In recent weeks I have failed to call my mother, attend kid birthday parties, and check in with friends, all to work with Extinction Rebellion for the Global Climate Strike. I feel like I'm cheating on my loved ones with my activist community. My house is dirty, my laundry is screaming to get done, my family has had burritos for dinner several times because I failed to cook. I am not exercising or sleeping enough. I'm tired. I'm neglecting my family, my housework, my business, my writing and my friends in order to participate in this effort that feels so critical.
A good friend is 8 months pregnant and I missed her baby blessing to attend an activist art workshop. I am turning down play dates for my 3-year-old daughter Sophia and making her sit through organizing meetings. On the 30th anniversary of Mothersong, a multicultural music circle where Sophia and I have been singing my favorite hippie earth-loving songs, I guiltily took her to an art build to paint a Spanish banner for my group instead. She fell off a chair, hit her head and cried for twenty minutes. We painted a great banner, but I felt like a monster mom. Another friend recently told me she felt I was shaming her for not doing more activism.
I feel like the biblical Noah, building his ark. Everyone thought he was nuts because he was talking about the coming deluge, while there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Except that we have plenty of signs that all is not well with our way of living. Just last year we could hardly breathe, surrounded by smoke from the Paradise fire, remember?
Even though mainstream media outlets hail young climate activists as heroes, I still feel like talking about the seriousness of the climate crisis to my loved ones is socially unacceptable. Like farting loudly in public, it's a total conversation killer. Mention it, and people will walk away like you just stank up the room.
People love Greta Thunberg, but they are still not hearing what she is saying: when the crisis hits (as it is bound to do sooner than you think), your kid's birthday party won't matter anymore. See? I've turned into an asshole.
I don't even know how I handle the cognitive dissonance of raising my child, being present to play and laugh with her, feeding her the next meal, helping her use the potty, making her a long-flowy skirt so she can dance to Mariachi music in the living room (she loves Mexican folk dance); while sifting through my environmental grief.
North Atlantic puffins are critically endangered, salmon are dying of heat by the riverful in Alaska, the Amazon is burning and with it the homes of the protectors of the rainforest. Funerals are being held for glaciers that will never come back. Every time I see a photo of a skinny, starving polar bear hanging onto an ice floe, it hits me like a stake through the heart. One day I will have to tell my daughter that Puffin Rock, one of the shows we let her watch, is a paean to a species that no longer exists; the Octonauts have no marine life left to protect, and by the way, Captain Barnacles died of starvation. Is that a cruel thing to say?
If only it weren´t true that we are killing the world, and ourselves with it, right now.
As I mentioned in my last blog post, I got involved with Extinction Rebellion (XR) after another eco-mom read my blog and reached out. For someone like me who has been at least marginally involved in the ecological movement for 20 years, it is a relief to have found an organization committed to telling the truth about the climate crisis. XR has been using the most effective means to force governments and corporations to STOP destroying the world (mass civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action), and make a transition (that will be incredibly complex yet totally necessary) to a way of living that is not fossil-fueled, extractive, growth-obsessed capitalism. It has been GOOD for my mental health to sit in living rooms of people who until yesterday were strangers, sharing food and stories and supporting each other to show up. Rather than being all alone in my environmental grief closet, I feel more sane and connected than I have in years. I wish my friends and family would join me.
But here's the thing, I met a lot of these friends when I was pregnant. After a lifetime forswearing ever having kids because I knew we were on the road to environmental collapse, there I was, expecting a baby in my 40s, hanging out with my (much older) husband's friends who were definitely in the post-baby part of life.
Like every pregnant woman, and maybe more than your average one because of my history of pregnancy by rape, I needed to shelter myself. I quit working as a trauma-focused child psychotherapist, I dove deep into writing my novel, I revived my tiny private practice to make a little money. For the most part I ate well, took naps, read books and lived in a bubble of my own making. My daughter’s arrival coincided with the arrival in the White House of that horrid administration (you know the one), but even though I have breastfed my way through almost every single demonstration and march of the past 3 years, my emergence from the baby bubble has been somewhat slow and careful, like a butterfly trying not to tear her wings upon exiting the cocoon.
I know that my friends with young kids, some of whom are pregnant again, or in that sweet and sleepless state of caring for a newborn, need their cocoon too, and when they exit, they need to do so gently. But I can't stop worrying about them, and their kids, and all of the children of the planet.
And I know, I know, whatever activism I do, I do because I am privileged: my family gets by mostly with my husband's income, and he takes care of Sophia in the evenings when I attend organizing meetings.
Because I work with the part of Extinction Rebellion that supports indigenous sovereignty and is committed to redressing the ills of colonization and slavery, I have been making some visits. My group recently met with the tribal chairman of the Amah Mutsun people, who for thousands of years stewarded this land as one of the most biodiverse regions in the world, none of whom can afford to live in Santa Cruz today. I went to visit some of the migrant farmworkers who produce more than 1/3 of this country's fruits and vegetables in conditions of exploitation: overworked, underpaid, exposed to pesticides and at risk of sunstroke, without stable housing. Not everyone gets a cocoon. And isn't that a reason to rebel? Because the world is so unfair and our way of life so destructive.
As I struggle between my present responsibilities to my home and community, and my duty to my child and future generations, I got some encouragement from the brilliant book, “The Parents’ Guide to the Climate Revolution: 100 ways to build a fossil-free future, raise empowered kids, and still get a good night's sleep” by Mary DeMocker. Everyone who wants to solve our world's problems can get some really clear practical help from this book. Read it, then come over to discuss it. I'll make you lunch. I promise you won't regret it.
The author, who has a much stronger and longer track record in the environmental movement than I, and knows a heck of a lot more about climate science and political activism, also really understands parents. Her messages are so clear, compassionate and smart. Mary DeMocker conveys that the next couple of years are unique and critical in giving us an opportunity to heal our world to some degree. If business as usual equals human extinction, it may be worth ceasing to live our lives as usual and putting some serious effort into pulling us back from the precipice.
Like her, I am choosing to shrink my family’s budget and work less to have more time for activism, which is our best bet—better than everyone going zero waste and shrinking their personal carbon footprint—to transform the fossil fuel-guzzling machinery of industrial civilization.
Hey, friend, we're building an ark. It's a refusal to go extinct, it's called community, activism, positive deep adaptation and emergency response. It will be here when you need it.
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