Global Friends

A few months ago I participated in a six-week workshop called SUM-it UP run by Global Niche. I’ve known Anastasia and Tara, founders of Global Niche, for many years. We have something in common as wives who followed Turkish men home. The course itself looked deceptively simple. Six weeks of working through visions and goals, to what online platforms you want to present these on, to creating and action plan and implementing it. Easy. But somewhere along the line it Click for more

Homage to Hybridity

When I read the Week 9 post it immediately brought to mind my wonderful hybrid sisters. They deserve to be named: Anastasia Ashman, Tara Lutman Ağaçayak, Rose Deniz, Sezin Koehler, Judith van Praag, Elmira Bayrasli, Catherine Salter Bayar and Jocelyn Eikenburg. These are women consistently remind me that being myself is ok, in fact, that it is terrific. Our backgrounds are varied, our locations global, what unites us is a belief in ourselves and an acceptance of our hybrid nature. What Click for more

Special-ism

Announcing HYBRID AMBASSADORS: a blog-ring project of Dialogue2010 You met our multinational cultural innovators this spring in a roundtable discussion of hybrid life at expat+HAREM. Now in these interconnected blog posts some of them share reactions to a recent polarizing book promotion at the writing network SheWrites. Join the discussion on Twitter using #HybridAmbassadors or #Dialogue2010 I am special. I really am. I’m from a small country. That makes me special, there are only so many of us out there. Click for more

Sisters-in-arms

Sisters are on my mind lately. Initially the real thing, busy with work and hopefully with pleasure soon, I follow her journeys with a bird’s eye view, imagining the new city streets she sees, the small coffee shops, the sprawling conferences. I tick off a list of cities I have ‘seen’, saving them for longer visits in the future or discarding them as not worth the effort. There are the new sisters I have gained, many through shared interests, most Click for more

Perspective

A few weeks ago I had a problem. It should have been simple – there were only two solutions. All I had to do was choose. But I couldn’t, no matter how hard I thought about the problem both solutions looked bad. It was a rock or a hard place, the frying pan or the fire. I was spending far too much time obsessing and getting nothing done. Then the Handyman provided a flash of inspiration. ‘There is no wrong Click for more