The title of the Power Stories Meetings "Silent and Strong" is derived from the first identities we acquired in our childhood and youth, which can affect our character: lazy, hardworking, tolerant, non-conformist, from this neighbourhood or that city, silent or strong... Here are our two storytellers, "Silent and Strong", who describe their first struggles on the road to adulthood against these identities that cling to them.
Do you believe in coincidences or free will?
We listened to the storytellers Didem Yaran and İris Bilen, who preferred to tell their stories together. They talked about their struggles with the same difficulties in different lives and the "growth stories" that brought them together in the civic space at the end of these struggles.
Didem Yaran, a CODA (her parents are deaf), spoke about the relationship she built with her mother tongue, which she learnt through television and the sign language she was born into, the responsibility of her talent that helped her parents communicate with the world during her childhood, and how she found her place among the many different languages during her school years. As a storyteller, Didem Yaran currently conducts reading activities with children at the StellarLab Science Club and Okuma Kültürü Derneği (the Reading Culture Association), where she is actively involved. She continues to accompany the children on their journey “in search of themselves”.
Actress and social cohesion expert İris Bilen spoke about the pain of a young girl leaving home when she goes to boarding school and meets her first enemy and comrades. She said that she turned the coping methods she discovered in the pain of growing up into a healing method using art, theatre and music and that she reflects these methods especially in her work with immigrants as a social cohesion expert: “While I thought I was healing them, I actually knew that they were healing me.”
Both narrators emphasised that the pains of growing up and the difficulties of early adolescence guide them in their work in civil society today.
The Power Stories Meetings will continue in Izmir and Istanbul in September with new storytellers and stories
What are Power Stories Meetings?
Power Stories is the name of our meetings where we tell and listen to our own stories. As civil society workers, volunteers and enthusiasts, we come together for storytelling. At "Power Stories", we hear first-hand real stories that have emerged in different channels of the civic space, reflect together with the storytellers' stories and talk about how we can move forward together on the difficult paths that lead to change.