With motherhood, my climate emotions took a new shade of real.

In January 2023, floods in Los Angeles, multi-colored cauliflowers from the farmers market, and my daughter’s first-year checkup converged to put climate change in a new perspective for me.

I used to become outraged by the lack of fury in others about climate change. My inner voice kept repeating. They don’t care. I had spent years on campaigning to “Save the Planet”, which started with much rigor and enthusiasm. But after seeing the vicious circle of campaigning for the same issues, wait I thought we had already saved the Arctic, wait I thought Coca-Cola promised to change their ways, as our Planet continued to fall ill, in fever and chills, wildfires and floods, year after year, depletion set in. It seemed that there were two kinds of people. Those who care and those who don’t care.

Even then, climate change felt like a future. There was fighting. Defending the Amazon. Saving the Arctic. The fish in West Africa. The caribou in Canada. Standing for this, fighting for that. There was lots of worry, guilt, shame, resentment, anger... But from a distance. The news came from faraway places. One-third of Pakistan flooded, Hurricane Maria devastated, Paradise California destroyed, Malibu on fire, getting closer now, but still out there in other places, happening to other people.

But in January 2023, the floods hit my place in Los Angeles. For the first time, it felt like this whole thing came to knock on my door.

Atmospheric rivers over California.

15 years in Laurel Canyon, I’ve never seen water run down the hill like this. Not only the curbs and the gutters but the entire street roars like a river. One night, I peek through the front door to spot a pack of coyotes shrieking. They turn out to be a pack of neighborhood teenagers, their laughter mixed with fear, climbing upstream in knee-high water. I smile. Partly envious of their jubilant youth, an adventure to be remembered, facing the forces of nature with their fragile bodies, from a safe space. I wonder what they will talk about when they get home. Will they philosophize about the state of the world or bury their faces in TikTok feeds and opt into the Matrix?

The chill washes over my chest and I retrieve into the warmth of my living room. The whole thing becomes visceral. Heart beats faster, breathing shallows, and thoughts shit what could happen to us? vibrate. Putting kids to bed I calculate how fast I could get from my bed to theirs, whether I would hear the mud sliding... I don’t want to think about this.

Multi-color cauliflowers.

Later that week, my home chef friend, Pelin says half of the farmers market was empty last Sunday - because floods. They either couldn’t work on their crops, or their crops were ruined entirely. She called her cauliflower guy to make sure he’ll have what she needs. Luckily the cauliflowers show up. Pelin cooks. And we enjoy a delicious meal. But the thought where’s our food going to come from lingers. I like to take for granted the abundance of fresh produce in California. Its fragility never occurred to me. First drought and fires, now floods and mudslides. The land’s high fevers and chills are as evident as my kids’ runny noses. When’s the last time we’re ever going to get to eat cauliflower?

Feeding the babies.

Same month. Our daughter’s 1st-year visit to the pediatrician:

_ Is she eating her solids?
_ She eats everything we eat.
_ Eggs, meat, fruits, greens?
_ All that and lots of yogurt.
_ How much fish does she eat?
_ 3–4 times a week. (proud)
_ No no! It’s too much for her age. Because of microplastics, mercury…

and he keeps saying more things, but as soon as I hear microplastics my ears start ringing, my vision blurs, my shoulders hunch. I know this very well. All the studies I read, all my eco-pooping at birthday parties smirking at plastic cutlery and disposable cups, and somehow I was going around like it didn’t apply to me, not to the fancy fish I buy from Whole Foods.

I feel directly threatened now. What do I feed my kids? Are they safe in this house when it rains? When it started getting personal, my climate emotions took a whole shade of real. With climate activism, I was emotionally invested from a distance. The anxiety was diffused and underneath. Now it is more immediate, alerting, and on the surface.

I begin to think about my family’s safety. The logistics. What’s our evacuation plan? What goes in the go bag? I turn to my climate psych community. We brainstorm. Talk about investing in a satellite phone, a solar generator, and Merino wool shirts… I stare out the window, overwhelmed. My mind escapes to the garden. I should get back to planting a garden. At the very least regrow garlic. Just stab a clove in the soil and there you’ll have more garlic. Free antibiotics! I should be able to grow some of my own food. See how long it takes. Make it an activity with the kids. Acquire some joy along with basic life skills. The garden regulates my emotions from anxious anticipation to playful curiosity. Priorities become clear.

Climate change is obvious to me. That’s what I thought. But recently I began to observe the subtlety and variance of my emotions. I realize that things are not fixed between those who care and those who don’t. This testifies to what I learned from studying Climate Psychology.

Climate emotions are different from other emotions. They are compounded emotional responses. They are mixed and can be contradictory. Personal and political, so-called positive and negative at the same time. They are sustained. With each weather event, as hail falls out of the blue, cyclones arrive earlier than usual, the wind blows stronger each new season, there is no dialing the emotions back to how they felt in the past. Lastly, they are somatic. Effects of planetary changes are felt in the body, subtly yet directly impacting our physical health which translates into emotions. In turn, emotions can also trigger physical symptoms in our body.

“Everything that we’re doing at this moment in history is a type of coping mechanism. ”

Climate denial and climate doomism are two responses that come up most frequently in our feeds. It seems, like everything these days, one has to pick a team. But in fact, “denial and doomism are two sides of the same coin to get out of discomfort,” Leslie Davenport explains in class. The coin is the coping mechanism of our brain, responding to an incomprehensible, unprecedented, uncontrollable threat. Doomism or denial are both ways of getting out of discomfort when overwhelmed with information overload. And that’s exactly what climate change brings, a heavy load of mental content that hijacks our attention and leaves us unable to regulate. The way I see it, the coping coin doesn’t simply have two sides but it’s an ever-spinning, swirling around, flying up in the air, about the land but rolling off the carpet and keep on going kind of coin.

The activist in me knows and stands firm that climate reality is in black and white. Our survival as a society depends on whether we act or not. However, the required action toward solutions gets its momentum from very diverse emotional places.

Climate feelings are not easily identified. They are not binary or linear, positive or negative. They are on a wide, moving, ebbing, and flowing spectrum. An ocean-sized state of feelings. Everything actually falls into a gray area. Everything that we’re doing at this moment in history is a type of coping mechanism. It’s not dread vs. hope. It’s not doomsday scrolling vs. complete denial. Not eco-poopers vs. delusional optimists. The way we cope is a lot more colorful than that. Accepting this is a revelation and relief. I am team Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson: “To me, it’s not a matter of joy or sadness or optimism or pessimism. It’s just my moral duty to be a part of the solutions.” I am intrigued to look at humans from a more compassionate lens and take the spectrum of behaviors as they are, and see them with the potential they bear to motivate action.

“The garden regulates my emotions from anxious anticipation to playful curiosity. Priorities become clear.”

Climate emotions come up in activism, emergency response, education, and policy-making. They influence art. Art influences them. They prompt unexplored research questions in science. They steer consumer choices and impact the economy. All possibilities for change swing along a pendulum of emotions hard to keep steady but worth studying and telling stories about.

All this perhaps is either too clinical or stating the obvious. The bottom line is when emotions are felt, they are powerful. When we find ourselves on that one spot of the spectrum, it may seem ever pervasive, and determinate, and it can take over. It can produce these narratives:

“They don’t care.”

“I have no power.”

“I am on my own.”

Whereas the healing narratives could sound more like:

“People are reacting to this in all sorts of ways.”

“I am doing my best.”

“There are others like me.”

Even in my small slice of life, I experienced a whole range of emotional states and responses within the last few years. Curiosity and enthusiasm. Disillusionment and burnout. Introspection and healing. I cocooned myself in motherhood and invited joy back into my life. I found new kin and communities and restored a sense of empowerment. Then, last month I got a taste of the mama bear state in the face of immediate danger. None of this makes me a type of person, none of this becomes my identity. These are simply emotions that are capable of change. I wonder what other places there are on this spectrum of climate emotions, and what stories to tell. Like one about my son enjoying post-storm mud puddles without a single worry in his mind.

Climate reality is in black and white, the psychology of it not quite

With motherhood, my climate emotions took a new shade of real.

Just Breathe

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