My Climate Action Story
I grew up in NYC and then when I was 11 years old we moved to the beautiful Hudson Valley, the foothills of the Catskills. For a city girl to experience the country for the first time year round was eye opening and extraordinary. I remember the brilliant oranges and golds of Autumn, the cool crisp air, crunch of leaves under foot. In winter icicles covered bare tree branches that glittered in the pale winter sun, there were piles of fresh snow to jump in, little green buds finally arriving in spring, we had crystal clear streams to swim in on hot summer days and meadows full of wildflowers to run through.
I grew up believing that this would all continue in it’s cycle- I simultaneously appreciated it all and took this all for granted, in the sense that we take our mothers for granted as children believing they will always be there.
Many years later I was living in Los Angeles and we were in the middle of the pandemic and forest fires and other fires were raging all around Los Angeles. The sky had a creepy orange glow and we were told not to go outside unless we had to and to minimize it. Already feeling trapped by the pandemic all around I started to feel a panicky claustrophobia during the fires, when we couldn’t even go out for walks. I have asthma and have had emergency room visits gasping for breath, ICU stays with a collapsed lung. Not breathing was all too real for me. I realized that even so I was one of the lucky ones at that point – my house wasn’t burning down and I wasn’t sick with Covid. I had known a little bit about climate change and I started learning more about it during this period. I joined Firedrill Fridays with Greenpeace and Jane Fonda and was reading about climate change “All We Can Save” was a pivotal book for me and I started creating an art series based on those most vulnerable to climate change. I felt a unity with so many others in this world who are suffering. And a pull to connect with others striving to turn things around.
As I learned more I went through a myriad of thoughts and emotions. The emotions were raw-fear, grief, and anger swept through me and I could see that the droughts and fires of the west coast were only going to become more frequent and worse, the hurricanes and floods of the south, the rising oceans, the melting glaciers, the heating planet- all would get worse until earth was unlivable… unless….unless everyone started to really take all this seriously and were willing to make the necessary changes. I decided I had to join the effort to make these changes. For my daughters, so much still at the beginning of their lives and excited about their futures, for all my little preschool students who have touched my life over the past 12 years, for all the children of the world who need a future to look forward to, for the beautiful land, rivers, oceans, trees, plants, for all the animals and all the people who deserve to have clean air and water and a healthy planet to live on.
This is a time of great threats and a time of great possibility for really wonderful change. If we can come together as a people, people for climate justice, racial justice, class justice, gender justice. If we can put our earth and it’s living creatures above materialism and greed we have a real chance. I can’t afford to go to that place in my mind of the alternative so I don’t, I stay focused on the positive changes we can make happen if we pull together. I can do that.
Creativity has always been an avenue out of despair for me, a way to take all the challenges in my life, even the most painful and transform them into something meaningful. As I researched the people, places, animals, plant-life most immediately vulnerable to climate change I grew to love them more and more. I wanted to protect them. through my collages I wanted to share the beauty, grace, sacredness of them, with others so that they too would love them, and want to protect them. Fear freezes us, but love has boundless energy, love of the world is the only true reason to work to bring it back into balance.
If you are interested in getting involved with climate action here are some great organizations to check out:
