InterPlay with Ruth Schowalter

 Sustaining International Sisters Share “What They Know” After spending time in breakout rooms naming the different women in their lives who were mentors to them, international sisters told a story about one of their mentors. Then we spent time writing in the chat box what we know about being strong women. We are changing the way people perceive the strength of women one assertion at a time! Happy International Women’s Day! This what we know…   I know that   I know that kindness and generosity can change the world. I know that this time together is important. I know that spending time together makes a difference. I know that being strong makes a difference. I know that making new friends makes a difference. I know that listening to our bodies - goes a long, long way.... I know that every bad thing in your life looks a bit better after you've shared it with someone. I know that patience is important. I know that laughing together makes a difference. I know that nature has ...

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...

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...

Zoom! Zip! Zam! Eeeeeek! What sound is made when you pretend to lift the lid off the top of your head? Does it pop, crackle, and snap? Maybe it makes that swirling, sizzling and exploding sound of fireworks!  What movement might you make as you open up your mental lid? Does your mental lid need to be unwound? Does it have little windows that need to be unlatched? Or do you have rusty hinges that require special care as you open it? For the April Online Global SIS: InterPlay 2020, Canan Arikan and I invited our international SISters to play around the spaces we create for our minds.   InterPlay  cofounder  Cynthia Winton-Henry  writes about giving the mind more space by taking off your mental lid in her book,  Move: What the Body Wants :   “It turns out that we hold our minds in too-small a physical space, a box the size of a skull. To think outside of the box, you’ve got to let your mind be as big as your bodyspirit. Your mind w...

Happy New Year to Global SIS: InterPlay! Fourteen of us women jumped into our first online connection on Saturday, January 18th, 2020.  Four women from China, two from Japan, one from Italy met with those of us living on Eastern Standard Time in the United States. Still we were diverse - with one woman from Iran and my collaborator Canan Arikan from Turkey. We American women signed in from North Carolina, Atlanta, Florida, and Washington, DC. Our specific goal for this 2-hour online global sister gathering was to find a guiding word for 2020 through play - storytelling, drawing, moving, and noticing. Of course, it almost goes without saying that we also have the goal to learn, inspire, and connect with one another; thus experiencing the warmth and sustenance of global sisterhood. Using Zoom as the platform for our playshop (thank you to national InterPlay for the use of their Body Wisdom account), we dove into breakout rooms on three different...

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 ...