Rhythm

🤍What’s your big picture?🤍

Rhythm,

Our 5yo wanted a dollhouse, and in the spirit of doing projects to get her off gadgets, I told her we would make it.💪

Here we are halfway into it, doing some testing. I thought all along the house was for her Lego dolls about two inches high. Turns out she wanted her Barbies to stand in them 😅

🤍On White Day, I’m reminded to look at the bigger picture and make sure I still see it while I work on the details. How about you? What big picture guides your everydays?🧐

🤍White Sunday: Who governs us?🤍

Rhythm

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?

❤️Red Tuesday: Who are your Mirrors?❤️

Rhythm

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. 🥰

💚Green Friday: Happy birthday, Pops 🥳

Rhythm

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?

🧡Orange Thursday: What do I want?🧡

Rhythm

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?”

🤍White Sunday: Happy Mother’s Day!🤍

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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.🙏🤍