My Why
photo by Sitora Takanaev
My Why is You. Me. Our children. Our future. My WHY is the future of all living beings that call this beautiful broken planet home. My WHY is the pristine wild spaces I have explored and adventured in, and the imminent threat that our children may not share this same privilege.
I wear many hats that sensitize me to the gravity of this crisis. None sensitize me more than the hat of mother and caregiver to my spouse who was diagnosed with stage 3 multiple myeloma and kidney failure in June, 2022 after years of suffering with chronic pain..
Like decent parents everywhere, I devote a good portion of my precious time to securing a viable future for my family. All of the usual stuff of parenting, partnering, and caregiving garners the bulk of my attention. Looming in the backdrop is the long term impact of a runaway climate crisis and what that means for my daughter's future and the future of my partner, patients, and those most vulnerable among us.
What disheartens me even more than the crisis itself is how slow we are to respond to it and how little attention we give it on a day to day basis. We busy ourselves with the usual stuff of life while it gains in momentum and our window of opportunity to alter our course narrows.
I am on a mission to change that. I want to normalize climate solutions and climate resilience talk in our daily conversation. I want to transform eco-anxiety and overwhelm into positive action!
With the majority of our teens reporting serious anxiety and anger about this crisis, we are on the verge of a mental health epidemic. What worries kids most is our, the adults in the room everywhere, unwillingness to prioritize this work.
Our kids and the most vulnerable in our communities are counting on us to do something now. We must let them know that we are taking this crisis seriously and teach, by example, how to do this work in a way that is fulfilling and fun!
I wear many hats that sensitize me to the gravity of this crisis. None sensitize me more than the hat of mother and caregiver to my spouse who was diagnosed with stage 3 multiple myeloma and kidney failure in June, 2022 after years of suffering with chronic pain..
Like decent parents everywhere, I devote a good portion of my precious time to securing a viable future for my family. All of the usual stuff of parenting, partnering, and caregiving garners the bulk of my attention. Looming in the backdrop is the long term impact of a runaway climate crisis and what that means for my daughter's future and the future of my partner, patients, and those most vulnerable among us.
What disheartens me even more than the crisis itself is how slow we are to respond to it and how little attention we give it on a day to day basis. We busy ourselves with the usual stuff of life while it gains in momentum and our window of opportunity to alter our course narrows.
I am on a mission to change that. I want to normalize climate solutions and climate resilience talk in our daily conversation. I want to transform eco-anxiety and overwhelm into positive action!
With the majority of our teens reporting serious anxiety and anger about this crisis, we are on the verge of a mental health epidemic. What worries kids most is our, the adults in the room everywhere, unwillingness to prioritize this work.
Our kids and the most vulnerable in our communities are counting on us to do something now. We must let them know that we are taking this crisis seriously and teach, by example, how to do this work in a way that is fulfilling and fun!
WAKING UP TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS
A 5 minute wait in a supermarket line in Brussels, Belgium changed my life trajectory.
It was the summer of 1990, two years following the birth of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the same year it published its first report.
I was a sophomore in college.
A headline in the International Herald Tribune triggered an internal alarm and woke me up from my belief that all was well in the physical world. The article referenced newly released scientific data predicting severe climate instability and water wars resulting from global warming. It warned that human activity was setting us up for a course collision with disaster.
While occupational therapy was my chosen career path, an acute onset of undiagnosed eco-anxiety began a life journey in activism as a means of coping and moving forward.
From mountain biking through rural Argentina to raise environmental awareness, to becoming a priest in a Christian Mystical Order, to homesteading and re-wilding a 5 acre plot of land with my family of four while serving as my workplace sustainability leader, 'action' has taken on many different forms. The unifying thread is that each resulted in realizing a greater sense of peace, purpose, and place in the world.
As this crisis grows and eco-anxiety spreads, I feel called to serve others through my own life experience. I have come to see the critical link between human occupation, how people occupy time and inhabit space, and the environmental crisis.
Collectively we have occupied our time and inhabited our spaces in ways that we now know are toxic to our environment and to ourselves. The desire for ‘bigger-better-faster-now’ in every domain of living has left us depleted, sick, and longing for meaning and purpose. Striving for a slower, simpler way of being and inhabiting the world has become the antidote.
Slowing down and simplifying makes room for passion and purpose to come on board. Being ignited by passion and fulfilled by purpose allows us to evolve as humans from a state of ‘surviving’ to ‘thriving’. This state of living and being is our birthright as humans and accessible to us all if we are willing to reach for it and get help along the way. We deprive ourselves of the opportunity to thrive when we remain trapped in desire and craving for things outside of ourselves or stuck in negative emotions.
The existential threat of the climate crisis can serve as an incredible catalyst for positive change in the world, beginning at home with ourselves. Indeed we must do what it takes to become the best possible version of ourselves because it’s our best possible way forward. It very well might be our only way forward.
What I know from making this journey myself is that once you learn to pry your fingers loose, letting go is a whole lot more fun than holding on. It is impossible to know what the journey ahead might look like and who you will become whenever you arrive at your next launching pad. But becoming your best self and a better keeper of the earth is sure to be one heck of an adventure!
If you want a catalyst to kick start your journey, I’m ready for you!
It was the summer of 1990, two years following the birth of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the same year it published its first report.
I was a sophomore in college.
A headline in the International Herald Tribune triggered an internal alarm and woke me up from my belief that all was well in the physical world. The article referenced newly released scientific data predicting severe climate instability and water wars resulting from global warming. It warned that human activity was setting us up for a course collision with disaster.
While occupational therapy was my chosen career path, an acute onset of undiagnosed eco-anxiety began a life journey in activism as a means of coping and moving forward.
From mountain biking through rural Argentina to raise environmental awareness, to becoming a priest in a Christian Mystical Order, to homesteading and re-wilding a 5 acre plot of land with my family of four while serving as my workplace sustainability leader, 'action' has taken on many different forms. The unifying thread is that each resulted in realizing a greater sense of peace, purpose, and place in the world.
As this crisis grows and eco-anxiety spreads, I feel called to serve others through my own life experience. I have come to see the critical link between human occupation, how people occupy time and inhabit space, and the environmental crisis.
Collectively we have occupied our time and inhabited our spaces in ways that we now know are toxic to our environment and to ourselves. The desire for ‘bigger-better-faster-now’ in every domain of living has left us depleted, sick, and longing for meaning and purpose. Striving for a slower, simpler way of being and inhabiting the world has become the antidote.
Slowing down and simplifying makes room for passion and purpose to come on board. Being ignited by passion and fulfilled by purpose allows us to evolve as humans from a state of ‘surviving’ to ‘thriving’. This state of living and being is our birthright as humans and accessible to us all if we are willing to reach for it and get help along the way. We deprive ourselves of the opportunity to thrive when we remain trapped in desire and craving for things outside of ourselves or stuck in negative emotions.
The existential threat of the climate crisis can serve as an incredible catalyst for positive change in the world, beginning at home with ourselves. Indeed we must do what it takes to become the best possible version of ourselves because it’s our best possible way forward. It very well might be our only way forward.
What I know from making this journey myself is that once you learn to pry your fingers loose, letting go is a whole lot more fun than holding on. It is impossible to know what the journey ahead might look like and who you will become whenever you arrive at your next launching pad. But becoming your best self and a better keeper of the earth is sure to be one heck of an adventure!
If you want a catalyst to kick start your journey, I’m ready for you!
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There is no 'away'. Climate Change in our own backyard.
In 2017, after living in California, Colorado and the Pacific Northwest, where wildfires and abnormal weather events were becoming the norm, our family returned to our Midwestern roots buy a small farm. Our return was about reconnecting, rewilding, and regenerating ourselves and the land we call home. In 2018, after an unusually wet summer, an unprecedented storm front moved in. 65 tornadoes caused the kind of destruction I never imagined I would see here. There is no 'away' to escape the ravages of climate change. But if we act powerfully now we can slow its progression and ensure a viable planet for future generations.
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