Dear Friends,
In the movies when a character, especially a woman, goes through a transformational experience, their appearance changes dramatically to reflect the changes within. Maybe that’s why, several times during my sabbatical, my kids asked me if I was going to shave my head. While I am returning to Girls Leadership feeling different than when I left in January, my appearance remains the same. So does my approach: during the last five months living with my family in Tokyo, I took the approach that we have been teaching girls and gender-expansive youth for over 15 years. I let go of the pull of what I felt I “should” do, and let myself tune into my internal voice.
For me, this meant closing my laptop and stepping out to explore my new city on foot and bicycle. I won’t try to capture the whole experience of four months in one letter, but instead share three brief moments that I am holding onto.
February was the first month of my sabbatical. It was winter in Tokyo, but it was still youth baseball season. It is always baseball season in Tokyo. For my youngest son, that meant long weekend days of highly disciplined practice without his friends, or his language. For me that meant watching him practice while bracing myself against the wind coming off of the river without my friends, without my language. Then a mom came up, and using her phone translation app, she asked where my son went to school. I answered in my translation app. It was small talk, but her intention and effort felt profound.
Years ago, Girls Leadership co-founder Rachel Simmons used the term “social peripheral vision” to describe the edges of our social awareness. She would teach the girls in our programs to use this vision to notice and include others, not to erase the people we learn not to see. Living in a foreign country, when I thought back to youth baseball games at home, I realized that native English speaking families and non-native speaking families were often on two different sets of bleachers. When I feel powerless to shape our national immigration policy, I realize now that I do have the power to create my own personal policy. I can widen my social peripheral vision across the bleachers, and remember that I always have a translate app in my pocket.
Another moment came in a ceramics studio, my first time at the wheel in decades. I was so proud of myself to be focusing on process over product, but then ended up trying to learn as many processes as possible. When I asked my sensei for feedback, her only advice for three months was, “Slow down.” I remembered my first years of teaching, when after every class I would say to myself, “Next time teach less, teach it better.” Coming from a Western culture that doesn’t usually value craftsmanship, I find it hard to remember the value of making less, and making it better.
In the last weeks before heading home, I took ten days away from my family, in silence, to learn meditation. In the farm country of Chiba, I sat for 12 hours a day, far from my phone, just me and my breath and my thoughts. This free course is made possible, in part, by the efforts of volunteers, and I can’t wait to volunteer so that others can have the same free opportunity. Coming home from the meditation course, I felt something unfamiliar as I sat on the train. At first I thought it must be overwhelm: after all, I was on a train from silence to back to my family and life in a huge city. But that wasn’t it. I thought through the Girls Leadership feelings chart, but nothing resonated. Then I realized—this was the feeling of peace. I felt peaceful.
Immediately after registering peace came the guilt. Who am I to get to experience peace, a privileged White woman on sabbatical overseas? It felt wrong to experience peace when around the world, and especially back at home in the US, so much pain and dehumanization is being inflicted on so many. Sitting in this fleeting feeling, I realized this sabbatical didn’t take me away from the work of fighting for the wellbeing, bodily autonomy, and power of all girls. This experience is the foundation for the work ahead.
I am coming home feeling more ready to lead from a place of compassion, strategy and strength. As one of our team members, Monica, said, that peace is always there. I am so grateful that I got the chance to slow down enough to discover it. I know so many leaders, especially those on the front lines of working for girls, women, and gender-expansive people, especially those who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color, deserve the rest and restoration that I experienced.
Most of all, I want all our girls and gender-expansive youth to experience peace, too. They all deserve to connect with their own peace, without having to earn it with their appearance, likeability, grades, or achievements. When our girls and gender-expansive youth know peace, they will know joy; they will know power.
I’m returning from my sabbatical brimming with gratitude. I can’t believe the support of our team who leaned in in my absence, and I am grateful to our Board of Directors, who granted me this opportunity. My experience would never have been possible without the leadership of our co-CEO, Takai Tyler. Takai fiercely protected my time away, teaching me what it means to take a true break. To have four months for myself, for play, for adventure, and for family is deeply life-giving, and I look forward to giving it forward.
With love,
Simone Marean
Co-Founder and Co-CEO
P.S. – Want to learn more? Or thinking about your own sabbatical? Email me and let’s find time to connect.
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