White Day

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.🤍

🤍 What little things make up the big things? 🤍

Rhythm
Montalut Daily Rhythm

🎶 And the singing goes on…this time with our halam, effortlessly beautiful and kind, our family’s big sister.

We spent the weekend just enjoying family time and letting the summer go by. These are the last few weeks that we can wear our summer dresses, so our little one wears her new favorite on repeat (it changes every few days).👗

When we make time to slow down, the little things take their place and the big picture becomes richer and more balanced.

🤍 On White Day, slow down. Let your hair down and let the pieces fall where they may. Everything’s going to be all right.

🤍 Can you go off-season? 🤍

Rhythm, ,
Montalut Daily Rhythm

In 2 weeks it will be my first anniversary in a four-season country.🌏 Adjusting to a new season every 3 months for the past year meant adjusting to changing weather, clothes, food, daily activities, and daily habits.🕶🧣 The secret for tropical girl me is to tap into the seasonal rhythm, embracing it vs resisting, and actually seeing it as fun. Yes even the dreaded cold of winter and extreme heat of summer. İt’s all part of life.

Taking it one step further is to relate this rhythm back to non-four season countries.😎 I still have friends and family back in the Philippines who I connect with everyday. So I also need to be aware of their own season, their changing weather and activities.☔️

Working with a global team, there’s also the awareness of different hemispheres and inverse seasons. 🌗 İsn’t the world amazing?

🤍 On White Day, let’s step back and look at the global map. Take in the different seasons of the world happening simultaneously right now. Somewhere in the world İt’s really cold, really hot, wet and rainy, dry and humid. Just like traveling, there is an awareness of the world that comes from season-hopping. It’s a familiarity with nature that expands our sense of time, and maybe our sense of awe and compassion.🌟

🤍 What’s your Sunday mood? 🤍

Rhythm
Montalut Daily Rhythm

Weekends are designated play days, when Mommy and Daddy aren’t allowed to work, and this little girl gets our undivided attention.🤠🥸

Saturdays are usually jampacked with all the activities she wants to do, and Sundays are the chill days. No effort, just relaxing together. İn Filipino we call it banjing–doing nothing.🕶

Today started off with R&B music, some dancing and breakfast, and then everyone got to do their own thing. Peace and quiet in the middle of a family. A beautiful Sunday.🎶

How’s your Sunday mood? 🤍

🤍 How do the seasons nourish you? 🤍

Rhythm
Montalut Daily Rhythm

Aşure, aka Noah’s pudding, is a sweet porridge made on the 10th day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar.🗓 Tradition says it’s the first meal Noah and his family made after the ark touched land again, and is believed to bring about peace and abundance. It’s a labor of love for sure, usually made with at least 10 ingredients (equivalent to the 10th day) comprised of various wheats, nuts and fruits. It takes 6 hours to make and is done in large batches for sharing with neighbors and the needy.🫕

This one has bulgur, garbanzos, white beans, baby raisins, apricots, pears, pomegranates, sesame seeds.🍐🍚🍠🫐 It’s the closest I’ve eaten here to the Philippine ginataang halo-halo, a sweet rice dessert made with coconut milk and sweet fruits. I super miss ginataan, so I ended up eating most of this bowl. 🥣

It was interesting that Aşure started popping up everywhere in the past week, from our daughter’s school, to gifts from neighbors, and to Sunday breakfast in restaurants. The feeling reminded me of bibingka and puto bumbong, rice desserts and treats which in my youth were only available on simbang gabi masses leading up to Christmas.🎄 Because they were seasonal, they were extra special, and it was well worth the effort to wake up at 4am to hear mass and then indulge in these treats afterwards.🍮

🤍 On White Day, let’s look at the seasonal dishes across cultures and the rituals behind them. These traditions are rich in time and intention. Keeping them seasonal is not so much about making them scarce, but more so about deeply aligning the intentions behind them with the movement and rhythm of nature.❄️🌸🌞🍂

🤍 What do you see from the top?🤍

Rhythm
Montalut Daily Rhythm

Did you know that there are Nine Cities of Troy?🏛 For 3,000 years from the Bronze Age to the Roman period, settlement over settlement was built on top of each other, and one of them was Homer’s Troy, the legendary city of Priam and home to the mythical Trojan Horse.🎠 When you visit the ruins in modern day Çanakkale, Turkey, you get to see it from the top. And you get not just a bird’s eye view but one that cuts through the layers underneath.👀

🤍 On White Day, when you step back and look at the big picture of your life, put on Xray goggles and look through the layers of time that brought you to where you are today.⏳

🤍 How do you balance? 🤍

Rhythm
Montalut Daily Rhythm

We’re on crunch time for @leadiagrowth Festival İstanbul, and yet Koray insisted on getting proper R&R this weekend.😎 When in Turkey for the summer, that means heading to the seaside and having a barbeque.🍢

Here’s our dinner setup on the balcony with the mezes, cheese, bread and salads.🥗 It’s still bright and the sun doesn’t set until 9pm on summer days. Notice the two sets of glasses ready for the all-time fave local drink: rakı, a distilled liquor made from anise or licorice. Raki is usually paired with fish, and it turns milky white when mixed with water. It’s taken ice cold and with water as a chaser.🧊 It’s an acquired taste for sure, and I half-jokingly said it seems like a ladies drink because it’s sweet. I got forced laughter in reply (we call it “labas sa ilong” in Filipino) so maybe it’s scandalous to say such things.🤭

Thank you Ablam and Abim for again hosting us and letting us refill the well and balance work with rest and play.🌈

🤍 White Day is the day of wholeness, of seeing the big picture and remembering that we’re part of a whole: a whole culture, history, expression, industry, gender, family, clan, community. Today, do something to balance. Allow yourself to stand upright, relaxed and open for what’s to come. 🧍‍♀️ 🧍‍♂️

🤍What were you doing 7 years ago?🤍

Rhythm
Montalut Daily Rhythm

Who had the bigger smile here, the baby elephant or me?🐘

This popped up on my feed today, taken in the Elephant Sanctuary in Chiang Mai 7 years ago.🌴 This was right when I started to actively explore the digital nomad culture.👩‍💻 I’d heard Chiang Mai was rivaling Bali in that respect, so I went to see it for myself. Coliving wasn’t a thing yet, and coworking was the new buzzword. The mood was fresh and excited, and youthful energy filled the air, even for the thirty, forty and fiftysomethings I met there.🧘‍♀️

They say every 7 years we are born anew; literally the cells of our body are new.💎 We also go through seven-year cycles in our Biography, and this year I entered the new stage of 42 to 49yo.

Tbh I’m still on the fence and lingering in my Sun stage, which was home to me for the past 21 years, equivalent to three full cycles: 21-28, 28-35 and 35-42yo.🌞 Each life cycle has its own energy and challenges, and the Sun agenda was to consolidate what we learned during the age of exploration💡, come into adulthood and fulfill our mission during the Christ years of 30 to 33 (Crucifixion year!).⏳

Who I am Right now:
✅️ I’m a startup founder implementing my lifelong dream to build a global creative community @leadiagrowth
✅️ Community Mom for Leadia and gathering people for the Festival this October to finally get the ball rolling
✅️ New expat in Turkey and learning the language
✅️ Soon-to-be expat of Portugal, Greece or Albania, prepping to build Leadia Campus there and simultaneously doing research in all countries
✅️ Artist navigating next generation art 🎨 with NFTs and AI
✅️ Mom to a 5yo who is also braving new cultures and languages
✅️ Spouse to my co-founder @korayerimez who is also navigating through a new life cycle in his 50s
✅️ Daughter, sister and friend to many 🤍

Feel like I just wrote my autobio! 😅
👉Sidenote: my epitaph will read “She was brave.”

With all the transitions in my life now, easing into 42 is happening whether I’m ready for it or not, and just like this elephant, I’m reminded to smile through it and just have fun!

🤍 On White Day, let’s just get wet, make a mess, and smile. 😊

🤍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?

🤍White Sunday: Happy Mother’s Day!🤍

Rhythm

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.🙏🤍