Everyday Life

What makes you overhungry?

Rhythm Life in Turkey,
Montalut Daily Rhythm

For the first time ever she was not happy to see us. She’d already bargained for another night at the beach with her Aunt and we said yes. We dropped by to see her just the same, and she didn’t even want to go near us for fear we’d take her home! 🤸‍♀️

The local beach culture here in Turkey is very different from the PH. The water is only warm in the summer, so beach towns get packed in June-July-August. Young and old (it’s normal to be past 70 in a bikini here, yay!) brave the midday sun complete with their beach gear: foldable chairs and tables, towels, mats and coolers. Often they live in the city and stay in their summer houses at the beach three months a year.

The summer house culture concentrates summer energy into three months. Maybe for seasoned locals, it’s just how life is–activities change every season, and it’s actually a beautiful thing. Our daughter, on the other hand, has been beach-hungry since we moved to Turkey. Swimming was an everyday activity in the tropics, so she gets overeager or “gigil” for any moment to swim.

💙 On Blue Day, do a mental check of what you’re overeager for. What do you crave so much that you’ll pack tons of it, maybe even hoard it? What can you do to release that hunger, to tune into what is, what changes, and flow with what comes, as it comes?

What expertise lets you serve at your highest capacity and joy?

Rhythm
Montalut Daily Rhythm

Congratulations my love @korayerimez on finally claiming your Food Engineering diploma, over two decades later! It was wonderful visiting Ege Üniversitesi with you and seeing you light up like a college schoolboy, remembering the stories that led you to being our beloved crazy Koray. Great way to do a full circle on our Turkey journey and set the tone for the next great adventure ahead of us.

Here’s to using your expertise to serve others in your highest capacity and joy.

💚 Onwards and upwards!

What’s Beyond 43

Everyday Life

It’s been 3 months since I shared that visioning post of our life on a farm. From Albania we plucked out that dream and went on an intense rollercoaster ride to land it on Bicol, the homeland of my father. Intensive research (again) and imaginings to connect the dots, to make real and incarnate that probable life of joy and prosperity in building a dairy farm where market demand is sky high and “there’s no risk of (business) failure”. After countless weeks of mania and 4-hour sleeps, now comes the dip.

This has been the motif of my life for 7 years: exuberant highs of chasing crazy dreams and investing all of me mentally, emotionally, socially, financially, creatively, only to be followed by abyssmal crashes–unbelivably hard, life-turning crashes that dig out a new rock bottom every time. Seven years ago, I was on a peak clarity with almost heavenly distilled vision. I knew what I wanted and it all came to me.

Since age six I’ve been on a spiritual quest, declaring to the universe that I wanted to be a saint. This seeking led me to Rilke and eventually to Steiner, which allowed the slowburn and digestion of the inner work that informed my art, life perspectives and choices. I never went for what was easy and obvious. Everything had to make inner sense. At age 36, I found peace and spiritual clarity…until I dared to ask, “What’s next? How do I move forward, expand, and clarify further?” The answer came simply and without fanfare: marriage and motherhood.

I’m now 43, and in a few months I will cross the threshold of having been a wife and mother for a full seven-year cycle.

These twin journeys have tested, pulled, pushed, propelled and ripped apart every nanofiber of my being, to the point that I don’t know who I am anymore. The extreme highs and lows of it all have made me dumb, numb and mute. I now live in Turkey where no one speaks English. Everyday for the last two years, I learned to not talk, and maybe alongside it, to not listen. I barely speak to anyone and get by on small talk, even to friends and family back home. Being “invisible” for this long has sealed the deal on this new me, who is muddled, inexpressive, constipated. I don’t flow. I don’t paint anymore. Writing and heartfelt conversations are scarce and feel like blips in the matrix.

And yet, onwards and upwards I go. I asked for this.

My marriage has been tried and tested multiple times over, and whether it survives may not be the point. I am learning what it entails to really see someone and to be seen by that person, in the face of everyday ups and downs. Together we’ve walked the path of courage, bouncing back, exploring unknowns, quiet and crazy laughter, and also financial failures, miscommunication, cultural gaps, strained friendships, self-doubt, depression and health scares. Remembering all that we’ve gone through together just now is giving me the feels…and perhaps this is the gift of marriage: It allows us to show up and be fully present in the realm of feelings, where it gets messy and great. It’s not the land of fairytale feelings. You build a boat together, set it out to sea, and go on wild adventures until the next calm port, where you decide to keep sailing together or not. We are not yet at a calm port.

Motherhood, for its part, has been a wellspring of unmatched joy. To be entrusted with the care and guidance of a child, who can move mountains with a smile or chuckle or happy dance–oh it’s very real that children are magical. Especially their tiny cuddles that go on and on and on every morning and every night. Their wonder and sheer delight in everything, it’s contagious and overflowing. And yet, the depletion in mothering is real too. To give 100% of myself non-stop and to inhabit the same time-space with another human being 24/7 is exhausting, and I always feel guilty for wanting solitude. I had so much of it before, it was my anchor. I never had a mentor; maybe solitude was it. And true to life’s plot twists, my mentor had to die for me to come into my own.

And so, marriage and motherhood are my ongoing wow. There is also the mothering of a different entity, Leadia, also turning 7 this year…and also wild, stubborn and unwielding and full of life.


I started this piece with low and confused energy and now feel lighter, as if I’ve tamed someting inside and let it go.

Some final thoughts: the journey so far has been to name and accept the boundaries of Who I Am, and then lose my anchor and stretch those boundaries far and wide, inside and out, this time in robust, permeable layers: I am still me, but you (other people, the world, life and feelings), who I let so close, are also me. The journey is to lose the I and You from our vocabulary altogether.

I have met amazing human beings along this incredibly wayward road, and their stories and wisdom are mini bonfires that keep me warm. Thank you.

Who thought destemming raisins could be so satisfying? 🫐

Rhythm Food
Montalut Daily Rhythm

Annem (mother in Turkish) likes to give us clothbags full of homemade dried fruits and leaves. Once she gave us apples she harvested from her garden and dried over the fireplace–these lasted well over a year back home in Manila. @korayerimez says keeping them in breathable bags lets them last longer.

Today I took out the raisin bag and went about removing dried stems. There’s something about getting busy with our #hands, touching something that has passed through other hands as well. It’s calming and grounding, like I’m shaking hands with old #wisdom. Tradition. Storebought #raisins never have these stems.

On White Day Sunday, do something traditional, artisanal, handmade. Get rooted and touch something that’s been passed on to you with love and tenderness.🤍

I’m A Natural Girl

Everyday Life,

🎵 In between singing Material Girl 🎙

Su: Mom, what does Material Girl mean?

Me: It means you like Material things like this (paper) and this (markers) and this (scissors).

Su: Am I a Material Girl?

Me: Yes, but you also like nature, parks and trees, right? So you’re also a Natural Girl.

🎤 Su back to singing:
We are living
in a natural world
and I’m a Natural Girl. 🎶

What makes you smile from ear to ear?

Rhythm
Montalut Daily Rhythm

On our dede (grandfather)’s 83rd birthday we all went to his happy place, Ikea. When we got to the kitchen section, it was @korayerimez who was like a kid in a toy store. Koray’s the cook in our family and his eyes lit up every time he picked up a new must-have kitchen tool. Here he is smiling ear to ear next to copper pans.🤩

On Blue Day, we’re invited to do what nourishes us, mind, body and soul. Having a happy place that brings so much joy is a blessing. Imagine what life would be like if this happy place was home? 💙

Time to touch grass!

Rhythm
Montalut Daily Rhythm

25°C weather is here and today was extra busy at the neighborhood park. Looking forward to sunny spring days to touch grass more often again and tap into grounding energy.🌿

I’m an ideas 💡 person by default, airy and flying from one shiny new thing to the next. Green Day is my polar opposite: staying grounded in the concrete and practical, servicing. In my Sun years (30s) I started feeling an impulse to build a home and more recently, life as a mother, has gotten me embracing green energy more. I like predictable and steady, what parenting circles would call rhythm.

On this Green Day, may you find your bit of nature, calm and balance.💚

Our first attempt at Mrs. Fields style cookies!

Rhythm Food

Fudgy, chocolatey cookies are not easy to find here so we did the next best thing–we made it ourselves.🍪 They ended up more like Chewy Chips Ahoy (still so yummm). Koray says brown sugar in Turkey is made with beet molasses, which give a weaker flavor, so we got creative and added grape molasses.🙃

Yellow Day is about creativity, and it comes even in everyday things like adapting a cookie recipe.💛

Just in case you want to DIY Chewy Chips Ahoy, here’s the recipe (we added 1/3 cup grape molasses).

Do you See fun and joy?

Rhythm
Montalut Daily Rhythm

Pink is such a happy color. It says princess, unicorn, rainbow (even if it’s not in the rainbow!). Cherry blossoms are most wonderfully pink.🌸

💓Pink Days are days of vision and seeing, and what better way to truly See life than through fun and joy?