The rain is freaking me out. So is the cold in the rest of the country.

The special features of Children of Men in 2006 had a scientist who shared that as the planet gets warmer, the polar ice caps will melt and for some amount of time, we will get colder in response to things getting hotter. This stayed with me because, while I don’t like global warming, I do get distracted by the loveliness of warmth- but I am terrified of the cold. It was motivating to me.

When we first moved to LA, I was a farmer in Silverlake. I learned the patterns of weather in 2011 & 2012 because I was out in it and it affected our job. When the rainy season, winter, came in December and January, we couldn’t always work. We bought seeds and worked on finances over lunches indoors.

But over the last eight years, the rainy season has shifted. Last year, it seemed to rain more in February and then it rained a lot in March, which was noticeably different. The plants bloomed and blossomed bigger than they usually do because the combination of water and spring sun gave them more of a chance to thrive. But then they were too tender too close to the scorching summer and the edges of many plants burned and the extra growth died back.

I went home to Tucson for the holidays and it rained in December. The Tucson desert doesn’t rain in December. It has a monsoon season in the summer where it pours storms. But this was a heavy rain, smack in the middle of the wrong season.

The rain in Los Angeles this season is also different than I’ve ever seen. It’s colder and longer. I see on the yearly and monthly almanac that there are random years with more rain. But this feels so different to me.

People are excited for the Super Bloom. I was so happy to go to it in 2017 after the drought for so many years. But I feel like it may be a response, this year, to global warming. I don’t know how to feel about it yet. Some part of me wishes I could enjoy it. It seems like it will feel like cake may taste to a diabetic: sweet and daunting.

LA has so many transplant residents that it might be harder for people here to notice the yearly weather patterns. I feel like many humans tend to be in a car or on a phone or computer instead of outside on the ground developing a relationship with the cycle of life happening around them. Without that connection, it seems easy not to take action.

I keep trying to think of ways to start a big-small movement, where, while people are working on political protections for the environment, even more people can do small effective actions together. I understand that big actions are needed. But I think we each have so much power to make small change.

I think our society often looks for fast, complete success and can get impatient with, or not notice, small growth. So we don’t keep on going to let the small growth add up. But if we got excited to believe in our individual capability, and trusted that slow manageable change is very powerful, we could really make a difference!

And I believe the practice of loving ourselves leads to this type of trust and belief.

I dream of hashtags that we all can participate in-

• #SundrySundays Have one day a week where we don’t use laundry dryers (dryers release a lot of unregulated pollution and use a lot of energy)
• #WalkingWednesday Take public transportation for a day and don’t drive
• #OneThirdPlantBased Eat one vegan meal a day (the pollution from raising animals for dairy and meat contributes more to global warming than cars and all transportation combined, and it’s methane from their farts which is 23 times more planet-warming than CO2 from cars)
• #2HoursADay Spend at least 2 hours outside each day, to get away from the screens, in order to notice what is around us
• #WhatIDo List each action you take to do your own part
• #SmallSustainableCommitment Commit to one or two small green actions that can be sustained over a year, without judging the size, with pride for the action
• #EarthCareIsSelfCare A daily action to be kind to the earth and in turn, to be kind to ourselves
• #MentalHealthLeadsToRealWealth Take time and space in our lives to learn to love ourselves, through therapy, free group therapy or whatever fluffs our muffins, because when we come from true self-mattering, we value the nourishing world around us and believe we’re worth whatever effort it takes to care for ourselves

My true hope is for a movement to organically happen. (That sounds like a poop metaphor. Poop metaphors and animal farts… It’s the first time they’re not funny to me.) But if you are a teacher or a leader, or a person who hides from the world, or both or any type of person that would want to share these hashtags, or talk about getting together to spread an idea, or who is already part of an environmentally-healing movement that you’d like to share, please let me know.

Writing this out makes me realize what’s really resonating with me:

I’d love to hear the stories of other people who are noticing the weather and world around them. It would help me feel less alone, and safer, because when we all see the same problem, we’re more likely to act in ways that heal it.

What is your connection to the land, sky, wildlife and water around you and have you noticed those things changing?

#imnoticing  #myconnection