Everyone has a secret friend and will be surprised by little gifts.
In the morning after breakfast, we, 22 women, were gathered in the living room making us comfortable on the floor cushions. Some of these women are artists, some of them are our comrades from feminist or queer communities. 8 of them joined the retreat in Şirince one year ago, but the majority were newcomers. We played some get-to-know each other games. Now, each of us has a big envelope hung on the door of the room we are sleeping in. Everyone has a secret friend. We hope that our secret friends will put some little gifts into our envelopes and will surprise us in the following days.
This retreat was organized by inviting our friends who might like to collaborate with us. When I say ‘’we’’, I mean Milena, Kara, Hazal, Tuba, Sehri and myself. Most of the invited women have an area of expertise which they are going to share in the first 5 days during the workshop hours. The sixth day is off. Then Defne will arrive to facilitate the performance process for another 4 days.
The first 5 days are mainly to share our experiences, our emotions, our thoughts while having the joy of living together and dealing with the challenges of being in an isolated place all together. Since most of us do not know each other, I guess there will be some conflicts along the way. However, we opened ourselves to every possible discussion, tension and resolution. Whatever emerges is welcome.
As the organizing team, we also would like to be flexible and inclusive as much as possible. We decided to re-plan the daily schedule for the coming day each evening according to the needs and ideas that have arisen during the day. Being flexible seems good in the long term but at the moment the idea of having another meeting after dinner time feels overwhelming for me.
