Dear Jane, I wanted you to know
…how indebted I am for your helping me to write my story.
You weren’t just a trailblazer. You invited me onto the trail so I could blaze.
Rewind to October 2002, when I had no idea what I was in for in planning a trip from DC to Seabrook Island, South Carolina with my then fiancé, Tony.
Tony said it was a good idea to go, that I’d meet a host of esteemed organization development (OD) practitioners — individuals whose books we’d read, dogeared, quoted from, bought extra copies of as gifts, and stacked on the shelves of our new home together. Still mustering up the courage to launch my own OD practice, I took Tony’s advice and we booked that fateful trip (adding to a growing list of “Great Tony Ideas” — like the very first time he asked me to dance, and then to marry him).
You see, Jane, much like you and your loving husband, Ralph, Tony and I weren’t just embarking on a promise to spend the rest of our lives together, in love; we endeavored to be business partners and positive deviants. We longed for the new sciences graduate school didn’t teach. A practice and a community. To make a living and to make a world worthy of the family we dreamed of.
Enter Appreciative Inquiry (AI), and our chance meeting at Seabrook.
You inspired every life you touched into believing and seeing that their story mattered.
I remember sitting beside you, Jane, desperately trying to keep my cool, as if to conceal the stars beaming from my eyes.
Your smile assured a vote of confidence. Your words, grounded and honest, strung quotable quotes. I went from star-struck to oozing self-assuredness. You weren’t just an AI trailblazer. You invited me onto the trail so I too could blaze.
That was your gift — which gave even more than the books you wrote, the workshops you taught, the keynotes you delivered from continent to continent. You inspired every life you touched into believing and seeing that their story mattered.
And so we believed it to see it. We blazed new trails.
For me, that meant (in the short span of one month, the following May 2003) finishing grad school, quitting my job, starting my own practice, marrying Tony, and learning we were pregnant — all in that order. And thank goodness, because only after committing to my aspirations could I truly believe them to see them. I had no option but to be successful, making a living and making a world worthy of our new family.
And in making that world I found my calling for helping others to believe it to see it.
Dear Jane, I wanted you to know that among my favorite learnings from you is a phrase I repeat like a broken record: “Plan well. Hang loose.”
You taught me to prepare well for what I might know, and to expect to learn — to shift gears — as I go. You affirmed that emergence is key, that it’s where the magic happens. You patiently (so patiently!) assured my ambitious, always outcomes-driven self that I could trust the process — that getting there is more important than going there. And that what we seek, we find; what we pay attention to grows.
Dear dear Jane, I wanted you to know all this and one more thing: how heavy my heart is, learning of your passing today. So many deeply loving, grateful hearts weigh heavy with this news.
Though your memory faded before the rest of your body, and you didn’t have it in you to miss or to remember us in recent years, we miss you as big as the sky. Rest in peace, dear Jane, and trust ya done good, real good, in inspiring generations of positive deviants from around the globe to be the change they want to see.
“The only way to have a good life is to help people… Empower the people you’re leading to step up and into who they are.” — Jane Magruder Watkins (May 3, 1937 — August 12, 2019)
For more stories inspired by Jane and our 2009 trek to Nepal to study women empowerment projects:
