, forming, steadying and growing the school. Both women modeled what it looks like to surrender into a calling of the heart. My god. A calling to steward a school called SoULL? – it took no less than everything that soul brings us to. The depths of love, incredible challenge, adventure, sorrow. Their devotion and love no doubt seeded the forest of SoULL.
And…as surely as we are called forward, there comes a time of completion and return.
Jeanne had long said that SoULL needs to be led by a community, not by one person, and that no role we have should ever be permanent. She held to her commitment to see the first class of whole-life-doulas through to graduation. She (and we) did it! After graduation, she needed to release the role of director, to rest and integrate. It was time for the school to evolve into its next form.
None of us knew exactly what would happen after April. There was just one thing left on the calendar: a SoULL board & leadership retreat where we would gather to determine the future of the school. We all knew that a possible outcome could be closing the school.
Continue onto our blog for how it all unfolded and where we landed.
