Dear Friends,
It has been another difficult and challenging year, and there are more ahead. There is so much to be done to help restore balance and harmony.
An open letter seemed the best way to introduce the transition I am going to undertake in 2022. Some of you have been witness to the enormous changes that I and my family have experienced the past few years. We are now stronger than ever, not because we are resilient, but because we were able to surrender to the transformations that needed to take place. We let go of the old and re-imagined what could be, allowing the new to emerge and unfold; and it continues to do so.
I have enthusiastically pursued and now walked away from a career that others envied and that I myself loved, not without pain, but also having grown more than I could have anticipated. Everything I have learned and everything I have become in the process has led me to a point of crossing over. Of stepping outside of the lines, letting go of old norms and expectations, and re-imagining how I can be, and be of service to the world.
I am going to share the story of this journey with you all, openly and publicly, as it unfolds. I hope that some of you will join me in the journey and be part of the story. However, I know that this journey is not for everyone. Some will be interested enough to watch it unfold, others will check in from time to time and others still will not understand, will deem my actions radical or inappropriate or unnecessary even, and that’s ok. Maybe this is where our journey together ends and we go our separate ways – ’til we meet again.
For those still with me here, I am embarking on a new adventure as a social activist. I will continue my work as an educator and coach, with a focus on positive, human-centered transformation, and I will be developing a brand around women’s sovereignty, through radical authenticity and radical freedom, and in doing so will embrace a few radical behaviours of my own.
In service of helping to shift the existing dominant paradigm around leadership, I will be facilitating development of the type of radically authentic leadership that is required to lead the social and cultural transformation needed to rebuild our society in the wake of a global pandemic and going into the height of the climate revolution – system-wide transformation. In doing so, I will be sharing aspects of myself that will deliberately and possibly shockingly, surface assumptions about women, gender and leadership in our society.
I will be deliberately provocative and political and radical, and not everyone will agree or get it, and that’s ok. I hope those of you that do get it reach out, and maybe join me in some way in actively and intentionally helping to shape our future.
May all beings be well
May all beings know happiness,
May all beings be free from suffering.
With metta (loving kindness),
Shari
We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Shari Read PhD