In 2011, as an author living in Istanbul, I wrote an absurd play called Mi Minor. In 2013, because of the Gezi protest, my play became the target of a hate campaign, and I had to leave Turkey with a single suitcase.
Two years after I moved to Wales, I married my partner, who lived in Turkey back then. In the month of our marriage, we discovered my husband had brain cancer. I lost him within a year. I visited him over that period but wasn’t able to go to his funeral because of new accusations against us. In 2019 the Turkish court accepted Gezi Indictment seeking life sentences for 16 people, including me.
This was a huge turning point in my life. I lost my husband, my trust in people, my savings to pay for his care. I lost everything. But Wales wrapped me, hugged me, talked to me like a mother during the most challenging time in my life. I went to the doctor for my Menopause in this period, but it ended up being 'Asperger/Autism', but I'm so happy to have received this diagnosis.
I was wild, and only felt comfortable when I was dancing. At six years old, I started learning Turkish folk dance; when the Turkish dance figure got complicated in high school, I started dancing with myself. Then I participated in Turkey’s first professional dance group. But I was 16 years old, and ultimately my dad would not give permission for this to continue. It was a big heartbreaking moment for me.
Dance was always part of my identity, but it was like my sin. I could only do that occasionally. When I want to do something, including dance, people around me always say no. First, I was so young, then I was a mom, then later it was serious writers shouldn’t dance, and then I'm old.
Autism diagnosis set me free. I decided to come out because I firmly believe that if those of us who are on the autistic spectrum share our experiences openly, it helps other autistic people and it also helps neurotypical people better understand us and our behaviour.
Looking back at the last several years of my life, I have been thrown into navigating the most challenging aspects and life experiences, and there has been a complete cracking of all masks. The most significant benefit of this process is that I am learning again, like a child, to re-evaluate everything with curiosity and enthusiasm.
I became a complementary health practitioner, and I put myself in the surgery room and rearranged everything. I discovered that negative feelings are in me, not in reality. So I stopped trying to change facts and hoping others would change also. I learned I don’t have to change anything.
I learned to refuse to need any particular person, be unique to anyone or call anyone my own. I passed through the pains of the dark night and understood what love is and is not. My dark nights forced me way beyond my capacity for pain, but they opened me to new and mysterious possibilities. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling indeed. I was in the night, profoundly unsettled, seeing no way out. Yet, it pushed me to the edge of what is familiar and reliable, stretching my understanding of how life works and what controls it.
Nature accepts life as it is. Nature accepts everything goes away, good and bad. Nature doesn’t ask Why? Nature accepts no emotional dependency, so nothing makes it happy or miserable. I learn how I can be like nature.
I start writing, playing the piano, drumming, dancing, singing, and practising qigong again. I felt more connected with my authentic self. I’m not listening to my mind voice as before and using the ho'oponopono technique to clean my memory and my critical mind voice, but I felt something was missing, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I know daily life can be like a mesh, and sometimes it opens up, and I fall through into the rabbit hole. It’s like the raw cold of winter when your heart is frozen, and you feel cut out of the world, rejected, sidelined from progress; it comes from humiliation. It arrives with sadness and melancholy, and, of course, it’s involuntary, but I learned how I could handle this using nature, art, mindfulness and ho’oponopono.
And this point in my life, I found the Groove dance method, and I felt OMG this is what I have been looking for. I always loved dance but always postponed my desire to do it seriously. For the first time in my life, I decided without asking anyone, and first, I made a 30-day Groove challenge. I discovered the last piece of my puzzle. I woke up every day like a happy child. Groove dance has completed me.
I never gave up, I worked hard, and I got my diploma as a groove facilitator. In the end, now I’m 53 years old, dancing has become a part of my life... This process has taught me not to give up my dream for anyone and not listen to others. Just do what you want and persist in the things you really want to.
2020 was an exciting year for me. As if I died and was reincarnated again. In the end, I understand that my true nature is not to be some ideal that I have to live up to. It’s ok to be who I am right now, and that’s what I can make friends with and celebrate. I learned it’s about finding my own true nature and speaking and acting from that. Whatever our quality is, that’s our wealth and our beauty. That’s what other people respond to…. I’m not perfect, but I’m real…
My life has been completely transformed so that I am now dedicating my life to ongoing discovery and transformation that can profoundly help people’s lives. I love offering the same possibility of change and providing the same love, encouragement, and acceptance in sessions or my workshops and my groove dance class that I have experienced.
If you want to meet your authentic self, “Now choose Yourself”. I’m here to show you different ways to find which one is right for you.