Dear
With a child on your hip, the face of climate crisis changes. It stares you down.
Over a decade of exploration with my daughter—through 40 countries, 300 dives under water, and 1,500 miles on foot—I witness an earth that’s dying. And in response, I experience a woman’s violent and feminine instinct to put my own body between my offspring and the threats of a quaking future.
In lyrical prose that embodies the fragmented form of motherhood itself, my essay collection, MY OCEANS (60,000 words), responds to the threat of climate crisis on modern motherhood. It is a mother’s quest to answer the pressing question, “How do I defend all that’s dying and precious?” It speaks to an underrepresented, collective, feminine, grief and suggests it’s time to dust off the label of “ecofeminist.” Women must transform from mother to animal to eco-pirate.
There are books that allow readers to experience the lyrical fragmentation of motherhood (Little Labors by Ravka Galchen) and books that focus on the erosion of ecosystems through political or ecofeminist lenses (Erosion by Terry Tempest Williams). MY OCEANS will appeal to mothers confronting the new realities of parenthood during climate crisis, women who feel parallels between the patriarchy’s violence toward women and the planet, readers interested in the confluence of spirituality and ecology, and the new wave of politically engaged citizens seeking more disruptive forms of activism as embodied by eco-piracy.
Three excerpts from this book project were published in 2020 at Bat City Review, Catapult, and Atticus Review. It recently won first place in Pacifica Literary Review’s Creative Nonfiction Contest.
I am the recipient of artist grants from the Millay Colony and Vermont Studio Center and began her journey as a writer in 2001, as one of the first solo female travel bloggers. I still manage my personal website (and persona), which has received recognition by Footprints Guidebooks, Travelers Tales, Blogs of Note, World Nomads, Mslexia, and a number of influencers.
I look forward to your feedback. Thank you for your time and consideration.