Aligning ego with eco when flooded, burned out, or depleted

Holistic and sustainable climate change solutions that are trauma-informed and address environmental injustices and social oppression

I believe that at some primal level, we are all swinging between the same extreme states of flooding, stress, depletion, and burnout that our Earth Mother is unapologetically reflecting back to us this summer with extreme rainfall, flash floods, heatwaves, wild fires, and climate catastrophes in many new regions all over the globe.

We feel powerless and overwhelmed when we look around us and tune into the state of the world — it’s easy to feel as if we’re being victimized by our own emotions, human nature, and the earth, which are all out to get us and make our lives miserable. Nothing could we further from the truth.

Don’t get me wrong. The suffering, upheaval, and havoc caused by (human-driven) climate crises are real, and particularly debilitating and hurting the voiceless, marginalized, and most oppressed and disenfranchised humans — as well as countless non-human animals, plants, and parts of the planet.

My extended family, friends, and the majority of citizens in my native Suriname live on or near the coast and have been plagued by floods and increasing temperatures and humidity for more than a decade, if not longer. In addition to the many political and economic challenges Suriname has faced as a former Dutch colony that only gained independence in 1975, it is now one of the poorest and most vulnerable countries to river and coastal floods in the world.

Environmental injustices most severely harm people of color and low-income communities in the US and around the world who are in the worst possible position, in terms of financial and political power, to overhaul and reform our global capitalistic and polluting systems and industries. Of course, they are bonafide victims and at risk of becoming helpless climate refugees of environmental injustices (piled on top of historical injustices and oppression, colonization, slavery, patriarchy, racism, etc.).

No doubt, they will be blamed and further scapegoated for causing trouble and threatening our comfortable ways of life when the day comes when they have no other choice but to knock on the doors and walls of…