InterPlay Sustaining International Sisters
InterPlay SIS Potluck & Play (Face-to-Face)
1st Saturdays, 10:00 AM - 01:00 PM EST
Canan Arikan and
Ruth Schowalter

Decatur, GA
First Saturday of each month, 10:00 am - 01:00 pm EST
We are a community of women from around the world connecting, sharing, and inspiring one another through InterPlay.
Sustaining International Sisters (SIS) invites all women to connect, inspire and support each other through InterPlay.
FREE! (Donations $5 - $15 welcome to space support rental fee and other costs.)
POTLUCK –Bring a dish of food to share that represents your country’s food. Be aware that your Muslim and Jewish sisters cannot eat pork and meat must be halal. Vegetarian options welcomed (Please come if you don’t have time to prepare food).
Visit our website to learn more about us: https://www.sislife.org
Sustaining International Sisters (SIS) invites all women to connect, inspire and support each other through InterPlay.
Join us for two hours of community building through telling stories, playing with movement, and networking.
We meet at 10:00 AM and begin our InterPlay at 10:15. At noon, we break for a shared potluck meal.
FREE! (Donations $5 - $15 welcome to space support rental fee and other costs.)
POTLUCK –Bring a dish of food to share that represents your country’s food. Be aware that your Muslim and Jewish sisters cannot eat pork and meat must be halal. Vegetarian options welcomed (Please come if you don’t have time to prepare food).
Visit our website to learn more about us: https://www.sislife.org
Cost: FREE! Donations accepted $10-$40! Paypal to interplaysis@gmail.com
Registration/Information: Canan 404/966-2014, arikancnn@gmail.com, or Ruth 404/580-2392, ruthtruth@mindspring.com
Leaders
Canan Arikan
Canan Arikan is a software test engineer, women’s advocate, and certified InterPlayer Leader. She has more than 20 years of volunteer work supporting and empowering women and youth.
Arriving in the United States in 2016 as an asylee, she needed a way to heal, release, and relax. InterPlay tools and forms helped her through this healing process with fun and joy, without any judgement or criticism. Through her training and the formation and operation of Sustaining International Sisters (SIS), she exformed the trauma of moving unexpectedly to a different country by moving, singing, shaking, witnessing, running, and stopping. She listened to many stories of SISters. She practiced affirmation and looking for the good. She was delighted to share all of these treasures with other women from around the world. Canan and her former English teacher Ruth Schowalter founded InterPlay SIS to bring together asylum seekers, other international women, and U.S. citizens to connect, inspire, and learn from one another through InterPlay. In 2019, SIS began Online Global SIS to offer InterPlay to women worldwide. In 2020, InterPlay SIS became a 501c3 non-profit with the Body Wisdom Office. Canan holds an MBA and completed graduate studies for a PhD(ABD) in Management and Organization.
Ruth Schowalter
Ruth Schowalter, visionary folk artist, certified InterPlay Leader and Life Practice Program Leader, co-founded InterPlay Sustaining International Sisters (SIS), a 501c3 with the Body Wisdom Office, in 2018. Ruth is dedicated to bringing together women from diverse backgrounds (geographical, cultural, spiritual, racial, educational, and generational) through play. Within InterPlay, she found the structure to connect women in ways that support them and allows them to share, learn, and inspire one another. Ruth has an M.S. in Applied Linguistics and ESL and taught international students English communication at the university level for 30 plus years, applying InterPlay to her instruction for a decade. In addition to InterPlay SIS, she leads a Deep Play group twice monthly in Decatur. As an artist, Ruth stays engaged in the creative process and established the The Daily Creative Practice Group on Facebook to insure that her own art, dreams, and creative ideas get priority while supporting others creative engagement. She is a certified Art of Ensoulment coach and has been a dance chaplain for six years, leading CPR for the Soul every Monday through Cynthia Winton-Henry's Hidden Monastery, where she leads participants to blend dance, prayer, and making marks. In 2022, Ruth co-led a monthly Ensoulment Creativity Studio with Cynthia Winton-Henry and is currently co-leading with Cynthia the Art of Ensoulment Wisdom Circle. She is in the process of creating art work to accompany Cynthia's intergenerational book, The Great Dance, to be published in 2026. Once called a “sophisticated primitive” artist, Ruth's colorful figurative paintings and drawings express her inner world both from dreams and psychological meanderings. She lives in Decatur with her author husband, Anthony J. Martin and four cats, Tao, Sapelo, Ossabaw, and Durga.