Excerpts from Jeanne’s Graduation Remarks
April 27, 2025
Welcome, welcome, welcome everyone who has come to be here this afternoon to help 11 of us graduate to being the first ever Whole Life Doulas on the planet (as far as we know). We are truly grateful you are here. My name is Jeanne Denney. I am the founder of SoULL, and have been the primary teacher to date. That means I remember the most.
When I began the first full cohort of SoULL students in 2018, I had absolutely no idea of what I was getting into, or what I was inviting people into. That had to be discovered. I was just trying to start a conversation in Body Psychotherapy. That was all. But I do remember on the opening night saying something like this. “We are going to climb a mountain together. And what we will see at the top of the mountain will be amazing. It will help you understand where you came from and maybe even where you are going next. But to climb this mountain and be safe, we will have to stick together.”
Since then these students and others have climbed several mountains, at least 3 in fact. And this last one was the biggest and hardest of all. It was the mountain of learning to help others heal. These folks hung in there….through thick and thin. Through their courage and stamina they helped create a new path. This is our first graduating class. And for all of this they need special recognition.
So I want you to imagine something we often imagine in SoULL…. that we are a village (because we are). That these “explorers” have been gone from us for years, taking risks, learning and creating a new path through those misty mountains for others to follow, Maybe we did not know if they would ever get home. I want you to imagine how you would feel if one of you saw a line of them coming down the mountain in the distance? Wouldn’t we, the village gather? Wouldn’t we start cheering? And wouldn’t we light a fire to warm them? And then wouldn’t our cheers become a roar?
Now we have a fire. And as these our villagers come in, I wonder if you could stand and welcome them with as much noise of celebration and welcome you can make. Don’t hold back your roar or stomping or your tears. Because they have been on a long journey, and they are arriving home, different than when they left.
(Students enter)
About SoULL:
It looks small doesn’t it? Just this little, tiny handful of human beings? But believe me, what went into this day has not been small. And I don’t believe that what will come out of it will be small. Because each one of us are going to be going forward serving others, probably for the rest of our lives, in a particular way. If you are here, you have probably been supporting and following at least one of us up here through this journey. You may be wondering what this is about. So let me say a few words about SoULL and why I feel that this small moment in this small day is so significant on the planet.
We are graduating these students today in the middle of a truly serious moment in world history. If I look at everything happening around us, political upheaval, nationalism, Tribalism, group on group violence, loneliness, addictions, ecological crisis and collapse. Almost all of it boils down to this: Fear and existential distress. Fear of Nature. Fear of being human. Fear of taking our part in the life cycle.
If SoULL has taken up ONE thing in these 8 years, it is helping people with the fear of existing itself, the fear of change, the fear of growth, decline, illness and the fear of dying. Because when you look deeply, at the core of most of all of our problems are these fears.
I think that we can all observe that we are in a mental health crisis in our country, and it is not likely to abate any time soon. But does it make sense, with such a need for healing, wisdom and support, that our training for helpers involved 8 years of academic study, hundreds of thousands of dollars, after which students often do not feel prepared or supported to deal with the enormity of human distress? In fact they become damaged by the work itself even during training?
This is why we have worked so hard to blaze a new trail through those mountains. And that is the difference we are standing for today, and celebrating today? A great experiment. A short cut.
SoULL started with a few simple but radical ideas not included in our cannon or our culture.
That death is not the opposite of life. That we therefore don’t really need to resist death or aging or endings or change as much as we do.
That Nature is the great teacher of life and healer.
That we can look closely at the body and the patterns of our own energy to see that we are part of nature, that we are likely immortal energetic beings, and that the whole pattern of our consciousness lives in our bodies throughout our life.
That even our relationships and communities are full of the patterns of nature, they are connected to our bodies. We can learn to observe and foster health in them.
Mainly these insights are not included in Psychology or even medicine. Mainly, the left brain has the right brain in a head lock. But we are trying to bring them into a conversation.
With this simple but also radical backdrop, we realized after a few years of teaching and a pandemic that we had the basis for a new kind of helping. One that supports people returning to their true nature, to their bodies and their natural right to be exactly where they are in life as vital, healthy people in relationships and communities.
So we had the idea to experiment with offering an alternative to becoming a human helper. This is what we have been experimenting with in SoULL, with radically positive results.
We have completed a Beta!! That is exciting.
So What do Whole Life Doulas do?
We walk with people, not as authorities, but as fellow human beings.
We focus on supporting the life force itself.
We learn to follow the energy. Learn to recognize its patterns and learn the short cuts to helping it become whole.
Support each other.
In just a few short months, 7 of these new practitioners have meaningfully impacted the lives of 28 others. Those of us in regular practice have integrated the teachings into our work with many others. And we will continue. Each person we touch will touch others. Which is why today is a celebration of not just 11 people, but the value we will bring to all of the people we will touch. And those of you students who are here. How has this changed your life? And all of the people you touch. Finding and teaching a different way of understanding life, of healing and of creating abundance matters in this time of threatening totality.
De Chardin.
"If there is a future for mankind, it can only be imagined in terms of a harmonious conciliation of what is free with what is planned and totalized…..Whether we like it or not, all the signs and all our needs converge in the same direction. We need and are irresistibly being led to create, by means of and beyond all physics, all biology and all psychology, a science of human energetics." (author's italics)
From Phenomenon of Man by Teilhard De Chardin
When we started, we (I) had no idea what it would take to really do this. We were led. And I can’t tell you that it has not been hard. But this has not been the work of one teacher or two or three. These students and their thirst were the driving force in this creation.
Appreciations:
Before we graduate the people that are going to be new practitioners today I want to call up and honor the women who have been standing beside me during all of these creative years, starting with one of my own oldest mentors, friends and colleagues who was with me in the Netherlands the first time I tried to teach SoULL in 2016.
Liz Carl. Liz was one of those people who was first a mentor and teacher, then became a student in 2018, as my first assistant (that takes humility). Liz had started a school in Poland. Board Member. Teacher. Without that support we would not be here.
Second I want to call up the woman who stepped bravely in, in 2021, to help us form and fund a non-profit. Andrea Pollak. Andrea has been a true friend and colleague, who did everything from books to teaching to student process to kitchen cleanup to board presidency, but most importantly holding me through the most difficult moments of SoULL as a friend. Without her support we would not be here.
Third I want to call up Barbara Pettibone. Long time social worker, Barbara has been with SoULL since 2020, and has done every kind of hard job SoULL had with complete devotion. She has brought her Social work experience, her friendship, her creativity. Always asking after listening to our problems of keeping going…. “How can I help?” Barbara has used her social work experience to help mentor these students through this year and has been every bit a true colleague. Without her support we would not be here.
About Gender and the support of Men:
Now I think you can observe that there is a radical gender imbalance up here. That this work is somehow just a little bit more aligned with the way women’s brains and bodies work, and the deep wisdom of the feminine is probably true.
That does not mean that there have not been men supporting this work and participating in from the very beginning and throughout. In fact we could not have done this without your support. Men that have done this, I want to acknowledge you. Your support of this work, and your protection, whether you knew it or not, is essential to this coming into existence. Everyone knows that money does not generally flow to women’s creativity and innovation. And that what is needed more than anything in this world is this innovation now. We need to rebalance things.
When the masculine supports the feminine lots of abundance starts to happen.
Students then came forward to give their remarks. They were presented with diplomas and “Crone Shawls”.
Closing:
We are going to close the formal part of the graduation now. Students will take over form here.
I need to say something about the future of SoULL.
Everyone wants and expects things to continue in life. Obviously SoULL will continue in the lives and work of its students. But actually, we don’t know if the path we have created will fill back in or be used again for others. We just don’t know. One thing I do know, is that if we do continue to train practitioners, it will require a committed and effective community around it, new leadership and financial support
If you feel moved to be a community around these teachings you are certainly welcome to be a supporter.
Support takes a lot of forms:
Love and prayers are support
Encouragement is support
Witness is support
Referrals to these new doulas is support
Volunteerism is support.
Of course money is support
Support the projects of women. There is no greater gift of sanity to this time.
Students then completed the ceremony by leading a beautiful community experience of “The U”, and exited with their candles through a tunnel made by the community. You can watch the video here.
