Episode 14 - Remaking Parenthood for the Anthropocene
Parents have the formidable task of providing care for their own children while also caring for a planet in crisis - all while questioning how to raise the next generation to be caretakers. This episode of Reseed looks at the unique role that parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and other guardians can play, with specific actions that we can take as people who are raising children at an exhausting and intensive stage of life. We explore how to guide children to be active stewards and activists, without imposing too heavy an emotional burden that lessens their resilience or their ability to be active cultivators of a healthier planet.
This conversation is not just for parents, but rather is for all of us who are contemplating what role we want to play as stewards and ancestors at this moment in time. This conversation is for people who want to explore how systems of care can dismantle the systems of dominance and extraction that have brought us to this convergence of climate change, war, and inequality. If we take a birds’ eye view of this era that is fraught with crisis and sorrow, how do we want to show up? What can we do with our own hands and hearts - with love, conviction, and courage - regardless of how everything turns out?
Reseed is joined by Elizabeth Bechard, a climate activist, mother, and author of Parenting in a Changing Climate: Tools for Cultivating Resilience, Taking Action, and Practicing Hope in the Face of Climate Change. Elizabeth is a coach, former research coordinator, and graduate student in public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. After becoming a mother, she became passionate about the intersection between climate change and family resilience. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, with her husband and young twins.
At its heart, Remaking Parenthood for the Anthropocene is a deeply spiritual conversation. It examines awakening as a critical part of being a human right now, and how we all awaken to climate change in different ways. This episode looks at how environmental action is a spiritual calling for each of us, and how the Earth is rising up and speaking through us in our actions, in mysterious and wondrous ways.