We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sande Hart. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sande below.

Alright, Sande thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

First, it was difficult to choose which menu options to pick and respond to for this article because doing so would be impossible. From the options, “Idea to Execution,” “Scaling Up,” “Learning Important Lessons,” and “Valuing Unexpected Problems,” all share a common root with my final pick; “Meaningful Projects.” We are all well-served if we consider these “options” as markers for anything we do. Alone, they each represent one of the whole, and if we do all of the above with integrity, all projects, no matter what they are, will be meaningful.
The most meaningful story, besides birthing and raising two children, was writing my book The Liminal Odyssey, The Alchemical Power of The Spaces In-Between. Writing it was what brought me to the conclusion and the condition that I described above.
About 15 years ago, I sat down to write my (true) “crazy story” my friends had been urging me to write for years but did not have enough of a story to make up a book, let alone a chapter, so I kept putting it down. Then, in 2019 I discovered the word “liminal” which means “the space in-between.” I consider it a threshold, the space between here and there, in-between breaths, words, and thoughts, and between crisis and action, option and choice. It was then that I started thinking about what was really going on in the spaces in-between that made my experience remarkable. What was it that put me in that scenario, gave me the courage to do what I did,? What did I learn from it? I realized this story was not simply interesting, it was miraculous. Then 11 more such meaningful stories poured out onto the pages, threaded together with gossamer threads of lessons and skills I had picked up in the past 2 decades of global work.
Had I not learned this word and been prodded for years to tell this story, I may never have slowed down to the speed of awe and wonder about the richness of these stories. In fact, I am convinced we all have miraculous stories that we have yet to realize. Knowing this, we can cultivate skills to pay attention, question assumptions, notice clues and gems, and look in the spaces in-between to expand every experience for a life full of adventure.
(The original “crazy story,” which is Chapter One: What About The Dog? is about me finding my voice among 100,000 people at The Peace Sunday music festival and no-nukes rally in 1982 at the Rose Bowl in Southern Ca.)

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

In 2001 I woke up to the same scene everyone in the world was watching. Before the 2nd plane hit, I heard, “Gather Women.”
Months later I had 12 women in my living room of diverse faiths to explore who we were as women of our community. I was more interested in knowing what traditions and beliefs other women of different faiths valued and how that lived out in their lives. Over the past 23 years we have grown to the world’s oldest and largest grassroots interfaith organization. With hundreds of monthly meetings, community events and projects, initiatives, speaking engagements, workshops, local and global awards, and more than we can really know, all we really did was show up as our creed states, “We are women of our community, dedicated to creating a more safe and harmonious environment with our daily actions.”
Our name, S.A.R.A.H. (as the Mother of All Nations) (The Spiritual And Religious Alliance for Hope) recently evolved into our new name and identity as The Global Woman’s Village.
Some projects include The General Congress of Women and The Death Throws of Patriarchy series.
We brought The Compassion Games to the local woman’s prison and to our county to community build in a fun and “covert” manner of creative tension for lasting relationships through co-opitition (cooperating to compete.)
S.A.R.A.H. led to my work in the field of compassion where I founded and led the Women and Girls sector of the Charter for Compassion International and Compassionate California, the first State of Compassion in the world, recently signed by CA legislature.
I have served in leadership for The United Religions Initiative as Chair for North America, and the Woman’s Task Force of The Parliament of World’s Religions. In 2023 I designed and produced the first Women’s Village at their global conference in Chicago with thousands of attendees come from around the world.
As of this writing, The Global Woman’s Village is launching The Center for Women Who Future, an initiative to progress the status of women, and I am currently writing my second book of the same name.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Before the morning of 911, I was the Director of Sales and Marketing for a major home builder. In a matter of moments before my eyes were fully open and I made sense of what I was seeing on TV, my DNA rearranged and I transitioned from a corporate, sales-driven, high octane business-woman-with-a-plan, to a leader in women’s spirituality that learned quickly to get out of my own way. Naturally, doing so was the antithesis of everything I learned from the decades of my sales career. I was taught by the great sales trainers to make a plan and don’t let obstacles stop me. I learned to see them as challenges and invitations to plow through them to the “promised land.”
Of course, we have a strategical goal, a job that requires us to hit our numbers, and milestones to achieve. However, how often do we question assumptions about the methods in which we arrive at those success stories? How are we communicating to elevate a conversation? Are we perpetuating a system of domination by not engaging and empowering others for fear of losing some power or glory? Why aren’t we elevating conversations with more creativity? What fear is keeping us small in someone else’s box? It’s usually fear. It’s usually that we don’t stop and ask ourselves these little harmless questions. This is what is known as The Domination Trance. We don’t notice the very water we are swimming in.
In 2023 I produced the first Woman’s Village at the world’s largest convening of it’s kind. For a year my sub-committee and I met weekly. We considered every wildly creative and dynamic idea we had. When something did not want to happen (an obstacle) we listened carefully to why it was creating more energy to keep it rather than let it go. In every case, and there were more than a few, almost immediately, a better solution emerged. In fact, in one case, we saved thousands of dollars. What we produced is still being talked about more than a year later. It was not the fixtures, activities, engagements, spaces, or workshops we provided. It was the air. It was the environment. It was the intention of that space that made problem solving, new relationships, new initiatives, and that which we will never know possible because of the integrity and care we took while building it. It is my proof of concept that this way of doing anything is sustainable and meaningful. It has also beared more fruit that we can handle right now!
What is that obstacle preventing and/or costing you to keep tripping over it? Asking the question is what it means to be a “creative.”
I have taken it upon myself to redefine the word creative so that we can expand our opportunities and language that puts us in boxes.
In fact, everyone is a creative. If you have to solve a problem, you are a creative. If you write grueling monthly reports, you are a creative. When you employ the skills you have to do what you do, you are a creative. To me, a creative means we are using our right brain hemisphere, which enables us to access creativity, community, resourcing solutions, etc.
Why the eye rolls or dismissal? It is usually a misunderstanding of the power of techniques that systems of domination have taught us as “the only way.” Anything “deep” is woo-woo and laughable. What some may not understand about a creative path is it is far more sustainable and profitable. Prosocial psychology and new discoveries of neuroscience have proven we are wired to be more compassionate, adaptable, and mutually supportive. This is what accepting that we are all creatives fosters.
Systems of domination took prisoners of women and the arts for thousands of years because of the extreme power both bring to the world. Over time we have been taught and believed (and therefore perpetuate) that system because we have come to find comfort in it. Those perceived as creatives because we are artists (and use our right brain really well) have made strides over the past decades and measurably this past year. In fact, great tensions in our world always activate the marginalized into action, and more and more language, media, and policies are reflecting it.
With all that said, those who are traditionally thought of us creatives have yet to recognize our extreme power and too many buy into the construct that our work is not worthy of the same income as the alternative. We have some work to do, and until we untangle those deep roots of the system that does not serve us, we may constantly face this struggle.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I am passionate about reminding us all that its time to check our integrity, question every assumption, and identify our soul’s purpose. Then live in that direction. Our world needs you to do just that. I am passionate about mainstreaming feminine values of cooperation and collaboration. I am passionate about reminding us all that we all have agency, without exception. Even women in conflict and war zones, where the culture has devalued them into hiding, have agency in mind and heart. I am passionate about asking everyone (and myself) to take stalk of our privileges and let’s stop playing small and/or walking in the domination trance, no matter if you are an textile artist, entrepreneur or C-Suite executive.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sandehart.com
• Instagram: sandehart
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sande.hart/
• Linkedin: [email protected]
• Youtube: Sande Hart