Beautiful documents

Plain language editing

Writing ourselves; righting ourselves

Evaluations and project management

Process facilitation

Committing to our own soul growth

Using the Tarot for transformation

Journaling for joy

Gentle Like Water

About Gladys Ryan

When I was younger and began to question my religion, I became fascinated with the tarot. I’ve been an obsessive navel gazer and my go-to tools have been my journal and the tarot. The tarot, I believe, can be a powerful tool for personal and collective transformation. At the same time, my working life began with the trade unions and an organisation called the South African Committee for Higher Education (SACHED). I cut my teeth with some of South Africa’s leading thinkers and educationists. This was my university and my colleagues and comrades my teachers. I am deeply grateful for the strong socio-political grounding I gained here, and the values reinforced from my childhood about people and care and creating a more just society. My work at SACHED, the English Resource Unit and Agenda Feminist Media equipped me with a range of skills to start my consultancy, Communicating Simply, in 1998. Through Communicating Simply I have supported many and varied organisations in creating publications either through helping them write their own stories (through facilitated and guided processes) or researching and writing up their publications on their behalf. Materials created have included histories, reflection documents, plain language versions of more complex writings, annual reports, educational materials and reflection documents highlighting the organisations’ achievements, projects or processes. Building upon this foundation, Selful Soul was set up in 2020 as a response to the need to engage around the spiritual in the political and the political in the spiritual. Selful Soul’s byline, the spiritual is political expresses a commitment to support activists to come to terms with the pain of exclusion from emotions and gently challenge the spiritual sector to keep itself to account as it shares spiritual “truths”. In Africa in particular, and the global South in general, we need deep and honest healing from the past, not the plaster often proffered as real. The Selful Soul is about a journey to selfulness for us all. I believe that a world filled with more self-aware and reflective people is surely to be one that is inclusive, takes care of its souls and provides an earth that is home for all.

“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition.”

Rumi

“Not only are you the shadow that is dancing on the wall, but you are the hand that made the shadow and you are the light.”

Gill Edwardes

“In time, we shall be in a position to bestow on South Africa the greatest possible gift - a more human face.”

Steve Bantu Biko