InterPlay with Ruth Schowalter

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...

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...

What gifts did 2019 bring you? What do you want to savor and remember from this past year? What do you want to release? Sustaining International Sisters (SIS) of InterPlay Atlanta played with these questions at their December "play and potluck."  "PRESENCE-ING" OURSELVES. Having our potluck first instead of our InterPlay playshop as we normally do posed us with the challenge of getting "our body spirits" into the room after driving in Georgia traffic and then relaxing into connecting with one another. So we had a mini-InterPlay warm up before diving into our feast! We did two rounds of saying our names, the first with our names and the place or country we identify with. I love it when someone surprises us with multiple countries or "Planet Earth." More than 30 women from around the world came together for an evening of connection, learning, and inspiration in the home of a Turkish SISter, Guldane, in Alpharetta, Georgia, USA. We had wo...

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 ...