Thank you to our wonderful Philippine diplomats at the Consulate in İstanbul, Rachel and MJ, who were so gracious and generous with their stories and Pinoy hospitality. It was great to be back “home” even for a few hours, and with pabaon dried mangoes 🥭 Special thanks, too, to Tita Rap who connected us with Consul Rachel. 🙏
Bonus#2 was seeing the İstanbul bridge in Philippine colors as we drove around the Bosphorus last night. Super heartwarming (nakakatuwang yakap!) to see our two home countries shake hands this way.
On our agenda in Istanbul was to taste the flavors we missed from back home, and so far so good 🍔🌯
We had to walk half a km in hilly neighborhoods for our milk tea hunt, and pasado!! It’s no Tiger Sugar, but after 9 months, we finally get our proper milk tea fix.🧋😂
It’s election day in Turkey today and most shops and cafes are closed. It’s Round 2 of voting for the new President 🇹🇷, and the feeling of waiting for what’s next feels familiar. Tomorrow we find out how Turkey moves forward from here.
Growing up in the Philippines, I didn’t really know what it meant to have a functioning government🏰. Harsh truth: when your leaders don’t deliver, you just don’t expect anything from them.
Sometimes glimmers of hope come, when the possibility of change is at hand, and we feel alive and invigorated even for a moment. The change that we seek is simple, for everyone to do their job and what they sign up for. For the country to be managed so that everything works as it should…no dead space, dead air, dead weights.🌬
🤍On White Sunday let’s ask, What governs and controls us? And flipping that question, What do we govern or control? Where in our lives does everything work as it should? Who is the Who behind it all?
Here’s a portrait I made of my big bro, Paolo, who turns 44 today.🍾🎂 We’re just a little over a year apart, and I remember insisting on calling him by his first name when we were kids. Maybe it was on my first day in kindergarten, when he return-shoved a boy who shoved me, that I officially started calling him Kuya or “older brother” in Filipino.🦸🏻♂️
It was Kuya who took my first artist headshot. He sat me down and said he needed a subject for his photos. There’s a refreshing honesty in the resulting photos , sharing one outtake here 📸.
There’s an ease and familiarity between siblings that’s born out of years of relentless taunting, no holds-barred conversations and all the ups and downs of family life. Family, after all, is our biggest karma–they’re the people we have the strongest inner work with, i.e. karmic debt we pay together. They also make the best mirrors, showing us who we are, at our best and worst.
Kuya is the only sibling who has shown consistent interest in my art and creative journey, and it’s something I am truly, deeply thankful for 🙏. When he asked for “Henry”, one of the all-time favorite paintings, I knew he was the right home for him.
👀Red Day is vision day, and today I re-viewed myself from the point of view of the men around me.🤵♂️ Also deeply thankful for my spouse, Koray, who everyday teaches me what it means to be seen, cherished and supported fully:
When two or more people are truly together, a channel is open and something immortal can enter. And when two are together in the name of confiding love, a spiritual being can come and dwell in this space.
Julian Sleigh, Friends and Lovers 👩❤️👨
❤️On this Red Day: take stock of the mirrors 🪞 you hold dear, and check too how good of a mirror you are to them. 🥰
May 19 is when we celebrate my father, Pepe @pepebpilar. He’s probably one of the gentlest souls to everyone who knows him, with his cheerful, quiet demeanor and many years of dedicated service to our neighborhood community🏘 and Church. In our family, we lovingly call him Mr. Nega(tive) because he likes to challenge everything and in his words, “play devil’s advocate”. He’s our all-in-one farmer, architect, journalist, and lawyer, and is the most voracious reader in our family (his favorite past time as a kid was to visit the library)📚.
I will never forget Mom’s stories of him writing love notes on paper napkins.😍 These days I get my share of love notes from Pops as random emails about new healthy superfoods and recipes, tech news. He sends Whatsapp messages about his musings about life in his 70s, memories from his youth, and lessons to pass on to his kids and grandkids.🧓
Now that my siblings and I crave for wide open spaces as a way of life, we feel the same call Pops has as a farmer. To be one with the land, and grow something is nothing short of a miracle.
💚On Green Day, ask yourself this: What am I growing? With every inch of me, what am I servicing and tending to, and am now ready and willing to wait for?
I’m thankful for an intense, beautiful morning. I woke up before 6am and felt a strong and gentle invitation to sit and close my eyes 🧘♀️. I may have been there just sitting on the bed for an hour, Koray and my daughter still sleeping next to me.
I haven’t gone “inside myself and meet no one for hours” in a long time, truly in the quiet, without music or guided meditation. It was wonderful, and felt like a warm orange uplifting.🌅
Then I remembered it’s Ascencion today. In explaining it to Koray, I said it’s when the Divine left the world because it already equipped us to unite with the Source on our own.
There’s a line in the Abundance prayer we say every night: “You are me, I am You, we are One.” Su said it out loud last night, out of the blue, and today that random moment goes full circle: We are fully capable to choose and design the life we want. We are equipped 💯 to be who we are.
“Until now, in my name, you have not asked for anything. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.” John 16: 24
🔶️On this Orange Thursday, take that long walk inside yourself and ask, “What do I truly want? What is my deepest and highest desire?”
Here’s my Mommy @bigbons. Strong and generous of heart. I am who I am because of her. I asked her once, “Who are you?” and unlike me who needed to find time and a wide open place to digest that question, she gave it a quick pause and answered with the knowing of a mother: I am Isabel Pilar and I can talk to anybody, be it a janitor or the Ambassador.💃 Now that we live 8,000 km away, I miss her terribly, especially the quiet conversations that only happen in the in betweens: while choosing what show to watch on Netflix, having spontaneous “roadtrips” for milktea or Jollibee, figuring out what to buy in the next Lazada sale, even decluttering Papa’s desk. In Filipino we say mothers are ilaw ng tahanan or “light of the home” and she really is that. When she’s there, you know things will be all right.
Here’s also a pic of me with Mom one month before I was to be a mother myself. On our faces you see the joy and excitement of passing on the umblical cord so to speak, generation to generation.🤰 Mom has an infectious love for mothering–it is one thing that brings her pure joy, and she’s always made sure that her children (now grandchildren) feel it.
In Turkey, our big mother is Annem, who is just as fierce and gentle as Mom. @korayerimez and I grew up in very different worlds, but in the nucleus of family, we were very much alike. Raised by strong, intelligent and caring mothers who love and dote on their children. We have here too, Ablam, who I lovingly call superwoman 🦸♀️: she is one of the kindest, most self-giving people I know, and we are so lucky to have her in our inner circle of family.
Mothering is a gift 🎁 that we both receive and give. And today on White Sunday, I open myself to also receive the gift of being mothered from my sweet 4yo, who insisted on having a footspa on Mother’s Day. She wanted it outdoors facing the garden, complete with bubbles and flowers 💐
So much to be thankful for. Here’s to honoring all the mothers 👩 👩🍼 around us and in us.🙏🤍
Beautiful purple plants! And one of them is the milk thistle, which I thought was a prized plant tended in a garden…turns out it’s a widespread wild flower, even covering full hillsides.⛰️ If you’re wondering why it sounds familiar, it’s a key ingredient for supplements for nursing moms–so it’s a superfood growing so abundantly here for free. It’s also been used for liver, kidney and gallbladder diseases. Wow 🤩
The other purple shrub is the shrubby germander, a silvery-gray member of the mint family popular in landscaping home gardens. We thought it was lavender at first, but the aroma is very faint. Bees looooove them 🐝💜
Ramazan bayrami is the first of two Bayrams celebrated every year, and it marks the end of the thirty days of fasting during Ramazan. Kurban bayrami or the Feast of Sacrifice comes two months later, where families sacrifice a lamb to share 1/3 of the meat with neighbors and family, 1/3 with those in need and the remaining third to eat for themselves.
It’s amazing to be in Turkey 🇹🇷 to experience the month-long fast (I was just a spectator–it was Koray who fasted from sunrise to sunset), the special iftar dinners every night with the prayers and mezze traditions, and now an open house on Bayram day itself to welcome visiting family and friends. Amidst all this came our first experience of Spring (and all the sheep! I’m an uber fan of sheep now), and two other Holy Weeks: Easter and Orthodox Easter. We were even able to squeeze in two visits to Mary’s house in Ephesus to offer prayers and petitions.🙏
Today, everyone is dressed up, chocolates and Turkish coffee ready to serve to guests and the house is given an extra special Spring cleaning to welcome the new season. Yesterday, groceries and malls were swarming with crowds and families buying gifts, sweets, and new dresses for Bayram, and even the line at the carwash was crazy! Traffic in downtown Izmir was at a standstill as offices closed at midday and the roads were packed with people flocking to the coastal towns to spend the holiday in their summer houses. Altogether it feels like a mix of Christmas and Holy Week in one, complete with the feasts, pamasko, reunions, visits, and holiday fever. Truly thankful we’re able to experience this with our Turkish family, and sending everyone lots of clarity, holy energy and joy. 🙌
