Join us in raising kids to be kind, engaged, resilient, and sustainable world citizens! We’ll Eat You Up, We Love You So chronicles my family’s adventures in radical kindness and sustainability.
My book, Growing Sustainable Together: Practical Resources for Raising Kind, Engaged, Resilient Children was released in June 2020 with North Atlantic Books! You can order it anywhere books are sold, including your local bookstore, Amazon, and Barnes & Nobel.
“Remember Ms. Margarett from church? She’s in that picture,” I said to my younger son, pointing at a photo of her and her husband. “She’s had cancer for a long time and she’s at the point where the treatment isn’t doing much and is making her feel worse. So she’s stopping treatment. But that means that she’ll die soon. They’re just trying to make her as comfortable as possible and we’re making cards about peace and love. But like, we can’t say get well soon or anything like that. Because she won’t.”
“Hm,” he said, contemplating the situation. He started drawing an elephant.
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“Why are you on your phone – again?” my younger son asked with an edge of whine in his voice from the bathtub.
I felt a pang of guilt. I should be paying attention to him – right? My undivided, unquestioned attention.
But wait. I had given him a ton of attention earlier that day. We had played a board gamebefore dinner. I had just played a game of 20 Questions with him focusing on Dungeons and Dragons monsters while he was in the bath. No, I shouldn’t feel guilty. I needed that break.
“Because my brain needs a break. I find being a good listener takes a lot of energy. Reading gives my brain a rest. So I’m just reading on my phone for a little while,” I responded.
He grumbled and started telling me something anyway, but at least I tried.
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Feet pushing confidently on his pedals, riding his bike in loops around the park, I see the stress melt away from my older son. I’ve described it as moving meditation for him. He’s an emotionally intense kid, but other forms of meditation just didn’t meet his needs. They were often too quiet or too still. Biking fulfilled that need to move, his body in sync with his mind and everything else.
I know my kid isn’t the only neurodivergent kid for whom biking helps. (For those not familiar, neurodivergent refers to any person whose brain doesn’t match the “typical” brain. It includes autistic people, people with ADHD, people with depression, anxiety, dyslexia, and more.) In fact, there are many environmentally friendly activities that can help kids (and adults) with some of the challenges that come with being neurodivergent. Even if you and your kids are neurotypical, these activities have many of the same benefits. This is actually what much of my book is about!
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40 was always the big milestone, the “over the hill” age. It’s the age of big parties and black balloons and ageist jokes. But for me, it was … not much. It was following on yet another COVID spike, in yet another dreary February that seemed to go on for far too long and involve far too many gray skies. It was wondering why I would even bother having a party because I wouldn’t have enough friends to attend. It was desperately contemplating every day if I would ever stop being so damn tired. It was a slight mid-life crisis that felt more like a slog through quicksand. It was being disappointed in myself that I was 40 and this much of a mess.
Now, I realize that a lot of that was burnout turned to depression talking. If there’s one thing that depression does, it lies like a bitch. I started recognizing that burnout and depression the fall before, but really started turning the corner on it just after my birthday.
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“What age is she?” I asked the dad standing with a double stroller next to me in the elevator. The top seat had an older toddler in it; the bottom one was empty, but from the conversation between them, it sounded like there was a baby with the mom.
“Three,” he sighed, obviously exhausted.
“Oh, that’s a tough age,” I responded, trying to sound as sympathetic as possible. Three was by far the hardest for us, especially when our older kid was that age and our younger kid was an infant. “It gets easier – and more fun.”
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The brown flower pot was criss-crossed with gold paint, highlighting the cracks where my child had glued the pieces together. A chunk of the top was missing, a section we couldn’t find.
This broken pot was not an accident. In fact, it was an arts and crafts project at church. But there’s been no lack of shattered pots in our household, physical or metaphorical.
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The map on the wall at the Museum of Natural HIstory seemed small, dull even, compared to the wealth of excitement around it – dinosaur bones, wall-sized video displays, models of giant sloths! But what it showed was jaw-dropping.
It was a map of what would be underwater in the U.S. from sea level rise if climate change continues unabated.
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The dog stretched its legs, sniffed around, and laid down to rest. All totally normal dog things. Except this one was made of metal and settled itself into a charging station. All of the kids watching from outside a window cried “Awww!” They were crying in wonder of not just a dog, but a robot dog! How cool is that, right? Maybe.
Once I pulled the kids away from the window and bought tickets to get in the Boston Museum of Science (where we were), I discovered that the robot dog was part of a larger artificial intelligence (AI) exhibit. I talk a lot about using AI for science in work, so I was intrigued. How was the Museum of Science going to explain AI in a way that was interesting to non-scientists?
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I stared at my face being reflected back at me from a shining silver surface. Beyond my reflection, there was a photograph laser-etched in black that felt very familiar. Activists of all ages and races yelled and held signs declaring the “People’s Climate Movement” in front of the U.S. Capital.
“I was at this event! Heck, you were at this event!” I exclaimed to my seven year old. We were at an exhibit called “Look Here” at the National Building Museum (shush, it’s much cooler than it sounds). The piece of art combined giant kaleioscopic sculptures with huge metal versions of childhood fortune tellers. Some of the fortune tellers had surfaces printed with photos of historic events in Washington D.C. Other ones featured the 1964 March on Washington and the AIDS quilt.
But to see this one – a photo my kids and I could have been in – was startling. It put us in the company of other people marching on Washington who made history. We were part of that group. We were part of history.
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I know what it’s like to be the kid sitting alone in the cafeteria. I also know what it’s like to be the kid who befriends a kid sitting alone in the cafeteria.
In eighth grade, I was having a very rough year. At the beginning of the year, I was kicked off the swim team for the simple fact that I wasn’t very good, the one place I had a semblance of a social life. I had befriended a few folks at the beginning of the year, but wasn’t very close to them yet and didn’t have the same lunch as them. Most of the time, I ate lunch in the cafeteria alone and then moved on to the library to read or music room to practice my saxophone. I never got particularly good at the saxophone, but it was a heck of a lot better than sitting around by myself in the cafeteria.
Around that time, an advisor for a club I was in (who was also a guidance counselor) suggested that I befriend a classmate. I knew I was nowhere near popular. I was barely tolerated in class among the “smart popular” kids who were in honors classes but weren’t as weird.
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