InterPlay with Ruth Schowalter

You are enough. What you create is enough. I have a mantra: “Not good. Not bad. Just is (Thank you Natalie Goldberg,  Writing Down the Bones ).” To the extent that you want to “play” we will be fanning the ember of your creativity in our time together today releasing all judgment of outcomes. –Ruth Schowalter, July 18 th , 2020   Women from around the world who attend our monthly Global SIS: InterPlay were offered this invitation to ignite their creative spark in a recent playshop. Each July, my collaborator and SIS co-founder, Canan Arikan and I have chosen to highlight CREATIVITY. Fanning the flames of our creative souls seemed even more important this July while all of us are managing our lives in the midst of a global pandemic.   Connecting with SISters from Around the World.   We were on "creative fire" in July! Women from China, Brazil, India, Turkey, Argentina, Philippines, Iran, Israel, and the United States. Making marks and doing that without fear is one o...

Atlanta InterPlay's Sustaining International Sisters (SIS) met together on Saturday, May 18th, 2019, to break the fast during Ramadan with their Turkish Muslim sisters. More than 30 women from Pakistan, Israel, Canada, Iraq, Libya, China, Brazil, Spain, Ecuador, and the United States came together at one of the Turkish SIS InterPlayer's home in Alpharetta, Georgia. Two Turkish women drove in from the Atlanta suburb to midtown and filled their cars with SIS participants who were experiencing an Iftar for the first time.  The large spacious home had four tables set for a feast to share their tradition of breaking the daylong fast of Ramadan. The abundance of delicious food spilling off of kitchen counters and tables filled everyone with gratitude. But first we gathered in a large comfortable bonus room to meet one another through the forms and tools of InterPlay. Canan Arikan, co-founder of SIS and InterPlay Leader-in-Training, welcomed everyone and informed them of our...

It’s 7:30 PM in China and 7:30 AM on the east coast of the United States. Twelve women have gathered to welcome Chun Fang to Sustaining International Sisters (SIS) and InterPlay. We will play for one-hour only and have no more than 12 SISters. Hence the term “sislet.” “-Let” is a diminutive suffix that attaches to nouns to denote smallness (i.e. booklet, piglet). A usual SIS: InterPlay gathering will last two hours and have more than 20 women. Online Global SIS connects women globally to form friendships through InterPlay, an active creative way to unlock the wisdom of the body. As we grow our SISterhood, we are discovering that newcomers need to “move at the speed of their bodies” both in language and playful movement, voicing, and storytelling. SISlets give us the opportunity to offer incremental steps into the world of InterPlay, offering “bite-size” explanations about InterPlay tools and forms. When “playing” globally, language becomes a “thing” of importance. InterPlay...

Sustaining International Sisters (Global SIS : InterPlay) met on April 24th to celebrate Chiara Pilloton's birthday and wish our Muslim SISters Ramadan Mubarak! Chiara is a SISter living in Rome, Italy, alone and is in her 3rd month of quarantine because of the 2020 Pandemic. In the photo below is Chiara with the "crostata" she baked for herself. Happy Birthday to  Chiara Pilloton  quarantined in Rome, Italy,  on ZOOM!  In attendance for  Chiara's  SIS birthday party were SISters from Turkey, the Philippines, Pakistan, Mexico, Venezuela, China, Brazil, Argentina, Italy, England, Laos/Thailand and the United States. InterPlay is an amazing way to bring international women together in an environment that is nurturing, supportive and FUN.  And the FUN we had! Yay! We InterPlay "babbled" about birthday related words - cake, cards, ice cream, and parties. We did "I - could - talk -  abouts" on anything related to birthdays pa...

What is GLOBAL SIS: INTERPLAY? Global SIS: InterPlay is a two-hour online “playshop” using the Zoom platform. Global SIS began in November 2019 to stay connected with sisters around the world once they leave Atlanta, Georgia, USA, and our community of Sustaining International Sisters (SIS).  The BEGINNING! Sustaining International Sisters, October 2018, Little Five Points Community Center, Atlanta, Georgia,  USA. SIS has been bringing together international and American women living in the Metro-Atlanta area since October 2018 for four hours of "play and potluck" on the first Saturday of each month. Canan Arikan and I, Ruth Schowalter, are the InterPlay facilitators. We use the forms and tools of InterPlay during our gatherings which allow women to connect, share, inspire and learn from one another.  We discovered after a solid year of InterPlaying and meal sharing with Georgia Tech Visiting Scholars Yue and Tianqi from China, that we couldn’t just say “goo...

We are together in a room without walls, yet we feel connected. We are women from eight different countries engaging in online “embodied play” in the spaces of our own homes, offices, or classrooms. We are from China, Turkey, Pakistan, Brazil, Argentina, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States listening to our body wisdom, moving, and telling our stories. We are Global SIS: InterPlay, and we are gracing each other’s lives across various times on the world clock in the internet’s ethersphere by engaging in InterPlay! GLOBAL SIS PLAYGROUND: MEETING WITHOUT WALLS. December 2019  "Last Saturday was my first time participating in an online Global SIS meeting and also my first experience with InterPlay. One word comes to mind when I think about these moments shared with women around the world: beauty. Women from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and cultural identities, sharing, learning, and listening to themselves and others. It felt tribal in a way. In a great way. I felt l...

Sustaining International Sisters October 2019, Planning Committee. Our first “Global” SIS brought tears to more than one sister’s eyes. Some tears were of self-discovery, some of loss caused by the distance after returning home to their countries from Atlanta, some of recognition of how we can connect with each other from around the world through the “mysterious” ways of InterPlay no matter the difference in culture and languages.   Imagine women from around the globe coming together online to do InterPlay together! That’s what we Sustaining International Sisters (SIS) did on Saturday, November 16 th , 2019! “Global” Sustaining International Sisters (SIS): InterPlay had its first playdate online! Yes! Using computer technology! To play together we had to juggle a world clock with a vast range of time differences! We two Global SIS facilitators, Canan Arikan and I (Ruth Schowalter), live on Eastern Standard (EST) Time in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, and coordinated the start ...