The Girl Effect

At 12 years old, I was writing stories and poetry, illustrating my notebooks with doodles. I was thinking about my first crush and spending hours alone daydreaming. I never had to think about birthing a baby once I hit menstruation, raising a child through my teen years, nor not being able to attend school. I had choices. My family encouraged my independence. 

I'm a mother to a two-year-old girl. A lot of the time I think about how important it is that I just stay alive for her, that I don't die before I am forty like my mother. I delight in her joy, her freedom, her exploratory curiosity.

Sometimes I don't know when to speak up. Speaking up takes courage. Sometimes I don't know when to wait and let something pass. Knowing when to stay quiet takes authenticity. This past February, I wrote about Medine Memi, the young girl buried alive in Kahta, Turkey, and the female Turkish writers and journalists who combat honor killings through their words and questions. 

Keeping girls and women in the center.  Not looking away even when it is tough, and finding solutions. 

That's how I envision The Girl Effect. And I'm proud to be part of Tara Sophia Mohr's The Girl Effect Blogging Campaign. 

Authenticity and courage, two words kari m. said applied to my blog yesterday. After all the voice lessons, worries over the language of mothering, and awkwardness of standing out as a foreigner abroad, authenticity and courage seem something I aspire to. The fact that I can aspire, though, is a result of the fostering of independence that I was raised to believe was my right.

I only want the same for every other girl in the world.


>>There are now more than 40+ other bloggers in Tara Sophia Mohr‘s Girl Effect blogging campaign. You can add your own blog post and follow #girleffect tweets on Twitter to join in!<< 

The taste of initiation

At my women-only gym, the middle-aged Turkish women I do crunches with talk about pastries. It reminds me of my first summer in Turkey, where instead of crunches, my neighbors would knit or crochet in our garden while talking about baked goods.

Is there no bad time or place to talk about pastries?

My vocabulary has become peppered with the Turkish versions of pastry dough (börek), cake (pasta), and salty or sweet cookies (tuzlu and tatlı, respectively). Baked sesame seed rings (sımıt) are a daily part of our life.

Sımıt, for Pukka Living

Eat, and then work it off. Bonding in the form of locker-room chat. On the aerobic floor, commiseration over leg lifts and latent stomach muscles. Chats about tattoos, taboos, and domestic routines.

Food was my initiation into Turkey - hours in my mother-in-law's kitchen taught me the aromas and textures that filled the Turkish table - but my gym in Turkey is a social sphere of my own choosing. 

What's one surprising place you go that makes you feel at home?

Silk Road Stories

Friendships made in just a few short hours. Life stories shared, professional commonalities discovered, mothering suggestions offered, all while eating some of the best Turkish food I've had in Turkey. The women I met from the Bursa International Women's Association were French, Italian, German, Russian, American, and more. How were we able to relate to each other with different cultural viewpoints? Different occupations, different ages? I went to speak about creativity and left marveling at the ability for community to form abroad. Enlightened conversation. Multi-national viewpoints.

Bursa, known for being the last stop on the silk road, has a vibrant international women's community. I met a Turkish woman who runs her own coffee shop after first studying finance in Turkey, designing textiles in New York, and returning to start afresh with coffee and pastries she decorates herself. I met an American opening the first quilting shop in Turkey that will be selling fabric online (yea for me!). I met a German graphic designer who breezed through my drawing exercises. I met homemakers juggling multiple kids and learning new languages. I met a woman with her 2-month old baby who apologized for her English while elegantly articulating that the only thing she wants to do is be a mother right now.

Riding a bus to Bursa that left at 7:30 a.m., I sat next to a university student wearing hand-knit leg warmers and gloves who offered me her saltine crackers. 11 hours later, we coincidentally rode the same bus back to Izmit, laughing when we boarded the small service bus that took us home to nearby neighborhoods. She studied economics. Had taken her final exam that day. She was a photographer. We made a date for coffee.

I believe that the things most difficult to overcome, public speaking being way out of my comfort zone, are emboldened by passion. By the support of a community that honors unique, individual voices that examine larger cultural patterns. I am passionate about art and life being merged, even if it is messy. I am grateful for breaking out of routines. And the kismet relationships that can form just by hopping a bus.

Medine Memi, 1994-2010

Medine Memi, may you rest in peace. May you now know a freedom you never experienced in life. May no young girl or woman ever again experience the horror you faced. A link to a Turkish news report here (in Turkish).

The book Batman'da Kadınlar Öluyor (Women in Batman are Dying) is an investigative report by female reporter Müjgan Halis from 2001. She interviews survivors of honor killings and family members in Batman, Turkey. I'm sorry there is no translation of the book nor her profile. Turkish-born female journalist Fazile Zahir's article in Asia Times Online also takes a critical look at honor killings masked as suicides. 

It is important to me to point to the Turkish women, female reporters and journalists above, and to hopefully add to the list of those who are asking questions and talking about honor killings. That there are female voices here that are not passive, but strong, and that their discourse must be acknowledged for contributing to building a safe place for women worldwide.

In honor of Medine, on February 5 of every year I will hold a memorial, no matter how simple or elaborate. As an artist, a writer, and most of all a woman and mother, I feel immense grief.