by Lydia Wylie-Kellerman
Broadleaf Books
7/23/2024, paperback
SKU: 9781506495125
What does it mean to be a parent in the age of climate change?
We are living in an era of climate collapse. We feel it in small ways: when the snow falls less or the cherry blossoms bloom too early. And in large ways: when our streets flood and entire towns burn to the ground. Climate anxiety touches nearly everything we do, but perhaps nothing so intimately as our parenting. It leaves an impossible task for those of us raising children. What do we tell our kids when the air quality is too bad to go ride bikes? What skills will they need if systems collapse? And what do we do with the fear, grief, and anger we feel as parents
Parent, activist, and writer Lydia Wylie-Kellermann wrestles with these questions and dares to argue that while the future remains unknown, there is still awe and wonder, love and struggle, gratitude and overwhelming joy to be found. As we raise our children toward this uncertain future, Wylie-Kellermann helps us see that those same children shift our posture, slow us down, and invite us to fall in love with the ground on which we stand. At this turning point in humanity, we can choose to shift our lives away from death-dealing profit systems toward life-giving, generous systems. Here is the moment when we must choose to fight like hell for climate justice. And we can do it by nurturing a deeper relationship with this sweet earth in all its beauty, wonder, and wisdom, walking alongside our children.
Reviews:
"With this precious pollination song, this wind-swept map-book, Wylie-Kellermann invites us to the fugitive vocation of wandering with our children--reminding us that it is in radical accompaniment that we might catch a glimpse of what they've always known, what my daughter seems to know now: that endings are strewn with stranger worlds, and the gift of our journeys lies not in arriving, but in the traveling together." -- Báyò Akomolafe, PhD, author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences
"This Sweet Earth is so desperately needed right now. Read it. Gift it to parents and grandparents and everyone who needs hope during this time of despair. This book is hope for our world and for the next seven generations!" -- Randy Woodley, author of Becoming Rooted and co-sustainer Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice
"Wylie-Kellermann invites us to pilgrimage and prayer walk, toddler walk and tween race, to stand in silent reverence and thunder like the holy prophets as we work to protect a world that is fragile, fractured, and still so fecund! Read this book aloud with friends and build community; share it with the kids in your life to start to see nature as they see her; read quietly to yourself, and your tears will cleanse, challenge, and change you." -- Frida Berrigan, author of It Runs in the Family
About the Author:
Lydia Wylie-Kellermann is a writer, editor, activist, and mother. She is director of Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center and the editor of The Sandbox Revolution: Raising Kids for a Just World. Lydia's writing has appeared in Geez magazine, Sojourners, Red Letter Christians, and various Catholic Worker papers, and she is a contributor to multiple books. She lives with her partner and two boys in Bangor, Pennsylvania.