This final project was impossible without anonymous respondents who contributed with their personal stories and deep reflections. Every time someone submitted a story, it made my heart jump with joy and in awe for humanity. My path towards becoming a Processworker would not have been as pleasant, confusing, wonderful and exciting without encounters and exchanges with many many elders in different forms: Ellen Schupbach, Bill Say, Josef Helbing, thank you for being members of my guiding team and shepherding along during my journey. Magdalena Schatzmann, our talk in Paris truly grounded me. Anna Gabryjelska, thank you for reminding me of the Big U and the small U in me. Husna Said and Marina Zavolovskaya: how we have witnessed each other’s growth. Thank you both for the support, encouragement and practice during our triads. Lily Vassiliou: the moment Zoom went grey during the online celebration of 40-years Processwork is something I will never forget! I learned so much by observing and experiencing your calm and thorough preparation. Thank you to Julie Diamond, the certification for Diamond Power Index and collaboration for the (first ever!) virtual conference of Power Intelligence are some of my fond memories. Max Schupbach, how you show up in the world with mountain spirit and fluid movement of a fish is inspiring. Thank you for bringing in your unique energy to the world.
The stories many have shared with me inspired me to dig deeper into my own story, seeing them with a Processwork lens, tasting and savoring the insights that came through reflection.
The participatory research was like a marinade that led to a creative collaboration with Nohad Elhajj. She was experimenting with the potential of art practices as impactful forms of protest. Nohad was designing and hosting ‘writeshops’. Collecting meaningful & hopeful stories to build new narratives by including stories that are often left out or pushed to the margins. During her month-long visit to the Netherlands, we collaborated and started to experiment by hosting writeshops combining reflective writing and tasting.
We challenged ourselves by inviting the participants into tasting and linking the specific taste to a particular dimension. They were:
Following the simple yet profound framework designed by Barefoot Guide Connection, Nohad and I created a rhythm so that with each tasting of the flavour, participants would:
The prompts for the flavour ‘bitter’ were for example:
My favorite part is when the participants get to create their own mini-zine as a meaningful artefact. A keepsake that represents their own process of writing, reflection and connection to different version of selves.
[From the article: https://mymodernmet.com/how-to-make-a-zine/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/withjulie/4081808449)
From the article: https://mymodernmet.com/how-to-make-a-zine/
As the mini-zine gets folded, it represents for me the way that we can become three (& more) dimensional beings. It is thanks to the cutting of a line, that something one-dimensional then transforms to something three-dimensional. The cutting is like the saying:
Life is like a flute. It may have many holes and emptiness, but if you work on it carefully so it can play magical melodies - (Source unknown)