by LiZhen Wang & Nandita Batheja
Leadership is an organism unto itself. It has its own life force, one that goes through stages, needs care in its development, stumbles along the way… and hopefully also grows in maturity and wisdom.
We, LiZhen Wang and Nandita Batheja, have stepped into the growing body of SoULL leadership. As incoming co-directors, we navigate this new body with awe. It’s pretty incredible how much SoULL has done in seven years, and how deeply it has touched people’s lives. In these few months, we have already grappled with some of SoULL’s challenges, its extraordinary gifts, and tenderly peered into its future.
Before getting much farther down the road, we wanted to take some time to introduce ourselves. Through this blog post and short video, we share some stories of who we are and how we got here. We would love to hear from you too, so comment below!
Who we are and how we got to SoULL
We met 10 years ago in New York City, through an entirely different community – YES! Jams – which bring together changemakers and activists around the world, working on personal, interpersonal and systemic transformation. It is bizarre to think back to that time, when it would’ve been impossible to predict how our lives would be gently and slowly connected over the years, landing us in this partnership in SoULL.
While we have some shared background in organizing, community building and social change movements, we each came to SoULL in our own way:
Nandita: Looking back, the thread pulling me towards existential inquiry was alive since I was a child. I wanted to know what this life thing was about, and what it meant to die. I spent most of my 20s looking for ways to meaningfully contribute to a world that was wrought with disparity, division and so much suffering. I noticed that many social justice spaces I joined had their own share of divisions and pain, and many of the communities I worked in were facing death or loss in a constant way. I wondered what to do with all the grief. I wanted to know - what matters to someone when they are dying? Is it the same things we are fighting so much about through our lives? What can dying teach us about what matters in our living? I wanted to know more about what could unite humans. There’s so much we do not share. So, what do we share? All of this is what brought me to, and kept me in, SoULL. This, along with my own fear of my father’s death, whose mortality felt so present, so near. Somehow, it was all tied together for me. And somehow…I found Jeanne on google (!) as I searched for ways to learn about death and dying, and this strange, human body.
LiZhen: I came to SoULL in 2020 when my mother was diagnosed with cancer and given a one-year prognosis to live. I was 35, newly in love, and newly close with my mother after years of mutual misunderstanding and heartache. I had never seriously considered death before, and I was lost. How was I to prepare? From practical questions of “what does the end look like?” to complex ones like ”how do I help someone whom I have both hated and loved, complete this life with dignity?” That’s what brought me to SoULL. But what kept me in SoULL? My partner used to laugh at me for being part of so many groups (the 40-person intentional community I live in, my transformative justice pod, an international network of co-counselors, YES! Jams, plant medicine community, etc.). Yet, it was at SoULL that I had an experience of community unlike any other. That may be a story for another time, but in short, that was when I learned that anger is part of love — not against it — and that “not belonging” has a place (an important place!) in the circle of community — not outside of it. And I didn’t just learn the theory of it at SoULL, I experienced it for myself.
How did we find ourselves in co-directorship anyway??
We shared earlier how the board decided on our leadership transition, how we listened to the calling of SoULL, and the calling in our own hearts. That's the thing about calls -- they evoke a response. Callings are a two-way conversation: the yearning we feel within us, and that something just beyond us calling us forward.
For Nandita, as she shared in her blog piece, SoULL had rooted so deeply in her life, had grown and regenerated within her like cells in the body, that the calling of SoULL simply felt… true.
For LiZhen, when Jeanne asked me two weeks ahead of the board retreat if I would attend, "yes" jumped out of my mouth before I knew why. It didn't make sense (I’d have to fly out with my partner and infant!), but I knew I needed to go. And one thing I knew for sure was that SoULL would not be ending, and that I was committed to helping somehow. Once at the retreat, as we circled up and listened for guidance, I felt SoULL calling me… and I felt myself yearning to step forward. I knew, then, why I had come to the retreat. The truth is, I had long felt a longing to contribute to SoULL, even when it wasn’t obvious how. It was in the force field of that unknowable yet perfect timing — Jeanne’s absolute certainty to step back, Nandita’s readiness to step in — that my “yes” ripened and joined theirs. Callings are a mystery that way. I don’t know where I’m going for a long time. I just put one foot in front of another, and then I look around and find I’ve arrived at a place that was prepared for me.
How else do we know these roles are a life calling? Well, this level of leadership is new for both of us. As we grow into it, we’re each having to confront old doubts and fears — the dark places within ourselves that are reaching for light in order for our lives to thrive. And we have the support to do it. Jeanne and Barbara are lovingly behind and beside us, mentoring us and encouraging us. It’s as if this work is the path — through doing it, we heal and become more free.
Tending to SoULL’s life force together
As we step into leadership at SoULL, we continue to listen to the calling of the school. One way the school is being moved forward is to grow into a new model, to get out of a conventional “Executive Director” model and into shared leadership.
There is some synchronicity here. We met through YES! Jams, which build a deep experience of community in the space of a weeklong retreat. 30 or so people who started out as strangers are often on the ground in a cuddle-puddle by the end of the week. Leading up to that are many moments of holding each through tears, facing conflict with courage and vulnerability, and spontaneous play.
As facilitators of Jams, we carry with us the wisdom and learnings from the last 10 years of jamming in our communities. Things like: how to listen as leaders and co-create with participants, how to find direction when many voices want to go many different ways, how to build bridges through the heart when our differences feel too big. With this, we also know the heartbreak of when the bridges don’t make it, or when a community loses its coherence and can’t find it again. Perhaps most importantly, we bring our devotion to being in the messy practice of building beloved community and pointing our compass towards healing and repair.
We are humbled yet inspired by the task we’ve said yes to at SoULL. Shared leadership requires more maturity from the organization: we have to navigate more roles, more voices, and more process. Just as SoULL is having to grow up, so are we. Of course, there is also the beauty of leaning into each other for strength, like the legs of a tent rather than a single stake driven into the ground. In this way, shared leadership moves SoULL forward. It also moves us backward; the ancestors often shared leadership, with every person having an important role in tending to the wellbeing of the village. This model reaches SoULL both back and forward in time. (Hey SoULL students, recognize the dual pulse in this?)
The vision of shared leadership extends to you, too, dear community. Jeanne has long used the metaphor of a garden to describe SoULL. Just as soil is composed of many beings (minerals, mycelium, roots, fungi, earthworms and more), the school is composed of many beings, too. The terrain of SoULL thrives when each is present in its unique and necessary role. So we encourage your presence. How, you ask? Just as we, Nandita and LiZhen, are listening for what is ours to do, we invite your longing to shape the school, too. Have an idea? Write us a line! Even better if you're ready to act on your longing. With your hands, our hands, and much heart, we can garden the heck out of this place.