Our story
dear me collective is for people who want to hear themselves.
We exist to give New Yorkers a living room to come back to,
in a city that never stops asking them to perform.
How dear me collective began
It began in December 2025, in a SoHo loft, when founder Meltem Cakmak Shuman asked herself the question everybody asks and nobody answers: how are you?
She had moved from Istanbul to New York in July 2025. Somewhere between a new country, a new surname and a new life, she had stopped checking in with herself.
People asked how she was, and she said fine. She meant it the way everyone in New York means it.
So she said it out loud, at her own dining table, to twenty-eight people. It turned out she was not the only one who had stopped asking.
What we gather around
She began hosting practitioners from New York’s healing and spiritual world, first for her friends, then for friends of friends: cacao ceremonies, breathwork, Pilates, art therapy, sound baths and goal setting nights, so that a living room full of people could hear the voice underneath everything.
“you may not find a soulmate here.
or your next big project.
but you’ll hear your soul.
and that’s where everything starts.”