Photo courtesy of The Green Mama.
For our final Green Moms interview, welcome Manda Aufochs Gillespie, otherwise known as the Green Mama. She’s got two kids, who are ten and almost seven. Perhaps most interestingly, she lives on a remote island off the west coast of British Columbia in Canada. She blogs at The Green Mama, which you can also find on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
As this interview was over the phone, I’ve edited it a bit for clarity.
Welcome to Earth Month! This month, I’m profiling a number of “green moms” who purposely live in a sustainable way.
For our next Green Moms profile, welcome Sandi Schwartz! Like me, she’s an environmental communicator. In her interview, she has some great honesty on what’s hard about being green, even as an adult. You can check her writing out online on Happy Science Mom, the blog’s Facebook page, and its Pinterest board.
Washington D.C. has never felt hotter than when sitting on a bench at the National Zoo, holding a baby who won’t sleep and wondering when the hell your spouse will show up with some water. This was me two years ago at our first trip with the kid to the zoo. Despite grandparental support, it was a disaster.
But since then, we’ve had many successful, fun trips to the zoo, both to see the animals and ZooLights, their annual December extravaganza. Thankfully, we learned from our experience. I’m going to share those lessons learned so you have a better first (or second or third) experience!
It’s spring! Along with a lot of rain and a lot of tourists here in D.C., it’s also gardening season. We’ve sowed seeds, sprouted plants, and had a baby eating mulch. While not exactly always on task, my kids do love the idea of gardening. How do I get them excited about it?
I recently wrote how I’ve involved them over at Happy Science Mom in the post 7 Clever Ways to Get Kids Excited about Gardening.
Here’s the first paragraph of the article:
“Messing around in the dirt is a classic childhood activity. Gardening is just messing around in the dirt with a purpose. Growing fruits and vegetables together can actually be one of the most fun and engaging activities that you do with your kids. In addition to the general benefits of being outside, gardening connects kids with their food, provides them with a sense of accomplishment, and is a great way to teach a variety of important skills. In my own life, I have seen my son get so excited about the cherry tomatoes in our garden that he eats them right off the plants!”
Welcome to Earth Month! This month, I’m profiling a number of “green moms” who purposely live in a sustainable way.
For our third Green Mom Profile, welcome Julie. She’s in Germantown, MD, a suburb of Washington D.C. just north of where I am. She has two kids, who are one and five years old. She’s a mentor for Vegan Outreach, a group who is dedicated to reducing suffering through the promotion of a vegan diet.
As I peered up between my legs at my ob-gyn, I learned that I couldn’t attend my grandmother’s funeral.
“You’re four centimeters dilated,” she told me.
“So I shouldn’t go to New Jersey on Monday then?” I asked.
“You probably shouldn’t travel out of state,” she responded.
She was right. My younger son was born that afternoon. Between not attending the funeral and the chaos of a new baby, I never told my older son about my grandmother’s death. He had only met her once, briefly, so it would have met little to him anyway.
But the whole thing made me realize how urgent it was to talk to him about death. That’s in part because my other grandmother is getting up in years. My older son (nicknamed Sprout) has met “Grammy” several times and knows her well enough. While her passing may be years away, there’s no way to know. Needless to say, I didn’t want finding out about her death to be his introduction to the topic.
But I had no idea where to start.
Privilege is a word tossed around a lot these days, often in the phrase “Check your…” But even though the words are new, the idea is something I’ve known about for a long time. My mom emphasized how I was lucky to have what I had. Sure, my parents and I worked hard, but what we had wasn’t through hard work alone. I hope to pass that knowledge onto my kids.
Knowing how damn lucky and I my kids are motivates so much of my activism. I got the chance to write about it for Mamalode recently, in a piece called My Privilege Protects Me and My Sons From So Much – This is the Least I Can Do.
Here’s the first two paragraphs:
“President Obama, I know you have two daughters. I know you love them. But I want you to know that I don’t know if I’ll have kids. That’s because I don’t know if they’ll have clean water to drink,” said Eryn Wise, a 26-year-old organizer of the movement against the Dakota Access oil pipeline. As she stared out at the crowd gathered in front of the White House, I gasped just a little. Of course, I know this is a calculation women make every day – whether the world they would bring their child into is good enough. And too often, that answer is no. But to hear a young woman say it in person made me breathe in just a little more sharply.
That’s because it’s a question I’ve never had to face.
Welcome to Earth Month! This month, I’m going to be profiling a number of “green moms” who purposely live in a sustainable way.
For our second Green Mom profile, welcome Caryn Chmielewski. She lives in Springfield, Virginia and has a 15 month old daughter.
Why is it important to you to parent your kids in a “green” way?
I choose to parent “green” because I have serious concerns about the safety of most consumer products available in the U.S. today. While I don’t particularly want to go back in time, I do truly believe that many of the products we used to eat and live with (food, storage containers, cleaning products, etc.) used to be much safer and healthier prior to the 1980s (approx, I would have to do some research to support my gut feeling here). I could go on about this topic (i.e. American businesses being permitted by government to sacrifice quality and safety for convenience and bigger profits, etc.) but I will stop there. Ultimately, I want my daughter and any future children I might have to have the best possible health and part of that, in my opinion, means choosing to give her organic, natural, whole foods as much as possible and using safer/greener storage items (glass over plastic, for example).
This guy was painting multiple paintings with multiple paintbrushes simultaneously. Seriously.
Spring has sprung, with flowers and thunderstorms in our area. We’ve even had water tables and bicycles out this week. With my parents now living in our area, Sprout had his second sleepover with them yesterday, where they plied him with ice cream and homemade cookies. Grandparents.
For your articles this week, we’ve got commentary on raising non-racist kids, Finland being awesome, being an ethical parent, and many other topics!
Kite-flying does not come easily to my family. In Ocean City a few years ago, my mom and I sprinted through the sand over and over again to be met with a diving kite on the end of a limp string. We fell over laughing, but we never did get it up in the air. Thankfully, we had a lot more luck in both kite flying and cooperation this past weekend at the Cherry Blossom Kite Festival in Washington D.C.