The Season of Giving

A few months ago my husband, daughter and I went to Florida (okay, okay, Disney World) for vacation. In the rush to get out the door and to the airport, we forgot to bring my daughter's baby doll. Halfway to the airport, she noticed Baby's absence and began to cry, asking if we could go home and get her - which, of course, we couldn't.

(At this point, the feminist in me always feels compelled to comment on the baby doll, so please excuse the diversion. When my daughter was born, I vowed that she would never play with dolls - as they say, never say never. She had trucks and trains and blocks, but no dolls, because I did not want to force her into any sort of gender-stereotyped play. When she was just over a year old, we were at a friend's birthday party, and when Bess found her stash of dolls - well, the girl was in heaven. She wanted to hold them, feed them - with a bottle, which I thought was odd because she never had a bottle and no one we know uses bottles - diaper them, rock them, put them to sleep, wake them up, carry them around, put them in a stroller and go for a walk, put them in the pool....you get the idea. What could I do? We got her a baby doll, and then another arrived at our house, and then another, and they are by far her favorite toys.

Since then, I have discussed this with some other feminist friends who have different but comforting perspectives on the issue. One told me that all young children play with dolls because they imitate what they see around them - namely, us taking care of them. It isn't that girls are encouraged to play with dolls, it's that boys are encouraged not to play with dolls. My wisest friend and role model, Valerie, had a more thought-provoking and challenging perspective: as parents, it is not our job to make our kids what we think they should be, but to help them become the best them that they can be. So if my daughter chooses, with no pressure from me, to be a pink-wearing twirly girl, then it is my job - distasteful as I may sometimes find it - to encourage her to be the best, most confident, powerful pink wearing twirly-girl she can be. What a lovely thought, no? After all, there are worse things that she could be than a kind, considerate, and nurturing person. Right?

Okay, thanks for the indulgence, now back to the story.....)

So, where were we? Oh, that's right, forgot the baby doll, weeping child...so, of course my first instinct was to say, "That's okay Bess, don't worry. As soon as we get to the airport we will find you a brand new baby doll that you can bring on vacation." Luckily, something stopped me from saying that, for which I am eternally grateful, because it gave me the opportunity to learn a valuable lesson. What I said instead was, "I'm sorry that we forgot your baby doll at home, but she'll be waiting there for us when we get home. I'm sure you'll be looking forward to seeing her." Though she cried for awhile, by the time we took off she had made her sippy cup into a baby, wrapped it up in a tissue blanket, laid it on a pillow for a nap, and was happily anticipating a trip to see Mickey. (My Disney guilt will have to be a topic for a later post, but in my defense, let me say that it is all my husband's idea and he plans our vacations.)

In the most recent issue of my most favorite magazine, Brain, Child, they published a debate titled "Is there such a thing as too many toys?" A timely topic at this time of year, to be sure. The woman arguing the "No" position said that kids need as many toys as possible so they have as many props as possible to help them construct complex fantasies and storylines in their play. The woman arguing the "Yes" position said that fewer toys force children to use their imaginations more, and that she has concerns about the global, environmental impact of all that stuff.

I remember coming away from this debate feeling oddly ambivalent, as if neither one of these writers had really captured my feelings on the subject. On the one hand, I could see the point that more toys could, theoretically, offer more opportunities for different types of play, for creativity. But I think my sympathy with this point of view went much deeper than a simply being persuaded by the strength of her argument. I grew up pretty poor. We always had food on the table, clothes on our backs, and a roof over our heads, but we didn't have much else. I rarely had the latest and greatest toys (with the exception of a Cabbage Patch Kid - remember those? - that my mom saved up for months to buy), and it always made me feel different, left out, deprived if you will. Even though I am committed to minimizing our family's consumption, I could not help but look under the tree this year and feel that there wasn't enough. But that was my own stuff bubbling to the surface, and had nothing to do with Bess - she got the two or three toys she wanted, and was happy. It is not until we meet up with the larger culture that we start to have a sense of quantity with respect to toys.

However, even though I really believe - when I look past my unhealed childhood wounds - that the answer to the question, "Can we have too many toys?" is a resounding "YES!", I still felt that the argument on that side of the issue was lacking something. I think that children get distracted by too many toys and don't really know what to play with, what to do, where to go when they're surrounded by too much stuff. I'd rather see my daughter figure out a hundred ways to use a play scarf than for her to have a separate apparatus for each possible function. I believe that it is better to spend our money on a few, versatile and high-quality toys than a ton of plastic crap that is going to break soon anyway. I believe that children need to develop an aesthetic sense and should be surrounded by beautiful things, not garishly bright mono-textured plastic toys of every imaginable shape, size and sound. And, of course, I am not in any way naive to the environmental and human rights impact of these abundant toys, including the pollution generated to make them, the toxins they contain, the fact that they will be here taking up landfill space (or floating in the ocean?) until the end of time, the amount of energy needed to manufacture and ship them from China, and the fact that the people who make them are likely not treated particularly well.

But there's something else, something that I couldn't quite put my finger on....and then I remembered the sippy cup doll. I think what sticks in my craw is that we are so quick to allow our children to become attached to STUFF. I realize that children are inclined to attach to a comfort item (a blankie, a baby doll, in my sister's case a slipper) to help them get through difficult transitions (going away from home, starting school, the arrival of a new sibling). However, wouldn't it be so much better if they could become attached to PEOPLE who help them through these transitions instead of a piece of plastic manufactured halfway around the world? Sure, my daughter would have liked to have the comfort of her baby doll as she dealt with the stress of going away from home, getting on an airplane, living in a new room for a week, not having any of her familiar sights and sounds to count on (contrary to my husband's opinion, I firmly believe that vacation is stressful for young children, not relaxing). But she didn't need that thing, because she had us to count on to help her through.

How odd that my first inclination was to meet her attachment to stuff with a promise to buy her more stuff! It is so much easier, as parents, when our kids find their comfort in things, not people. It frees us from the obligation to actually be there and sit with their difficult, powerful, ugly and uncontrolled feelings as they work them through. It is so much easier, or at least less unpleasant, if our children curl up with their blankie and the TV when they're feeling sad, or play smash-em-up cars when they're angry, instead of coming to us and expecting us to sit calmly with them while they cry, scream, rage, yell, or say hurtful things. But the truth is, that's what they really need.

Perhaps, in this season of giving, the whole focus on stuff - more stuff, less stuff, who has stuff, who doesn't have stuff - what we should really be focusing on is giving our selves to our children, our spouses, our friends, our communities, and...well, ourselves. It's been quite some time since I've been to church, but I seem to recall from those days of Sunday School so long ago that the story of Christmas is one of personal sacrifice. I'm not sure I believe that Jesus is the one true God, but for sure he is a great prophet and a shining example of what it means to love and to give. According to the story the Bible tells, a lot of people had to find ways to work through a lot of complicated issues - unwed motherhood, ostracism, friendship and betrayal, death by crucifixion - in order to fulfill their commitment to save humankind from damnation. Okay, so none of us has anything nearly that heavy resting on our shoulders, but certainly one of the messages this story has to teach us is that we need to work through our own baggage so that we can be free to act with courage and love towards others.

Somewhere along the line, we began to associate Christmas with giving stuff. Even when people talk about "putting Christ back in Christmas" and "remembering the reason for the season", they are often referring to charitable giving in lieu of gift giving. Obviously, I am all for philanthropy, but maybe we should also take some time to consider the notion that we need to focus on giving ourselves as well, or instead. Rather than thinking so much about what our kids do and do not have, we should examine this preoccupation with stuff in and of itself. My New Year's Resolution is to think less in terms of stuff - namely, why isn't it ever where it belongs in my house? - and worry more about time. The mess (unfortunately) isn't going anywhere, but my daughter sure is. She's older and more grown up every day, so I've decided that my commitment to her needs to be that I will stop sweating the small stuff and work through my own control issues so that I can give her what she really needs - my time, attention, and support in becoming a pink-wearing twirly girl who loves her baby dolls.

The Universe Story

Last weekend, I went to Genesis Farm in Blairstown, New Jersey to see a talk given by Jennifer Morgan, author of the Universe Story trilogy for children. She was discussing the mythological implications of the story of our cosmos, and how this can and should inform our parenting. One of the central ideas of her work is that within crisis is the force of creativity, and (much like in our personal lives) it pften takes a huge disruption in the status quo to set the stage for the next big step forward. Morgan discussed the oxygen crisis of 2,500 MYA and how it led to the evolution of oxygen-breathing organisms, and how the extinction of the dinosaurs was necessary for mammals to emerge. Now, she claims, we are in the midst of another such earth-rocking crisis.

Unfortunately, we cannot know ahead of time what the next phase of life on this planet will be. We cannot know if human life will continue, and if it does, what it will look like. Many of the participants in the seminar asked questions that revealed their discomfort with the idea that we cannot know if, or how, the story of human life on Earth will end. They wanted to know what people think our future holds on this planet, and what we can do to ensure our survival. To be sure, it is terrifying to imagine the pain and suffering that could occur if civilization as we know it were to come to an end.

However, there is also something liberating about the idea that we are constantly evolving, and that each planetary upheaval leaves the door open for the emergence of something new and previously unimagimable. I've often wondered about the movement towards sustainable, mindful living, thinking that it might represent a huge evolutionary step for humans, along the lines of walking upright and developing agriculture. It seems that I am not alone in this thinking. Perhaps the technological leaps that have been taken in recent centuries, and that have drained the resources of our Earth, were necessary to give highly-evolved, simply-living and ecologically-conscious humans the tools we will need to take this next step.

As I considered the implications of Morgan's talk, I began to see the "Save the Planet" movement as the ultimate in human hubris. The planet does not need saving - it will continue if and after we are gone, no matter what we do. It will surely not take the same form as it does today because of human activity, and it may already be too late to undo most of the problems and destruction that we have wrought. However, though our species may have a catastrophic impact on this planet, in the framework of geologic time this crisis will be short-lived and, even if it spells the end of human life as we know it, the planet will rebound and fill the void with new life. Many people view humans as the crowning achievement of evolution, but in fact, we are just one species among many who have inhabited the planet during its long and ongoing history. While there is no question that we have done a great deal to reduce biological diversity on this planet, there is not one person among us who knows what this really means. Humans or no humans, the bioshpere will change, and continue to change, forever. That is what Earth does. Polar bears or tigers may not be around forever, but there will always be life.

So, then what does this mean for us as parents and as human beings? Does it mean we should simply throw in the towel, and surrender our fate to the Universe? Should we just live it up today, and who cares what happens tomorrow? I don't think so. However, I think it does mean that we need to give up our attachment to our ideas about how things should turn out. Obviously all of us, especially as parents, want to see human life continue with a minimum of war, poverty and pain. But none of us know what will happen, and we can waste an awful lot of emotional energy worrying about things that may or may not come to pass. This energy would be better spent working towards the future that we would like to see.

Accepting that we just do not have a crystal ball that will show us the future does not mean that we should stop working to ensure that humans will have a long, prosperous and peaceful stay on this planet. In fact, I would say that surrendering to the unkown is very freeing for the socially conscious among us. We no longer have to end our days wondering, "Have I done enough to save our biosphere from human destructiveness?" since that responsibility is off our plates. Who can live with that kind of pressure for very long, anyway? Instead, we can simply look at each day and ask ourselves, "What have I done to make my lifestyle more sustainable today?" That is a much more productive way of thinking, since every day we can easily do something that will help us move towards that goal.

For some of us, a contribution to the sustainability of human life on Earth will be local and personal, such as getting a hybrid automobile, installing solar panels on our homes, eating local foods, and minimizing our consumption. Others of us will take a more active role, enlarging our circles to become educators or activists. Some among us will be drawn to a hands-on approach, helping to educate children or build a well (or wind turbines?) in poor communities around the globe. All these contributions are important as our species necessarily moves towards a more cooperative, rather than a domineering, way of living on this planet. Instead of taking an all-or-nothing approach that can be a big turn-off to people who are not ready to take a big leap, seeing each small step as a contribution that moves the curve towards the sustainable end of the spectrum allows everyone to take a part in the movement to end the suffering that is being caused by humans on this planet.

Big Vision Living

I was recently driving past a church in my neighborhood - you know, the kind that always has one of those snappy sayings on the bulletin board in the front. This week, it simply had the title of the weekend's sermon: "Big Vision Living". I'm not sure what that means in a Biblical context, but I thought that would be a great topic for a Humane Parenting talk. I wonder if it would be plagarism to use it?

When we talk about parents who are aiming to raise a humane child, we are talking about taking both the long view and the wide view of life. We are asking parents to consider things that may not affect the planet in our lifetimes, or in those of our children or even our grandchildren, such as global warming. We are also asking them to consider things that are happening outside the realm of their immediate experience - water shortages in Uzbekistan, child labor in Pakistan, enslaved prostitutes in Thiland, even factory farming on distant stretches of pasture land in Kansas. This is a tall order, to say the least.

It is difficult for parents, who are often wrapped up in the day-to-day goings on of our family lives, to practice Big Vision Living. It can seem impossible to keep tabs on all the issues that may be important to us, never mind researching all the options regarding such things as food and personal care products, clothing purchases, how our homes and transportation are powered, or the entertainment we choose for ourselves and our children. For those of us who are committed to living a humane lifestyle, it can often become frustrating and demoralizing as our friends, families, and perfect strangers feel obligated, or at least entitled, to criticize the alternative choices we make on behalf of our families.

At least in my experience as a childless person making choices outside the mainstream, I was often teased for the "strange" things I did, and though I may have been seen as an oddity, I was rarely met with open hostility (unless I chose to put myself in the line of fire). Once a child became involved, however, people began pulling no punches as they explained to us how our choices, which they once regarded as unusual and perhaps inconvenient, are now selfish, irresponsible and downright damaging to our children.

So, what is a conscientious parent to do? Most important is finding a group of like-minded people, parents if possible, who will understand, respect and support you in your right to make the choices that are right for you. For our family, joining our local chapter of the Holistic Moms Network has made the path much easier as we are surrounded by others who make non-traditional lifestyle choices that are perhaps different from ours, but who understand our desire to live an authentic life.

Secondly, you need not share your opinions and choices with everyone who asks. While it is important to be an ambassador for Big Vision Living, to live your values and be an example to the world of humane living, it is also important that we save our sanity. This sometimes requires us to take a break from constantly seeing ourselves as educators to the world and minding our own business and allowing others to mind theirs.

It is also helpful to try to see where our critics are coming from and to try to approach their position with compassion. People get very emotional when it comes to children. Sometimes when we look behind angry or critical words, what we find is a scared or regretful person who is really upset with themselves more than us.

Lastly, we need to stand our ground. Our decisions are ours alone to make, and we alone must live with the consequences of what we do or do not do. In the end, if me make a particular choice not in an effort to live our values, but only to avoid the criticism or arguments that will result from that choice, we lose some of ourselves in the process. We have to always remember that we are setting an example for our children: of courage, of integrity, of vision. That is more important than what other people think of the lives we live.

Big Vision Living means something different to everyone. People have different priorities and different perspectives. People who agree on what the issues are can also disagree on how exactly to recognize and act on those issues in an effort to live a humane life. All we can do is identify our values, examine the things that are important to us and how our behavior speaks to those things, and do the best we can for ourselves and our families.

One Mountain

I belong to quite a few online chat groups, many of which discuss homeschooling. There is one I particularly enjoy, which is run by a woman who writes nature-based curriculum for young children. I find her ideas to be inspiring, and I have incorporated many of them into my own life.

Recently, she posted that she and her daughters had gone out and collected thousands of acorns from their yards, and offered to mail some of them to people who did not have any acorns around their homes. While this is a seemingly innocent, even generous, offer, the more I thought about it the more it started to bother me.

First of all, if acorns are not something that is native to your area, why would you ever want someone to mail you some? What were people going to do with them? What would be wrong with going outside with children and looking at the things that are native to their area, whether that be cactus and Joshua trees or lichen and towering pines?

Richard Louv, in his book Last Child in the Woods, quotes an old Native American saying that goes something like this: "It is better to know one mountain well than to visit many mountains." (I've loaned out my copy so I can't look up the exact wording, but you get the idea.) If we are trying to build reverence for nature among our chilren, in the hopes that this will make them physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually healthier - in addition to making them more compassionate and responsible residents of our planet - it is probably more effective, and certainly more efficient, to help them fall in love with their immediate surroundings.

In trying to teach them about some Hallmark card-esque version of "Autumn", for example, instead of going outside and exploring what autumn really looks like in our own neighborhoods, whether we live in the deserts of Arizona, the tundra of Alaska, or foliage-dense New Hampshire, we turn what could be a reverence-building activity into an intellectual exercise. Instead of teaching our children to tune into the beauty that surrounds them wherever they are, we teach them about an abstraction that is some other place, a place they cannot touch or experience, at least in the moment.

But more than that, I think that this activity shows a very subtle lack of respect for nature. It implies that the acorns belong to us and are ours for the taking, instead of recognizing the reality that they have a purpose, right where they are. Recently we were in Florida on vacation, and the acorns there look very different from the acorns we see in New Jersey. Jersey acorns are short, fat and brown, while Florida acorns are long, thin and green. My daughter was intrigued by the difference, and wanted to collect dozens of them to bring home to compare to our native species. While I did allow her to take a handful of them home (which amounted to about five), I then explained to her that they rest of them needed to stay where they were. The squirrels needed them for food, and the ones they did not eat they would bury and either dig up to eat later, or they would grow into new trees.

It is vital that we be very aware of the underlying messages that are inherent in what we do, if we are trying to raise our children to be humane. Many of the problems that we face in our world are borne of the attitude that humans, whites, men, Protestants, heteresexuals, able-bodied people, or ________________ (fill in the dominant group of your choice) are entitled to take what they wish from other people, other species, or the environment, and everyone else would have to get by on whatever is left. Therefore, it is so important that those of us who are trying to raise compassionate children give serious thought to everything we do, examining our actions to be sure they do not perpetuate this mind-set. If we wish for our children to be critical thinkers, then we need to model this for them by critically evaluating our own choices and decoding the messages that we send.

The Eternal Yin

Recently my mom's group had a discussion regarding the ways we, as educated and intelligent women, find fulfillment - or don't find it - as stay-at-home moms. Most of us agree that there is no place we'd rather be than home with our children, yet we also miss the intellectual and professional pursuits of our pre-parenthood days and wonder what we are going to do with our time when our children have moved on and we are left searching for ways to fill the hours that used to be spent bathing, dressing, feeding, diapering, and otherwise cleaning up after our young ones. One of the moms suggested that perhaps our dissatisfaction with the mundane nature of our lives as homemakers stems from the fact that we have schooling that our fore-mothers did not have, which has prepared us for, and allowed us to expect to have, careers that we have now chosen to leave behind, at least temporarily.

I wonder: Is it that education has somehow opened up the options for us, so that we can no longer happily settle for lives at home? Or have feminists, who have struggled to achieve equality between the sexes - clearly a worthwhile goal - somehow thrown out the baby with the bathwater? Perhaps in the glorification of the "yang" - activity, achievement, attainment, aggressiveness - we have lost sight of the value of "yin" - the feminine, the nurturing, the softness. Perhaps it is not so much that women used to have no options, but that they recognized that the work of nurturing a family and ensouling a home was just as important, if not more important, than the work their husbands did outside the home in order to bring home a wage.

Qualities that are often associated with femininity are those of being passive, receptive, and yielding. These are not qualities that are valued in American culture. Even those of us who embrace the role of mother and choose to make it our vocation, at least for a little while, struggle to come to terms with that choice in a society that rejects all things feminine. We struggle to reconcile our own training, which has taught us to reject these qualities as well, with the primal and very fundamental urge to honor and continue the time-honored work of women. It would do us well to consider another quality that is traditionally associated with "yin": that of the eternal.

I will concede that most of the tasks involved in parenting young children are far from intellectually fulfilling. The physical demands of mothering often leave us with little time and energy for the academic pursuits which used to be so important to us. However, there are few careers that offer us better opportunities for personal growth, emotional fulfillment, and the chance to really touch the future. Aside from education and non-profit work, careers that may be intellectually stimulating are rarely meaningful in the long-term. Every time a woman chooses to use her time and abilities to build a home that is compassionate, peaceful, respectful, tolerant and loving, she revitalizes the feminine, caretaking energy that has become so lacking in our society. There is little that is more important that that.

This is not to say that I believe that a woman's place is in the home - far from it. I work, though I chose to leave a career whose demands would leave little time for the type of parenting I wanted to do when I had a family, and chose a job where I have the time and flexibility to be with my daughter. There are women who want to work, and women who have to work, and I believe every woman should have the freedom to make that choice for herself. However, I do believe that the way our society devalues caretaking on the one hand, telling "liberated" women that it is beneath us, while still expecting us to bear the bulk of the caretaking work on the other, leave us feeling either guilty for working, or unfulfilled at home. This schizophrenic attitude towards the work of homemaking cheats us of much of the joy of motherhood.

Many hunter-gatherer cultures are matriarchal. Before people had an understanding of the biology of reproduction, women were honored for the life-bearing and life-sustaining role that they played. It was recognized that we, like the Earth herself, are the givers and supporters of life. Now, we do understand the science behind procreation, but that does not make it any less magical or miraculous. Instead of mourning the life that we, as women, do not have - the freedom from the physical and emotional demands of motherhood that we sometimes envy our partners - we should rejoice in and respect the power that we have. We can break the cycle of violence, aggression and control that has taken over our society, and begin to cultivate the eternal yin that will sustain our species and our planet.

My Child is My Message

Several years ago at an animal rights conference, I was baffled by the near-complete absence of children, despite the fact that it was heavily attended by young couples. When I asked a friend who has been active in the animal rights community for many years about this, she shared her theory that people who become heavily involved with animal issues tend to be misogynistic – they turn to animals because they just plain don’t like people.

At the time of this conference, I was a young and childless newlywed. Since then, I have come to develop my own theory about why many activists, in many different fields, choose not to have children. After bearing witness day after day to the worst that humanity has to offer, these committed people often become bitter. Louise Hart said, “Bringing a child into the world is the greatest act of hoping there is.” People who are hopeless often choose to remain childless as well.

When we became pregnant with our daughter, I knew my priorities would soon change as my time became scarce and my energy drained. I worried that I would have to – or worse, I would want to – give up my studies and the activism that was so fulfilling to me. However, something else began to stir within me. Slowly, the issues I was examining took on a more personal cast. I began to imagine how it must really feel to be a mother in sub-Saharan Africa, going hungry so that I could put an inadequate meal on the table for my starving children. I felt the agony of the mother dying of AIDS, knowing that her young children would soon be orphans in a place that already had more orphans than healthy adults to care for them. I wondered about all the women who were also expecting a child, not because they chose the role of mother but because it was forced upon them by an abusive husband or anonymous attacker. I even feel more of a connection with the mama deer that shares the woods with us. I watch her fawns start at some imaginary predator and tear through the bushes after each other, leaping over fallen trees and rocks, and though she barely pauses from her browsing I can almost hear her thoughts: “Go ahead, run all you want. Maybe then you’ll sleep tonight!”

Sure, my priorities were going to change. I would have less time and energy for the type of activism I had been doing before as I became absorbed in my baby and nurturing my new family. I was grateful to have that luxury, unlike so many other women who had to work exhausting and dangerous jobs just to survive. However, I was also on the threshold of a very powerful chapter of my life, where my understanding of the issues I had been grappling with would become more concrete, more urgent, and more real.

It has been argued that instead of refraining from having children, people who have a deep awareness of the issues of human rights, environmental stewardship, animal welfare and the like should have children who will carry on a legacy of activism. This is certainly not a stance I would personally advocate – I am humbled by people who choose to fully dedicate themselves to a cause they believe in, and grateful for their devotion. That said, it is crucial to imbue the coming generation with the consciousness, creativity, critical thinking skills, and motivation to change the world for the better, and we as parents are uniquely positioned to do just that.

I recently read that the most rapidly growing market for organic food is among new mothers. These women presumably already knew something about the dangers of the various fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides and fungicides that are applied to most of the fruit and vegetables grown in the United States, and of the various antibiotics, growth hormones, and other drugs routinely administered to livestock. What changed, I think, is that while the risk to themselves was one they were willing to take, they were unwilling to risk their children’s health and future for the sake of convenience or saving a few food dollars. I believe that many women experience this type of altered perspective upon entering into motherhood. Consider global warming, which suddenly seems much more imminent when we begin to consider it with respect not just to our own lives but to the lifespans of our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Through our children, we become personally invested in the future of this planet and all those who inhabit it. Parent have “skin in the game”, so to speak.

When a reporter asked Mahatma Gandhi what his message was to the world, his reply was “My life is my message.” For me, I would answer that my child is my message. The choice to bring her into the world was my statement that I believe sustainability and peace will win out over destructiveness and greed. I have made a promise, by having my daughter, that I will do everything in my power to create the just, beautiful, and sustainable world that I for her. Having a child requires great courage and commitment. I have come to see the act of consciously becoming a parent, and of consciously parenting, as an act of rebellion against the forces that are destroying our planet. Choosing to bring something beautiful into the world diminishes the ugliness. My parenting has become my new form of activism.

I may lack the time these days to do all the research and volunteer work that I used to do. What I lack in time, however, I believe I make up for in motivation – the motivation to build a community of supportive, loving and humane people to surround my family, to be aware of the example I am setting for my daughter, and to do the inner work required to become the kind of mother, wife, and human being I want to be.