Parenting in a Climate-Changed World

How do we navigate the joys and challenges of parenting in a world shaped by climate change? In this episode, hosts Ben Yosua-Davis and Nicole Diroff explore this question with two thoughtful guests: Elizabeth Rush, acclaimed author of The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth, and Sophia Cheng, founder of With Many Roots and a new parent herself.

Together, they share personal stories, insights, and strategies for parenting amid uncertainty, reflecting on the deep connections between care, community, and climate action.

Meet Our Guests

TRANSCRIPT

Nicole Diroff: You are listening to Climate Changed, a podcast about pursuing faith, life and love in a climate-changed world. Hosted by me, Nicole Diroff

Ben Yosua-Davis: and me, Ben Yosua-Davis. Climate Changed features guests who deepen the conversation while also stirring the waters.

Nicole Diroff: The Climate Changed Podcast is a project of The BTS Center. Welcome listeners. We have reached the final episode of season three of the Climate Changed Podcast.

Ben Yosua-Davis: And today we will explore a topic near and dear to our hearts: Parenthood. What does it mean to raise a child in a climate-changed world?

Nicole Diroff: In this episode you will hear my conversation with writer Elizabeth Rush. Her book The Quickening is an account of her extraordinary voyage to one of the most remote parts of Antarctica. During more than 50 days at sea, Liz was without Internet and immersed in a world of scientists. In addition to documenting the scientists’ journey, she wrestles with a longing to bring a child into this world despite climate change risks and uncertainties.

Ben Yosua-Davis: It is an incredibly rich discussion, so we invited a new parent to dig deeper into what Liz and Nicole have to say. Sophia Cheng lives in England and recently gave birth to her first child. We are curious about how her perspective as a parent from the United Kingdom differs from our own.

Nicole Diroff: We are also curious about Sophia and her partner's intellectual and emotional journey that led to their decision to have a child. We hope you will find our conversation insightful, practical and stimulating.

Sophia Cheng shares a poem

Ben Yosua-Davis: Now it is time for our grounding, an opportunity to pause, to take a breath and remember why each of us, including all those of you who are listening, are here. It will be offered by Sophia Cheng and is a poem that emerged in response to the UN Climate Science Report in 2021 and vulnerably expresses the complicated ambivalence that is becoming a mother in a climate changed world.

Sophia Cheng: Tick Tock Tick Tock we're on the brink. The cusp the geriatrics at 35 plus the will we? The won't we? The should we? The could we? The do we really want to? We wrenched our eyes open and let the weight of the world in the unfairness, the uncertainty, the absurdity of inertia In a warming world we opened our minds and it imprinted there before piercing our hearts and sinking into our bones. It echoes around our wombs the emboldened citizens, the future grievers the how can we? The what best to do now? We are not the spring chickens we are not striking from school declaring no future, no life. Formative years formed in a 1 degree world decades of fertility ahead and we are not over the hill, not our window fully closed. We are not the mothers of two waking up fired from maternal instinct. We are the ones who have not yet rolled our dice and we will not be here forever. Time or a decision will move us on. For now we occupy this liminal space. We the ambivalent. We are grateful for the Liberation of the 60s absorbed the girl power of the 90s. We are the habit all generation that wisened. We see the challenges and expectations that still confine us. We know either path involves sacrifice and we know we are the lucky ones. So many never face this quandary. From unquestioning to culture to adversity. The technology of contraception has brought us so much freedom, but it does not come for free. We carry the burden of choice from our head to our bellies. Tick Tick Tick Tock Tick Tock Tick Tock. With time and courage I explored my baggage on  family and bodily clocks. I stretch time forward fact based dreaming, exploring a future world we know is possible in the company of others. I sow seeds of transformation every day, banishing shame and self flagellation. We could pick apart the old world order while building windows of the possible. Today, with a joy in my heart and a fire in my belly, I hold onto a gritty hope and prepare for what's ahead. Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock, TIck Tock.

Nicole Diroff: Thank you Sophia. Thank you for that grounding. And I am so grateful that we get to engage with you more as our special guest.

Nicole chats with Elizabeth Rush

But first, we turn to my conversation with Elizabeth Rush. When I read The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth, I was riveted. I kept thinking it would be incredible to have the opportunity to talk with this author. So hooray for podcast interviews and our producer Peterson's connections. He had interviewed Elizabeth for two of his podcasts, Bubble and Squeak and Citizens Climate Radio. The world works in wonderful ways sometimes. In addition to The Quickening, Elizabeth Rush also wrote The Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Her writing has appeared in many publications including the New York Times, Vogue, Orion, and the Atlantic.

Ben Yosua-Davis: Liz, as she likes to be called, has received fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Howard Foundation, among others. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island with her husband, son, and recently born daughter. She teaches creative nonfiction at Brown University.

Nicole Diroff: I hope you, our listeners, enjoy my conversation with Liz as much as I did. Hello Elizabeth. It's so nice to be with you today. Do you go by Elizabeth?

Elizabeth Rush: You can actually call me Liz. Thanks for having me, Nicole.

Nicole Diroff: I wonder if we might just start. I'd love to know a little about where you are, the geography of where you are, and I don't know what sort of weather weirding are you talking about where you are.

Elizabeth Rush: So I'm in Providence, and you guys are in Portland, Maine. Is that correct?

Nicole Diroff: That's correct. We're not too far, then?

Elizabeth Rush: Yeah, totally. I'm just down the coast this morning. I got out for a nice bike ride. It is sunny but brisk here in Providence, and we live really close to the Narragansett Bay, so I got to ride along the bay this morning.

Nicole Diroff: Beautiful.

Elizabeth Rush: And, yeah, it was gorgeous. It was one of those days where it's like the water is that deep blue that it gets when the sky doesn't have a single cloud in it.

Nicole Diroff: Uh, I love it.

Elizabeth Rush: Yeah, it was really pretty, I would say. You know, I grew up north of Boston, and so I'm pretty close to where I grew up. And one thing that I noticed really profoundly is that we don't get the winters that we used to get. Like, I can remember snowstorms where the snow was up to my thighs. We haven't had any of those since we moved to Providence, like, eight. Eight years ago, nine years ago. So winters, less snow, warmer, weird, warm spikes in February, which are really bad for different kinds of, you know, fruiting trees. And the past couple summers have also had these really tremendous rain events where you get inches of rain and in a single event. And that also I don't really remember from my childhood, and certainly not the frequency that we've been getting them. So I got a leaky basement, I got a leaky ceiling, stuff like that. 

Nicole Diroff: You notice the rain events. We just moved to Portland. Well, oh, my gosh, it's now almost five years ago. It still feels new somehow. But one of the things I delighted in moving here was that every town had these amazing outdoor skating rinks. Just like, you know, a place that anyone in the community could come pop on some skates and be outdoors. And just every winter since we've been here, you know, there's maybe a couple days that they can even be open. So it's really clear the way in which the winters are just not what they were.

Elizabeth Rush: Absolutely. I grew up, I remember skating on ponds. Like, I have these really crystalline, beautiful memories of skating on ponds. And, like, that just doesn't happen anymore. Ponds never freeze over enough down here to get skating on them. Where did you move from?

Nicole Diroff: From Philadelphia. And grew up in Ohio and Connecticut. But we had been 15 years in Philly, which would get, like one snowstorm each winter, and the city didn't even have the infrastructure for it, so the whole place would shut down. And it was magical to be living downtown during that.

Elizabeth Rush: Totally.

Nicole Diroff: But I like snow. I like snow in winter. So I was psyched to move. I was psyched to move north. Now you're just back from there, too?

Elizabeth Rush: Yeah.

Nicole Diroff: Yeah. Good. I mean, if we're living here, we better like it.

Elizabeth Rush: Yeah, like, if it's cold, give me snow. I don't like any of the, basically, winter here is, I don't know, 37 and rainy, and it's like, oh, man.

Nicole Diroff: No, see, that's. That's like Philly. You're just back from maternity leave.

Elizabeth Rush: That's right. I had my second baby February 13th. The big snowstorm of the year was February 13th, and she was born. You will get a kick out of this, I hope. She was born in the backseat of our car on the way to the hospital. She did not make it. And she came about an hour before the snow arrived. And, people say that, like, when the barometric pressure drops, those babies pop out. That's totally what happened. Yes.

Nicole Diroff: That's amazing. That's amazing. Actually, I've never heard that. That's amazing.

Elizabeth Rush: But I had heard, like, when she was born, in the snowstorm, everyone was like, oh, the barometric pressure must have dropped. I was like, I guess, yeah.

Nicole Diroff: Oh, yeah, that's what happens. All the babies are born in cars right before a snowstorm.

Elizabeth Rush: Yeah.

Nicole Diroff: Amazing. Amazing. Well, we are both parents. I have a 10 year old who's in fourth grade, only child. And, I mean, being a parent in these times is so defining of the way. The way we look at things. I don't know how we introduce our young people to the topics at hand. I wonder for you…I'll have a chance to share your formal bio. But if we were to meet in a mom's group, sitting on mats on the floor or something, and I were to ask you what you do, how would you answer that question in a mom's group?

Elizabeth Rush: Oh, I usually say something along the lines of I'm a writer and a professor. And then if people ask me what I write, I say I write a lot of nonfiction about the environment and climate change in particular. That's usually something along the line. Like, I answer it sort of like that. Yeah.

Nicole Diroff: A friend of The BTS Center Elizabeth Bachard, who wrote a book called Parenting and a Changing Climate, tells this story in her book of coming into a mom's group feeling actually really, really heavy from all the climate knowledge she was taking in. And so as people were going around the circle sharing their struggles, she kind of dove into, you know, I'm feeling really overwhelmed and panicked about the potential future for my child, for our children. And it was just like dead silence. Like, that was kind of not the topic for the mom's group. You know, like lactation or, I don't know, like, finding time for yourself. Like, you know, deep topics that maybe you're not sharing with anyone else are welcome. But going to that place of like, actually, I'm in a panic over the state of the planet is not an okay topic. And I found that too, with friends. I don't know if you have also.

Elizabeth Rush: Yeah, I mean, how would I put it? I think you could hear my tiered response, as in, I'm a writer and a professor. I feel like I often kind of sidestep it in more social settings, in part because it doesn't necessarily feel super welcome. And I think I'm like a people pleaser and I don't want to bring down the mood. Like, I do feel like it can bring down the mood and. Because sometimes I need to leave it. Like, I'm like, I actually just need to talk about breastfeeding right now because that's right. Like, I actually think about climate change all the time and I need to, like, tune into a different frequency. I think that I sometimes do that for myself.

Nicole Diroff: Yeah, that makes good sense. That makes good sense. Well, tell me a little of your path. You know, what’s a piece of what led you to become so involved in writing about climate change?

Elizabeth Rush: You know? Well, before I do that, tell me how you deal. Like, if you were in a mom's group, do you bring up climate change or are you, like, how do you answer that question? I'm really curious.

Nicole Diroff: I mean, so I'm an ordained minister and work at this nonprofit that works on spiritual leadership for a climate-changed world. So I might start off with something like, I'm an ordained minister, which comes with all sorts of its own baggage and assumptions. And I work at a nonprofit, you know, so I could just kind of like, leave it there. And when I start talking about climate change, I think, friends, people are afraid and they don't know how to respond other than with like defensiveness and kind of like a way of saying but I, or my family I think is going to be okay because. Hm, usually it's because I'm in circles of people with quite a bit of privilege. So, you know, the posture of that this is not in the future that it's here for so many people around the world, it's here for us if we're paying attention. You know, on the coast of Maine, on the coast of New England, and the ways in which that might inspire a need to love one another better. You know, that's the place I kind of want to go. But it's hard to, it's hard to get there because. Well, because our lives are full of, of the things of parenting, of juggling schedules, of navigating school, of breastfeeding when, you know, the kids are younger. Like all those things are super real and things that we can connect on. So yeah, yeah, it feels like a special moment.

Elizabeth Rush: You're making me think of something that someone said to me. Like over the last two years I was working on this project that I really loved working on and I did it in partnership with a former student of mine as she has become an actual radio producer and she does a lot of work for NPR and all the heavy hitters. She and I did this project where for literally two years we started, we were trying to figure out by listening to people how climate change was changing their intimate lives. Like how was it changing the way they love. And we tried to think of that in a really holistic sense. So we also talked to breeding bird specialists and a person who studies things like honeybees and the timing of pollination. And so we tried to think of it in an interspecies kind of way also. But you're making me think of actually this thing that this single mom by choice said to me where she was talking about how she had taken so long to choose to have a child. And she lived in Portland, Oregon and the child was born into, you know, the summer, the second summer of the pandemic when things were still quite bad, right? And it was like the heat dome in Portland and the wildfires in Oregon. And she was like, you know, one of the biggest things for me to figure out and having the kid was like really trying to think about did I want to do that in a climate-changed world. And then the kid came, she gave birth, and within months it was assailed on all sides. And I asked her, you know, does that make you feel differently about the choice you made? And she was like, you know, the thing it clarified for me is, we have to love even stronger what's here. It's our responsibility to love more and more powerfully, you know. No, I don't change my decision at all. In fact, I just think love is, you need more of it. And I was like, that's a really powerful thing to say. You made me think of that.

Nicole Diroff: I loved reading The Quickening, by the way.

Elizabeth Rush: Thank you.

Nicole Diroff: I wanted to keep reading this story.

Elizabeth Rush: Which you don't always feel that way about environmental stories. I'm often like, I would like to put this story aside.

Nicole Diroff: Totally, totally. No, I was really journeying with you and wanted to keep kind of plugging in and getting on the boat with you. I love how you talk about the climate crisis being both threat and an opportunity multiplier. There are a lot of people who are saying, this isn't how it's supposed to be. We need to be connected and in love with the natural world. There's this idea of, in times of violence, look for the peacemakers. So in times of brokenness, look for places of connection. There are so many opportunities to do that with children of any age. To, uh, fall in love with nature with a child at your side is, like, such a special gift.

Elizabeth Rush: Totally.

Nicole Diroff: I went through this program to become a Maine Master Naturalist.

Elizabeth Rush: Oh, cool. Totally.

Nicole Diroff: And my child accompanied me on all that homework. And, you know, I got home from my class and I was like, well, I'm supposed to look for redback salamanders, so I think they live under decaying logs. Like, let's see if there are any in our backyard. And literally, the first log we flipped over, there's a redback salamander right there. It's right there. And I never thought to look for it. Yeah, my kiddo just is into all of that now, and we need people who know. Who know the depth of what we love.

Elizabeth Rush: Totally, totally. Totally. Yeah. It's like the world is ours to be compassionate towards.

Nicole Diroff: Mm. Beautiful.

Elizabeth Rush: And, our kids totally help us tune into that. I feel like I went into having kids being like, oh, I gotta be really specific about the language that I use and try to use, like, pronouns that give agency to the trees. And, I mean, I'm trying to do all that. But also, he knows the trees. Oh, yeah. I think we beat it out of them. I'm the 100 trained in the pronoun switching.

Nicole Diroff: Not, not my 3 year old 100. That has been my experience as well. Yeah, young people,they already know. It is much more about our unlearning than anything else. Yes. An amazing, amazing story you tell as a journalist accompanying several teams of scientists on this boat as they're studying a particular glacier in Antarctica. How did you end up on that boat? What was the purpose of that trip, of that scientific endeavor?

Elizabeth Rush: Oh, my gosh. I'm like, it is a long story how I ended up on that boat. So I'm going to try to do the fast version. I had been writing about sea level rise in coastal communities for like seven years and had spent a lot of time with the people experiencing firsthand these changes. And I think over time I grew super curious as to, like, the source of those changes. And I'm an experiential learner. I was like, I think I need to go to Antarctica. I knew about this program through the National Science Foundation, where they send one artist and one writer a year, usually to Antarctica. And so I applied for it. And that was really complicated. That's where I'm sort of like, ha, ha. Huh. Ha. I won't tell you the long story, but my application was 60 pages long. I eventually was admitted to the program, and they gave me the last remaining berth on the first icebreaker ever to be sent to the calving edge of Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, which is like, it's ground zero for the possibility of really rapid sea level rise this century. No one before us had ever been there.

Nicole Diroff: Amazing.

Elizabeth Rush: Just this really phenomenal opportunity.

Nicole Diroff: Amazing. The title of your book, The Quickening, references the incredible moment in pregnancy when you first feel the baby's movements. And putting that in conversation with moments of glacial calving. Am I saying that word right?

Elizabeth Rush: That's right, yeah.

Nicole Diroff: Oh, my gosh. It. For me, I kept thinking about time. Like, there's this long time and then there's just like these moments. My favorite course in college was volcanology because it has a cool title, but I think it is that, like, long, long time is like in a moment erupting, you know, and totally, totally. Reading about glaciers from your perspective tapped that. The same thing in me of long time drawn into a moment.

Elizabeth Rush: That's part of it. Okay, we're nothing. But also in the span of a very short time, we're changing everything.

Nicole Diroff: Yes.

Elizabeth Rush: Collectively, we're doing that changing. And that tension, the way our timescale is ripping at or, like chewing away at or dismantling this other timescale is really extraordinary. That's what makes me nervous.

Nicole Diroff: Right, right, right, right.

Elizabeth Rush: But it is also totally extraordinary. And I feel like that was a tension for me as I wrote was like, how do you write in a way that's aware of one timescale changing another timescale? We used to think of glaciers as being really slow, and now they're accelerating. So I was trying to play with that a little bit with the title. Everything is quickening in Antarctica. Uh, it's accelerating. And in some ways, that acceleration is what even allows us to see the glaciers moving. Right. Because they used to move so slowly that you would, like, never see them with your eye.

Nicole Diroff: Right.

Elizabeth Rush: And it's still hard to see glaciers move, but they are moving faster than they used to.

Nicole Diroff: Wow.

Elizabeth Rush: So I was also trying to kind of, like, play with that. Like, it's like two kinds of quickening because it's also that sense of acceleration.

Nicole Diroff: Yep. And it's devastating and motivating, uh, at the same time. One of the themes that we're exploring in this season of our podcast is the common good. The common good in a climate-changed world. I was so moved to read in your book about the Antarctic Treaty. This is not something that I really knew or thought about before. As you say, the continent was set aside as a place of peace and science. Military operations and weapons testing were prohibited, as was eventually the extraction of minerals or materials of value. And that idea, it just opened my imagination to, like, what is the commons and what does it mean to work towards the common good in that sense? Those are not necessarily words you played with in your book, but I saw it woven throughout. What does the common good look like in a climate-changed world? How do we play with that concept? Is there anything Antarctica might teach us?

Elizabeth Rush: Oh, goodness, that's such a great question. And I don't have an immediate answer to that question, but I will, like, fumble my way towards something at one level. All the data that's available in Antarctica has to be made freely available to everyone.

Nicole Diroff: Amazing.

Elizabeth Rush: Which I think is awesome. Like, data can be so expensive to procure, and data from Antarctica is, like, very expensive. And you see it in the scientific projects. One of the scientists said to me, the principal investigator of our most ambitious project, to send a submarine under the ice, she said to me, if you're gonna work In Antarctica, especially on climate change, you kind of have to cede a sense of ownership to the science because you might deploy a mooring that has a 15 year lifespan. It's gonna collect data for 15 years, and it's not necessarily gonna be you who goes back to retrieve it or to service it. You're like kind of in a relay race and you hand the baton off to other people and you have to be willing to do that. Which I thought was really beautiful.

Nicole Diroff: Wow.

Elizabeth Rush: A lot of science you don't hear spoken of that way.

Nicole Diroff: Right.

Elizabeth Rush: People are trying to get the discovery so they can get tenure. And there's like something deeply competitive about it. Antarctica demands a slightly different kind of interaction because of its remoteness, the difficulty of getting anything done there. That's something that I felt throughout the whole time I was on this boat, was that it really asked us to work together and there was no surviving without each other. That's pretty awesome.

Nicole Diroff: Your book just played with both the kind of global notions of Antarctica and how different countries relate to that place and the data gathered there, and then kind of like zooms in on this world set apart and this tiny community that, you know, there's moments where the relationships are fraught, there are moments where they're delightful. I mean, there's hilarious moments that you share in the midst of all of that community explored in that intensive way. And then like, community really explored in this very, very global way. And mostly male. I mean, you explained.

Elizabeth Rush: And mostly male. Right.

Nicole Diroff: Like, explored the gender stuff in really interesting ways too. So. Yes, totally true.

Elizabeth Rush: It's like, yes, and totally a comment. It's a yes.

Nicole Diroff: And yeah, one place I really wanted to go with you is the reference you made about the way in which your journey was so filled with persistent uncertainty. Um, how both the scientific journey was that way and then of course, your journey around decisions, around parenthood and raising children paralleled that. So you wrote that raising children can similarly, similar to the scientific investigation, involve investing a whole lot of time and energy into a project without having any idea how things will turn out. I mean, I was like, yep, highlight that line.

Elizabeth Rush: Oh, my God. Every day is a practice of that with little littles. It's like you gotta just roll with it all the time and be really creative all the time. Usually when my son is a little prat, it's not because he's a bad person, it's because he hasn't had a snack.

Nicole Diroff: Yeah, right, Exactly. You're not deplorable. You just need an apple? Yeah.

Elizabeth Rush: And then it's, um, up to me to be like, oh, my God, he's in one of his big, like, I'm not going to do anything, you tell me mode. So how can I get this apple into him? If I told him to go eat an apple, he would be like, ah, uh, no. And then he would get really angry and, like, you know, so then it's like, then you got to get creative. The person you got to get creative with looks at you and is like, I don't even love you.

Nicole Diroff: Yeah, exactly. Well, one of my mantras is like, do I have the capacity to. Do I have the capacity to care? And sometimes the answer is no. And I'm like, tag, I'm out. Or, you know, I end up yelling when I didn't mean to. But, like, trying to just be like, do I have the capacity to care? In this moment? Your book, it just evoked this sense of, like, how do we keep choosing to care within a context of the unknown? We don't know the future, and we still need to choose to care. I mean, the stories of what the scientists were devoting themselves to, risking so much of their own, uh, self to care and to just keep caring, even though, I mean, that particular experiment, you know, might end up with data that isn't even discernible, or, I don't know, there's so much unknown, or you might, like, let it all poop out onto the floor because you dropped some of it. There was a funny moment in the book. What have you learned about choosing to care when you don't know the outcome, but you're just going to keep choosing that?

Elizabeth Rush: I feel like a lot of people are at this point where they're like, I know climate change is a thing. I want it to get better, but I don't know how.

Nicole Diroff: Right.

Elizabeth Rush: We have an idea that you have to, like, go be a climate activist, and that's how you care.

Nicole Diroff: Mm.

Elizabeth Rush: The people who wanna be climate activists should go be climate activists. But, like, don't saddle yourself with a set of expectations that are gonna make it hard for you to continue to show up for that thing.

Nicole Diroff: Yeah.

Elizabeth Rush: Choose a thing that's something that you care about. Someone recently asked, did the adventure draw you to Antarctica? I was like, I would like to pretend that the answer to that question is no, but it's not. I have always been, like, really into adventure.

Nicole Diroff: Like, yes, I mean, the adventure drew me to read the book.

Elizabeth Rush: Right? Like, some. I was into it in part because I care about, and I've chosen to, like, tune into and make space for adventurous things in my life. My capacity to care about scooping mud out of a tube for 27 hours repetitively while I'm on this boat stems from the fact that I'm choosing to do that in a context that I already am really passionate about.

Nicole Diroff: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Elizabeth Rush: Part of it is knowing what you cherish and fueling that love relationship. And then you can continue to care inside of it because you love inside of it. It's hard to ask yourself to do something that you don't care about and then do it a lot.

Nicole Diroff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Your book was so centered on decisions around becoming a parent. I'm just wondering just what courage looks like in that context. I think a lot of people are questioning parenthood, even if they're already parents. What might you invite courage around?

Elizabeth Rush: Courage. How would I put it? It's like, well, when I went on this journey to the weight, part of me went on the journey knowing that I wanted to have a kid, and I was really terrified that I would come back and not want to have a kid. And I felt I kind of had to be open to having this experience change the shape of that desire. I, like, kind of knew that I was going to write a book about the journey. I thought I was, like, jinxing the whole thing by being and I'm gonna write a book about it. Maybe it's gonna be a really sad book in which the person is like, nevermind, I don't want to have a child. Not that that's, like, inherently sad, but I, uh, had no idea what was gonna happen. And I came back and my desire to have a child had not gone away at all. And it was sort of like, oh, that's curious. Uh, some part of me didn't think of that as being the possible narrative trajectory of what I had gotten myself into. Writing the book became about how to have the courage to keep having my desire.

Nicole Diroff: Nice.

Elizabeth Rush: If this thing is important to me, like, spiritually, as a human being on this planet, how do I have the courage to make space for it? Because it's apparently not going away. I think about that a lot. For me, in this instance, having the courage for something meant starting to recognize what it means to be in community and how to depend on other people. I will tell you, having a second child has been like, you really gotta depend on other people. And you don't have to have kids to have to learn how to depend on other people. But depending on other people is, like, scary. You have to open yourself up. I'm an introvert. Like, that's not my inherent happy place. But there are things that you can do in community that you cannot do alone. And you can be an introvert and still be in community. How do I have the courage to keep space for my desire?

Nicole Diroff: I love that. I love that. How to have the courage to keep space for the desire. I love it. Thank you.

Elizabeth Rush: That's like a deep need desire.

Nicole Diroff: Right, Right.

Elizabeth Rush: If that thing feels a little bit under threat, what else do I have to show up for to buffer it or to tend to it?

Nicole Diroff: I mean, I've used the phrase it takes a village so many times since having a child. There is something about that that breaks open an individualistic sense of going about your way in the world.

Elizabeth Rush: My invitation is, go tend to something you love that is part of the more than human world. Go and tend to yourself. Go make space for that thing that you love. Slow down and just be with it for however much time you can set aside. That's the place that action starts from.

Nicole Diroff: Does that mean you're gonna head and hang out with some glacial erratics or what might that be for you if you had to spend time with what you love?

Elizabeth Rush: I often take a bike ride in the morning and, like, get off my bike and look at the water for a couple minutes and just try to, like, slow down and be there.

Nicole Diroff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What you're saying invites me to go spend a moment by the ocean, which I will admit just does that time thing that we were talking about. It just makes me feel small in a good way.

Elizabeth Rush: Yeah. And I feel like whenever I get down by the water, I'm, like, riding a bike or walking or I'm, like, doing a thing, and you know what the best is, is when I stop doing the thing and I just sit there for a minute.

Nicole Diroff: Amazing. Amazing.

Elizabeth Rush: Yeah.

Nicole Diroff: Thank you so much for this conversation.

Elizabeth Rush: My pleasure. This has been such a pleasure.

Nicole, Ben, and Sophia Chat

Ben Yosua-Davis: Wow. What an authentic conversation this is. As I was listening to the two of you talk, it reminded me of those moments I've sat down with another parent, and we've just kind of swapped stories about what life is like. And I love Liz's humor and thoughtfulness on heavy topics like parenting and climate change.

Nicole Diroff: I left my interview with Liz longing for a chance to walk in the woods with her. I could have kept talking for quite a while. Today we're mixing it up and continuing the conversation with a special guest who has joined us in the studio.

Sophia Cheng is the founder of With Many Roots, focusing on climate change

Sophia Chang is five hours ahead of us in the UK, but she similarly spends a lot of time envisioning what climate change solutions will look like in the future.

Ben Yosua-Davis: Sophia Cheng is the founder of With Many Roots. Their core purpose is to make a meaningful impact. Currently, they focus on climate science and silence by delivering collaborative, interactive educational workshops based on robust research. They deliver these sessions in C suites and in the streets.

Nicole Diroff: Their offerings include the wonderfully whimsical and inspirational CliFi Imaginarium, a library of original stories where climate change solutions have been fully implemented. With Many Roots, cites Rob Hopkins, a friend of The BTS Center, as one of the big influences on their work. Hooray for a small world full of relationships. And hello, Sophia.

Sophia Cheng: Hi, Nicole. Hi, Ben. Thank you for having me.

Ben Yosua-Davis: It is so great to have you with us, especially after you shared that grounding with us.

Parenthood is an act of profound uncertainty

I'm really eager to ask some questions for us to talk about as three parents, particularly around this question of uncertainty. I was thinking back to our first episode of this season, which is a conversation I had with Brian McLaren. It dealt with a question of how do you lead? And how do you love in moments of profound uncertainty, when the future genuinely seems up for grabs in a way that perhaps, certainly for people in my position of privilege, it never has seemed like it has before. I'm curious, how do you both experience this kind of double uncertainty? Because parenting is an act of profound uncertainty, as Liz talks about. And, then along with that, we also have this uncertainty about the future of our planet.

Sophia Cheng: Yeah, Ben. The notion of uncertainty, which was coming through very vibrantly from Nicole and Liz's conversation when I was listening to it is something I have really consciously wrestled with as someone kind of conditioned into the world as it was. I love the notion of control, predictability and the idea of certainty. So to arrive at a place of being I wouldn't say comfortable, but less uncomfortable with uncertainty has taken quite a long time and a lot of unpicking of where these conditioned thoughts came from and working with that. And I think it was the boldness of tackling uncertainty in our times allowed me to maybe take on the notion of uncertainty in parenting and parenthood as well.

Nicole Diroff: I think about all the moments in parenting when my plans for the evening are derailed and I'll just say that that happened a lot less before I was a parent. And sometimes they're like amazingly joyfully derailed and then other times it's like, oh, we're going to need to work through something and let's do it. That is my experience of impacts of climate impact, fear as well. They end up being surprising and derailing in many ways. I've been thinking a lot about whether I can trust my future self to respond to those things that I'm not anticipating. And I think it's a skill that parents build and I think it's a skill that we are going to need more and more in a climate changed world to trust ourselves, to trust our people, to trust our communities, to navigate those things that derail us and navigate them with love.

Ben Yosua-Davis: I just have to say that I resonate so much with that based on my experience. I'm recording this podcast in my home office with a wonderful backdrop that thankfully you, the listener, cannot see of my washing machine and my dryer. And when I get done with my workday and I open the door and go into the rest of my house, I literally have no idea what I'm going to find there. Is the household going to be peaceful? Is there going to be chaos? What I'm going to step into on a day to day basis seems utterly unpredictable. And that is exactly the same sort of experience as I think about what sort of world is my, are my kids going to grow up, um, to. I certainly inherited a narrative about what it meant to be a good parent would have been to provide a good future for your children. And there are just some questions about that that I feel like I actually just don't know the answers to. And so Nicole, um, I love that question of like, how do you trust your future self that like your future self's got this. Even if you don't know what that future is going to look like.

Sophia Cheng: I feel very much attached to that idea. It's interesting being brought in as a third parent and it took me a while to recognize that I was the third parent. Such a new identity to me. My little one is seven months old. I feel that I am uncertain who I am has been suddenly thrown into uncertainty. I feel porous, I feel more open, more vulnerable. But also there's a sort of curiosity who my future self within this new paradigm as a family and as a mother who is going to emerge. My learning and my work prior to this date is there's a trust that something decent will come. And um, being kind of curious about all of those dynamics and myself along along the route.

Nicole Diroff: Sophia, I wonder if you would share a little with us about the decision to become a mother. I so appreciate that this is a journey that you're willing to talk about publicly because I think many people are navigating this incredibly privately to the point of actually it being detrimental because it's really hard to be held, it's hard to be cared for in the hardest of decisions when not talking about it. So thank you for being willing, for being willing to share. When I chose to have a child, the climate crisis was about saving the rainforest. The 10 years since I've had a child, my understanding of the climate-changed world to call it that has radically changed. And so I do not envy those of you who are making these decisions right now. I didn't need to encounter it in the way that I know that you did.

Sophia Cheng: Thank you for the opportunity to be able to talk about it. Uh, and I think off the back of yours and Liz's discussion, it's amazing that there's another piece of literature out in the world that is voicing these kind of questions in a public platform. I'm um, so, so grateful and will be recommending Liz's book. The seeds of my courage come from seeing it in pockets in other places like you know, Liz's book but prior to that, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez being able to name it as a valid concern. Dr. Britt Ray she's been doing some really great, great stuff in communicating around climate anxiety and then realizing that if I was brave enough in those private circles to raise the topic, invariably people had something to say about it. And so it's that kind of recurring piece of this serves a purpose beyond meeting my own needs. If I raise this topic, I think it's a challenge maybe of a particular age range. So I'm 37. The making of me was in the old, older way of thinking. And yet I was stepping into my power at exactly the same time as the threats and the science is saying, in the next 10 years, in the next 15 years, we've got to solve this. That is exactly on cue with my fertility window. So this kind of simultaneous timing was something I really, really wrestled with and found it quite overwhelming. It's like there's a big call on all of us to step up in some way, shape or form. And my interpretation of it at the time was, I've got to be useful. I've got to be useful. Uh, I've got to do stuff, and it's got to be useful, and it's got to be productive, and I've got to get people on my side. And I couldn't equate motherhood in that sort of very narrow paradigm that was around 2018, 2019. And the gradual unpicking, um, of the mentality and thoughts that keep us spinning around this rat race has also been the space that's opened up. Realizing that the climate crisis and living in the climate-changed world, a bit like the themes that you and Liz were talking about, is not zero sum. This doesn't always have to be a narrative of sacrifice. There is opportunity and there is space for our needs. I think Liz referred to it as our desires, and there is space to create. In the quietness of those lockdowns, a really impactful practice was the practice of future dreaming. And I realize it's a theme that comes up in your podcast quite a lot, is, you know, what do we want this world to look like? Yeah, there's a lot of stick. You know, the science is bad. We're going to hell in a handcart, not a lot of carrots. What do we want in the world?

Nicole Diroff: That's right.

Sophia Cheng: Pulling on Rob Hopkins kind of what if idea. A few of us came together in the pandemic, and we came back month after month after month, thinking of different climate solutions and imagining they were already. So I started. I could only go kind of five years into the future. And again pulling on another theme that you and Liz talked about was this notion of time. But as I practiced, I could go further and further and, um, further to a point where I could get to 350 years into the future. I could see my protagonist very visually, the world building erupted around her. I could sense what she was smelling on her way to the library. And in that practice, there also became room for me to be, to be time and um, for there to be space for me to be a mother in all of this paradigm. And it's that unpicking that living in a climate emergency is no way to live. But actually if I can start building the blocks of the future I want to live in, then suddenly a much kind of more fruitful path and hopeful path and practice emerges.

Ben Yosua-Davis: I love that thought, Sophia, about how do we unpick these narratives that we bring with us into becoming parents? I can't be a mother. I have to be useful and productive. And I thought, oh my goodness, isn't that industrial capitalism at its worst? Because our, uh, lives are determined by whether we're useful and productive. And of course parenthood, motherhood in particular. Being family is not a thing that's actually productive in our family. My wife made the decision to step out of her work so she could become a full time homemaker and homesteader as a real call and positive vocation. It was a point we had been working to as a family for a long time. And there are not a lot of models out there or certainly not a lot of non patriarchal models that actually value that. But then, you know, I have these moments before I came in to record this session. I went out to take a quick break and my daughter's lying on the couch and I was gonna go like check the mail and walk back into my office, but she like pulls me into the couch and she wraps me in her arms and she kisses me and she's like, daddy, I love you. Then she looks at my wife and goes, aren't we adorable together? And that is the sort of encounter that reminds me that this is not about being productive. My daughter is precious because she is beautiful and wonderful and was from the moment that I met her for the first time. And I love the ways that when we, we tend to these decisions, and there are also ways, I just have to say, to tend to these decisions that lead us to decide not to have kids as well. That has always been a choice historically that people have made that when we tend to these things, it begins to blow apart the mechanistic economies that have captured our imaginations.

Sophia Cheng: Ben, listeners can't see how much I'm nodding my head. It's almost about to fall off the realization. And thank you for calling me out because that was a huge learning for me. The fact that I had equated motherhood and um, to not being useful was a huge wrestling I had to deal with and a real unpicking of what we valued in our society. And I have to say, in my very short experience as a parent so far my favorite moments, I tell you, I am not contributing to GDP. They are small, they are beautiful. No one's getting any of my money. Yeah. At ah, those small moments that you recognize that you pulled out there, Ben, it's what is filling me up.

Ben Yosua-Davis: Mhm. Hm. Yep.

Nicole Diroff: I so appreciate the way that you shared a real intentional practice around imagining a beautiful future that might be radically different from what we're living in right now, perhaps must be radically different from what we're living in right now, but is beautiful and imagining yourself into that. I was reflecting on the way I told Liz I would introduce myself at, you know, a mom's group or how I might share what I do with fellow parents. I kind of hit this point of wanting to say the work I'm doing is around how we might turn towards one another, how we might love one another into a beautiful future. The challenge when I say that I've been reflecting on this, I think it might be the difference between adaptation and mitigation. In some ways, what you were describing in terms of I need to, I need to do things, I need to get people on board, I need to change things. You know, like it's this, like we have 10 years and here's the list of the tech we got to deploy and the changes we got to make. Adaptation still requires a ton of urgency, but it also acknowledges a way in which the world is super broken right now. That in my conversations with other parents, I think that's the taboo part to raise. Saying that I do climate work and I like, I don't know, I work for a compost nonprofit or something, which I totally think composting is awesome. That would be more palatable than me trying to work on people loving one another better in a world that's broken. Because it means I'm kind of saying our world is broken enough that we need to be talking about love. Uh, so anyway, I've just been really reflecting on like what is, what is the thing with fellow parents or even just other people in our lives that makes it so hard to talk about, you know, for you, why spending so much time imagining a beautiful future is, is so compelling, is so worth doing.

Sophia Cheng: I recognize the tension in myself kind of shifting from mitigation to  including or leveling adaptation as on the same parallel, because I think there's that, uh, again, it's probably that kind of capitalist must win must finish, must complete kind of notion, being like, well, well, you know, hold on a second. We can't talk about adaptation yet. And you see that reflected in, you know, right up the scale when it comes to the big climate change conferences as well, particularly those of us from countries or the conversation from countries where they're being less impacted yet are contributing the greatest amount to the problem. I feel like it's a hard pill to swallow. It almost feels like that Matrix moment. Right. But once you swallowed it, once you've swallowed it, then like the whole, the layers peel back again. You go, okay, well if, if I'm gonna keep my head above the parapet, you know, if I'm gonna stay here, I'm gonna stay conscious to what, to what's really going on, what, how am I going to sustain myself and what's the practice? And then we come to these imagination practices, centering care, centering love, coming back to our family, that, you know, and all of those sorts of practices that uh, but it took me a while to get there. 

Ben Yosua-Davis: As you say that it reminds me of the reason why on weekends I love working out on the land. Yes, the world is falling apart, but my daughter needs hugs, the chickens need to be fed, the trees need to be planted. And the great thing about, about farming is actually you are doing a lot of embodied imagining into a possible future. We planted three apple trees this spring. They look like sticks. I mean they're just like sticks stuck in the ground. There are a few leaves on top. And we have the audacity to imagine that someday these will grow into great trees that are going to feed our family and others. And that is kind of an act of embodied imagination that I find kind of helps keep me sane and keeps my head able to keep my head above the parapet where oftentimes what I'm looking out of seems very highly distressing. Uh, I guess I was really curious, Sophia, as you were talking about that, what you're imagining that future looks like.

Sophia Cheng: The specifics are hazy, but what is very clear to me is that we are living lightly and I think lightly in terms of the different types of work and whether that's GDP, accountable work or otherwise, that takes up a portion of the day. Like you say, closer to the land. Like there's a lot of new skills to get ready for that I hopefully get there at some point and in community with other people. And so that is kind of the carrot. And um, the practice that I'm doing right now with my 7 month old is going okay. Co-housing. What does that look like? It's kind of burgeoning area of alternative forms of living. So we are now going to visit all these different places and treating them like mini holidays. But it's a practice I think Jane McGonagall calls pulling the future in. And once you kind of see the pockets of it, it makes that, that like leap so much closer and so much more plausible. The other practice we're doing is kind of questioning the education. I mean he's only seven months old, but it's like, is the educational system particular? You know, I can't speak for uh, in the US but in the UK are we just churning out people ready for late capital given, you know, the paradigm's already shifted. So. So actually what are uh, alternative forms of education? And all I'm doing now is being curious and open and I'm finding that really energizing. So learning about Steiner and all these kind of other alternative models and that keeps me, it feel like I'm building those small little blocks whilst at the same time being open to kind of the unfolding situation today. I'm really curious actually, just kind of throwing the baton back to both of you as a first time parent and um, like curiously kind of being a sponge to hearing other people's experiences. What do you wish you had known or been exposed to around your decision around becoming a parent or those early uh, hazy months of the parenthood journey?

Nicole Diroff: There's a reason people say, oh my goodness, enjoy every moment. It, you know, will be gone before you know it. I mean I think there's a truth in that. But then to feel like, ooh, damn, I didn't appreciate that last couple hours, that was like really kind of stressful to be like, that's okay, that's normal. I mean Ben's on number three. So may have like, I feel like it starts to get normalized by, by number three and it's just sort of a different thing. But first time parenting, just an acceptance of this is going to be hard. So let's support one another through it. Which uh, I think is kind of something we could say about climate change too.

Ben Yosua-Davis: Yeah, yeah. You know, as you were saying that I feel like my experience of having kids is it's always a willful choice to lose control of your own life for multiple years. So you know, three kids, eight and under, we are at like the very bottom of the kid hole and uh, there's just parts of our life we don't control. Will our almost one year old daughter will she sleep. I don't know if she's going to sleep tonight. Will the fact that she sleeps or not sleep have a large impact on the rest of the household? Absolutely. What? You know, and you just. You have no control, and you learned that. Actually, that could actually be okay. We can learn not to be in control, which feels to me like a climate lesson, especially for those of us who come from privileged contexts, that is almost too on the nose. Like, you can learn to not be in control, and it's okay. And paired for that with me has been this need to continue to run towards my sense of joy and fun. Being a parent of small children is endlessly entertaining. They're hilarious. They are adorable. They are responsive. They say the most amazing things. And I am just constantly surprised and delighted by what is happening in my life. I try whenever I have that moment where it's like I could write an email or I could play basketball with my son, I try to just always lean towards basketball or this ridiculous game that we call chicken soccer that I've talked about that I play with my two older kids or whatever it might be.

Nicole Diroff: That does not involve kicking chickens, right?

Ben Yosua-Davis: It does not involve kicking chickens. It involves me playing soccer against my son with my daughter on my shoulders while clucking loudly like a chicken.

Nicole Diroff: Better. Better than kicking chickens.

Ben Yosua-Davis: They love it. They love it. This is like our annual summer tradition now, where I get to go and embarrass myself in front of all my neighbors, running around our front yard clucking like I'm turning into poultry. That's actually amazing. How often did I get a chance to do that when I didn't have kids? The answer is never. No one asked me to play chicken soccer when I had no children. And now I get to play chicken soccer every summer. And I think it's really important to lean into those moments of fun and joy. It's one of the things I learned from parents on this island where I lived is that, uh, actually parenting, it can be hard, it can be tough, but it also can just be a lot of fun.

Nicole Diroff: Well, and I think just to reflect for a moment, chicken soccer is those things you named Sophia. It's living lightly, living spontaneously, living joyfully, living close to the land, being in community with other humans that you care about. It's so untechnical, it's almost ridiculous. Kids do bring out this. This way of actually just being and not doing.

Sophia Cheng: Thank you for these nuggets of wisdom. I'll take them with me. And, yeah, I feel like I'm learning from Finley every single day about being versus doing. Thank you so much.

Nicole Diroff: Remind me what a seven month old is. Like, what, what is parenting a seven month old. And if you can in the UK, you know, like, what is that? What is that like in the United Kingdom?

Sophia Cheng: Well, there's no British accent to wrestle with just yet, but, uh, he's certainly finding his voice and his range, vocal range, as well as finding his teeth. So that's like a whole new exploration that we are journeying through food and uh, the weaning journey and baby led weaning, which is super exciting. And just keeping a constant eye out to check whether it's gagging or choking. Gagging or choking. Gagging. Okay. Choking. Not okay. You can hear gagging. You can't hear choking. So it's this constant kind of high alert. But he's rolling, he's starting to crawl. And, um, the piece we're doing now is kind of that socializing piece. We're really lucky in the UK there's lots of really accessible parent and baby classes. So it's kind of bringing him into those spaces and watching him interact with other small people. Yeah. Is kind of what is center of our lives now. And not to mention the sleep. Ben, um, I'm hoping, you know, he went down about an hour ago, so fingers crossed for a good night.

Ben Yosua-Davis: We'll cross our fingers with you. Thank you, Sophia, for joining us today. How can those listening who want to learn more about your creativity and your inspiring work at With Many Roots find you?

Sophia Cheng: Thank you, Ben and Nicole for having me. It's been such a pleasure and a real joy to share these topics, the kind of heavy ones and the light ones, uh, with you and your listeners. Uh, you can find out more about me and With Many roots at withmanyroots.com those are tree roots and our focus is on delivering education for the Anthropocene and really kind of picking apart the systems. We call it throwing water on the spider web. You can't change the system if we can't see them. So helping groups of people find those and their levers of influence. And we've got our, uh, CliFi Imaginarium up there. You'll find some of Peterson's CliFi up there as well. So do check it out. It's right at the top.

Ben Yosua-Davis: In each episode of the Climate Changed Podcast, we provide suggestions on how you can engage in meaningful climate work or enhance your current work.

Nicole Diroff: We are committed to sharing significant, achievable and measurable actions. Sophia, what might you suggest?

Sophia Cheng: So I think based on some of the themes that came up for me and helped me to be bolder, more courageous in the life choices that I've made, is that practice of future dreaming, particularly if you are prepared to take in the bad news. Having, uh, a space and a practice for being open to what could happen or defining giving shape to that carrot, for example, has been a very valuable exercise for me. And I kind of encourage others to do that as well. And I know that happens here. I encourage you not to do it on your own. It seems to be so much more effective when we can do some group dreaming together in your local community or an online community, for example, the call to action, if I could quote Rob Hopkins, is to make the future so delicious that we are longing to be there.

Nicole Diroff: Yeah, that's great. Liz Rush and I talked about parent groups where serious conversations about climate change may not typically be welcome. But I invite our listeners to look for climate cafes where those conversations are intentional. And I know there are several climate cafes specifically for parents. So if you are a parent and listening, I invite you to find one of those. Or maybe you even want to create something yourself. So perhaps you want to find a way to give parents and potential future parents or people who are wrestling with decisions around parenting. I'll toss in there. Give grandparents an opportunity to consider what it means to be involved in children's lives in a climate changed world. You don't need to be an expert to host that kind of conversation. And in fact, those of us here at the BTS center are, uh, really hoping to equip you. So we have created a study guide that goes along with this episode. You can invite people to listen to the podcast in advance or bring them together and we'll have a suggested segment for you to listen to together and use the discussion guide as a resource to structure your conversation.

Ben Yosua-Davis: We've mentioned this before, but a, uh, practical and meaningful activity for parents to do with their children is to create a 72 hour immersion emergency kit. With ever increasing risks arising from severe weather, children can feel anxious by storms, wildfires, heat waves and what Dr. Katharine Hayhoe calls global weirding. By creating the kit with your child, you can help relieve some of the stress. The Red Cross has a list of items you can put into a 72 hour emergency kit. Visit RedCross.org and do a search for emergency kit. You will find detailed lists and even activities for children.

Nicole Diroff: When creating this kit with a child in your life, encourage them to customize it with things they would like to have during an emergency. This could be a, uh, special stuffy or snack, a favorite game. To make an even bigger impact, consider taking photos of the process and sharing it on social media. And once you have your emergency kit, you and your child can show it to friends and neighbors and offer to help them create their own. Have fun with it. Now, as she has done in each episode this season, one of our producers, Anna Barron, has some more suggestions for you to consider.

Invitation to Next Steps

Anna Barron: Thanks Nicole. As someone who is considering becoming a parent at some point myself, I found this episode particularly thought provoking. In my circles of friends, we are all grappling with the notion of bringing more children into this world while the threat of climate change is so real and rapidly approaching. I was personally inspired by this episode and I'd love to share some more invitations with you, our listeners. First, if you are a parent, I invite you to seek out someone who is not and vice versa. Set aside 30 minutes for a conversation about the decision to have children in this climate changed world. What are the differences in your perspectives? How might you come together to help impact the future of children's lives on this planet? Consider sharing reflections from your conversation on your social media so that other friends might be inspired to have the same conversation. Next, I invite you to visit climatekids.org. This website has many great resources for engaging children in the climate crisis. If you click on the Resources button under the Learn with Us tab, there are different activities for children like Climate Bingo and a climate scavenger hunt. Consider doing one or two of these activities with your child. This will help them become more aware and learn to care about the natural world. You can help them understand that it takes a community and not any individual to care for the Earth. That way these activities won't be too overwhelming and they may be inspired to share them with their friends. In fact, to take this invitation a step further, I invite you to share one of the activities that you found useful with your child's teacher or another parent so that they might be inspired to do the activity with more children. Once again, the website for these resources is called climatekids.org that's climatekids.org as always, if you do any of these next steps, please feel free to share them with this episode on your social media so that some of your friends might be inspired to do the same. There is no pressure to do any or all of these next steps. We just want these to be a resource for you as you figure out ways to engage in this huge and overwhelming topic. Thank you to Liz and Sophia for broadening my own perspective on parenthood in a climate changed world. And a special thank you to Ben and Nicole for bringing me onto the team this season. It has been such a joy.

Closing

Ben Yosua-Davis: Thank you Anna and thank you for being such an important part of the Climate Changed Podcast team this season.

Nicole Diroff: And I want to give a huge shout out to Sophia for joining us as a special guest in the studio today. It was so amazing to expand the conversation from Ben and I to include you.

Sophia Cheng: Oh thank you so much Nicole and Ben. It's been a real pleasure. My face is a little bit sore from all the smiling and the giggling. This concept conversation will stay with me. Thanks very much.

Ben Yosua-Davis: I also want to thank Elizabeth Rush for deepening the conversation with us. Learn more about Liz's writing and social media, visit elizabethrush.net 

Nicole Diroff: Thank you listeners so much for joining us today for this episode of the Climate Changed Podcast. We have already begun production of Season Four. If you have an idea for a topic or a guest, please contact us. You can leave a voice message at the following 207-200-6986 that's 207-200-6986, Plus one if you're calling from outside the USA like Sophia or please email us. That email address is podcasthebtscenter.org podcasthebtscenter.org 

Ben Yosua-Davis: We have included links to our guests, our invitation to next steps, and much more at our website, climatechangedpodcast.org We also have show notes, the discussion guide and a full transcript of this episode. That website again is climatechangedpodcast.org Our podcast is produced by Peterson Toscano and Anna Barron. Climate Changed is a project of The BTS Center in beautiful Portland, Maine.

Nicole Diroff: In addition to our podcast, we provide free resources for spiritual leaders and many online and in person events and cohorts. Learn more by visiting thebtscenter.org. That's thebtscenter.org. Thanks, listeners. Be well.