What you focus on grows
Our climate futures and the power we hold to shape them.
Pacing Ourselves
A couple of seasons have passed since we last spoke. Autumn came and went, the flowers wilted into rust-colored soil, and I began savoring the last blooms, literally - drinking fragrant lavender, jasmine, and chamomile teas at all hours of the day.
Winter arrived as a cool mist absorbing light and shrinking daytime, inviting us to recalibrate along with the season. Black sesame tahini by the spoonful and frothy golden milk lattes are helping me move through colder afternoons.
It is only mid January, but already the rhythms of business, exertion, and performance are siphoning our attention spans. We still have free will to choose a more humane pace. Have you?
The year transitioned, and the holidays are technically over, but did you rest, did you get to slow down and properly greet the new year?
Wherever the beginning of this year finds you, I hope you are seizing restoration aggressively, in whichever form most serves your needs.
Seeking Awe
I began taking spontaneous photo walks during the pandemic as a practice of touching grass, keeping vigilance, staying human, and insisting on awe. Many of the images you see in this newsletter are a result of moments from my weekly photo walks. Each frame is a nod to the awe that exists around me.
Living out varying simultaneous realities of wildly unprecedented times that human kind has never seen before has the world collectively tuned in and tuned out at once. But awe… awe snaps us into attention.
Why awe, why now? I keep coming back to awe as a lens to process this critical decade because it sits squarely between fear, wonder, and action. Awe is not just fascination, its the emotion that precedes response. Awe requires (re)action.
A mindful photo walk seems like a frivolous reprieve, a meaningless blip in the midst of every cruel action happening in the world right now. And in some ways it is. But, taking care of ourselves and others, and attuning our appreciation toward the life happening around us, is essential in an era where we are repeatedly witnessing innocent lives, entire ecosystems and populations being diminished, devalued, and discarded with such ease - either by gross violence or compounding so-called “natural disasters”.
Every opportunity to experience awe is an invitation to reconnect to our humanity.
And that reconnection is not separate from our climate crisis —it is foundational to it.
Our Changing Climate
Climate change and awe don’t usually appear in the same sentence, but they are closely related. Climate change is not just an environmental issue; it is a perceptual one. When destruction unfolds at a scale too vast to hold, we disengage. Awe interrupts that numbness. It places us back into relationship—with place, with time, with response ability. It reminds us that we are not outside the systems we are altering, but deeply embedded within them.
Part of what makes climate change as a concept so disorienting is we all experience it differently, and until it hits close to home, it feels like a distant problem with vaguely dire consequences, but not soon or specific enough for you to worry about right now. There are more urgent concerns, like ensuring your family is safe, the groceries that need buying, the work load that seems never-ending, the bills, the pending doctors report.
That’s the urgency of survival.
Surviving is not concerned with foundation, it is hard set on ceasing pain and making it safely to the next minute. Survival is immediate, primal, gritty, swift, restrictive, fear-driven.
And when survival dominates our inner landscape, there is little room left for imagination. We become oriented toward endurance, not possibility- toward bracing for loss rather than envisioning what could still be built.
Much of the language describing climate change is about survival and the lessening possibility of survival. The available climate solutions feel out of reach because we rarely hear about them in contexts we are familiar with and formats we want to consume. Our go-to movies, books, shows, and music creative outlets are rarely sites where climate solutions are mentioned because we demand entertainment and are conditioned to be more distracted than prepared.
But as co-creators of our lives, we possess a wellspring of power to form realities that serve us all.
Beyond Surviving: Serving
WOC Creators Leading Change
It’s easy to look to others who “know more” to lead the charge to build the worlds we want to see, but it’s within our neighborhoods, friend groups, and local communities that we hold the most influence. Your language, your sensibilities, your way of taking action is needed.
We are each other’s best hope.
The following are four women of color creators who know this and act accordingly. Each are raising funds to help their communities survive these times. Check out their initiatives and support where you can with a share, a donation, or a purchase. Every effort counts. If you know of any other trusted resources share in the comments!
The future we need is within us.
HAWAII
Nai Vasha is growing a farm of red fruits and veg in Hawaii, literally feeding people -sustainably. Support her vision with a donation, buy merch, share her work with ya friends. Donate to Get Redy farm. To hear her inspiring story, watch this.
JAMAICA
Chari and Dane Caston are raising funds to build homes in Chari’s motherland of Jamaica. So far they’ve raised $885 with a goal of $4000. Donate and follow their non profit, World-Peace Connection for updates.
Mecca JW is offering proceeds of her JAM clothing line collaboration with Skylark Negril to hurricane disaster relief efforts in Jamaica.
SUDAN
Safia Elhillo is offering poem workshops or 1:1 poem readings if you email her proof of your donation to Darfur Women Action relief efforts. Don’t know what is happening in Sudan? This fifty minute podcast episode breaks it down.
3 Awe ‘Tings
a short list of awe-inspiring content to help you through your week.
If you’d like to imbue more awe into your life this year, I highly recommend photo walks as a way in! Try experimenting with small detours in your day that could inspire new openings: lingering awhile in conversation with a stranger, taking a different route to the grocery store, or filling your spare moments with a music genre that fascinates you. Here are three awe inspiring resources to help you begin exploring :
📱This thirty minute Our Common Nature podcast episode from Yo-Yo ma on learning how indigenous Wabanaki musicians remain in kinship with nature through music.
🎵 Yurudas - I heard this song for the first time recently and it has been on repeat since. let the joy of it transport you into dance, into a smile, into jubilee.
📚 “How to Read A Tree” book by Tristan Gooley - a fascinating read that I couldn’t put down - you’ll look at trees with more awe and cool knowledge that will help you survive in the outdoors (should the need arise).
Thank you a million for this. 💖✨