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...

Happy First Birthday to Sustaining International Sisters  & Happy 30th Anniversary to InterPlay! “There is a ‘we’ in me,” writes Cynthia Winton-Henry, co-founder of InterPlay.* That is, “the group” is within each one of us. However, what happens to the “we” when the individual is a refugee, a person seeking asylum, or an international visiting the United States and is feeling like a fish out of water?  Here in Atlanta, our InterPlay community is offering a way for individual international and American women to create a new sense of “groupness,” a new “we” in their “me.” We have created Sustaining International Sisters (SIS), a 3-hour monthly “play and potluck” so that women can begin to weave themselves into a new communal fabric. Each month, we are figuratively and literally stepping across cultural boundaries through movement, storytelling, using our voices in fun and surprising ways and sharing an international lunch together. The InterPlay tools an...

Connecting, Inspiring & Supporting Women from Around the World through Play & Meal Sharing A woman from Egypt, head covered in a hijab, bursts into a big smile as she enters the Little Five Points (L5P) Community Center Café in Atlanta, Georgia, for a morning of InterPlay and meal sharing. She sees a roomful of women, many wearing hijabs – and until this moment – she has felt isolated in this metropolitan city of five million from women like her. Although these other women in hijabs are Turkish, there is a visible commonality signaled by the scarves covering their heads. Likewise, a woman from Mexico, softens as she steps into the room filled with international women – she is not the “different one” as the only “foreigner” present.  Sharing Stories Across Turkish & Egyptian Cultures Over the next 30 minutes, close to thirty women arrive. They are asylum seekers, American citizens, internationals working or studying abroad. They differ in age, nationa...

InterPlay is an active, creative way to unlock the wisdom of the body, and I am fortunate to the have the opportunity of offering InterPlay to my community in many venues - science  and  business communication, English language fluency, empowering women who have resettled here in the United States, and  creativity! Recently, I had the pleasure of bringing the gift of InterPlay to my community YMCA. On a Friday night in the middle of September, as a way of giving to my YMCA community in Atlanta, Georgia, I led participants in making marks, telling stories, and “leaping” from these “storied lines” in movement - knowing that through play we can “dance” with our creative spirits.  By making taking incremental steps - one mark, one move, one story, one partner at a time - we find the way back to the juiciness of our imaginations and into the flow of infinity. And we do it in the company on the “playground” with others! Wheee!  I'm so thank...