What helps me not be at climate week
My experience last year is offering deep perspective on making space, tending to what matters most, and investing in good stories.
NYC Climate Week starts September 22. This didn’t occur to me when I selected dates for a three week notebook archiving and writing retreat starting on — you guessed it — September 22. Seeing all the LinkedIn posts and hearing colleagues ask who else is going makes my FOMO balloon. And when I say FOMO, I really do mean a fear of missing out: the fear that I’ll lose out on new work connections, chances to make a bigger impact, and, worst of all, I'll lose my claim that I belong in this work sector. I spent several years feeling denied opportunities in the world of climate services. I don’t want to lose out again!!, my inner fear shouts.
But then I think about last year's Climate Week, and I pause. On Monday morning of 2024 Climate Week, I woke up in Upstate NY full of anticipation as I got ready to head down to the city. That’s when I got the phone call from my mom: Dad had a stroke.
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Leading up to Climate Week, I felt empowered and important. I spent months planning two different events about honoring ecological loss, climate resilience, and spiritual care. One was through my artist residency at Madhura Studios, and another with one of my favorite NYC institutions, Green-wood Cemetery. I had the chance to bring together panelists, partners, and participants who I admire deeply. I had a long list of other resonant events I RSVP'd for, from summits to happy hours to environmental art shows. I was ready to feel part of something significant, full of innovative ideas for a healthier future, and that being there would bolster my career.
Needless to say, the week did not go as hoped. My dad stayed in the hospital for three days while I did my best to pull off both events, and I cancelled almost everything else — making space by necessity to tune into what was most pressing. By Thursday, I made my way down to New Jersey to join my mom and aunt in being by his side. We were incredibly lucky that as far as strokes go, his was fairly mild.
But his health crisis put me in a state where I was hardly thinking about about my work future or even our collective climate future. Instead, I was full of thoughts about my own future with aging parents, and the future of my own aging.
I felt the weight that anything can happen to our bodies in an instant; the fear that this could be the start of a serious decline; the fear of missing out on precious moments with my parents. At 65 years young, my dad thankfully had both the time and vitality to recover and heal from this. But the idea that my parents’ healthiest days might be behind them is a hard reality to hold on its own.
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So too is it hard to harbor the feeling that our planet — or vital institutions, or country as we knew it, or anything we care about — are in decline, nose diving towards the end. Without something to hold alongside this, we can become so terrified that we scramble for control, try and do all the right things, or feel like we must bring some enormous, perfect response or solution. If I could just go to Climate Week and convince the right people of loss-honoring policies and practices… if I could just end fossil fuels… if I could just stop all abuses of power…
To be clear, I want to work towards those things. And yet, what we're really facing here — from climate work to aging loved ones — is less something to master and even get completely right, and instead a kind of process of tending to the fragile and impermanent conditions we find ourselves in on planet earth. Knowing that no matter what, the present is always becoming the past, what, then, is our companion for facing uncertainty and endings?
For me right now, it’s stories. Stories can be like candles that keep the past aglow. Stories have the power to offer comfort and show us a way forward — though can also be hurtful, elicit hate, and stoke fear and violence. Rebecca Solnit often writes about how “every crisis is in part a storytelling crisis,” reminding us that we hold so much agency in what stories we hold close, and those we share and uplift.
My boyfriend Luke and I were lucky enough to see Rebecca speak at Upaya Zen Center recently, where she talked about how contemplative Buddhist practice “offers not just better stories about who we are and can be... but also the ability to pause our stories, to quiet down so we sit without the noise of the stories we tell ourselves.” Luke reminds me often how important it is to cultivate this kind of spaciousness.
When we’re quiet enough that the conditioned stories drop off, we can take more responsibility for what stories will really serve us best. As Rebecca said in her talk, it's our duty to “look for the liberatory (stories), the ones that open doors and take you through the gates, not the ones that slam them. The ones that invite you to expand, not contract, in care, in awareness, in connection.” I think we can also look for the ones that bring loved ones, ancestors, things cherished and no longer a little closer towards us. Stories - even after my parents and aunt and loved ones are gone - will be what I can still hold with me.
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So in lieu of participating in NYC Climate Week, I'm embracing my life-given role as a holder of stories, a conduit between past and future. Thanks to my artist residency with Madhura Studios, I'm tending to the words and drawings that fill all the notebooks of my past sixteen years, attempting to string some of them into insights and ideas that will accompany us to wherever we're going. That can accompany me in my own uncertainty and inevitable letting go’s.
The act of writing even this very newsletter has helped create that very spaciousness I need to unhook from the Climate Week FOMO. With quieted fear, I was able to uncover a story of wisdom gleaned from my experience last year. Will this story offer me powerful enough proof to feel okay about unintentionally “missing out”? Maybe!
And for everyone who is going, I’ll be awaiting your own great stories from the experience on the other side.