Soft hair on my face tickles me awake A small voice Mom there is something wrong with my body I’m wide awake, but it is still night time The clock, the only light teases us with its numbered face, 7:15 No sweetie I reply it is morning time it’s just dark outside today Sleepiness, my costume, mirrors calm we read morning stories by lamp light time to get ready for school! discordant in the dim room The soft padding of small feet on stairs I leap from bed to window the sun hangs feebly in eastern sky red disc muted and dull It is day two of zoom school and feigning normalcy is the new gold standard of parenting we turn on lights, power the screen I want to shout it is not your body that is wrong, child, it is the world! I kiss soft hair as I walk past turn the air filters up high the darkened windows reflect her image body dwarfed by the monitor which she stares at dutifully distant as the hidden sun a teacher attempts to wrangle a class of 6-year olds from her square in the box All day we are flooded with photos the golden gate bridge the blood red light and the word “apocalypse” Inside homes across the bay we make forts, play dance games smoke so thick it erases the sun is just another day
Category Archives: parenting and climate crisis
Trauma Anniversaries in a Changing World
Originally published in the Climate Psychology Alliance-North America blog Spring has sprung early again this year in Northern California. And with temperatures at a record setting 90 degrees last week, it appears to be ending early too. It took my New York body a long time to adjust to California’s Mediterranean climate when I first…… Continue Reading
Teaching the Love of Plants: Nature Therapy with Children
Originally published in the Climate Psychology Alliance-North America blog By Jenni Silverstein, LCSW, Santa Rosa, California My new “office” is a garden hidden behind a berm at a therapeutic farm. The farm rescues animals and brings children from foster and group homes to tend them. Each creature comes with its own story of being saved from…… Continue Reading
A Mother’s Love, 2021
You master crawling a spark of rushing energy I shut doors in your path as you crumble beneath me “My job is to keep you safe, my love” I whisper, and turn you back “I must keep you safe” I explain as I pull your small body down from the heights of the couch hold…… Continue Reading
Love and Grief in the Redwoods
A very wise midwife once told me, “you cannot vibrate in love and fear at the same time.”* I pondered this for a long time, believing it made sense, but not embodying it. Until one evening years later, when I had a profound experience in my first garden. I had been practicing a form of…… Continue Reading
Mothering In the Age of Climate Crisis
For my entire life, I have been an environmentalist. As a child eager to save the whales and pick up litter from the park, as a teen lobbying for the end of garbage incineration and boycotting aerosol hairsprays, as a young adult awed by the EarthFirst! rallies I attended to save the precious old growth…… Continue Reading