This week I asked fellow substacker
from the Substack The Golden Hour to help me answer the above question. Anya is a parent and climate activist, a former NPR journalist and she has written five books loosely related to the mental health of young people in the face of difficulty. She is also the producer of Joanna Macy’s incredible podcast with Jess Serrante, We Are The Great Turning.Anya will join the comments after this goes live!
At the bottom of the post are a bunch of resources for parents asking the same difficult questions.
The question - How to parent in the face of collapse? - comes up often and there was a particularly moving thread that opened up last week that spoke to this concern that so many parents have. Here it is if you missed it. The gist is that while we might be able to accept collapse on one level when we reflect on the kids in our lives an incredible emotional dissonance kicks in.
Here are a few of the comments in that thread, all of which hit me in the guts:
Donna: My 19 year old is studying animal science. The truth just hit - she won’t be working on conservation initiatives, she’ll be documenting mass extinction. Golly. This is hard.
Callie: I feel like I can personally feel a lot of relief at all of this. An easing of the cognitive dissonance. Until I think of my kids and then a desperate terror blooms in my chest.
