Start Where You Are

In restoring earth’s natural beauty, we need to each start where we are. Becoming beautiful is an organic process of expressing authenticity; this includes imperfections and vulnerabilities. Where I am now is in a period of avoidance and mild day-drinking. My mom died on New Year’s Eve and I am riding the unpredictable waves of grief.

My mom in 1959 or 1960 - around the time she met my dad.

An unexpected reality of my mom’s death is a deluge of material items that now belong to me. I am sorting photos encompassing two lifetimes and the physical reminders of my mom’s hopes and efforts. She was mighty crafty for a good while and there’s a lot to show for it.

Part of the Elemental Activist road to natural beauty is taking responsibility for one’s material objects. I think of objects as extensions of ourselves. Whether we make them, buy them or keep them, we are responsible for the urges and needs that led to their creation and acquisition.

Because I am bound to my mother by blood, history and now inheritance, I must take responsibility for her remains. Her body is in the ground but the fruit of her efforts remains in every room of the house, I am happy for it. Some people have nothing when their mom departs.

To honor my mom, natural resources and all the other lives involved in the manufacture of these goods, I will run my hands over each item and make what does not have a home in my current reality available to someone else.