CONSCIOUS PARENTING • SUSTAINABILITY • COMMUNITY • WELLBEING

Maya After shaking off a bout of baby brain back in 2019, and finally feeling more capable in motherhood, I attended the Mothers Rise Up march in London on International Mother’s Day. It felt immediately empowering. I joined 3,000 equally concerned parents, friends and children. It was the first time we had joined in to support the youth who were already taking to the streets. Maya was one of the nine mums who organised the march.

“It was intense! Over a three-month period, we came together over frenzied WhatsApp groups, without any budget or previous experience of organising a march of this scale, and somehow we pulled off a beautiful family event that surpassed all our expectations.”

Rowan It was through the Mothers Rise Up march that I met Rowan. She is one of the founding members of the emerging grassroots organisation Parents for Future. She is also a human rights and environmental lawyer, and mother to two young girls. Today, Rowan has put her law career aside to focus on engaging parents to act for the future.

“After I had my first daughter, I was head down, trying to find my feet in first-time parenting, but something shifted with my second daughter. Having a very young baby, I felt a connection with the world around me on an emotional, instinctual level that I hadn’t felt before, and I finally allowed myself to experience it fully. I felt the injustice of why I, as a human mother, have rights to raise my children in safety, when non-human mothers of other species don’t. Non-humans are being massively impacted by human activities and it just felt wrong. It made me, as a parent, want to engage in environmental issues. And then the 2018 IPCC report came out, which just confirmed all my worst fears. And that was enough. I realised I didn’t need any more expertise, that caring about the future was enough. It was all the qualifications I needed to go and engage in climate. That perspective, of basing my engagement in love, has remained really important as my involvement in climate activism has grown, and it is one of the things that keeps me going when it feels hard.” >

39 JUNO