As a clinical psychologist turned climate activist, it’s a primary focus of my career to consider such tricky emotions and help folks charge forward. (It’s also the very topic of my book Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth, a new edition of which is out next month.)

Yes, the climate disaster holds bleak effects if we do nothing. But the truth is that we’re not without options, hope, or a path forward. Below, find my top climate anxiety tips for processing and channeling your emotions into effective action and mindful optimism.

6 climate anxiety tips to feel better and make a difference

1. Treat yourself with self-compassion

It’s a common tendency to be harshly self-critical, and that inclination extends to climate emotions. Think: “What am I, pathetic?” or “I have no right to feel this way when others are so much worse off?”

One of my top climate anxiety tips is to cut negative self-talk that only complicates things further. This kind of self-criticism shuts down emotional processing and exploration. It will not serve you.

Welcome your self-critical feelings as a means of building “emotional muscle.” Approach your pain with an attitude of curiosity and self-compassion.

Instead, welcome your self-critical feelings as a means of building “emotional muscle.” Approach your pain with an attitude of curiosity and self-compassion. An effective litmus test to gauge whether you are doing this is to ask yourself whether you would treat a beloved friend the way you are yourself.

You likely wouldn’t tell them to ignore their pain or call them a bad person. You would listen to their feelings with interest and respond to them with compassion and empathy. Don’t treat yourself worse than you would treat a loved one.

2. Welcome fear, grief, and other difficult feelings about climate anxiety

You are right to be upset! Your feelings are valid—all of them. Feeling fear is a healthy response to the climate emergency. It helps us protect ourselves, mediates between perceiving danger and taking defensive action, and launches us into action.

We can only fully process our pain, honor our loss, and enable ourselves to engage in reality by grieving what we’re losing.

Grief is also healthy in this time of mass deaths and extinctions. People grieve because they love humanity and the living world. We must decide that losses deserve to be remembered, felt, and mourned. We can only fully process our pain, honor our loss, and enable ourselves to engage in reality by grieving what we’re losing.

3. Get comfortable with crying

This can be challenging, especially for those who believe crying is a sign of weakness or that it signals an inability to cope. In actuality, crying is a specific act of emotional recognition and response that provides an outlet for all the grief and pain inside you. Its benefits include linking the emotional and physiological—and can even help you feel better, in some cases.

4. Rethink your life story: Maybe you have a mission?

The climate emergency will drastically affect your life and your future. Have you taken that in, and really thought it through? And even more deeply, have you considered why you are alive at this time of tremendous import? What if everything in your life, including its most painful challenges, has prepared you to help humanity protect itself from the climate emergency?

Many people who become activists have gone through this kind of identity rethinking in the context of the climate emergency. By viewing yourself as a potential activist or change-maker, you empower yourself and also place a great responsibility on your shoulders.

5. Share your feelings with others

The most common emotional experience with regard to the climate emergency I hear from people is alienation. “No one understands how bad it is” or “I can’t talk to anyone about it.”

Dealing with the truth is hard enough. No one should have to do it alone. It’s too hard, and totally unnecessary, as everyone in the world is dealing with the same issues.Some are doing so unconsciously, others are using defenses such as denial to protect themselves from painful reality. But remember that many of your friends and family are also worried, and they will be relieved and appreciative when you bring up your feelings, especially if you can listen and offer them support as well. Be personal, emotional, authentic, and empathetic.

A great way to get started is to join a Climate Emotions Conversation, and have a chance to share your feelings and hear the feelings of people, often from all over the world, who understand.

6. Join the climate emergency movement and disrupt normalcy

If you have tapped into your feelings, welcomed them, talked with others about them, and rethought your life story, you may wonder, What’s next? Am I just supposed to carry around almost unbearable pain? Or is there something to be done?

I recommend that you join or support a campaign that is disrupting normalcy, likely one using nonviolent civil disobedience. “Normal” channels for change have failed. Our institutions are not keeping pace with the accelerating emergency. It’s time to get outside of your comfort zone.

According to a 2021 Yale study, 8.6 million adults are “definitely” willing to personally participate in nonviolent civil disobedience for climate. Are you one of these willing Americans? If so, it’s time to activate.

Figuring out how to join the movement in a way that works well for you can be complicated. Only you can decide where you can be most effective. But know that any and every role is better than none.

The experience of parenting is an overwhelmingly gendered one, and pregnancy is a catapult into that gendered space. When I was 12 weeks pregnant, a midwife told me that I probably wouldn’t be able to chestfeed because of my “gender issues,” as she put it. I had done hours of research looking for trans-friendly providers, called ahead to confirm trans-friendly care, and still had a woman tell me my trans-ness would make me a worse parent.

This midwife said, in her experience, patients with a gender identity different from their biologically female sex didn’t go on to successfully chestfeed. She felt my own chest and predicted I’d have the same experience, whether for biological reasons or socio-emotional ones. She just didn’t believe trans people could chestfeed. For obvious reasons, I didn’t stick with that midwife. But when my child was born, I did successfully chestfeed.

As a nonbinary parent, Nonbinary Parents Day, which is celebrated on the third Sunday in April, is both a celebration and a relief. I’m years into parenting and am still carving out room for myself in such a gendered space.

Nonbinary educator and performer Johnny Blazes created and began celebrating Nonbinary Parents Day in 2017, and the holiday seems to find more celebrants each year. When you’re nonbinary, you’re often forced into choosing a binary gender: between the men’s or women’s department, between Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. Being a nonbinary parent involves so many parentheticals, but Nonbinary Parents Day is a day that’s just for us.

My son calls me Mimi, but I hadn’t landed on that name while I was expecting; I just knew that I wouldn’t be “Mom.” But every week at prenatal yoga, the instructors would end their classes the same way: “Now, mommies, put your hands on your bellies.”

To me, motherhood feels linked to womanhood, and I’m not a woman. I never have been.

Even typing this out brings back a wave of discomfort, a complete absence of belonging. There are plenty of nonbinary parents who are comfortable with the binary parental monikers, but “mom” never felt like me. To me, motherhood feels linked to womanhood, and I’m not a woman. I never have been.

As a result, pregnancy was a gender-dysphoric experience for me. Every time I was in a space designed for expecting moms, I felt like a fraud. When I recovered from labor and delivery, I slept in the “Mother Baby Unit.” I had my pronouns printed out on my otherwise abandoned birthing plan, but only a couple nurses used them. I was pregnant in New Jersey, a blue state with progressive politics. Still, I encountered provider after provider who told me they were working on being more gender-inclusive only to call me “mom” in the next breath.

Often, it comes from a good place. When a stranger calls me “mom,” they’re usually making sure I don’t forget a water bottle or just trying to find the grown-up for another kid on the playground. The compassion and camaraderie between parents can be a force for good. The last time my family was dealing with a spilled drink at a restaurant, it was other parents that jumped to the rescue. Before we could even pick up the pieces of glass, parents from a neighboring table brought paper towels and jokes about toddlers. Among parents, we can joke about the messes we make and the sleep we don’t get. The idea is that we’re on the same team. The problem is that the language falls short.

Among parents, we can joke about the messes we make and the sleep we don’t get. The idea is that we’re on the same team. The problem is that the language falls short.

When I try to find a good pediatric dentist in my area, I find myself in online “mom groups.” When I create content about parenting, unless I include my pronouns prominently, I will inevitably get a comment like, “You go, Mama!” These gendered lines are meant to bring parents in and emphasize what we have in common, but as a nonbinary parent, the exclusion they entail can sting.

Certainly, there are glimmers of progress toward a more inclusive future. When going through steps for enrolling my child in preschool, I’ve noticed kind administrators crossing out “Mother” and “Father” on the forms and scribbling “Parent 1” and “Parent 2.” Even “Mommy and Me” classes I’ve attended often have teachers that acknowledge the dated language.

But ultimately, I’m a trans parent living in the South. A year after my son was born, we moved to North Carolina. There’s a vibrant trans community here, but I have a sense of caution, too. I find myself looking for friendly bumper stickers before I tell a playground acquaintance my pronouns. Every week at soccer, Coach John ends the class telling the kids to “find their mommies and daddies.” I don’t correct him. My kid knows to come find me. It’s delicate and exhausting. And it makes a holiday designed for nonbinary parents feel all the more worthwhile.

I’m lucky to have fellow nonbinary parents in my life. We’re out here. We’re everywhere. We’re just waiting for the rest of you to catch up to us. We choose all kinds of names, like Mapa, Baba, or, in my case, Mimi. When we introduce our kids to each other, we all have our own languages around pronouns. The kids never blink. These are family structures they call home, complete without strict gendered codes.

In families with nonbinary parents, this lack of gendered language comes naturally. For allies, a shift in vocabulary can be the quickest way to signal that your parenting spaces are inclusive. The gender-neutral word “parent” is already a part of our lexicon and goes a long way. When interacting with families, just encouraging kids to find their “grown-up” at the playground includes nonbinary parents but also grandparents, siblings, and other guardians by which children may be raised. Families are shaped in so many ways. Broad language allows us to include everyone.

In my little family, being nonbinary is easy. My kid knows who I am, as does my partner. And on Nonbinary Parents Day, the world can see me, too.

Get Your Petroleum Off My Body

Fashion's impact on the environment—and our well-being—has as much to do with the fossil fuels used in the making of synthetic fabrics as it does factory emissions.

When you look at a piece of fashion—a swishy long dress, a pair of yoga leggings, a bright turquoise T-shirt—what do you see? I see petroleum. 

That’s right: When oil is pulled out of the Earth, it’s not just going to power cars and heat homes. It’s also going into the making of and materials used in clothing, shoes, and accessories. The $2.5 trillion global fashion industry is estimated to be responsible for somewhere between 2 percent and 5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, which are the main driver of global warming. That’s more than the emissions from the aviation sector or deforestation. 

A quarter of fashion’s emissions come from the cultivation and extraction of raw materials, from cotton and silk to viscose and acrylic. But out of all fabrics, in 2019, the production of polyester—a petroleum-based fabric known for its durability, breathability, and stain-resistance—produced the most emissions, at 98 million metric tons of CO2e (carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gasses), which is three times more than cotton.

Manufacturing high-performance polyester (and other synthetic textiles made from fossil fuels) involves extracting and refining crude oil, using a high-temperature chemical reaction to turn that oil into petrochemicals and then plastic polymers, turning that plastic into fabric, and then dyeing and finishing the textile with additional petrochemicals, again at high temperatures. Every step requires petroleum and produces waste and emissions that, if not properly handled, can pollute the local environment and contribute to global warming. 

And it’s not just a polyester problem. The versatile fabric is just the biggest offender; it’s so cheap to make that production has skyrocketed to nine times what it was 50 years ago. In fact, according to the World Resources Institute, half of all fiber used in fashion today is polyester, while another 5 percent is nylon—which brings with it similar environmental detriments. 

Case in point: One nylon manufacturer in Florida produced more emissions in 2019 than a million cars, mainly due to the “super-pollutant” nitrous oxide—a byproduct of nylon manufacturing—flowing out of its smokestacks.

According to a 2021 report by the Changing Markets Foundation, the synthetic fibers produced by the fashion industry account for 1.35 percent of global oil production. Even as we swap gas-guzzlers for plug-in cars and gas stoves for electric ones, the fashion industry continues to slurp up ever more petroleum and natural gas, turning them into petrochemicals that are then used to create not only polyester and nylon, but also fuzzy acrylic sweaters, stretchy fabric for jeans and underwear, colorful dyes, sparkly sequins, and the finishes that go on top of all of that. If we don’t change course, in fewer than 10 years, research estimates that almost three-quarters of textiles will be synthetics made from fossil fuels.

Petrochemicals used to make fashion finishes and dyes worsen the climate impact of petroleum-based clothing

In addition to the petroleum used to make the synthetic fabrics themselves, more petroleum is often added in the form of finishes and dyes composed of petrochemicals. And there’s a good chance you wouldn’t ever know it.

The United States government doesn’t require fashion brands to list all chemicals present on and in a garment. As I found during my research for my forthcoming book To Dye For: How Toxic Fashion Is Making Us Sick—And How We Can Fight Back, if fashion brands did provide a complete list, it often wouldn’t fit on the label. For example, when the University of Washington tested Alaska Airlines attendant uniforms in 2012, the lab found a whopping 42 different chemicals—many of them later connected to health problems among attendants—in one piece of fabric. 

While we don’t have data on the extent of the fashion industry’s use of petrochemicals for finishes and dyes, specifically, we know that it’s certainly not negligible. According to a report from the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, “the residues of finishing agents in garment textiles may account for up to 8 percent of the textile product weight.” And in the 2010s (the last time anyone measured and published these figures), the fashion industry was the second largest consumer of chemicals in China.

Even a clothing item made of natural fibers—like a cotton T-shirt—can have a panoply of petrochemicals applied to it as it’s spun, woven, and sewn: sizing chemicals for strengthening the threads for weaving, lubricants, solvents, and binders. Then, chemicals are used to strip these off, so more chemicals can be applied, such as bases for cleaning the fabric, bleach to make it bright white, and formaldehyde to make it anti-wrinkle. If a T-shirt is going to be dyed, it will also have surfactants applied to prepare it to receive the color, and finally, will be coated with fabric softener to make it feel nice. (That will wash off quickly once it’s in your hands, but if it helps make the sale at the store, it’s worth it for brands to add it.)

All these chemicals require a significant amount of oil and gas to produce, adding to the fashion industry’s contribution to greenhouse gasses and negative planet impact. They also have to be shipped, and it’s hard to do that safely. 

For example, the main chemical in the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment earlier this year was vinyl chloride, used to manufacture PVC, a type of plastic used in vegan "leather" fashion and clear plastic shoes and raincoats. While some chemicals are safely locked inside products by the time they’re in their final form, PVC products can off-gas (aka release into the air) vinyl chloride, especially when they’re new. (New pleather smell, anyone?) As a result, vinyl chloride pollution is now widespread, present in one-third of the federally designated toxic waste sites in the U.S. 

Let’s also talk about dyes. One of chemistry’s first, most profitable inventions—before pharmaceuticals, before photography—was the dye color mauve, invented in 1845 by a chemist who was playing around with the noxious waste that came from burning coal during the Industrial Revolution. In fact, many pharmaceutical and chemical multinationals today—BASF, DuPont, Novartis—got their start as dye manufacturers.

As Alison Matthews-David writes in Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present, within a few years of fossil fuel dyes being invented, some consumers were reporting nasty reactions to their colorful clothing, like striped rashes showing up on their ankles and feet from coral-colored striped socks. Because not everyone suffered the same effects, the dye and chemical industry deliberately downplayed these reports, according to Simon Garfield’s Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World. 

The industry voluntarily phased out some of the most toxic dyes, but they were never internationally banned, leaving the door open for unscrupulous manufacturers in less regulated countries to cut corners and make a profit.

For the past century, all dyes for fashion (unless otherwise stated) have been made from petroleum or natural gas. For example, synthetic indigo made from volatile petrochemicals started to replace plant indigo at the beginning of the 20th century. 

Petroleum-based azo dyes now make up 70 percent of the 9.9 million tons of industrial dye colorants used globally each year. Once released into the environment—usually by dye houses pouring them untreated into drains and rivers—they are extremely difficult to clean up. They don’t biodegrade, and instead, bioaccumulate in both wildlife and humans, blackening rivers and killing aquatic life in places like Bangladesh, India, and Indonesia.

Petroleum-based fashion has negative ripple effects for our health, too

It’s not just the planet that suffers when the fashion industry uses fossil fuels to manufacture the bulk of our clothing and the finishes and dyes that lay atop it; it’s likely that we do, too. The sad irony is that the more chemicals present on and in a garment, the harder it is to decipher which health effects come from which chemicals, and the easier it is for a brand or manufacturer to evade responsibility. There are hints that something is amiss, though. 

The French Agency for Food, Environmental, and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES) ran a 2018 study that connected skin reactions to certain chemicals found in clothing. As a result, it has called for azo benzene disperse dyes—the type used in polyester—to be banned. 

Whatever is in or on the fashion you buy is also in the microfibers that break off from clothing and mix with your home’s dust, which you can then inhale. A 2021 study analyzed dust from 124 households with young children and found azo disperse dyes floating around in every single household. The research team also tested 13 polyester kids shirts from the local mall, and one contained more than 11,000 parts per million azo disperse dye, or 1.1 percent of the total weight of the shirt. For comparison, that’s three hundred times higher than the EU’s limit for certain azo dyes.

Then there is the ongoing saga of airline uniforms. Up to a quarter of airline attendants from four major airlines—Alaska, American, Delta, and Southwest—have fallen ill after receiving new, brightly colored, polyester-blend uniforms coated in performance chemicals that provided stain-, water-, mold-, and wrinkle-resistance. (All but Southwest Airlines have swapped out these uniforms, but none have admitted that they caused harm.) 

When you move and sweat in skin-tight plastic fashion, your sweat can also draw chemical finishes and dyes out of the fibers, at which point they can soak into your skin. These chemicals include not only environmental pollutants, but potential human toxins, too: bisphenols (BPA), PFAS (or "forever" chemicals), and phthalates, all of which are known hormone disruptors. Current research doesn’t quantify how much of these chemicals can cross over from clothing into our bodies nor the effects of that potential transdermal absorption. That said, researchers have largely concluded that there is no absolutely safe dose of endocrine disruptors, the scientific term for the above hormone-disrupting chemicals.

When the Center for Environmental Health in California tested socks from large brands, including Adidas, Hanes, and Timberland, it found high amounts of BPA in over a hundred polyester and spandex pairs. The polyester part is important—CEH did not find BPA in socks that were mostly cotton, but did go on to find BPA in a half dozen polyester sports bras and athletic T-shirts from large brands, too.

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The Center for Environmental Health found high amounts of BPA in over a hundred pairs of polyester and spandex socks and in several polyester sports bras and athletic shirts from large brands.

Stocksy / Lumina

The PVC used to make vegan-leather fashion, noted above, also often contains phthalates, which are added to make it pliable. Phthalates, which can be breathed in or absorbed into the skin, have been connected to asthma, plus behavioral problems and genital abnormalities in children, and reduced fertility in men. (Experts are also calling for more research on whether phthalate exposure in young women puts them at increased risk for breast cancer.)

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has banned some (but not all) phthalates from children’s products, but they’ve still been found in kids’ and adults’ plastic bags and sandals in the past few years, most recently in “glass slipper” heels at Walmart and a Limited Too backpack in March. And very little testing is done on children’s clothing coming into the United States. Unless you live in California, which has the Proposition 65 regulation that requires brands to at least label clothing that contains known toxins, you’re currently on your own when it comes to chemicals like BPA, phthalates, and PFAS in plastic fashion. 

How we can move toward a cleaner closet—and world

If we want to reduce our usage of oil and natural gas, and also protect ourselves and the planet from the negative impacts of these fossil fuels, we need to get petroleum-based products out of our fashion. That will mean switching back to natural materials and reducing our use of synthetic dyes and finishes. 

Fortunately, more and more brands are going the natural-fiber route, from merino wool and silk base layers for outdoor sports, to 95-percent cotton yoga leggings and sports bras, and plant-based swimsuits. Even in the activewear space, where the stretch and durability of synthetic fabrics would seem to make their use a necessity, plenty of brands, like Mate the Label and Groceries Apparel, are launching innovative options made with natural fabrics and dyes. 

Also, avoid clothing that has any performance promises, such as being stain-resistant, water-resistant, antibacterial, or anti-wrinkle—all of which signify the use of the above petrochemicals that pollute the environment and may wreak havoc on our health. Unless you are a professional athlete or fisherman, you don’t need chemical-based waterproofing. Antibacterial finishes often wash out anyway, and any stylist will tell you there’s no replacement for a good clothes steamer. 

If you find the petroleum-free options to be too pricey for your liking, don’t feel bad. The best thing you can do when it comes to reducing the petroleum in your closet is to shop less, and buy secondhand items, with an eye on the label.

Climate Anxiety Disproportionately Impacts Communities of Color—And Cultural Stigmas Around Mental Health Increase Their Burden

But an uptick in mental health resources and a passion-fueled young generation are breathing new hope into the conversation.

When Chicken Little thought the sky was falling down around him, he panicked. Growing up, it was hard to relate to the tiny chick's immense terror. But now, as an adult, it’s a panic I know all too well. Due to climate change—with the deterioration of the ozone layer and increased natural disasters—the sky really is now falling down around us, and an increasing number of people are feeling the weight of the Earth's uncertain future.

Climate anxiety, as defined by Yale professor and clinical psychologist Sarah Lowe, PhD, is distress about climate change and its impacts on the landscape and human existence. Climate anxiety affects all communities, social classes, and races: According to The Commonwealth Fund, at least  68 percent of U.S. adults have reported experiencing anxiety around climate change. Every person’s experience with climate anxiety is incredibly valid. However, the effects of climate change—and climate anxiety with them—disproportionately affect communities of color. Yet, because of the stigma many communities of color have against mental health conditions and treatment, members of these communities aren't set up to get the support they need.

Many people in predominantly white, middle and upper-middle class communities are anxious about climate change because they're worried about the future. Will my children suffer in tomorrow's world? Their approach to curbing this anxiety is to switch to electric cars, promote using reusable containers, and speak with their therapists about how to cope with the looming climate dread. I admit, I also do many of these things. I recycle, use my emotional-support reusable water bottle, and talk with my therapist about my anxieties and worries surrounding climate change. I’m lucky that the effects of climate change don’t impact my day-to-day existence and I can focus on what the future holds. 

This isn't the case for many communities of color. Rather than worry about conditions they'll be faced with in the years to come, these communities deal with the anxiety of climate change in their daily lives. Systemic factors like the lack of political representation, pre-existing health conditions, and poor constructions and building materials are disproportionately prevalent in communities of color. And research shows that these and other factors contribute to a "climate gap," wherein underserved communities of color and low-income communities experience greater levels of harm from climate change impacts. (The cruel irony is that these people often contribute to climate change the least.)

One natural disaster can devastate a community for years, making it even more difficult to manage the effects of climate change. For instance, communities of color, especially Black communities, are still rebuilding after the effects of Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans in 2005. In 2015, the Black population of New Orleans was still 110,000 fewer people than before Katrina; this reduction is attributable to the fact that tens of thousands of homes and businesses remained destroyed. Surviving seasons of extreme temperatures without adequate electricity, access to clean water, or the ability to rebuild homes and businesses are stressors that communities of color live with on a daily basis. And, these are the communities typically forgotten after the initial coverage of the disaster. According to a 2022 report by Media Matters, only 21 percent of guest appearances in climate segments in nightly and morning news shows were people of color, compared to 79 percent of guests who were non-Hispanic whites. The lack of voices from communities of color on mainstream TV shows leads to the lack of in-depth follow-up coverage needed to highlight the impact of climate change on these communities. 

It's an understatement to say there's a lot to be anxious about. So while climate anxiety does touch all populations, the unique combination of environmental challenges, the immense impact these have on individuals and communities, and the cultural stigmas that surround mental health struggles is specific to communities of color.

As a person of color, I'm subject to the ways many communities of color stigmatize mental health issues. In these communities, struggling with your mental health or getting treatment for a mental illness is seen as a kind of personal failure or weakness. This can be incredibly isolating, and that feeling of disconnection can become an added burden that people of color deal with on top of their climate anxieties.

I know the feeling of shame that can be paired with admitting that you are struggling with mental health and it makes the situation even more complicated. Growing up in a socioeconomically disadvantaged community, my perception of who went to therapy was skewed. The majority of people in my community looked down on those who sought out help for their mental health. It took at least a decade for me to, personally, shake that stigma and seek mental health help.

The cultural stigma is also coupled with limited access to mental health resources for many of these communities. A disproportionate number of communities of color are underserved and underrepresented. This means that they do not have the ability (most likely financially) to receive mental health support. So, even if a member of these communities overcomes the cultural stigma and decides they'd like to seek professional support, the chances are they still won’t be able to receive the help they need to manage their mental health struggles. 

This isn’t to say there isn’t hope. Hope is an important aspect of climate anxiety that tends to be overshadowed by the doom and gloom of climate change.

First, more mental health resources in the past three years  have become accessible for people of color, including: free support groups sponsored by local hospitals and organizations (like the Blackstone Public Library in Chicago), smartphone apps such as The Safe Space and Liberate that are designed to teach people of color about mental self care and meditation, and free resource libraries that include tips and practices on managing mental health struggles for people of color, like the Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective and the Asian American Health Initiative Resource Library. 

Also, younger generations in communities of color are breaking down the stigma around mental health by talking about their mental health struggles, their need for support, and how the culture in their communities has made it difficult for them to find and receive mental health help. And they're taking action against climate change at its root. For example, students at Long Beach Polytechnic High School have started an initiative to make their school 100-percent fossil-fuel-free by 2030. These teenagers are fighting for their future as 16-year-olds. They are witnessing the effect climate change has on their daily lives and have been spurred into action because of it. Many Gen Zers are using social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok to spread information about the environment and climate change and advocate for better conditions, support, and solutions-based climate coverage for their communities.

These young advocates recognize that bringing awareness to not just their communities' struggles with climate change and climate anxiety but also to how their communities persevere in spite of these challenges is important for generating support and hope. They show how important diverse perspectives are in regard to climate change and how each community, race, social class, and individual person experiences its effects differently. For example, Vic Barrett, who is of Black and Indigenous Honduran descent, was spurred into action at age 14 after experiencing the devastating effects of Hurricane Sandy on his community. However, he uses his experience to fight for all who are affected by climate change to provide a world for his kids where they do not have to. 

Highlighting communities of color and their intersection with climate change and climate anxiety is an incredibly important step in bringing diverse voices and experiences to the forefront as well as providing a wide range of resources for these communities. Climate anxiety affects most of us, but remember: Even though it may feel like the sky is falling, there's hope that we can make it better. 

The Great Last Gasp of the Great Salt Lake

The Great Salt Lake, in northern Utah, is the largest saltwater lake in the Western hemisphere. Or, at least, it has been. Due to climate change, the lake's very existence—and the ecosystems that depend on it—is at risk of disappearing.

Standing on the shore of Utah’s Great Salt Lake, you can look out across the water and see the sky reflected on its glassy surface. But every year, you have to work a little harder for this view. The Great Salt Lake, a vital ecosystem for migratory birds and a $1.32-billion part of Utah’s economy, is shrinking, 

“We’ve seen this long-term trend that shows the lake is losing water year to year,” says Nate Blouin, Senator for Utah State Senate District 13. “It’s at a much lower level than we’ve seen at any point in history.” In December 2022, the lake hit a record low surface elevation: 4,188.5 feet. (Historically, the lake has sat around 4,200 feet on average.) From its recorded high, the lake has lost 73 percent of its water volume and 60 percent of its surface area. Activists are calling for a minimum level of 4,198 feet to maintain a healthy ecosystem. 

Most of this decline is human-caused: The Great Salt Lake is receding every year as humans divert water away for agricultural and urban use before it can reach the lake. Farmers and water users (such as industrial operations managers and residents) upstream from the lake own rights to certain water allocations. Currently, the rivers and streams that feed the Great Salt Lake are overallocated, meaning all of the water is accounted for before it ever makes it to the lake. And due to a decades-long “use it or lose it” water policy, water users were encouraged to use every last drop or risk forfeiting their allotment, even if they didn’t need it all to water their crops or lawns. As a result, for years, very little water was left over to refill the lake.

In 2022, this changed: Water users can now let water flow to the lake without risking their share—but many are hesitant to do so after decades of practice. Years of overuse, exacerbated by decreased streamflow and increased evaporation due to climate change, caused a water shortage. And now, “the lake is on the brink of ecosystem collapse, says Molly Blakowski, a PhD student at the Utah State University’s department of watershed sciences. “We’re at a really critical point to take action before things are barreling too far out of our control.”

The Great Salt Lake watershed is a closed basin, meaning everything that flows into the lake—the water that runs into the lake from waterways that terminate there along with any materials carried within this water—stays there. ”It’s a final destination for water,” says Blouin. “Everything that happens around the lake ends up there.” When water evaporates from the lake—which is a natural and important part of the water cycle but is accelerating at an alarming rate due to climate change—solutes (such as salt and other minerals) are left behind. Over time, these materials accumulate in the lake as sediment. (This left-behind salt is what gives the Great Salt Lake its salinity in the first place.)

Over the past few decades, human industrial activities like mining and farming have marred the land in the Great Salt Lake watershed. Pesticides and heavy metals, like lead and arsenic, flowed downstream and, with nowhere else to go, settled into the lakebed. “These contaminants have been flushed into the lake—out of sight, out of mind,” says Blakowski. 

As the lake dries up, this sediment—and all the accompanying contaminants—is uncovered and gets kicked up into the air. Between 2019 and 2021, dust emissions from the lakebed increased, according to Blakowski. As the dust fills the air and blows into surrounding areas, communities fear a public health crisis due to air quality concerns. 

After decades of human activity, “the contaminants could be blown back into our faces,” says Blakowski. Residents will be exposed to high concentrations of atmospheric particulates that come with a whole host of negative health risks, including increased rates of diseases like reproductive dysfunction, cognitive impairment, cardiovascular damage, and cancer. But it’s not just the air that could be hazardous. In her research, Blakowski found that heavy metals in dust leach into garden vegetables through the soil. Residents could experience effects depending on what’s on their plate. 

“A lot of people I know are weighing the question of, How long can I live here?” says Nan Seymour, a Salt Lake City resident and activist. How long until clouds of dust make it hard to breathe? Until the air that residents breathe is toxic? “It’s a big deal. The Wasatch Front [the chain of cities home to two million people that lies along the western edge of the Wasatch Mountains] would become a pretty uninhabitable place if we don’t take serious action,” says Blouin, the state senator. Many residents, like Seymour, can’t imagine a world without the lake: “This is my lifelong home; I don’t have any desire to move other than my desire to breathe.” 

Sarah Woodbury grew up in Kaysville, Utah, and could see the lake every day while she was growing up. She would spend summers sailing on the lake with her neighbors or splashing in the water to find brine shrimp. “It has been a central piece in my spiritual healing,” she says. When she visits now, places that were once a few steps from the car are now a half a mile walk. “It’s painful to see the water out that far—it feels like a friend is leaving,” says Woodbury. 

Around the lake, mats of microbes, called microbialites, anchor to the ground as reefs, covering around 30 percent of the lake bottom. Brine shrimp and brine flies, the two dominant lake species, feed on these underwater mats. But when the microbialites rest above the water’s surface, the sun bleaches them; some die from exposure. Without the microbialites, brine shrimp and flies are deprived of their primary food source. The impacts reverberate up the food chain, as migratory birds rely on these species. 

For the past two winters during the Utah State legislative session, Seymour has led a seven-week vigil on Antelope Island along the lake shore. Over 400 individuals gathered to walk along the shore, write, and grow their relationship with the Great Salt Lake. “People would come out and we would walk a long way along the shoreline to Buffalo Point [a rocky point of land that extends into the bay] so I could show them some of the exposed microbialites,” says Seymour. “This year, I didn’t even have to leave the campground—the whole bay was striated with [mats].”

The Great Salt Lake is also an essential stop for migratory birds. “Birds will arrive looking for food,” says Woodbury, an activist and birdwatcher. “They won’t find any and will essentially die.” This year during Seymour’s vigil, Seymour saw over 500 bodies of dead grebes, an aquatic bird species. Her scientist friends told her this loss may be attributed to avian flu, but she couldn’t shake the sense of foreboding while she was counting those bodies.

“It was a hard thing to be with,” says Seymour. “Imagine this times 10 when [the birds] won’t have sustenance next year.”

Researchers say the choices that the State of Utah makes over the next few months will be imperative for saving the lake—and emergency measures are needed. “I want to see a commitment from the State of Utah to recognize a healthy elevation range for the lake,” says Lynn De Freitas, the executive director of Friends of the Great Salt Lake, a nonprofit that works to preserve the lake through education, research, advocacy, and art. The target level—4,198 feet—would serve as a measure to evaluate the success of conservation policies.

One glimmer of hope is the record-breaking snowfall in the Wasatch Mountains this winter, which puts the snowpack at 201 percent of average. While it is unclear how it will impact the lake just yet, many anticipate it will increase the lake level. But Blouin cautions against seeing this as a miracle fix. “Just because we had a great water year this year, don’t think all our problems are solved,” he says. “It is a gift and we ought to rise to it,” says Seymour. 

Activists and residents are holding rallies at the Utah State Capitol and participating in public hearings during legislative sessions in an effort to raise awareness and put pressure on political officials to sign bills that will get more water to the lake. “There’s a lot of energy surrounding the lake right now,” says Blakowski. Seymour feels optimistic because the people who are gathering around the issue “are fierce and devoted and smart—and they care a lot.” 

During this year’s session, lawmakers didn’t act on emergency water-saving measures, but they did budget $200 million to help farmers make irrigation systems more efficient.

Citizen involvement is crucial to showing lawmakers that residents care about this issue. If you want to get involved, “you could attend public hearings, participate in comment periods at legislative sessions, write letters to the editor, call [or text] your local representative, or talk to your neighbors about the Great Salt Lake,” says De Freitas. But even if you’re not a Utah resident, you can continue the conversation in your community or on social media with tags like #saveourgreatsaltlake.

And while the window to act is closing, it’s not closed. “We’re not powerless. But we have to use our voice even when we don’t feel accomplished or knowledgable in every way,” says Seymour. “We have to speak on behalf of the lake.”

Climate Change Is Turning Outdoor Athletes Into Some of Our Planet’s Fiercest Advocates

Meet four women whose love of outdoor activities inspire their environmental action.

Australian professional surfer Tully White’s visit to California for the Malibu stop of the World Surf League’s longboard tour was not going as planned. An oil spill to the south of Los Angeles meant that, each day, the precise location of the competition had to change based on where the oil floated. Among the fans, workers in hazmat suits scrubbed oil off of the beaches and wildlife. 

“Everyone said it was common,” White says. “Like it was no big deal.”

Meanwhile, back home in Sydney, White learned that the Australian government was in the process of renewing a petroleum exploration permit for an oil pipeline. The California oil spill and the Australian pipeline were on opposite sides of the globe, but White could not help but draw a straight line from one to the other. Once she had witnessed firsthand the damage an accident could cause, White did not want to see that permit get renewed, so she decided to do something about it: advocating against the pipeline, and all future oil and gas pipelines off of the Australian coastline.

Those of us who work at a desk don’t often come face-to-face with environmental destruction, which means global warming and damage to the planet can feel like remote, theoretical problems. But experiences like White’s—witnessing environmental harm in action—are more common among people who make their living, or spend a large portion of their time, exercising, competing, and playing outdoors. As a result, it’s little surprise that outdoor athletes have founded several organizations to advocate for conservation and environmental action, like Surfers for Climate, Protect Our Winters, Footprints, and others.

“They're actually living it and worried about it and thinking about it,” says Earthday.org president Kathleen Rogers.

The diverse experiences of athletes and outdoors people paint a broad picture of environmental disaster at every elevation and terrain—and subsequently spark action at every level, too.

For instance, as professional skier Sierra Quitiquit has traveled around the globe to countries like Japan and Switzerland, and seen once consistently snowy places like Alaska become more temperate, her skiing seasons have gotten shorter and shorter. (Researchers report that the average ski season was shortened by a whopping 34 days from 1982 to 2016.) Quitiquit has witnessed the impact this has had on businesses as well as athletes, and learned from the communities just how different things have become in recent years. 

“As a skier, you spend a lot of time outside in the elements and you really become in tune with the rhythm of nature,” Quitiquit says. “Showing up on locations that traditionally had snow pack their entire history for as far back as it was written and there being no snow, it just is this feeling that something is seriously wrong.”

It’s not just her travels; Quitiquit has experienced that feeling of unease in her hometown of Park City, Utah, too. As a young girl, she even started a MySpace page called “Skiers Against Global Warming.” Today, she is an activist with Protect Our Winters, a coalition of winter athletes, and an ambassador for Earthday.org’s Athletes for the Earth program. She also works with NATO, has founded her own environmental advocacy projects, and traveled to Capitol Hill to lobby for climate change legislation as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (called the Build Back Better bill at the time). 

Quitiquit’s representative in congress impressed upon her that if he was going to support the climate change provisions in the legislation, it was up to her and others like her to deliver public support for the idea. “He was like, ‘I need you to educate and mobilize the people in support of this bill so that I have the public's popular opinion and I can vote for this bill,” Quitiquit recalls. “It opened my eyes to the way that politics work and how we can't discount ourselves. The public has the ability to move mountains.”

The IRA eventually passed in August 2022, and the EPA describes it as “the most significant climate legislation in U.S. history, offering funding, programs, and incentives to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy [that] will likely drive significant deployment of new clean electricity resources.”

Rogers agrees that athletes are uniquely positioned to do the kind of heart- and mind-changing that supporting political action on climate change requires. She says that while celebrities like actors and singers are often considered “liberal,” athletes are viewed as more politically-neutral role models, and that hard-to-reach sectors of the public take what they have to say seriously. 

“You're trying to save winter because your career depends on it,” Rogers says. “It's not perceived as anything shallow.”

Contrary to much of the environmental movement, in which women disproportionately drive action on climate, Rogers’s experience is that male athletes tend to be more visible in environmentalist initiatives (perhaps because society pays more attention to male athletes than female athletes in general). That makes Quitiquit’s and Tully’s involvement invaluable, as well as leaders like Olympic sailor Hannah Mills and rower Melissa Wilson, whom the Olympics have spotlighted for their activism. But Rogers wishes still more would lend their voices to the cause, and actually take the moments when they’re in the spotlight—such as when they’re sharing how they feel after a victory—to connect their sporting accomplishments with the need for environmental action.

“I do think they're great spokespeople for this,” Rogers says. “We just don't have enough of them.”

Luckily, professionals aren’t the only athletes getting involved. Kamilah Journét was a high school and college runner, and later became a high school track coach in Ventura County, California. While growing up, she recalls that there were days she was not allowed to run because of nearby fires and the potential danger of smoke inhalation. 

A few years ago, she met the founder of Runners for Public Lands, an organization that seeks to imbue running culture with environmental responsibility through initiatives like reducing waste at races and mobilizing runners as climate activists. Around the same time, Ventura County experienced devastating wildfires, harkening back to the smokey days Journét experienced while running as a teen. 

“It’s really hard for me to just completely disconnect from something that I so visibly see,” Journét says.

So when Runners for Public Lands asked Journét to be a member of the board, she was intrigued. As a younger woman of color, Journét realized it was a perfect way to take action on concerns she’d developed for the planet as a teen runner, and for the disproportionate way climate change affects people of color.

“It just seemed like such a natural way to lend my voice in a space that was really dedicated to building inclusive running communities and dedicated to protecting the environment,” Journét says. 

Journét notes that professional athletes often garner the most attention for their environmental activism. But Journét and Runners for Public Lands feel that there could be strength in numbers if runners—the largest recreational group in the country—mobilized to advocate for climate action. Runners, she feels, are uniquely suited to the demands of taking on an issue as large as climate change.

“There's a natural link between endurance sports and enduring the challenges that are coming with the climate movement because it's going to be something we have to commit to for longer than just a short stint of time,” Journét says.

That’s not to mention the love that runners, or any athletes who spend much of their time outside, end up having for the outdoors. For instance, photographer, documentarian, and recreational fly fisher Katie Falkenberg describes the feeling of fly fishing as one of “awe”—so it’s only natural it’d become something she’d want to protect. “Catching a wild fish and then releasing it is just the most magical feeling to me,” Falkenberg says. “It is this brush with this wild thing that you hold in your hands, and then let go.” 

After working for a decade at the Los Angeles Times, Falkenberg recently decided to go freelance, in part to tell stories about what she was witnessing in nature as a result of climate change: Namely, the warming of rivers and drying up of tributaries, as well as the wildfires that have wrought havoc on forests in Oregon. “Where we are in terms of climate change has been so tangible to me, but especially the last three or four years,” she says. “When I'm on the river or on the mountain, I'm constantly thinking of stories that I could tell.”

Today, Falkenberg makes films and documents those drying up riverbeds and the people working on their survival, hoping to inspire action by telling their stories. But she thinks that the best way to galvanize the fight is for more people to spend more time outdoors, fostering a relationship with—and responsibility for—our planet. (One small 2021 study even proved that spending just a week in the outdoors increased people’s sense of environmental responsibility.)

“I feel incredibly obligated to tell stories that might motivate people to get outside and to realize what is at risk, what we have to lose,” Falkenberg says. “If people aren't outside recreating and doing these activities, there's less people who are going to feel the desire to protect them.”

That desire to protect wild places is what connects these women who want to continue to surf, ski, run, fish, and otherwise live outdoors. Quitiquit refers to it as an “intimacy” with the snowpack. The way she bears witness to climate change happening in real time fuels her activism—and what she believes can empower athletes and anyone else who likes to spend time in nature, too. 

“There's so often a sentiment of like, ‘Who am I to lead?’ or ‘Who am I to lean into this, and what do I know?’” Quitiquit says. “There's this sentiment that someone else should be solving this problem. But in reality, this challenge belongs to all of us.”

How Community Activism Is Saving Me From My Climate Despair

Finding optimism has motivated me to fight like hell to protect the planet.

As a Girl Scout, I learned to always leave a place nicer than I found it. During my days as a troop member, the maxim primarily applied to camping sites, but now, as an adult, it feels relevant on a much larger scale. Being mindful of those who come after you, and ensuring that you leave a world for them to enjoy, seems like a big part of being a human being. 

As an adult, though, the “Girl Scout Way” has long felt inaccessible in that broader application. Thanks to the human-made climate crisis, the global temperature is rising, glaciers and ice sheets are shrinking, and so-called “once in a lifetime” storms seem to happen on a regular basis. Yet most days, it feels like the people in charge—officials we vote into office to govern such matters—aren’t doing anything to stop it. Frustration related to this inaction used to keep me up at night, grinding my teeth, and doomscrolling through my newsfeed. If the most powerful people in the world don’t care, I thought, or can’t get anything done, then what hope do the rest of us have on our own? 

I’m not alone in my climate anxiety, also called ecoanxiety—a concept that was popularized in the early ‘90s—which the American Psychological Association (APA) defines as a “chronic fear of environmental doom.” A 2021 study published in The Lancet Planetary Health found that 59 percent of people aged 16 to 25 around the globe were “very or extremely worried” about climate change. And a survey conducted by the APA in 2020 found that 67 percent of U.S. respondents were “extremely or somewhat anxious” about the impact of climate change.

“[Feeling this way] is normal,” says Robert Feder, MD, a psychiatrist, member of the Climate Psychiatry Alliance, and the APA representative to the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health. “People are very concerned about [climate change] and worried about their futures and the futures of their family and the world in general.” He stresses that climate anxiety is not an illness or disorder, but rather a healthy reaction to the state of the world.

Unfortunately, this worry can cause many of the hallmark symptoms of an anxiety disorder, like panic attacks, difficulty sleeping, shortness of breath, and ruminating thoughts. If left unaddressed, Dr. Feder says a person’s climate anxiety can develop into depression, causing feelings of hopelessness and despair. That rang true for me—until last summer. 

My climate activism origin story

My perspective started to change last July when I got a message from my friend Veekas: “We’re starting a climate justice group!” he shared in our group chat with other friends. “If you’re interested in learning more, come to our house on Wednesday evening!” I had never been involved in any kind of community organizing before. But what could it hurt to go try? 

The icebreaker activity at that first meeting—which consisted of about 15 people gathered on Veekas’s back porch—was to share what brought you there today. I felt a little bit like I was back in Girl Scouts as we went around in a circle, talking, one by one, about our fears for the planet, our collective disdain of Senator Joe Manchin (who at the time, had just tanked a huge spending bill because it contained provisions for fighting climate change), and our desire for a better world. 

“I’m angry,” I said when it was my turn. “I’m tired of standing on the sidelines and feeling powerless. I want to do something with this anger.” A chorus of nods and snaps greeted me from the rest of the group. For the first time in a long time, I felt a little bit lighter. I’m not alone. 

In subsequent weeks, our little group evolved rapidly. We named ourselves—Beacon Climate Action Now (BCAN), since most of us were based in Beacon, New York—and settled on our core mission as a politically engaged, progressive group centering climate justice and community care. 

We sketched out visions of a green future on the back of old pieces of poster board, welcomed in dozens of new members, and debated about the focus of our first campaign. By August, we landed on the answer: Petitioning the city of Beacon to pass legislation that would ban fossil-fuel hookups in new construction. Thirty percent of New York’s carbon emissions come from buildings, so by ending fossil-fuel use in new buildings, we’d significantly cut back on future state emissions.

From there, we mobilized. I knocked on neighbors’ doors in 90℉ heat to try and get petition signatures, I led a smaller committee to put together fact sheets about natural gas, and I talked to community members at the farmers’ market about our campaign. I was suddenly spending my weekends canvassing or brainstorming strategy with my friends over walks by the river. But it didn’t feel like work. It was fun. 

Engaging in climate activism single-handedly transformed my outlook on this existential issue—and it currently helps me better manage my anxiety around it all. I can’t pinpoint exactly when the shift happened, but I’m grateful for it. 

This outcome didn’t surprise Dr. Feder, who wrote a research-based guide for therapists in 2022 to help people with climate anxiety. “One of the primary things that people ended up reporting about as being helpful was getting involved in some sort of purposeful action to make a difference,” he says. 

The “why” is multifaceted, though. For starters, doing this work has connected me to experts and advocates who have taught me about the solutions alongside the vast problems that previously felt insurmountable to me. 

Basically, I’ve learned that the climate crisis is not a “closed case,” as Dr. Feder puts it. “We try to help [people] see that the situation is probably not as catastrophic as they’re seeing it,” he says, “that there are things that are happening that are good.” In my case, better understanding the fixes—like electrification and regenerative agriculture, to name a few—makes the huge crisis seem a bit more approachable, and gives me some hope for the future.

Being a member of BCAN has also helped me feel less isolated, which Dr. Feder says is a critical part of addressing climate anxiety. My husband and I didn’t know anyone when we moved from Brooklyn to Beacon in 2020. Joining the group has not only introduced me to so many new friends, but also provided us a natural outlet to hang out and connect with each other. That social support alone is crucial for my mental health. “The fact that you're working together on something with an endpoint goal involves an inherent hope,” adds Dr. Feder. Hope, he says, is kryptonite to climate anxiety.

And wow, is hope powerful. In October, BCAN organized a free festival to support our campaign. We had live music, performed by group members; a raffle with prizes donated by local businesses; a climate-themed story hour for kids; and an interactive trivia game to educate folks about the benefits of gas-free buildings. It was so much work to pull together, with very little lead time, and absolutely no money. But seeing hundreds of people show up on that beautiful fall day completely took my breath away. People actually wanted to turn out and make change on a scary issue—and we showed them it could be fun and healing to do so. I rode the high I felt following the event for weeks. 

Breaking down my feelings of climate anxiety further were the tangible results to our efforts we were seeing. At the end of March, our city council unanimously passed one of the most ambitious municipal electrification bills in the nation, banning fossil fuels in new construction and major renovations starting in 2024. That bill started as a mere idea in my friend’s backyard, and was championed by a group of 50 volunteers, many of whom had no prior organizing experience. It might also help push the state to pass its own version, making the impact on state-wide emissions even greater. If that’s not proof of the power of collective action, I don’t know what is.

How to start sparking change (and quieting your climate anxiety)

If this all sounds appealing to you (and I hope it does), there are a few places where you can start getting involved. 

First, look up local chapters of national organizations that you like and see if they have meetings you can join. Some great options include Food and Water Watch (which focuses on safe food and water), the Climate Justice Alliance (which centers addressing inequality), Sunrise Movement (which is geared toward young people) and 350.org (which targets the fossil fuel industry). 

There may also be independent groups in your area more targeted to your community’s needs. Examples include LA Forward Action and East Yard Communities in Los Angeles, We Act or NYC Environmental Justice Alliance in New York City, or regional organizations like Midwest Environmental Justice Network or the Southeast Climate and Energy Network. Other groups also focus on specific populations most affected by the climate crisis, like the Indigenous Climate Resilience Network and the National Black Environmental Justice Network. 

Educate yourself about what your city government offers in the realm of climate activism, such as climate-themed community forums or committees focused on environmental policy ideas. Attending city council meetings could be a good starting point to see what’s in progress (if anything) and where there might be opportunities to contribute or make change. 

If you’re not finding an existing group doing what you’d like to do in your community, you could always gather with friends and acquaintances and build your group from the ground up. You might be surprised what you can accomplish. Take BCAN, which now boasts over 50 members and is crafting a climate-justice policy platform and endorsement process for this year’s municipal elections. We also recently joined New York Renews, a coalition of hundreds of smaller climate justice groups, in order to tap into and support larger state-wide initiatives. 

Even Dr. Feder has taken to activism to address his own eco-anxiety as a member of groups including 350NH (the New Hampshire affiliate of 350) and No Coal No Gas. Organizing with others to take action on the climate crisis has “basically given me a feeling that there are ways of intervening in the situation that have possibilities for success,” he says. “[Organizing] gives you a sense of real action about it.” 

Yes, I am very aware that it will be a long fight to make the changes that need to be made. And yes, there are days where caring about the Earth—and climate justice—feels like you're chipping away at a boulder with a toothpick while everyone else denies that the boulder is even that big. 

But ultimately, I am choosing to have faith in a better world rather than accepting the fate that seemingly has been handed to us through decades of inaction. Being optimistic about that fate motivates me to fight like hell to protect my future and that of everyone I love—even on the most difficult, frustrating days. So if you’re overwhelmed thinking about how to leave the world a better place, take this step with me. You’re not alone.

Restricting drag is an infringement of the First Amendment right to free expression, and the rhetoric set forth by such a ban is contagious. That is, the ramifications aren’t sequestered to the cities and states where officials propose and sign these bills, and they’re not limited to drag shows alone. The whole community—including it’s youngest members will feel the impact.

“This is an all-out attack on the most vulnerable people within Tennessee’s queer community, and the ripple effects will be felt throughout the country,” says Colorado-based drag queen Jessica L’whor. “I’m afraid to even do all-ages shows here in Denver.” She says she feels under the watch of hate groups, who pose a threat to her, other drag queens, and allies.

How the Tennessee drag ban stands to harm Pride

Part of Tennessee’s new law specifies that drag can’t take place on public property or where children will be present. That begs the obvious question of whether children or drag performers will be banned from Pride events.

Furthermore, can Pride exist without drag or children? Should this be a decision we have to make? Having children at Pride events and allowing them to be exposed to drag while seeing all forms of other LGBTQ+ expression and representation is s good thing. It helps teach empathy to children, showing the various ways people may exist outside of their own homes.

It’s incredibly disempowering to have people outside the LGBTQ+ community dictate how and where we can celebrate our history, our heroes, ourselves.

Pride is and has always been a powerful display of well—pride—for the LGBTQ+ community. It’s incredibly disempowering, then, to have people outside the community dictate how and where we can celebrate our history, our heroes, ourselves.

“It’s banning Pride, public drag, and trans performance, even though it’s their ‘normal’ presentation. The consequences [could involve] being charged as a felon.” Eureka O’Hara, a drag queen from Tennessee who was on seasons nine and 10 of RuPaul’s Drag Race wrote in a statement, adding that felony convictions disproportionately hold back underrepresented and oppressed communities on the basis of race, sex, and gender expression: “It’s going to affect jobs, ways of life, and personal security for individuals trying to live—and barely survive—in this state of Tennessee, and it’s extremely shameful to see!”

Pride aside, other Tennessee-based events are left trying to figure out what the drag ban means for them. Bonnaroo, for example, released a statement promising inclusivity and protected self-expression for all folks. While the festival has made no mention of plans to move to a more inclusive geographic venue, who knows what the future holds. Furthermore, what options are available to businesses that aren’t as theoretically portable as a music festival—like a theme park—for instance?

The Drag ban is in Tennessee—are other states safer?

Along with events seeking more inclusive state laws like Bonnaroo, some people may feel inclined to move to a home in a different state. But for many folks, it’s not an option that’s feasible for reasons of finances, job security, or the sense of safety derived from having an established community. Additionally, given that a number of states having already introduced drag bans not dissimilar from that of Tennessee’s, finding a safe place to be oneself can seem like an ever-moving target.

Given that a number of states having already introduced drag bans not dissimilar from that of Tennessee’s, finding a safe place to be oneself can seem like an ever-moving target.

Beyond debating their own laws banning drag performances, states are suing doctors offering gender-affirming care, and even calling affirming parents perpetrators of child abuse. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis is proposing crackdowns on everything from books to sports to transition care.

DeSantis is even going after businesses when they dissent to his extreme agenda. He took a swing at Disney after the company spoke out against his “Don’t Say Gay” bill, revoking the company’s self-governing status in Florida, and ensuring in the process that the area would fall in line with exclusionary values. Who is suffering? Florida’s most vulnerable residents—including the LGBTQ+ community.

“The impacts of Florida’s anti-LGBTQ+ legislation have been all-consuming,”says Brandon Wolf, Equality Florida’s Press Secretary and LGBTQ+ activist. “Threats against drag shows and the venues that host them have put performers out of work and led to small businesses rethinking whether or not they can operate in our communities.” That, too, contributes to the future of LGBTQ+ Pride, and the youngest members of the community meant to carry the torch into the future.

What’s to expect for this year’s Pride

Right now, there are only nine states in the country that haven’t proposed an anti-LGBTQ+ bill this year—yet. If you are in Alabama, California, Delaware, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New York, or Pennsylvania, you are (so far) one of the lucky ones.

With 400 anti LGBTQ+ bills proposed around the country in 2023 alone, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to remain hopeful that an all-out attack on LGBTQ+ rights isn’t imminent. Per the spreadsheet, which mirrors information put out by the Equality Federation, activists are feeling safe in states like Colorado and Connecticut when it comes to discriminatory laws, but other states don’t stand to fare so well.

At their most basic, these proposed bans and laws will chip away at Pride, at our personal freedoms, and at our ability to make choices for our children as simple as what they read in school.

At their most cruel, they put children in mortal danger. A recent study from the Trevor Project found that transgender youth with access to gender-affirming care have lower rates of depression and are at a lower risk for suicide. Alternatively, another Trevor Project survey found that nearly two-thirds of LGBTQ+ students reported negative mental health impacts as a result of discriminatory policies.

From the lens of mental- and physical health, it seems clear that legislation like the Tennessee drag ban is introducing harm to the lives of so many. The law won’t go into effect until July, which falls after Pride, so time will tell what unfolds through the coming months.

That said, it bears remembering that Pride began as a protest in the summer of 1969, largely with the help of trans drag queen Marsha P. Johnson. It looks like members of the LGBTQ+ community may be heading back to our roots, as we have again and again. We’ve achieved the right to marry by overturning section three of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), to be able to adopt, and every other humiliating right we’ve had to fight for. This Pride, we’ll surely protest again—simply for the right to be who we are, however we want to express and be it.

What did shock Corbett was that, in the wake of Roe’s reversal, she and virtually every herbalist she knows received a deluge of direct messages asking them to share information about herbal abortions on social media. It’s a “big ethical battleground” in the herbalism community, she explains. “I can’t speak for everyone, but most herbalists hold an ideal of doing no harm. And talking about this on social media, spaces not known for their ability to hold nuance,  could legitimately cause harm.”

It didn’t help that TikToks on the topic were already amassing hundreds of thousands of views. (For the record, content about herbal abortions violates the platform’s community guidelines.) This happened to Victoria Fillmore, an Appalachian community herbalist with Cedar Hill Homestead, too.  “I thought it had died down,” she says, “but just last week, I received a few classic ‘how much mugwort for herbal abortion?’ and ‘can I buy herbal abortions?’ DMs, often from folks who don’t even follow or know my work.”

What makes social media an unsafe space to talk about herbal abortion

For people with uteruses, plants have been used for everything from supporting hormone balance, to alleviating PMS symptoms, to preparing the body for labor and delivery, to preventing the implementation of a fertilized embryo, to supporting your system during menopause. 

Throughout history, certain herbs have also been used to terminate pregnancies. There is very little scientific research on this topic, ostensibly because it would endanger study participants, but it is well-known by herbalists and historians alike. 

As Corbett shared on her Instagram feed, there are several reasons why social media isn’t the right space for having a conversation about herbal abortion. Neither she, nor Fillmore will discuss the topic on their channels for numerous reasons, including serious ethical and safety concerns.

Herbalists aren’t licensed health professionals

There is no formal licensing system in the U.S. for herbalists, which means they have no legal protection beyond the First Amendment.

Herbalists aren’t licensed medical practitioners, either. “It’s part of the limitations of being an herbalist,” Corbett explains. “I can say, ‘Historically, we have worked with herbs in this way,’ or educate in broad strokes.” But on highly surveilled platforms like Instagram, the stakes of sharing this knowledge are much higher than, say, a private workshop setting. It can potentially endanger herbalists and the practice at large.

Speaking about herbal abortions on social could be incriminating in states where abortions aren’t legal

Corbett lives in Georgia, where abortions are now illegal after six weeks of pregnancy with few exceptions. Fillmore is based in Tennessee, which criminalizes abortions at all stages of pregnancy with no explicit exemptions.

“I don’t want to criticize anyone who’s out there talking about herbal termination or herbs for reproductive care,” Corbett says, “but for me personally, there is too much risk in discussing those concepts online.”

Herbalists can’t offer adequate care to people through social media

Additionally, it is impossible (and totally irresponsible) for herbalists to make universal recommendations. “It goes against all ethics to simply hand out potentially dangerous information to people without walking through their medical history and every possibility and risk associated with their decision,” Fillmore explains. There are just too many factors at play in any given case. 

Many of the plants associated with herbal abortions can have adverse health effects in the wrong dosages. Even when dosed and administered correctly, they can cause an intense amount of stress on the body.

Corbett sometimes encounters people who believe plants are inherently safer than pharmaceutical interventions. Often, that isn’t the case. When it comes to abortions and contraception, pharmaceuticals are “more reliable, efficacious, and standardized than herbs are,” she says. “That doesn’t mean people haven’t been using herbs successfully for those things. But there is no herb that is 100-percent safe in every circumstance. It’s a very nuanced topic, and there’s no way to do that justice on social media.”

How herbalists prefer to talk about herbs for reproductive care

If you really want to learn about herbalism and reproductive healthcare, try connecting with established herbalists in your area, ideally IRL. There are practitioners in most major cities, Corbett says, and you can usually find them on social media. Nobody owes you their time or expertise, so approach the professionals with humility and respect, not demands.

Fillmore also recommends researching preventative reproductive care options, such as cycle tracking. “It’s a very real concern for folks living in my area,” she says, “and it’s crucial that we learn about this before we need it, even if we think we won’t.”

It behooves all of us to remember the overarching political context: Reproductive healthcare in the U.S. is under attack. With states able to dictate abortion access, one-third of Americans who can get pregnant now have to travel more than an hour away to reach their nearest abortion provider.

“I don’t think the answer to the hostile legislation we’re facing is, Let’s teach everyone about herbal abortions,” adds Corbett. “I think the answer is more, Let’s be aware of this knowledge and keep it alive, invest in community care and connections, and keep working to ensure that everyone has access to safe, full-spectrum reproductive healthcare everywhere.” 

The project is an $8 billion development venture that will allow ConocoPhillips, a crude oil producer, to drill into the underground reservoir of oil in the region and extract 600 million barrels of oil.

On March 13th, the Biden Administration approved the Willow Project after decades of legal debates. This massive development project stands to transform a portion of the northern Alaskan landscape into a facility capable of pumping out over 180,000 barrels of oil per day over a 30-year timespan, according to ConocoPhillips.

The Willow project stands to negatively impact the surrounding wildlife habitats and Alaska Native communities, in addition to the prospect climate-focused progress.

Proponents point out that the project stands to create an estimated 2,800 jobs and generate between $8 and 17 billion in revenue for the federal government, the state of Alaska, and the North Slope Borough communities.

The project is at odds with President Biden’s climate goals to create a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035. It also stands to negatively impact the surrounding wildlife habitats and Alaska Native communities, in addition to the prospect climate-focused progress.

Why was the Willow project approved?

Most of the land in the NPR-A is federally owned by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and is legally available to lease for oil and mining. ConocoPhillips acquired the leases to the land back in the 1990s, and in 2020, the Trump Administration gave the green light for drilling.

However, Sharon Gleason, chief judge on the U.S. District Court of Alaska, reversed this decision in 2021, citing that the environmental analysis was flawed and failed to properly measure greenhouse gas emissions. The BLM then performed a supplemental analysis to address gaps in the initial plan.

The Biden Administration has approved this project to appease the oil company and stay “consistent with the terms of existing leases,” according to the BLM’s Record of Decision. The project also received high praise from both Democratic and Republican Alaskan lawmakers for its potential to drive economic revenue and job creation.

It’s worth noting that the Biden Administration didn’t grant the Willow project full approval. Originally, ConocoPhillips proposed to operate five drill sites, but the approved pared-down version of the plan includes three sites. The aim here is to mitigate negative impact on wildlife habitat by reducing the surface footprint by cutting out things like roads. While this may be an environmentally preferred alternative than more invasive proposals of the plan, it still comes with a whole host of problems.

Potential negative impacts of the Willow project to know about

Nonprofit environmental groups, like Earthjustice and the Wilderness Society, have critiqued the Willow project for its short- and long-term environmental and social justice ramifications for local communities. With regard to the social justice component, officials from the City of Nuiqsut and Native Village of Nuiqsut, which sits on the border of the National Petroleum Reserve, oppose the development due to concerns for their health and way of life. According to a statement by the U.S. Department of the Interior, even the BLM has concerns about the project, including “direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions and impacts to wildlife and Alaska Native subsistence.”

This project has indirect emissions of 239 million metric tons of CO2, which is equivalent to the total annual electricity use of over 30 million homes. Environmental analysis also found that this project would also release black carbon (pM2.5), which research has found to have toxic effects on the health of community members near the pollution source. “If the BLM knows that our health is deteriorating, how can it in good conscience allow an activity to go forward, which will make our health worse?” ask Nuiqsut city mayor Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, vice mayor Carl Brower, and president of the Native Village of Nuiqsut Eunice Brower in a joint letter to the Department of the Interior.

Not only would the drilling and extraction release harmful levels of greenhouse gases into the air when the U.S. should be reducing our emissions for climate-protection efforts, but the associated infrastructure to produce and transport the oil would be massive. The final proposal selected by the Biden Administration includes 199 oil wells, 89.6 miles of pipeline, hundreds of miles of roads, bridges, boat ramps, an airstrip, a central processing facility, and a gravel mine site—among other required developments. These roadways and landscape changes stand to stress out animals, potentially altering the migration and movement patterns of caribou, wolves, and thousands of bird species.

That could yield an ecological disaster, and it would also impact the Nuiqsut population’s harvest access and ability to support themselves. A 2018 analysis found that the effects on subsistence and sociocultural systems of oil drilling in the region may be highly adverse and disproportionately born by the Nuiqsut population. According to the document, rapid modernization associated with a huge development boom (think: noise and air pollution and increased human activity) could increase stress levels and exacerbate mental health issues, such as anxiety and depression.

But while President Biden’s approval gives the go-ahead for ConocoPhillips to start building, we won’t see any oil pumped from the ground until the infrastructure is in place. In the meantime, environmental organizations and law groups are saddling up for a series of legal battles to attempt to delay development. Now is the time for concerned citizens to make their voices heard, whether through social media campaigns like #StopWillow (on platforms including Instagram and TikTok), via donation to nonprofit organizations like Earthjustice and Wilderness Society, or otherwise getting involved in the efforts such orgs support. Because what do jobs and money matter when the health of the planet hangs in the balance?

Equal Pay Day’s March 14 date is by design—it symbolizes how far into the New Year a person who identifies as woman would have to work to make what a man-identifying person made the prior year. However, that date pushes back even further when the numbers are stratified by race and ethnicity: for Black women, the date becomes July 27; for Latinx women, it’s October 5; and for Native American women, it’s November 30.

It’s worth noting that these statistics also lack some much-needed nuance. They don’t factor in the costs of invisible labor, for instance, which disproportionately falls on the shoulders of people who identify as women. That labor includes components that are physical (like housework), mental (such as managing the family calendar), and emotional (as in maintaining a healthy relationship with their partner). In short, the contributions to society from woman-identifying people continues to be grossly undervalued.

Widening the pay disparity even further? Motherhood. There’s even a name for the phenomenon: It’s called the “Motherhood Penalty,” a term sociologists coined in 2001 research. Full-time working mothers typically make 74 percent of what fathers make, according to the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC). That’s due to a number of factors, including breaks in employment to give birth and care for children and—shocker!—sexism.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 24, 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, we may see that pay gap grow, says Andrea Johnson, a lawyer and director of state policy, workplace justice, and cross-cutting initiatives at NWLC.

“The decision to have an abortion impacts a person’s financial well-being, their job security, their workforce participation, and educational attainment.” —Andrea Johnson, National Women’s Law Center

“The decision to have an abortion impacts a person’s financial well-being, their job security, their workforce participation, and educational attainment,” says Johnson. “These points in life where you have opportunities to make your family more economically secure are really put at risk when you don’t have that ability to decide if, when, and how to have a family.”

Indeed, the financial implications of restricting abortion access reach further and wider than a weekly paycheck (though that is an undeniable biggie). What are the costs that women and birthing people will likely face in a post-Roe world? We spoke with experts to learn the financial effects of overturning Roe v. Wade.

Deepening the class divide

The Dobbs decision upended nearly 50 years of precedent set by Roe v. Wade; it removed the constitutional right to an abortion, giving states the power to regulate aspects of abortion not covered by federal law. As a result, abortion is now illegal in 12 states, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights. The ruling was a crushing blow to the right to reproductive health care and bodily autonomy for folks with a vagina, to be sure, but the reality is, abortion access had become increasingly restrictive in many states in the years leading up to the ruling, due in large part to gestational limits.

One study found that in 2020 (i.e., pre-Dobbs), the shortest gestational limits in the U.S. were set at eight weeks. Yet, according to the research program Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, at least one-third of birthing people don’t know they are pregnant until they’re six weeks along. (People of color and people living with food insecurity are more likely to find out past seven weeks, research has shown.) That means that in the states with the strictest laws, a pregnant person would have only had a week or two to decide to have an abortion, find a facility, investigate costs and potential insurance coverage, and plan for the appointment.

The financial component of that tight timeline is notable because the birthing people most affected by limits and bans—both pre-Dobbs and now—are those from poor (living at less than the federal poverty level) and low-income (living at 100 to 199 percent of the poverty level) households, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

“When your state bans abortion, it becomes a matter of whether you can travel out of state fast enough or financial resources to order pills online.” —Diana Greene Foster, PhD, reproductive sciences professor, UCSF

“People who have resources can get care quicker,” says Diana Greene Foster, PhD, professor in residence at University of California, San Francisco Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences. “When your state bans abortion, it becomes a matter of whether you can travel out of state fast enough, or if you have all the information and financial resources to order pills online.”

The notion of traveling for an abortion incurs a number of considerations and financial costs for a pregnant person. After finding an abortion provider (a hurdle all its own, given that a single facility may serve its own state in addition to several abortion-ban states), there’s the matter of securing transportation for what could amount to a multi-day trip.

For instance, in Houston, where abortion has been banned completely, one of the closest full-service abortion facilities is nearly 800 miles away in Carbondale, Illinois, according to Sheila Katz, PhD, associate professor of sociology at University of Houston and author of the book Reformed American Dreams: Welfare Mothers, Higher Education, and Activism. Dr. Katz notes that many low-income pregnant people do not have the resources, like a car, to make the trip. There’s also the prospect of taking time off from work, which could pose issues from both a lost paycheck and job-security perspective. “It’s very common for a boss [in low-paying jobs] to say, ‘Well, if you need those two days off, you might as well just not come back,’” Dr. Katz explains.

Then there’s the matter of who will watch the kids who may already be in the home. Research shows that 60 percent of people who seek abortions have already had at least one child. That child would not be allowed to accompany the mother into the procedure. If a family member or friend isn’t able to babysit, that could be another added cost (if not a total non-starter).

Once you also factor in travel expenses, including gas, lodging, and food, and the bill becomes nearly insurmountable for someone working, say, a minimum wage job. That doesn’t even include the cost of the abortion itself, which, if not covered by insurance, averages out to $575.

Adding to the already existing racial disparities in abortion access, the Hyde Amendment bans federal funds from being used for abortion in 34 states and the District of Columbia. This means people on Medicaid—which covers a disproportionate share of people who are Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC)—will not have their abortion care covered in these areas.

And according to Dr. Katz’s research involving low-income women in California, few have someone to whom they can turn to borrow the money they need to travel or pay for an abortion. “In my research, I asked low-income women, ‘If you need a small amount of cash, less than $50, who could you ask?’ Two-thirds of them said no one,” Dr. Katz says. When she upped the ante to $500, only one out of the 45 respondents (a woman who grew up in a middle-class family but qualified for welfare after becoming pregnant) said they would have someone to turn to.

In that case, anti-abortion activists would surely argue that the best course of action for a pregnant person under financial duress would be to have the baby and put it up for adoption. But that’s rarely what happens, and that sentiment completely ignores the physical and emotional tolls of nine months of pregnancy.

“Very few people choose to place a child for adoption—less than 10 percent of those who are denied an abortion,” says Dr. Foster, who studies the effect of unplanned pregnancy on birthing people’s lives. “Choosing to have an abortion over carrying a pregnancy to term makes a lot of sense, given the very real physical health risks of pregnancy and childbirth.” (The U.S. has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among high-income countries, according to the Guttmacher Institute, and those rates among Black and Native American people are three and two times higher, respectively, than those among white people, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, which cites health-care inequalities and systemic racism as causes.)

So then what? If a person can’t afford an abortion, what kind of financial future can they expect after giving birth and raising their child?

A murky monetary outlook

In 2008, researchers at the University of California, San Francisco began recruiting birthing people for a study unlike any that had been undertaken before. With the help of 30 abortion facilities across the U.S., 1,000 abortion seekers—some who received abortions and some who were turned away because they fell outside the gestational limits and went on to give birth—were identified and accepted into the study. Over the course of five years (up through 2016), research assistants interviewed the participants periodically about all aspects of their life, including their mental health and financial standing.

The findings of the Turnaway Study (published in the 2020 book The Turnaway Study: Ten Years, a Thousand Women and the Consequences of Having – or Being Denied – an Abortion, authored by Dr. Foster, who led the study) revealed that it’s not just abortion seekers who face steep financial obstacles after being denied. Rather, their immediate family and, by extension, future generations also experience a trickle-down effect.

“A leading reason for abortion is wanting to take care of kids that she already has,” says Dr. Foster. “Those existing kids do worse if their mom is denied an abortion—we see it in [the kids’] ability to achieve developmental milestones, and we see it in the [reduced] chance that that kid is living in a household with enough resources for basic living needs.”

The costs of raising a child, which according to estimates from the Brookings Institute, now amount to nearly $311,000 over the course of 17 years.

The long-term ramifications are clear: Participants who were denied an abortion were four times more likely to live under the federal poverty level and three times more likely to be unemployed, according to the study. They were also more likely to experience a drop in their credit scores and an increase in debt, as well as more negative financial actions like bankruptcy and eviction on their record—all of which affect a person’s ability to get future lines of credit and housing. Children born because their parent couldn’t get an abortion are more likely to live below the federal poverty level than the children later born to a parent who had received an earlier abortion.

Then there are the actual costs of raising a child, which according to estimates from the Brookings Institute, now amount to nearly $311,000 over the course of 17 years. And that doesn’t include the cost of college or a transition into adulthood.

Further complicating matters is the lack of a social safety net: Birthing parents who live in states with abortion bans also tend to have fewer programs to help them. “There’s no support for women once they have the baby,” says Dr. Katz. “The welfare rules in Texas are some of the most stringent in the entire country. Even if the baby is able to get on to federal programs, like WIC or Medicaid, the mother is not.”

Dr. Foster agrees: “We have the worst support for young children and parents in this country,” she says. “There’s an appalling lack of health care, lack of paid leave, lack of childcare… We see an increase in use of public assistance, but it is very short-lived, and that’s because there are still some states that time you out, even if your household is in need and there’s not enough money to pay for housing and food. It’s just grotesque. This is a moral issue, regardless of abortion.”

One small glimmer of hope may be expanded access to preschool programs for 3- and 4-year-olds, which President Biden called for in his State of the Union address this year and included in his 2024 budget proposal (though earlier attempts to pass pre-K program legislation through Congress were unsuccessful). Yet, experts agree that affordable childcare is an important factor in a person’s ability to care for and support a child—whether they were planned or not.

“Lack of high quality, affordable childcare is a massive issue and contributor to the wage gap,” says Johnson. “It deeply impacts women’s ability to participate in the workforce and the number of hours they can work, if they don’t have reliable childcare.”

Ultimately, women and all birthing people will always be at a disadvantage—physically, emotionally, and financially—if they don’t have full autonomy over their reproductive health.

“Being denied an abortion you seek has years of negative impact on your financial and broader wellbeing,” says Leila Abolfazli, a lawyer and director of national strategy on abortion rights at NWLC. “This goes to the whole point of women knowing what’s right for them; they know their lives. It impacts their current children and has negative implications for their family. This is why, in the end, I think people really support the right to abortion because the decision about whether to bring a child into your family is so fundamental to your future.”

For Padma Lakshmi, Change-Making Is Personal

It’s difficult to imagine Padma Lakshmi being at a loss for words. Whether she’s critiquing a contestant’s use of spices as host of the Emmy-nominated cooking competition Top Chef or delivering a keynote at the United Nations’ Social Good Summit, she projects confidence and eloquence. She seems right at home commanding a room’s attention. But, chatting on Zoom before the launch of a pop-up restaurant with KIND Snacks highlighting the brand's commitment to whole nutrition, Lakshmi tells me that finding—and learning how to effectively use—her voice has been a “journey.” “I just didn't know that I had anything to say for a long time,” she says.

Lakshmi identifies her diagnosis with endometriosis at age 36 (after living with symptoms for decades) and subsequent co-founding of the Endometriosis Foundation of America in 2009 as a catalyst for her advocacy work. 

“[My endometriosis was] a personal, private issue that I dealt with for years and felt very alone in…I think it was just getting so frustrated [with the lack of attention this condition was getting] that made me speak out,” says Lakshmi. “Then I received this outpouring of support from other women who said, ‘Oh my God, thank you for speaking up.’ And that gave me further confidence [to get involved with activist causes].”

Today, Lakshmi gives voice to many communities who have been silenced or ignored through her work with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the United Nations (she was named a Goodwill Ambassador in 2019 and was recognized as the United Nations Correspondents Association’s Advocate of the Year in 2021), Planned Parenthood, and World Central Kitchen. 

In November of 2022, Lakshmi was honored by the James Beard Foundation for her work advocating for a “healthier, more sustainable, and thriving food system,” according to James Beard Foundation CEO Clare Reichenbach. In her acceptance speech during the organization’s annual Gala for Good, Lakshmi made sure to acknowledge the individuals and communities who have enabled her work, most recently on the production of her Hulu series Taste the Nation, in which Lakshmi spotlights the rich culinary traditions of various immigrant communities across the U.S. “The success I’ve had in my career is only possible because of the food workers, culinary historians, foragers, and immigrant families who invited me into their homes and shared their stories of pain, joy, and triumph,” Lakshmi said. 

In our conversation, Lakshmi and I talk about the barriers to accessing healthy food for so many Americans, the dire state of women’s health in this country, and the need for greater appreciation and understanding of cultural traditions. Lakshmi tells me that she feels strongly about “giving credit where credit is due,” like she did at the James Beard Gala, but there’s no denying how much credit should be given to Lakshmi herself for using her platform to push continuously for progress.

Padma Lakshmi: One of the biggest reasons that Americans can't get more fresh fruits and vegetables into their diet is because they live in a real food desert. I think the figure is only 12.3 percent of Americans are getting enough fruit and vegetables into their diet. That means that 88 percent of us are not. I think a lot of it has to do with accessibility and has to do with costs. It's often cheaper to go to a fast food restaurant to feed your family, or to buy a package of something instead of a bunch of carrots or eggs. And we are seeing food prices just skyrocket; it's been hard for a lot of families. At a time where we're subsidizing grain, but then we're cutting food stamps, it just seems like our food policy is upside down; it's not thinking about what's best for the American family. 

And so a lot of the initiatives that I've been supporting are just to talk about how interconnected our food system is. [We need to be] looking at what is going to be great for our farmers and great for our manufacturers, yes, but at the end of the day the American family should be first as a priority in our decisions. And I just don't think that it is a lot of the time. That has to do with food sovereignty, food accessibility. It's often cheaper to go to a fast food restaurant to feed your family. It's often cheaper to buy a package of something than a bunch of carrots.

Another piece of it is teaching children about food, how to make a healthy meal. What are the foods we should be eating more of? Why? My mission throughout all of my writing as well as my shows is to say, "You don't have to choose between eating healthy or eating delicious.” They can be synonymous.

PL: A lot of these ethnic foods are very nutritious! If you look at Thai cuisine or many of the Asian cuisines, it's totally vegetable-filled.

But yes, the whitewashing of ethnic foods for credit is a big subject with me, too. I'm Indian, but I don't only cook Indian food. I think it's important to give credit where credit is due. So it's not that, oh, you're a white person, you can't talk about turmeric. No, of course you can. But you just have to say, "This comes from this culture, which is thousands of years old, and that's where I'm taking it from, but I'm using it in X and Y ways that either are different from that culture or that I'm taking from that culture." It’s important to give a notation of where you discovered it instead of acting like you invented it.

PL: I think one of the things that Top Chef has done well is to evolve with the times; that's the reason we're still on the air. I think changing the city every season really helps to keep the show fresh and also to remind people how regional American food is...because we take a lot of inspiration when we're designing the challenges from the city that we're going to. The things that you're going to find in Tucson, Arizona, you're not going to find in Miami, or the things you find up in Boston you're not necessarily going to find in Kentucky, let's say. So being sensitive to those local traditions is not only the right thing to do, but also makes the show better and makes it fresher. 

From the start we’ve employed a very obvious affirmative action policy in our casting. The food world is famously male dominated. I think the only sector of our culture that's more male dominated would probably be the military. But we've always cast an equal amount of male and female contestants. And then we've also tried to cast a lot of people from different backgrounds, both ethnically and from the LGBTQ+ community.

I do think that at some level [greater diversity and representation within the food industry] has to happen before a chef even is thinking about coming on our show. And what I mean by that is that I would love for captains in our industry, big famous chefs, to not only recruit from whoever reaches out to them to say they want a stage or they want to work for them, but to actively go out into urban environments and recruit and talk in high schools. I didn't know this was a career that could be open to me when I was in high school. I couldn't imagine what it would've felt like [and how useful it would have been] to have somebody like Ina Garten or Jean-Georges come into my high school career day and be like, "This is also a possibility for you."

I also think in our culinary schools, we should be teaching Indigenous food. Because [those cuisines are all about] living in harmony with the environment and that is really what American food is. Correct? All these other things—including all this Germanic food and all this French food that we now extol to be the highest on the culinary totem, those are all imported things. Those are all immigrant foods. We don't think of them as that because now, of course, the Western European descendants have taken over and that's what's considered “American,” but it's not. Brown people were living here before anybody else. So let's teach their food. Let's learn from their food. Let's learn to live in harmony with the seasons.

PL: No, I don't think I ever shied away from it. But I just didn't know that I had anything to say for a long time. I think it takes time to develop your own sense of self, but also a set of beliefs that you can speak eloquently to. Every issue that I've spoken out about has come from a personal connection to it. Perhaps that's given me the courage I needed to speak with some authority on it.

That started with the Endometriosis Foundation of America (EFA). [Having endometriosis] was such a personal, private issue that I dealt with for years and felt very alone in, that when I finally started speaking out about it, so many millions—I mean, literally millions of women—came out of the woodwork and said, "Me too. I also had this problem. I didn't know what the hell it was, and doctors weren’t finding solutions." 

So I think that really galvanized something inside of me…and that gave me further confidence to get involved with the ACLU, and then with the UN in 2016 when there was so much vilification of immigrants. I really felt that I had to speak up because I lived in these communities and the image that was portrayed about immigrants in the media and coming out of Washington just wasn't true. My own journey with advocacy has been just a continually growing one since we started the foundation in 2009. And that is what gave me my voice. 

PL: Unfortunately we are seeing the opposite of progress right now. I think the first thing that needs to happen is that, constitutionally, we need to enshrine the fact that every human being has to have bodily autonomy. They have to be able to decide what happens and doesn't happen to their body. I think we can just start there. And until we have that, we don't have much else.

Whatever my personal feelings are about abortion don't matter. What matters is that we all have the same rights. There would be no way that [these restrictive laws] would apply to the male sex if men could get pregnant. And the fact that we are still being subjugated without equal rights is the first big milestone that we have to really once and for all settle, and everything goes from there.

PL: I think to me, a changemaker is somebody who brings [attention to] issues that maybe were there all along, but nobody is raising the volume on. So I think anybody is capable of being a changemaker. Anybody who really has thought about how to bring about change for the better and then implements it through their actions is a changemaker.

The changes that I would like to see in our food landscape is to make better whole foods—nuts, vegetables, fruits, legumes—available at different price points more readily in the whole country. The best thing that you can do for your family's health is to eat at home. But we need the government to help us make sure that every community has access to the resources they need to feed their families. [We need to] look at our food system in a holistic way, and not silo off our industrialized agriculture from that small family in Louisville, Kentucky. It's all connected, and the more we make those connections, the better off we'll be.

PL: The way we handle laws for corporations, laws for agriculture, [and government assistance programs like] food stamps is all connected and needs to work together from a policy standpoint, from an education standpoint, and also from a distribution standpoint. We want to make sure that we're looking at every policy—whether it's for a small business or a big corporation, whether it's for a small farm or an industrial farm, we want to make sure that those laws are all working in tandem with what is best for the health of the average American family.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

The back-to-back massacres in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, in August 2019—which together left 29 people dead and another 53 injured—marked the 251st and 252nd mass shootings of the year in the United States. Since then, three more mass shootings that didn’t make the national news have occurred, according to the Gun Violence Archive (a nonprofit that tracks America’s gun violence statistics). Some perspective: Today is the 217th day of the year. A quick math equation reveals the awful truth: The United States is moving at the breakneck (and, frankly, devastating) pace to average more than one mass shooting per day.

There’s an adjective invoked often when discussing gun violence. It’s described as “unspeakable.” Then, like a collective, self-fulfilling prophecy, it becomes just that: a widespread crisis that feels so uncontrollable that grasping for the right words to “solve it” feels like gasping for air.

The Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting claimed 28 lives in 2012, and since then, I’ve been bitingly aware of the armor I’ve built up against the reality that more that 100 Americans are killed with guns every 24 hours. The thing is though, this armor doesn’t deflect, but instead temporarily numbs me to the figures that enumerate the lives cut short, the families with one less person at the dinner table, and the internal outcry of “What if?” that now accompanies stepping into public gathering places like malls, movie theaters, and concert venues. What we have on our hands is nothing short of a public health crisis that demands to be verbalized. Not only right now, but for the remaining 148 days of 2019—and all the days that follow.

What we have on our hands is nothing short of a public health crisis that demands to be verbalized.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines “public health” as the concern “with protecting the health of entire populations. These populations can be as small as a local neighborhood, or as big as an entire country or region of the world.” Clearly, gun violence now presents a “threat” to the entire population of people living in America. There are nearly 330 million people currently living in the U.S., and 58 percent of adults have experienced some form of gun violence, or know someone who has, according to a SurveyUSA Market Research Study. Back in 2016, the American Medical Association (AMA) officially declared gun violence a public health crisis. During the Democratic debate on July 26, Sen. Elizabeth Warren echoed the point: “Gun violence is a national health emergency in this country. We need to treat it like that.”

Gun violence has long been considered a crisis. Now, it needs to be treated in tandem with other public health crises (like the opioid epidemic), which the World Health Organization (WHO) outlines as strategies centered around “crisis preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery.” The latter aspect cannot be overstated. The emotional trauma in the aftermath of shootings can live on in survivors for years after the news cycle has moved onto the next mass shooting. Colleen Cira, PsyD, the founder and executive director of the Cira Center for Behavioral Health, previously told Well+Good that the first month following a traumatic event is often characterized by a condition called acute stress disorder. “The body is in a state of hyper arousal. That means the nervous system is constantly running as though there is a danger 24/7, even when [the person] is now safe, leading to a feeling of always having to look over your shoulder, irritability, and anxiety,” explained Dr. Cira. And that’s not all: The Journal of Traumatic Stress estimated that 7 to 10 percent of trauma victims suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition that the Journal European Journal of Psychotraumatology declared a public health issue in 2017. 

The message here is abundantly clear—and has been spoken, quite plainly, by the world’s leading health experts. For too long, these events have been labeled as unspeakable, when in fact, so many of us just don’t want to hear the solution: gun control. There are steps the United States could take today to restrict access to firearms and finally put a stop to gun violence. (A 1996 shooting in Australia left 35 people dead and 23 wounded, prompting legislation that caused a dramatic decline in gun crimes.) Nonprofit organizations like Everytown for Gun Safety have adhered to the WHO’s guidelines for facing large-scale loss of human life. They’ve assembled a team of litigators to help Americans navigate the criminal justice system in the wake of gun violence, and have clamored for background checks that would “mitigate” future tragedies. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and The Joyce Foundation are doing similar work.

What’s more, Americans now have an  upcoming opportunity to alter the future of how the U.S. comes to grips with the Second Amendment. The upcoming 2020 presidential election is shaping up to be one concerned with how the candidates will approach the gun violence health crisis. Our jobs, as voters—and as human beings—is to listen.

If you or someone you has suffered trauma related to gun violence, please call the American Counseling Association at 1-800-985-5990.

Why should you donate to local food banks?

“Millions of vulnerable children are losing the healthy meals they depend on as the [COVID-19] closes schools nationwide,” Davis said at the beginning of the pandemic. “As of [March 17, 2020], 39 states had closed schools entirely. When you add in the districts closed in other states it means 41.6 million kids, or 4 out of 5 kids, are out of school.” Even in areas where the schools were still open, many businesses were closed, which meant hourly workers who may have already been struggling to make ends meet were hit hard.

Fortunately, as of July 2022, the health risks posed by the pandemic have lessened over time. However, Davis notes that the need and the financial impact has not abated. “Families still face ongoing challenges due to the strained supply chain, rising food and gas prices, and skyrocketing inflation,” she says. “Today, one in six kids face hunger in the U.S.”

According to a recent Feeding America food bank survey, 80 percent of food banks across the country reported an increase or steady demand for food. Food insecurity exists everywhere, says Zuani Villarreal, the senior director of communication for Feeding America. “It could be your classmate; it could be a co-worker; it could be your neighbor [or] a fellow church goer that needs help and I think the awareness of that issue should drive people to help,” she says. For this reason, donating to food banks is more important than ever.

Why donate to food banks specifically?

“Food banks generally are very efficient in their logistics processes, affording the food industry a one-stop place for donations that they can trust will be handled with best-in-class food safety considerations,” says Michael Guerra, chief development officer for the San Antonio Food Bank in Texas. “Food banks also work to equitably distribute donated food to local nonprofits that have food as a part of their mission—food pantries, shelters, soup kitchens, etc.” And, he adds, food banks are often the primary organization in a community that aims at minimizing food insecurity among low-income households and under-resourced households in that community.

In addition to providing food, Guerra says most food banks also provide nutritional education and access to public safety programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

How do I donate to a local food bank?

The donation process will vary from food bank to food bank. To find your local food bank, Villarreal advises visiting FeedingAmerica.org and entering your zip code into the food bank locator. From there, she recommends connecting with that local food bank. Typically, they’ll have a most-needed list of items of things you can donate.

Financial donations are also welcome at most food banks as are volunteers. “Volunteerism is a huge need at all food banks,” Guerra says. “And the donation of the dollar goes a long way also. In fact, with the increase of fuel, most food banks need the dollar more than ever to keep food flowing into and across their local service region.”

Other local meal programs such as Meals on Wheels also rely on volunteers to deliver and prepare meals. “For many recipients, the trusted Meals on Wheels volunteer who shows up every day with a meal and a smile is the only person they see or speak with all day,” says Jenny Young, the vice president of communications for Meals on Wheels America.

And if you’re not in a position to donate food, money, or time, Davis says helping spread the word about available resources for families in need is one of the easiest ways to support. “No Kid Hungry has a texting line to help,” she says. “Families can text ‘FOOD’ or ‘COMIDA’ to 304-304 to find community meal sites for their kids.”

What food (or other) items can be donated?

As a rule of thumb, Villarreal says food banks are looking for food pantry staples that most people have in their kitchens such as grains, pastas, canned beans, cereal, and peanut butter. Guerra adds that low-sodium canned vegetables, rice, and canned fruit are also needed.

There are some items that food banks generally don’t take as donations such as homemade items, Guerra says. Villarreal advises not donating items in glass containers as they can shatter during transportation or anything that’s opened, damaged, or unlabeled.

Keep the expiration dates in mind as well. “Many nonperishable items have a shelf life well beyond their sell-by date,” Guerra says. So, Villarreal recommends using your best judgment. If the item is near its expiration date it should be fine to donate, but if it’s well past the date it’s best to toss it.

Depending on the food bank, some also accept other items as donations. Think of things that you’d find at your local grocery store such as feminine hygiene products, toothpaste, soap, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, diapers, pet food, and other household items.

5 Food Banks and Food Programs in Need of Donations Right Now

1. Feeding America

With 200 food banks (where goods are stored) and 60,000 food pantries (where goods can be picked up) across the country, there’s a good chance that there’s a Feeding America drop-off site near you. To receive donations, nothing is required and no questions are asked.

2. Food Rescue Us

Food Rescue US is great because it helps donate fresh food to those in need, including lots of healthy proteins and produce. If you work in the restaurant industry, instead of throwing out your extra food, consider donating it to Food Rescue US, which will repurpose it into delicious meals for those in need.

3. Meals On Wheels America

For those unable to physically go to food pantries, Meals On Wheels is an important resource, bringing food right to people in need. Because seniors are most at risk for COVID-19, Meals On Wheels is especially a valuable resource right now. You can donate money or volunteer your time in your city.

4. Feed the Children

Feed The Children has long provided food and resources working through the public school system and are of course continuing to do so now. While the organization doesn’t accept food, you can donate monetarily through its site.

5. No Kid Hungry

You can help contribute to No Kid Hungry’s efforts by fundraising, organizing donation drives through your workplace, and contacting elected officials. Visit its site for more information.

Rachael Lorenzo, a longtime activist for reproductive rights of Mescalero Apache, Laguna Pueblo, and Xicana heritage, personally ran up against this reality in 2013. After learning that a pregnancy they wanted was no longer viable at the start of their second trimester, they were told to “just wait it out” because of the legal restriction against abortions in Indian country. “Indian Health Services [which is the primary source of health care for Native Americans, including Lorenzo] is operated and funded by the federal government,” says Lauren van Schilfgaarde, a member of the Cochiti Pueblo and a research fellow at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law. “And as a result of the Hyde Amendment passed shortly after Roe, no federal dollars can be put toward abortions, with very few exceptions in the cases of rape, incest, and mortal danger to the mother.”

“Indian Health Services is operated and funded by the federal government, and no federal dollars can be put toward abortions.” —Lauren van Schilfgaarde, research fellow at UCLA School of Law

Not falling into any of the above buckets, Lorenzo was forced to wait until things became dire, rather than receive the care they needed to remove the non-viable fetus from their body. So, they waited and waited some more until weeks later, they were miscarrying and actively bleeding out on a hospital exam room table when, still, they were denied care. “I waited for hours to be seen in a room with the door open, so when people walked by—not just providers, but patients—they could see me bleeding,” they say. All the while, Lorenzo was also refused pain management on the basis of their weight, so “I was fat-shamed, too,” they say. Hours later, an OB/GYN took them to the operating room for a dilation and curettage—a common, low-risk procedure to empty the uterus (for abortion and after miscarriage). But the emotional scars of the experience cut much deeper.

“Afterward, I felt incredibly depressed and dehumanized,” says Lorenzo, who, at the time, had also been the only Native person working on the Respect ABQ Women campaign to defeat a 20-week abortion ban in the city of Albuquerque. It struck them then that they didn’t have anywhere or anyone within their community with whom they could openly share their story. This was the genesis for what would become, in 2014, Indigenous Women Rising, a health-care advocacy nonprofit supporting Indigenous people, which also now runs the only abortion fund dedicated to Native Americans.

Why abortion care has long been inaccessible for Native Americans—and is increasingly under threat

Lorenzo’s reproductive healthcare experience is neither isolated nor tied to one-off acts of discrimination (though these are also rampant against Native people in medical settings). It’s part of a system of biased practices codified into law by the Hyde Amendment long before Roe was ever at risk of being struck down.

To be clear, restricting abortion care of any sort was the point of Hyde, says van Schilfgaarde. “It stemmed from a reflex to Roe that said, ‘If we can’t constitutionally ban [abortion], we can at least control the federal dollars that go toward it.’” Naturally, that has a disproportionate impact: Only those whose health care is federally funded—namely, veterans, Native Americans, and Medicaid recipients—are affected.

Untangle how that’s panned out for Native Americans in particular, and the outlook for abortion care only grows grimmer. Not only are abortions conducted by IHS restricted by law to the above exceptions in the Hyde Amendment (rape, incest, mortal danger to the pregnant person), but in practice, they’re limited even further by the fact that IHS is “woefully underfunded,” says van Schilfgaarde. As a result, many IHS facilities don’t even have obstetrics clinics, much less the capacity or equipment to administer a rape kit (in order for someone to meet the rape requirement of the amendment) or provide an abortion, anyway.

This often forces Native people to wait until the last minute—when medical care is absolutely necessary, as in Lorenzo’s case—to seek reproductive care and, in some cases, to travel many miles to receive it, all of which compounds the associated health risks. Indeed, the IHS facility closest to Lorenzo’s home, Acoma-Canoncito-Laguna Indian Health Center, has no OB/GYN or emergency services, requiring community members to drive 50 miles to Albuquerque to get reproductive or emergency care. In the wake of new state-level abortion bans post-Roe, that distance is even longer for many Natives seeking abortions who are now required to commute not only to a private clinic outside of IHS but one that’s, in many cases, in another state.

“You have a population that is being targeted for sexual violence and from which reproductive-care is being withheld.” —van Schilfgaarde

Meanwhile, the need for this kind of health care is also disproportionately high in Native communities. Native women are 2.5 times more likely to experience rape or sexual assault than other women in this country, “and we can speculate that a certain percentage of those violent attacks are going to result in unwanted pregnancies [whether or not they’re recognized legally as rape],” says van Schilfgaarde. “[It’s] a population that is being targeted for sexual violence and from which reproductive care is being explicitly withheld.”

Worse yet, it’s been that way for decades due to a long pattern of “policies rooted in the sense that Native Americans needed help or saving or civilizing,” says van Schilfgaarde. Just take the once-common practices of forcefully removing Native children from their families and placing them with white families in the interest of “assimilation” or the forced sterilizations of Indian women “to help prevent pregnancies that would ‘keep them trapped in poverty,’” says van Schilfgaarde, who contends that abortion restriction is just the latest offense in this legacy of misplaced paternalism. “It’s never just been about abortion,” she says. “It’s about the lack of self-determination, the sense that Native people need their reproductive-health decisions determined for them or on their behalf.”

Against this historical backdrop, the idea of tribal lands becoming abortion-care oases for non-Indians is as ethically absurd as it is legally unsound. It’s questionable whether reservations would legally be able to offer abortions in states where abortion is banned—even if they were to fund them privately—given that state criminal jurisdiction continues to encroach on tribal authority. But even in that unlikely scenario, why shouldn’t that care be offered first to the Native people who’ve so long been denied it?

“The ask of tribal nations to expand their very limited resources now because white women, in particular, are afraid of losing abortion access when Native people have never had good abortion access is a slap in the face,” says Lorenzo. The fact that Native people have long been excluded from the conversation on reproductive justice—until now, when they might suddenly be useful to white people—is why Indigenous Women Rising and its Native-centered abortion fund plays such a crucial role.

“Considering our history, we really needed to include all of these lived experiences and generational trauma into something that was just for us, by us,” says Lorenzo, describing their decision, in 2018, to launch IWR’s Native-focused abortion fund through the National Network of Abortion Funds. “It’s already hard to discuss these issues with non-Native people, but it’s now getting easier to share our stories among each other.”

How Indigenous Women Rising provides access to culturally competent abortion care for Native Americans

In the early days of IWR, Lorenzo and their co-founders Nicole Martin (Navajo, Laguna, Chiricahua Apache, Zuni) and Malia Luarkie (Laguna Pueblo/African American) were focused on expanding reproductive justice through political avenues. They were joining campaigns to ensure Plan B was available over-the-counter in IHS clinics (after it became clear that many were restricting its purchase unnecessarily) and cultivating relationships with New Mexico’s federal delegation. But after they received a grant, in 2018, to participate in MIT’s “Make the Breast Pump Not Suck” hackathon and garnered national recognition for their invention—breastfeeding-friendly prototypes of traditional Pueblo regalia—they started to get Instagram DMs from Native people: Could IWR help them get abortions?

So the IWR abortion fund was born to help Native people access and pay for abortions, given that they’re largely unable to use their traditional healthcare infrastructure (IHS) to do so. Today, that assistance extends to Native people nationwide and consists of funding for any element of abortion care that someone may need, says Lorenzo: “Our deal is, you tell us what you need, and we’re going to do our best to make it happen for you.”

While that certainly includes paying for an abortion procedure—as well as the transportation, lodging, food, and childcare required to receive one—IWR will also fund folks seeking help paying for medication abortion pills or an abortion doula. And like many abortion funds, they’ve experienced a surge in requests since Roe was overturned, as state-level bans have made accessing any kind of abortion even more costly, risky, and time-consuming for Native people, just like non-Native ones.

“White feminism can make us feel like we should just be glad that we can get an abortion, rather than taking into account the nuance of our experiences with religion and colonialism and tradition.” —Rachael Lorenzo, co-founder of Indigenous Women Rising

What makes IWR’s fund unique is its ability to offer not just assistance with accessing abortions but culturally competent assistance. “We get clients who grew up in very traditional or Christian households who might feel dirty or ashamed [about seeking out an abortion] and many times can’t even say the word ‘abortion,’ and we have to be respectful of that,” says Lorenzo, adding that her team is dedicated to providing the kind of abortion care that a client requests, no matter what shape that takes. “I think that feminism—white feminism, in particular—can make us feel like we should just be glad that we can get an abortion at all, rather than taking into account the nuance of our experiences with religion and colonialism and tradition.”

To that end, IWR’s support doesn’t stop at the abortion itself, either. “Some of our traditional clients may want ceremony or to have a medicine person visit them after their abortion,” says Lorenzo, “and often, that involves the fetal remains.” Because clinics can only release those to a funeral home, IWR will coordinate with and compensate funeral homes and medicine people, “so that our client can engage in their cultural practices as a form of healing after the procedure.”

This cultural sensitivity is inherent to Lorenzo’s mission. We’ve spent years building that trust, they say. “When someone calls us or texts us or fills out our form, they also know that they’re talking to a Native person”—someone to whom they can relate—“because representation is important,” says Lorenzo. “We wouldn’t exist if that need was already being met.”

Overall, the people we send to Congress can and will have a huge impact on national reproductive health policy. A more solid Democratic majority of the House and Senate, for example, could ensure that the Women’s Health Protection Act—which federally protects a person’s right to abortion without unnecessary restrictions—actually gets signed into law. On the flip side, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) introduced legislation back in September that would make abortion illegal nationwide after 15 weeks. While he doesn’t have the votes right now for it to pass, he could if Republicans regain control of Congress. And despite current mixed reactions from GOP politicians on this proposed law, we the people have certainly learned the hard way that the Republican party is capable of some pretty wild things (like, you know, trying to get rid of abortion, ban gay marriage, and attempting to overturn a legitimate democratic election.)

Since states now are the arbiters of abortion access, who is in power in your state government matters greatly. There are some key gubernatorial races, for example, that could impact how abortion is handled in those particular states. In Pennsylvania, the outgoing Democratic governor has successfully vetoed several bills that would have restricted abortion rights, but a new governor could either ensure that those bills are signed into law. Similarly in Arizona, where abortion access is complex post-Roe thanks to conflicting state laws on the subject, whoever is elected as governor could either veto further restrictive abortion laws or ensure the passage of said laws. Whoever is elected to your state’s legislature or supreme court also impacts potential future abortion laws, either by passing legislation or upholding/overturning it, so pay attention to those candidates and their views before voting.

There are also five states in which voters can directly weigh in on reproductive rights through ballot measures. In California, Kentucky, Michigan, and Vermont, people will have the chance to update their state’s constitution to either enshrine abortion rights or to explicitly exclude them. Why does that matter? Including abortion rights in a state’s constitution grants them added legal protections and makes it harder for judges (or anti-abortion rights legislators) to infringe on those rights with new laws or rulings.

These ballot measures are critical because they give American voters a chance to directly impact reproductive health legislation in their state. Data consistently show that the American public generally supports the legal right to abortion in some or all forms. In fact, in previous instances where these issues were left up to voters (like in Kansas earlier this year), they chose to keep abortion legal.

Here’s what to know about the specific ballot measures concerning reproductive health and abortion that you might find on your ballot this Election Day:

California

Proposition 1: Adding the right to abortion and contraception to the state’s constitution 

California is already known for being fairly protective of abortion access. Under current state law, abortion is legal until fetal viability, state Medicaid funds and private health insurance plans cover abortion, and there’s a state fund to help pay for abortion care, per the Guttmacher Institute. Now, California voters will have the opportunity to change the state’s constitution to specifically state that individuals have the right to reproductive freedom, “which includes the fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and the fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives.”

Kentucky

Amendment 2: Change the state’s constitution to ensure a total ban on abortion

Kentucky’s proposed Amendment 2, as written, would add this language to the state’s constitution: “To protect human life, nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion.” Essentially, this means the constitution would explicitly not protect the right or access to abortion for Kentucky residents. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) says that this ballot measure could allow abortion bans to go into effect, and says that voting no “would help protect abortion from medically unjustified legislative interference.”

Interestingly, this ballot measure is very similar to one that failed in Kansas earlier this year. Abortion rights activists were able to get voters to turn out and defeat that state’s proposed anti-abortion amendment. Abortion remains legal in Kansas for up to 20 weeks, per NPR.

Michigan

Proposal 3: Change the state constitution to protect reproductive rights

Also known as the “Reproductive Freedom for All” petition, Proposal 3 would update Michigan’s constitution to ensure that “every individual has a right to reproductive freedom, including the right to make and carry out pregnancy-related decisions such as those concerning prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, sterilization, abortion, miscarriage management, and infertility care.” Per NBC News, this proposal would officially nullify the state’s existing abortion ban from the 1930s, which technically went back into effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court this summer (but was blocked by state courts).

It’s also worth noting that the governor’s race will also play a major role in how abortion rights (and other issues) are handled in the state. Current Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who is up for re-election, has been supportive of reproductive rights. Her opponent, Tudor Dixon, is staunchly anti-abortion and has been endorsed by anti-abortion groups, according to the Associated Press.

Montana

LR-131: Establishes rights for “born alive” fetuses to complicate reproductive care

This ballot measure isn’t directly about abortion—which remains legal in Montana—but does impact reproductive health care in the state. The “Born Alive” law, at its face, requires doctors to give resuscitative care to infants born at any stage of development. Health care professionals who do not take these measures would face up to 20 years in prison and up to $50,000 in fines. The bill also defines a “born-alive” infant as a legal person who breathes, has a heartbeat, or has voluntary muscle movement after an abortion or delivery.

Since data shows that fetuses rarely survive abortion procedures (and only 1 percent of all abortions are performed at or after fetal viability), opponents of this bill say that the penalties would primarily apply to doctors who help patients with early deliveries or miscarriages, potentially forcing them to choose between the health needs of the birthing parent and a fetus, per Kaiser Health News. The ACOG says that this initiative would “interfere in the patient-physician relationship” and affects the quality of life of families who are already going through difficult pregnancies.

Vermont

Proposition 5: Protecting reproductive freedom in the state constitution

Vermonters have the opportunity to update their state’s constitution to explicitly protect reproductive rights via Proposition 5. If passed, this language will be added: “That an individual’s right to personal reproductive autonomy is central to the liberty and dignity to determine one’s own life course and shall not be denied or infringed unless justified by a compelling State interest achieved by the least restrictive means.” The state also passed a law in 2019 that recognizes individuals’ fundamental rights to choose or refuse contraception, sterilization, and abortion.

In general, astrologer Susan Miller, founder of Astrology Zone, says that lunar eclipses are “the most dramatic tool that the universe uses to affect change and speed up timetables for necessary action.” The reason these alignments prompt such cosmic shockwaves has to do with our positioning in them. “While a regular full moon is an opposition between the sun and the moon, lunar eclipses put the Earth right in the middle of this opposition,” says astrologer Vanessa Hardy, “so the results are more tangible.”

“Lunar eclipses are the most dramatic tool that the universe uses to affect change and speed up timetables for necessary action.” —Susan Miller, astrologer

Eclipses happen in pairs—one solar (on a new moon) and one lunar (on a full moon) two to three times a year in opposite signs. And every couple years, they shift into the next set of signs. This total lunar eclipse in Taurus, following a partial solar eclipse in Scorpio, reflects the halfway point of the Taurus-Scorpio eclipse cycle, which began last November and will end next October. (As a result, people of these signs are likely in the midst of a major transformation.) “At this moment, the conversation and evolution between these signs is at its peak process,” says Hardy.

This could have pretty world-rocking ramifications given the core areas over which these opposite signs rule—comfort, love, values, and grounded Earth for Taurus; and transformation, death, rebirth, and emotional water for Scorpio. Not to mention, both Taurus and Scorpio are fixed signs, making them highly resistant to disruption and change, “and a lunar eclipse is definitely a marked change,” says Hardy. Translation: The shifts prompted by the total lunar eclipse in Taurus aren’t likely to be easy or comfortable ones to bear. Indeed, given that the north node (a point in the sky linked with destiny) will also be conjunct the moon in Taurus during the eclipse, these changes may even have a fated vibe to them, over which we can exert little control.

That friction will only be further magnified by unpredictable Uranus’s simultaneous conjunction with the moon in Taurus when the eclipse goes down. “Uranus rules chaos, rebellion, independence, creativity, and innovation,” says Miller. “Uranus is electricity, the feeling of having two fingers in two sockets, and it’s directly opposite the sun.” This will inject an element of surprise to this election-timed eclipse, which will bring to the surface “something you might not even think possible,” she says.

Given the rest of the current celestial landscape, it’s clear that this total lunar eclipse in Taurus will leave no zodiac signs untouched, Miller adds. Not only is the sun (in Scorpio) at direct odds with the moon and Uranus (in Taurus), but also, the sun is flanked by Venus and Mercury also in Scorpio. And taskmaster Saturn, in Aquarius, is forming a tense aspect to both the Scorpio entourage on one side and the Taurus entourage on the other, Miller adds. Altogether, the planets involved here rule over eight signs: Taurus, Scorpio, Libra, Gemini, Virgo, Leo, Aquarius, and Capricorn. And even if you’re not one of these signs, “you have them on the cusp of one or two or three or more of the astrological houses in your chart,” says Miller.

The challenging influence of Saturn—a planet of realism and structure—on an eclipse marked by so much volatility isn’t to be underestimated, either. While Uranus is forcing change, Saturn is resisting it, creating a “seesaw effect that can be uncomfortable in the moment,” says Miller. As the eclipse comes to a head, the truth is going to come out, she says, “but even if it’s the truth we need to hear, it might not be the truth we want to hear right now.”

How the lunar eclipse could pan out on the political stage this election day

Because this total lunar eclipse in Taurus aligns with the midterm elections—a decisive moment for our collective safety and security (Taurean themes) and the fate of the country (a north node theme)—it’s worth considering the two in conjunction. And in case you couldn’t guess based on all the forecasted upheaval for the lunar eclipse, things aren’t exactly looking rosy for election day, either, from an astrological perspective.

“The energy of this eclipse is not favorable for an easeful and supportive expression of the democratic process.” —Vanessa Hardy, astrologer

“The energy of this eclipse is not favorable for an easeful and supportive expression of the democratic process,” says Hardy. She predicts that things might even move backward amid the shakeup. Just consider the fact that our 2020 election took place during a Mercury retrograde and also “an incredibly fraught and destabilizing astrological climate,” says Hardy, “and agreements struck during retrogrades tend to be subject to change.” Perhaps now is the time when that change will arrive, and “this original agreement could experience a shocking upset, especially considering Uranus’s influence on the moon,” she says.

The current Mars retrograde in Gemini isn’t doing us any favors in this department, either. “Gemini is the same sign that the fated north node was in at the time of the 2020 election,” says Hardy. And now, with the apparent backward motion of intense Mars in this sign, we could see regression or disruption around things that we thought were settled then, she says.

All of this chaotic energy, coupled with the fact that Taurus and Scorpio also rule over money and power, could manifest in lapses in election integrity, according to Miller. In turn, she suggests voting early or mailing in your ballot if you can do so. And on the day of November 8, carve out as much free time as possible to just rest. “Whatever you do, do not overbook yourself,” says Miller. “Clear your calendar because the last thing you need on November 8 is a hard deadline.”

Instead, surround yourself with “comforts, community, and self love so that you can comfortably let go,” says Hardy. And overall, lay low. The biggest rule to remember during any eclipse is to “respond rather than initiate,” adds Miller. This is not the time to start up a difficult conversation with a significant other, ask for a raise, or do anything else that requires asserting your personal agency.

Amid the turbulence, it’s also helpful to know that this is just one phase of a two-year evolution, as we move through the eclipses along the Taurus-Scorpio axis. Whatever topics were especially top of mind last November and in May, when the last Taurus eclipses occurred, could resurface again, and after this eclipse is over, these subjects “will advance to a more sophisticated level,” says Miller. But the process, as of now, could feel messy and uncomfortable.

The important thing to remember is that it is, again, a work in progress. “It’s almost as if the universe knows we can’t cover it all at once,” says Miller, “so we have to tackle it in pieces.”

The concept is pretty straightforward: When you buy the limited-edition green bandana ($35), 100 percent of your money will go straight to the WWHA. “We took inspiration from the Latin American abortion-rights movement, the green wave (or green tide), and the symbolic green bandanas worn by activists and allies,” writes Oui the People. “Green symbolized nature, growth, and reclaiming the term ‘pro-life.'”

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The Oui the People team partnered with Brazilian artist and illustrator Niege Borges to create a “wearable piece of art representing a collective of people coming together.” The circular text across the bandana reads, “All bodies one voice, one voice all body.” The bandana is crafted with planet-friendly silkscreen and 100-percent, made-in-the-USA cotton.

In an Instagram post pre-launch, the team at Oui wrote that they knew the launch would potentially come at the cost of losing customers, adding: “Here’s the thing…the body is political. The body is a landscape for public opinion. The body is, and will always be, governed. And as a body care brand, the very act of self care, love, and acceptance is, in and of itself, a radical act.”

 

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Since the green bandana is limited edition, make sure to snap yours up ASAP. Also, Oui the People launches these drops every once in a while in support of specific causes, so make sure to stay tuned for whatever collabs they put together in the future.

From the moment that someone is told to evacuate, distress can take over for the simple reality that they might not know if or when they’ll be able to return home, says Sarah Lowe, PhD, professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School Public Health. And even if they do suspect or learn that they will be able to return at some point, they may not know whether their home and belongings will be intact, further magnifying the potential for stress and anxiety at the outset.

In a hurricane’s immediate aftermath, displaced people may not have the bandwidth or the opportunity to process these feelings, as they focus on meeting their food, water, and shelter needs. “There’s an initial sort of ‘honeymoon phase’ where communities will come together over a shared adversity, and there’s a sense of being made whole again as people support their neighbors,” says Joshua Morganstein, MD, chair of the Committee on the Psychiatric Dimensions of Disaster at the American Psychiatric Association. But then, headlines of the disaster quickly fade, resources diminish, and the reality of some “new normal” sets in, he says.

“There’s a feeling of uncertainty, of not knowing the magnitude of the impact.” —Sarah Lowe, PhD, professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Yale School of Public Health

The question of what that new normal really looks like can prompt another wave of distress with long-lasting implications. “There’s a feeling of uncertainty, of not knowing the magnitude of the impact,” says Dr. Lowe. As the aftermath unravels, people become increasingly aware of the losses they’ve experienced, which can encompass everything from losing loved ones and pets to losing rituals, routines, and a sense of normalcy.

“Even when you move to a new home under positive circumstances, you’re likely to encounter stressors, like having to create a new social network, navigate your way around, and find a new job or school,” says Dr. Morganstein. “So, for people who are abruptly displaced, all of that can happen without the planning, without the desire to be somewhere else, and without the things that bring them comfort and give them a sense of identity.”

Storm casualties often include deeply beloved belongings that might offer such comfort, like a “photo album that reminds them of loved ones, or the locket that a significant other gave them, or that picture of a deceased parent that they used to look at every night before bed,” says Dr. Morganstein. Without even these seemingly small things, it may be incredibly tough for someone to feel mentally grounded in the aftermath, he adds.

Any of these dimensions of sudden loss can serve as a shock to the system. For some people, such distress can lead to trouble with sleeping, anger and irritability, and a decreased sense of safety, which, Dr. Morganstein points out, can have adverse effects even if they are in a physically safe and secure place.

To cope with these distressing emotions, displaced people commonly begin to use or up their intake of substances like alcohol and tobacco, according to studies conducted after the 2004 Florida hurricanes and Hurricane Katrina. This presents “a serious public mental health problem, regardless of whether people have prior substance-use issues,” says Dr. Morganstein. Increased alcohol use, alone, for example, can raise the risk for violence in communities, errors and other problems in the workplace, and family conflict, he says. And any of the above will only deepen the psychological effects that people are already facing by being displaced by a hurricane.

This interplay of stressors can also put people at higher risk for developing mental-health disorders, like post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety—all of which have been demonstrated to occur in the wake of both human-made and natural disasters, including earthquakes, wildfires, and drinking-water contamination, in addition to hurricanes. “To be clear, these mental-health conditions do not arise in the majority of people, but when they do, they can cause considerable morbidity and mortality,” says Dr. Morganstein.

8 factors that make certain people displaced by a hurricane more likely to experience negative psychological effects

1. Pre-existing mental- or physical-health conditions

People who are most vulnerable, from a mental- or physical-health standpoint, when a hurricane strikes are also at higher risk for experiencing more significant mental-health fallout. “This includes those who are already dealing with health challenges or conditions, and who are suddenly cut off from systems of care—for example, their dialysis facility or their case manager—because of electrical outages or road flooding,” says Dr. Morganstein.

2. Previous traumatic experiences

If a devastating hurricane isn’t a person’s first traumatic blow, its effects can pile onto existing trauma. “You might think that you’d gain resilience with time, but that’s not necessarily true,” says Dr. Lowe. “These events can have a cumulative impact, wearing away people’s mental health over time.”

3. Low socio-economic status

While people of a low socioeconomic status are more likely to have pre-existing medical conditions and have experienced previous traumatic experiences when a storm hits, doubly disadvantaging them from the start, they’re also more likely to live in places that flood easily, says Emanuela Taioli, MD, PhD, professor of population health and science at Mount Sinai in New York. This makes them “more likely to have a psychological response to a disaster,” says Dr. Taioli, “which also makes them more susceptible to developing a condition like anxiety, depression, or PTSD.”

4. High exposure to trauma during the disaster

The severity and duration of a person’s exposure to the negative effects of a hurricane will also play a role in how likely they are to experience psychological consequences down the line.

“For example, consider people who lay eyes on human remains, and who might engage in something called psychological identification,” says Dr. Morganstein. “This refers to looking at a dead body and thinking, ‘That could be me,’ or, ‘That could be my loved one.’ When that happens during a disaster, it increases a person’s risk for psychological distress.”

5. Loss of a loved one

To no surprise, experiencing the loss of a loved one(s) in the midst of a hurricane will worsen a person’s capacities to cope with the crisis. This includes the loss of a beloved pet, or “having to leave a pet behind while evacuating because they won’t be welcome wherever you’re going,” says Dr. Lowe, “which can create significant sadness and guilt.”

6. Being alone or with stress-inducing people

Those folks who can lean on trusted community and family members for support during a hurricane will also fare better than those who are alone—or stuck with family members they dislike or with whom they have conflict-ridden or abusive relationships, says Dr. Lowe.

7. Being placed in a shelter or evacuation center

“Mental health signatures of anxiety and depression tend to show up more often in people who are displaced in a shelter or evacuation center versus those who are displaced and living with family and friends,” says Dr. Taioli. And that’s a direct result of how these shelters tend to be set up.

“During Hurricane Katrina, folks evacuated but then often found themselves in circumstances that were dangerous, in shelters where crimes were committed or where they were assaulted or where they were otherwise uncomfortable, sleeping on a blanket or sleeping bag on the floor,” says Dr. Lowe. These kinds of conditions can understandably make it hard to get good sleep, says Dr. Morganstein: “Without sufficient sleep, it can then become more difficult to think and make decisions that are sound, health-promoting ones for ourselves and our loved ones,” he says.

As the fallout from the hurricane changes over time, people are also often moved from shelter to shelter, increasing the sense of anxiety that can come with not having a home base, says Dr. Taioli. “This gives people the stressful feeling that they have to be prepared to take all their things, whatever few things they have, and go at any point,” she says.

8. Loss of income

Being displaced to either a shelter or a loved one’s home after a disaster could make it difficult or impossible for some people to access their work, particularly those whose jobs cannot be done remotely. “Any disruption in employment or income creates a financial toll that can worsen the psychological effects of the crisis, too,” says Dr. Morganstein.

4 ways to mitigate the psychological effects of being displaced by a hurricane

Even the best climate-supportive initiatives won’t prevent all hurricanes. As a result, it’s essential for post-disaster recovery plans to include strategies that address the psychological impact of hurricanes by “improving the sense of social connectedness, self-efficacy, and hope among those who were affected,” says Dr. Morganstein.

Reaching these goals certainly requires work on the part of local authorities to create and promote safe storm shelters with private spaces and mental-health counselors on-site, says Dr. Taioli. It’s also important for community leaders to communicate truthfully about the state of the crisis and the damage from the start in order to engender trust, and to practice “grief leadership” by “recognizing the many losses that people have experienced, and also articulating these losses out loud,” says Dr. Morganstein. “This ultimately helps people make meaning out of a tragic event.”

Outside of effective leadership, however, there are things that people can do personally—even amid the trauma of being displaced—to help ease the psychological burden. Below, Dr. Morganstein outlines the most important behaviors to consider, if you were ever to find yourself in this high-stress situation.

1. Develop a new routine

“As much as you can, even if you’re in a shelter, try to plan a time during the day to read or do another activity, a time to do a physical exercise, and a time to go to bed each night,” says Dr. Morganstein. “A sense of regularity can reduce the feelings of uncertainty that a disaster inevitably brings.”

2. Take a media break

Watching TV or scrolling the internet in the wake of a disaster is likely to put you face-to-face with a ton of inflammatory headlines and upsetting statistics. In fact, “people who report consuming more disaster-related media tend to have higher levels of psychological distress, don’t sleep as well, use more alcohol and tobacco, and are more likely to develop depression and post traumatic stress disorder symptoms,” says Dr. Morganstein.

That’s why he suggests actively taking a pause from media consumption as you figure out your new normal and only turning to technical news platforms—like the National Weather Service— should you need real-time disaster information to make a decision for you or your family.

3. Perform a daily act of kindness

Kindness might be the last thing on your radar in the wake of a serious disaster. But it’s a real route toward building hope, which can improve your mental health. “We sometimes think of hope as something that we wish for, or that we’re going to find, but really, hope is something that we create,” says Dr. Morganstein. “When we do something kind for others, we build hope.”

That might look like comforting a crying neighbor, helping someone carry a piece of heavy debris or search for a lost possession in their home, or giving someone a bottle of water in an evacuation center. “All of these acts of kindness remind people that there’s goodness in the world to look forward to at the end of a crisis, and create social connectedness,” says Dr. Morganstein.

4. Tap into your personal skills

When something as out of our control as a hurricane strikes, it’s easy to feel helpless. But there are many ways for any single person to help in a crisis. Doing so just requires thinking about how you can put your personal skills to good use.

“Inside a shelter or evacuation center, there might be religious officials who can hold services and welcome people of all faiths, teachers who can organize classes for children, or fitness instructors who can host informal exercises classes or sporting activities,” says Dr. Morganstein. And these kinds of practices aren’t just worthy distractors from the chaos of the moment; they’re integral in restoring that all-important sense of routine noted above.

“Displaced people may not be thinking about their skills because they are understandably distracted,” says Dr. Morganstein, “but by using those skills, they can feel a greater sense of efficacy, as in ‘I can actually do something to help other people.’ Then, those other people also stand to benefit from whatever it is they’re doing, so that both the individual and the community gets stronger.”

To contribute to relief efforts following Hurricane Ian, consider donating money to organizations supplying food, shelter, and other support, including the Florida Disaster Fund, the American Red Cross, and the Salvation Army.

The “No Public Funds for Abortion Act,” a 2021 law, prohibits professors from “promoting” abortion services to their students. However, it’s not the only law making it more difficult for university-goers to seek reproductive care. As PBS News Hour notes, a series of older laws written long ago are now going into effect, one by one, in Idaho (as in many other states).

For example, one 1867 law that was written before Idaho even became a state (and updated in 1974) prohibits all advertising or administering of abortion services or birth control methods, like condoms and birth control. This sparked the administration at the University of Idaho to advise that condoms should only be given out to students to protect against sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and never to prevent pregnancies.

Questions still remain regarding if, and how, technology will be used to surveil state employees who may be offering reproductive health advice on their state-owned computers.

“This is a challenging law for many and has real ramifications for individuals in that it calls for individual criminal prosecution,” said Jodi Walker, spokeswoman for the University of Idaho, in an email to the school. “The section does not specify what is meant by promoting abortion, however, it is clear that university employees are paid with public funds. Employees engaging in their course of work in a manner that favors abortion could be deemed as promoting abortion.”

Of course, reproductive rights are also a topic that comes up in classroom settings as part of the law and medical curriculum—and institutions like Boise University and Idaho University are still trying to figure out how these laws will affect how necessary information is taught in the classroom. For example, what will a lesson on ectopic pregnancies—or pregnancies where a fertilized egg gets stuck on the way to a uterus, thus endangering the mother—look like? How do you talk about the 14th amendment without also talking about abortion?

For now, university professors have been encouraged to remain “neutral” on tricky subjects whenever possible—a near impossible task. “If the science says the right thing to do is to provide birth control in this patient, is presenting that information neutral?” said Lisa Bostaph, PhD, a criminal justice professor at Boise State University.

If you, or someone you know in Idaho, need information about how to receive abortion care or birth control, visit abortionfinder.org or check out the Reproductive Health Access Project. If you’re part of an underserved community and need transportation to receive an abortion, contact the folks at the Brigid Alliance. 

A representative survey of nearly 2,000 Flint residents conducted in late 2019 and early 2020, nearly five years after the start of the water crisis, found that one in five people had presumptive major depression in the past year, one in four had presumptive post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and one in 10 had both conditions (“presumptive” only because respondents met the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for the disorders but weren’t individually diagnosed by a clinician). To be clear, this prevalence of depression is more than twice that of the general U.S. population, while this rate of PTSD is nearly five times as large.

These numbers speak to the major psychological toll of the crisis—in fact, a secondary crisis that is likely still ongoing. “In studying other kinds of environmental and man-made disasters like 9/11, we’ve found that while the majority of people experience distress immediately after, that number will drop in the first couple months before basically leveling off,” says Dean Kilpatrick, PhD, lead author on the study and Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Medical University of South Carolina. “I wouldn’t suspect that if we went back to the same Flint residents now, that we’d see much improvement.”

“They’re dealing with the impact of being potentially exposed to something toxic, where they don’t know how much exposure they got, how deadly it was, how long it’ll take for the effects to show up.” —Dean Kilpatrick, PhD, senior investigator at the Medical University of South Carolina

This slow and terrible burn mirrors the path of the crisis itself—which, like many crises involving exposure to toxic substances, didn’t really end when it ended. Even when officials deemed Flint water safe to drink in January 2017, “residents had a hard time trusting that this was actually the case, and rightfully so, given these same officials had misled them before about the quality of the water,” says Dr. Kilpatrick. “At that point, they’re also still dealing with the psychological impact of being potentially exposed to something toxic, where they don’t know how much exposure they got, how deadly it was, how long it’ll take for the effects to show up.” All this remaining uncertainty, he suspects, is what’s now causing the mental-health crisis in Flint to linger so profoundly.

Why environmental disasters like the Flint water crisis are also mental-health disruptors

Any environmental disaster threatening the safety of a person’s livelihood or minimizing their access to basic resources like food, water, or shelter has the potential to be a traumatic event, in its own right. Consider, for example, the traumatizing effect of being displaced from your home, suffering from environmental health consequences, or struggling to access the very things you need to survive or thrive.

In fact, ample research has shown that environmental disasters ranging from hurricanes and tornadoes to oil spills and wildfires often result in psychological distress that can mount into mental-health consequences like depression, PTSD, anxiety, and substance use.

In the case of the Flint water crisis, the mental-health impact was likely magnified by both the sudden onset of the crisis and its lengthy duration, according to study researchers. “Consider the mechanics of suddenly not being able to drink your water or bathe, and having to switch to bottled water for everything,” says Dr. Kilpatrick. “That is a stressor, in and of itself.” And it was one that went on for years, too, as the contaminant levels in Flint’s water remained elevated long after the water supply was reverted (and even once the water was once again drinkable, residents still, understandably, remained skeptical).

Add in the very real health effects of exposure to toxins—in Flint’s case, primarily lead—and the mental-health implications of this kind of crisis are magnified further. Not only can lead exposure itself trigger certain psychological issues (like changes in mood, energy, and irritability), but also, its physical health detriments can lead a person to a state of distress.

“Imagine learning that you may or may not have consumed something that will kill you, or have these other adverse physical effects, and it may be that these effects will show up right away or in 10 or 20 or 30 years,” says Dr. Kilpatrick. “You’re going to be stressed out.”

How the psychological fallout of environmental crises is unevenly distributed

As with most crises, the people impacted the worst by the mental-health burden of the Flint water crisis were the ones in the most vulnerable position to start—and with the most limited access to recourse. For example, people who believed that their or their family’s health was “moderately or greatly harmed by the water crisis” were 123 percent more likely to have depression, 66 percent more likely to have PTSD, and 106 percent more likely to have both conditions at the time of the survey. Which is to say, people who experienced physical harm from the water crisis were more likely to get the double whammy of mental-health issues, too.

The study also found that people who felt they couldn’t trust information from city officials about water safety were also more likely to develop depression or PTSD. And chances are, many of the people in this group were also people of racial minorities, given the ways in which systemic racism has caused and amplified institutional distrust in these groups.

In fact, Flint is a predominantly Black community, which made it more susceptible to this crisis in the first place. The residual effects of racist redlining practices and residential segregation make it more likely for Black people to live in poorly resourced neighborhoods rife with environmental hazards. Just take Jackson, Mississippi, also a predominantly Black city where, in this case, city officials failed to invest in an effective water treatment center such that it was easily overrun by a rainstorm last month, leaving residents without drinking water for weeks. In much the same way, it was a lack of investment by city officials in Flint (to effectively ensure that the Flint River’s water was safe to drink) that jeopardized the city’s mostly Black residents from the jump.

To take it one step further, the study also showed that those in Flint who reported the lowest income, lack of social support, and previous exposure to traumatic events, particularly physical or sexual assault, were also significantly more likely to experience depression and/or PTSD in the wake of the water crisis. And this just goes to show how quickly and tragically a crisis like Flint can have the largest compounding effects on the people least equipped to handle them.

What can be done to reduce the psychological burden of environmental disasters

This study is evidence that there’s not only a physical-health consequence to environmental disasters; there’s a very real and long-lasting mental-health consequence, too. And while this certainly underscores the need for infrastructure investment—particularly in such life-essential resources as water and in such historically under-resourced areas as Flint—it also demonstrates how important it is for local officials to consider long-term mental-health outcomes in crafting their response to disasters.

Part of that simply means acknowledging that the disaster is, in fact, happening, right from the start. As noted above, Flint residents who didn’t trust government officials during the water crisis experienced worse mental-health consequences than those who did—and much of that distrust sprang from these officials’ initial response to deny, deny, deny. Instead, authorities who run up against a similar environmental issue “ought to think to themselves, ‘What if this is actually a real crisis?’ And they ought to avoid blithely telling people, ‘There’s no issue here, nothing to see here,’” says Dr. Kilpatrick, “because if they blow their credibility in the beginning, it’ll create far more serious issues down the line.”

At the same time, it’s essential for communities to expand access to mental-health resources in the wake of a crisis like Flint’s. Though Flint city officials did launch some new mental-health support services in 2016, with the help of federal funding, these initiatives were likely too little, too late. Only about 34 percent of respondents in the above study said they were offered mental-health services to help with concerns related to the crisis, despite clear survey evidence at the time demonstrating a significant need.

Of the Flint residents who were offered mental-health support, nearly 80 percent used it (and those who did so were significantly less likely to meet the criteria for depression at the time of the study). Even so, that number isn’t 100 percent, which reflects the additional need to reduce the stigma of accessing mental-health care when it’s available, says Dr. Kilpatrick.

City officials can help by normalizing the fact that psychological consequences can and do occur in response to eco disasters (in just the same way that physical ones do), and by promoting psychological care from the outset. This will be especially important for people with preexisting risk factors, like for example, those who’ve experienced traumatic events in the past, adds Dr. Kilpatrick: “It’s essential to understand that these things have an accumulative effect on the likelihood that PTSD will exist—and persist.”

The citizens of the Mississippi’s capitol—a predominantly Black population—are no strangers to the daily challenges of unreliable water access. Interruptions to their water supply and “boil water” advisories over contaminants like lead and E. coli bacteria caused by aging infrastructure are very common. The Clarion Ledger, a daily newspaper in Jackson, reported that two-thirds of all water samples taken in the city since 2015 have contained at least small amounts of lead. Plus, in the first quarter of 2020, about half a billion gallons of raw sewage leaked into Pearl River, one of the major sources of drinking water for those who live in the metropolitan city.

The current water emergency in Jackson is the result of torrential summer rains that caused the Pearl River to swell to about 35 feet high. Per NPR, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said that the storm has posed a challenge to the city’s water treatment center, O.B. Curtis Water Plant. However, in the month leading up to the flooding, Jackson residents were already under strict instructions to boil their water (meaning this crisis can’t be blamed on the flooding alone). And in 2020, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) even issued an emergency order warning that the water system in Jackson posed “an imminent and substantial endangerment” to residents—prescient, given that residents of the city were without drinking water for over a month in early 2021.

“It was a near certainty that Jackson would begin to fail to produce running water sometime in the next several weeks or months if something didn’t materially improve,” Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves told reporters this week. “Until it is fixed, it means we do not have reliable running water at scale… It means the city cannot produce enough water to fight fires, to reliably flush toilets, and to meet other critical needs.”

A peek at Jackson’s infrastructure reveals why these issues have been going on for years. The city’s water system is in abysmal shape and over a century old—and is in desperate need of repair. The city’s tax base has been shrinking in population since the 1980s as people have left the city, per NPR. And thus, there are 20 percent fewer people to source taxes that could ultimately rebuild the system—posing a huge funding issue for Jackson.

However, this water emergency is hardly the fault of the people living in Jackson. While the city has made efforts to overhaul the system with a $90 million plan with Siemens (a private infrastructure company) to upgrade sewer lines and make other key changes back in 2013, a botched installation led to some residents overpaying for water while others paid none at all. In the end, Jackson served Siemens with a massive lawsuit, and Jackson’s water troubles persisted.

More recently, Jackson has tried to secure funding at the state level to redo its infrastructure. However, these efforts failed in the hands of Republican lawmakers. (A special fund was established, but no money was allocated to it.) Meanwhile, on a federal level, Mississippi has received $75 million from the bipartisan infrastructure bill signed by President Biden in 2021. However, this money is for the entire state, not just the capitol, and represents a mere fraction of what Jackson will need to rebuild its water system. According to Mayor Lumumba, redoing the city’s water infrastructure could cost as much as $2 billion. And, so far, there’s no plan for where to source that money.

“It’s racist,” Mayor Lumumba said about the Mississippi state legislature’s failure to provide funding to Jackson in an interview with Mississippi Today. He called out the state’s willingness to give millions to fund a golf course but not to help address the city’s water infrastructure. “We’re left at the end of the day with a huge disparity between how Jackson has fared in terms of the resources we have received from the state.”

The crisis in Jackson is just the latest example of a larger racial equity issue in this country. “The water crisis in Jackson is just the most recent example of an underreported national problem,” wrote Andrew Lee, a journalist with Antiracism Daily, a daily newsletter for “anti-racism education and action. Lee pointed out out that clean water is inarguably parceled out in this country depending on your race and class. “Native American families are almost 20 times more likely than white families to lack plumbing. Over one in ten rural residents have problems with their sewage. A national review found that ‘race is the stronger predictor of water and sanitation access,’ and the ‘key obstacle’ to water access is poverty,” he wrote.

In order to support the citizens of Jackson and take action to help all those in America without access to clean drinking water, now is the time to support local and national organizations fighting for this basic human right. Below, find a list of folks pitching in to address the racial disparities at play in the conversation around water.

3 organizations to support right now to help the Jackson, Mississippi water emergency

1. Cooperation Jackson

Cooperation Jackson is a citizen-led group “building a solidarity economy in Jackson, Mississippi, anchored by a network of cooperatives and worker-owned, democratically self-managed enterprises.” Right now, the organization has turned its focus on the water crisis and is distributing water in Jackson, at Ida B. Wells Plaza.

Donate now.

2. Mississippi Rapid Response Coalition Water Fund

This coalition has a goal of raising at least $2 million to provide clean water for Mississippi residents while the state works out its infrastructure issues. They’re also distributing free water all week.

Donate now.

3. MS Student Water Crisis Advocacy Team

Specifically helping people with disabilities who can’t go to the store to pick up water, the MS Student Water Crisis Advocacy Team is currently accepting donations at the account $JxnWaterCrisis22 via Cashapp.

Donate now.

Sadly, the abortion landscape looks decidedly different now than it did when the Brigid Alliance first started operations. On June 24, the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, which kicked abortion rights back to states to decide and has left an estimated 21 million people (and counting) without legal access to abortion procedures.

With 22 states now enforcing restrictive or very restrictive abortion policies, Schalit tells Well+Good that her approach to leading the Brigid Alliance will follow the creed she has carried throughout her career: the idea of meeting people where they are, wherever they are. “I’m taking stock of the fact that I, as the provider, am not the expert. I have the resources, the care, and the inclination to make sure that the person I’m speaking with who does not have those resources knows what’s available to them, and is given as much generosity and care as possible,” says Schalit.

Schalit’s life calling has been grounded in the idea of service long before she started receiving a paycheck. “I’ve been interested in pregnancy and pregnant people and and reproductive health since I was a little person,” she says.  “For a while, I had this thought that I would become an OB/GYN, and then in college I became increasingly interested in women’s health in psychology and child development.”

Schalit then had a brief stint in the film industry, where she spent a couple of years casting and styling, before she got back into reproductive health. “The thread [of my career] there was interesting. This was not so much a departure, but a really vital moment for me to realize that the thing I loved about my work in film, the thing that I loved about studying psychology, and the thing that I would eventually come to love about becoming a birth doula and an abortion doula and working to become a social worker, was meeting folks where they’re at.”

This self-philosophy necessitates constant evolution—and that’s why Schalit has been thinking critically about how Brigid Alliance fits into the abortion care landscape since her very first day. “My role has been shifting since day one and really growing in significance and in complexity with the increasing complexity of the work that we do and the volume of people who are now needing our services,” says Schalit, who oversees the Brigid Alliance’s operations, strategy, and communications. She started by developing services based on her personal experience as a social worker at an abortion clinic (and her training in reproductive and sexual health programming). “I knew that transportation, housing, childcare, and local knowledge would, at minimum, be necessary for a service like Brigid,” she says.

“Practical support—this notion of taking care of all of the surrounding factors of how someone travels to their care—is something that’s been woven into abortion access organizations for a long time.” —Odile Schalit, executive director of the Brigid Alliance

After Schalit narrowed down the offerings she knew would be most helpful to those seeking abortions, she started reaching out to abortion funds and volunteer networks to learn as much as she could. “Practical support—this notion of taking care of all of the surrounding factors of how someone travels to their care—is something that’s been woven into abortion access organizations for a long time. But at the time Brigid launched, there we only a few [organizations] that were solely focused on travel and practical support,” says Schalit.

Schalit initially worked with organizations like Fund Texas Choice and Northwest Abortion Access Fund to create an “itinerary model” that took on the financial and logistical burdens of traveling for an abortion. This model involves connecting individuals with coordinators who work with them throughout their entire abortion care journey: booking and paying for procedures and the travel required to receive it, handling child care if needed, and providing support along the way. (Currently, the average Brigid Alliance itinerary costs about $1,250 and helps people travel an average of 1,000 miles to receive the care they need.)

Her experience collaborating with other abortion care networks helped her figure out what needs were already being met through existing services—and where there were critical gaps that the Brigid Alliance could help fill. One of the major things that differentiates the Brigid Alliance from other abortion access organizations, she says, is the conscious decision to focus on people seeking care for later-stage pregnancies. “We knew that there were more resources that existed to help people travel for abortion care earlier in pregnancy. There were far fewer [resources] for people needing to seek abortion care later in pregnancy, and that’s because those providers are harder to access. It’s more expensive. It’s more complicated. It’s longer travel. It’s more appointment days,” Schalit says.

Although Roe v. Wade is in the past, Schalit says the organization’s services themselves have remained largely the same. What’s changing is the demand. “Our services were actually, in that sense, designed for the moment that we’re in now, in which people cannot access abortion care in their own states and have to travel hundreds, if not a thousands, miles on average to get to their nearest abortion provider,” she explains. This service has been relevant for years, as states with Republication-dominated legislatures have slowly chipped away at abortion rights by enacting strict (and medically unnecessary) regulations designed to close clinics and reduce access. But now, with millions more people suddenly without legal abortion access in their states, Schalit says the need is bigger than ever. “We’re now having to navigate how to scale and grow our team and our capacity as quickly and deliberately as possible without harming our organization,” Schalit says.

Right now, this means taking plenty of calls with lawyers, coordinating with other abortion-focused non-profits to make the experience of scheduling and receiving an abortion as frictionless as possible, and acting as a coordinator herself whenever she can. “As a social worker, I’m always drawn to service. Since the Dobbs decision [the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade], I started doing client work again because we’ve just been so overwhelmed,” Schalit says.

However, even as the day-to-day work becomes increasingly complex, Schalit finds herself focusing on the future of reproductive care—and how the Brigid Alliance will continue to serve. “In the early days of Brigid, I used to give speeches where at the end of the speech, I would say something like, ‘And we will be here until we are no longer necessary.’ Now flash forward four years, I’m ending my speeches saying, ‘We will be here for the next several decades and on,'” says Schalit. “I have to assume [that] we’re going to be here a year from now, two years from now, and five years from now.”

However, today it seems like there will finally be some additional relief for some of those saddled with student debt. President Biden announced a three-part plan to address the student loan crisis—with the goal of helping those currently affected by debt as well as addressing some of the worst aspects of the current student loan system.

What’s promised in Biden’s Student Debt Relief Plan

Under the new plan, the Department of Education will cancel up to $20,000 of debt for eligible Pell Grant recipients, and up to $10,000 for people who do not have Pell Grants. People are eligible for this debt cancellation if their income is less than $125,000 per year (or $250,000 if they’re married). According to CNBC, at least 9 million borrowers could have their debt completely erased by this plan.

The plan includes other measures to support borrowers, including:

• The pause on federal student loan repayment will be extended one more time, through December 31, 2022.
• A cap on monthly undergraduate student loan payments at 5 percent of a borrower’s income (half of the rate that most borrowers pay, according to the White House.)
• Proposing a new rule that borrowers who have worked at nonprofits, in the military, or in federal, state, tribal, or local governments also receive credit toward loan forgiveness.

The announcement still falls short of what other advocates of student debt forgiveness wanted—$50,000 canceled for each federal student loan borrower. That said, it’s still a positive step forward, and likely a relief for millions of Americans struggling to repay their student loan debt. It’s also worth nothing that the Biden administration has previously taken other steps to cancel roughly $32 billion of student loan debt, including for those who attended former for-profit colleges and severely disabled borrowers.

“President Biden has taken a giant step forward in addressing the student debt crisis by cancelling significant amounts of student debt for millions of borrowers. The positive impacts of this move will be felt by families across the country, particularly in minority communities, and is the single most effective action that the president can take on his own to help working families and the economy,” said Senators Chuck Schumer (NY) and Elizabeth Warren (MA) in a joint statement on Twitter. The two Democratic Senators have relentlessly lobbied the President for student debt loan forgiveness over the past two years.

How do I know if I qualify—and how do I apply?

According to the Federal Student Aid (FSA) website, here’s how to know if you’re eligible for the forgiveness program:

First: Do you have unpaid federal student loans that you still owe?

Next: Do you earn less than $125,000 per year? (Or if you’re married, less than $250,000 per year?)

If you answered yes to both questions, you will qualify for this debt forgiveness program.

How much debt is forgiven depends on whether or not you’ve ever received a Pell Grant (a federal, undergraduate grant for very low-income students). If you have debt and were a Pell Grant recipient in college, you can get up to $20,000 in debt relief. If you did not receive a Pell Grant in college, you’re eligible for up to $10,000 in student loan debt forgiveness.

The FSA says that around 8 million borrowers might get relief automatically, without having to do anything, because the Department of Education already has their income data that would help determine eligibility status. But an application will be released in a few weeks for those who don’t have their income data on file (or don’t know if they do), per FSA. For updates on when this application is live, subscribe to email updates from the Department of Education here.

My disability anniversary also comes right on the heels of Disability Pride Month, which is observed every July. It’s time where we get to celebrate ourselves, our accomplishments, our determination, and our resilience. It is a month where we get to see other people who may look or live like us.

There was a time when I refused to believe I was disabled—not because I saw anything wrong with disability, but for what it would mean for how society would view me.

However, there used to be a time when being disabled wasn’t much of a celebration for me. I live with several rare genetic conditions including coronary artery spasms (where the arteries that supply blood to the heart periodically constrict), Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (which affects connective tissues and makes skin very fragile), Alport Syndrome (which causes progressive kidney disease) and Ankylosing Spondylitis (an inflammatory disorder that attacks the spine). Yet I once refused to believe I was disabled—not because I saw anything wrong with disability, but for what it would mean for how society would view me. I never saw love stories of a disabled and non-disabled person on my TV or at the movie theater. I didn’t see the success story of a disabled CEO covered in my favorite magazines or news outlets. When people shared the stories of disabled people, the focus seemed to be on sadness, inspiration porn, GoFundMes, and pity.

That’s why I tried to avoid being seen as disabled. In California, where I live, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) placard that you hang in your car comes in two colors: red for temporary disability like recovery from injury or surgery, and blue for permanent disability. I was still in the diagnosis phase at the time, which made me feel like I was going to get my life back. To me, red meant not forever, and maybe, just maybe, I would get better. Committed to that concept, I would drag myself down to the DMV and renew my red placard every six months for two years.

But one day my doctor sat me down and said, “It is time you get a blue disability placard.” My heart dropped. My doctor carefully filled out the permanent paperwork listing all of my disabilities at that time and I took it to the DMV. When I finally had the blue placard in my hand, I cried.

It was at that moment I realized I was disabled. And it was forever.

Self-empowerment was the path I took to cope with a new part of my intersectionality as Black disabled woman. Telling friends, family, and followers that I was disabled became powerful. I used it as a way to educate people with visible and invisible disabilities. When a stranger accosts me for parking in an ADA spot, I share that not all disabilities look the same. When I get nasty looks at the airport when I pre-board with other people with disabilities, I remind people that disability is not just using an assistive device. When a company or brand treats me unfairly due to my disability, I use my platform on social media to call them into an opportunity of accountability and action. Through talks, panels, and even this article (which I wrote just after being discharged from the emergency room), I use my voice to show the power and pride disabled people live with daily.

Disability Pride Month has come and gone. But I urge you to take action every day to uplift and support the disabled community, not just during one month. Here are my action items for folks looking to further their allyship and support of the disability community:

• Remove “able bodied” from your vocabulary. This term is used to describe people who don’t have disabilities, but it’s misleading: I (and other disabled folks) have the ability to do things the same as you or a little differently. Replace it with “non-disabled” because it includes disabled people in your conversation.
• Learn our history. Educate yourself about the Americans With Disabilities Act, which was signed into law in July 1990 due to continued advocacy from disabled activists. I also recommend watching Netflix’s Crip Camp, an award-winning documentary executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama that shows how powerful our advocacy can be.
• Diversify your feeds. Follow activists like Imani Barbarin, Catarina Rivera, and Aaron Philip on social media to learn more about how we thrive and how you can advocate for us.
• Donate to disabled activists and causes: If you are privileged enough to volunteer or donate, use this intersectional list as a guide to where to start and continue supporting the disabled community, or buy from a shop owned by a disabled person.
• Advocate for intersectional celebrations at work. Talk to your employer to find ways to celebrate Disability Pride Month next year. Bring in disabled speakers or collaborate on a cool product. Perhaps you may even become inspired to advocate for more acknowledgement of the LGBTQ+ members of our community, whose stories and experiences often get overlooked during Pride Month in June. (In America, almost 13 percent of disabled people identify as LGBTQ+, compared to 7 percent of the overall population.)

Above all, uplift us and amplify our voices, because we are responsible for uplifting ourselves 24/7. As a Black disabled woman, I am constantly advocating for my appointments, tests, treatments, and having my pain believed during my many emergency room trips a year. The progressive disabilities I have will test me at times, but I still find a way to keep moving forward with my ever-changing disability identity.

Pride is something that we find through perseverance. Through being overlooked. Stared at and misunderstood. Being in a position to thrive every day in a society that really isn’t designed for us is a tremendous source of pride. I am proud to be disabled. I am proud to use my voice. I am honored to tell my story in hopes for more love, support, compassion, and advocacy for my community.

A large-scale study published in May in the journal One Earth analyzed billions of sleep measurements (from existing sleep-tracker data sets spanning more than 47,000 people in 68 countries) in tandem with local daily meteorological data and found that warmer-than-normal nights significantly reduced how much sleep people clocked.

To be clear, this finding was tied to ambient (aka outdoor) temperatures and not temperatures within peoples’ homes—which is to say that the effect was still significant in folks with access to air conditioning and the like. Though the researchers didn’t analyze why people categorically got less sleep on hotter days, previous research points to the fact that our body temperature must drop in order to bring on sleep, and it’s possible that higher ambient temps could interfere with that process.

People are losing about 44 hours of sleep per year, on average, due to hotter-than-optimal ambient temperatures, according to a global study.

The study found that, in terms of a world-population-weighted average, people are losing about 44 hours of sleep per year due to hotter-than-optimal ambient temperatures, which are also contributing to approximately 11 nights of “short sleep” (meaning less than seven hours) per person per year. Since not getting enough sleep can have a whole host of health consequences over time, affecting everything from your mood and ability to focus to your immune system, cognition, and blood pressure, these climate-induced sleep deficits are nothing to, well, sleep on.

While a previous study linked higher outdoor temperatures with poor subjective reports of sleep via survey results, the above is the first study to find that these temperature changes have a direct impact on objective measures of sleep from sleep trackers. This tracker data allowed the One Earth study to consider years’ worth of nightly stats per person, while the survey from the previous study had just asked folks to report the number of nights of insufficient sleep they remembered getting each month over the course of a few years. As a result, the scientists working with the sleep-tracker data had billions of per-person data points to analyze for fluctuations, allowing them to uniquely measure changes in sleep from each person’s individual baseline.

“We could look at, for instance, the effect of a night that is randomly warmer than normal for a given place at a given time of year, and see whether a given individual within that area sleeps more or less compared to what is normal for them,” says Kelton Minor, lead author on the study and PhD candidate at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Social Data Science. Basically, this ensures that data for a person who typically sleeps for just five hours a night (aka “short sleep”) and then also slept for five hours on a warmer-than-usual night wouldn’t have been mistakenly considered evidence for the effect of climate change on sleep.

This level of specificity also meant that the researchers could rule out “stable individual characteristics that we might not normally be able to observe,” says Minor. In other words, they could tell that the drops in sleep they found on hot nights weren’t due to other things (like, for example, a person deciding to have caffeine that night or being particularly stressed that day) because those variables would change at random in any given individual. Separately, they also controlled for a ton of potentially confounding location-specific variables—from daylight changes to cloud cover to humidity—and the effect of climate change on sleep still stood.

Projecting their model into the future, the scientists were also able to estimate how much sleep we may lose in two different scenarios: if the climate keeps warming as it is, and if that temperature uptick is curbed by way of stabilized emissions. In the first (and scarier) scenario, people are projected to lose about 58 hours of sleep per year by 2099, and in the second, that number is 50, which is still significant. But it’s also important to note that these averages mask a lot of disparity among different groups of people, says Minor.

The effect of climate change on sleep isn’t felt equally

Though the entire planet is experiencing rising temperatures, particularly at night, the negative effects of these shifts aren’t distributed equally. Folks in vulnerable populations are more likely to feel the impacts, and sleep loss appears to be no exception.

“We found that the effect on sleep per degree of warming was approximately three times as large in low- to middle-income countries as it was in high-income [countries],” says Minor. “This suggests that certain socioeconomic amenities, whether it’s air conditioning or something else, that people have in higher income countries… may buffer the effect of climate change on sleep.” Because the study used data from sleep trackers—which require money to buy—and in turn, had fewer data points from low- and middle-income countries than high-income ones, Minor suspects the socioeconomic gap may be even larger than the one they found.

It’s also the case that both elderly folks and (biological) females are likely more susceptible to the effect of climate change on sleep. In the study, the elderly lost over twice as much sleep per degree of warming as young and middle-aged adults, and females were about 25 percent more impacted than males. Though Minor says they aren’t sure exactly what was driving these relationships, one possibility is the naturally earlier sleep rhythms of both older people and females. “This may predispose them to hotter temperatures at their time of sleep onset, which could make it tougher for them to fall asleep,” he says.

“There’s evidence that even long-term exposure to warmer temperatures doesn’t guarantee any reduced impact on sleep.” —Kelton Minor, PhD candidate and social-science researcher

And it doesn’t seem like we’ll simply “get used to” the heat, either, adds Minor: “Contrary to what we anticipated, we found that the people in the warmest areas were over twice as affected per degree of warming than those in the coldest climates, providing evidence that even long-term exposure to warmer temperatures doesn’t guarantee any reduced impact on sleep.”

To test that finding in another way, the researchers also looked at sleep changes at the beginning of the summer within particular locations in comparison to changes at the end of the summer to see if people’s sleep “might be less impacted by the heat when it should be cognitively more familiar,” says Minor. And still no dice: People were actually marginally more impacted per degree of warming at the end of the summer, suggesting what may be a lingering, and even worsening effect of nighttime heat on sleep over time.

Because many of the warmest regions also overlap with low-income areas, that finding is a double whammy for folks who are already more susceptible to the heat’s sleep-reducing effects.

How policy change can mitigate the impact of warming temperatures on sleep

We know that people are already losing several nights of good sleep a year to suboptimal nighttime temperatures, says Minor, “but we also have reason to suspect that the number of nights will only continue to grow, as temperatures rise, given low evidence of adaptation.” While this is certainly all the more reason that greenhouse gas emissions need to be curbed (in order to slow the rate of climate change overall), Minor and his team also propose more direct policy changes to soften the blow of high nighttime temperatures on sleep.

At the top of that list is prioritizing ambient cooling techniques like heat-resilient planning (think: adding green spaces and building shade structures in urban areas). These strategies—already rolling out in places like Austin, TX—are crucial to combatting heat in cities, where the high concentration of heat-absorbing pavement and buildings make hot days even hotter. “We found that, on colder-than-normal nights, people actually slept more, which feeds into this notion that ambient cooling interventions may actually help to improve sleep,” he says.

Minor also stresses the necessity of expanded access to cooling technologies, like air conditioning. “If the market is allowed to do what it naturally does, these cooling technologies will continue to be unequally distributed,” he says. And this will actually worsen temperature inequality: “Because A/C basically takes heat in a given building and dumps it outside… the waste heat will further warm the surrounding environment, creating even worse conditions for sleep for those who can’t access A/C themselves,” he says.

That’s not to say that air conditioning isn’t a good solution in a warming world; in fact, it’s nothing short of essential, says Minor. “But in order to avoid unintended consequences, like an increasingly unequal distribution of heat and its downstream effects on sleep, access to A/C absolutely needs to be provided in an equitable manner.” Some state and local governments, like New York, have voucher programs that help low-income residents pay for (and install) air conditioning units in their homes. But this is potentially a Band-Aid solution if said residents still can’t afford to pay the higher electricity bill that comes with running the A/C.

All of that is to say, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to mitigate the effects of climate change on sleep (and everything else). Despite the recent discouraging news from Congress and the Supreme Court, don’t let your elected officials off the hook. Call your representatives regularly to let them know that addressing climate change should be a major priority, and get in touch with local environmental activist groups to organize for action in your hometown. Because sound sleep (and a healthy planet) should be our future—not a pipe dream.

“The Dobbs decision argued that the ‘liberty’ interest in the 14th Amendment’s guarantee that all citizens have the right to ‘life, liberty, and property’ did not encompass the right to make private reproductive decisions,” says Cynthia Daniels, political scientist at Rutgers University and director of the Informed Consent Project, a research organization that evaluates information about fetal development held by various states.

And with that right to make private reproductive decisions no longer firmly protected, she suspects that, like abortion, access to contraception could soon be legally challenged, and in the worst-case scenario, face a similar fate. At the same time, certain anti-abortion politicians are working to categorize particular kinds of contraception as abortifacients (despite medical evidence against this), grouping them in a way that could similarly restrict legal access.

The legal argument calling contraception access into question

This domino effect is not baseless conjecture: In Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion, he explicitly called for the Court to “reconsider all…substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.” Griswold v. Connecticut protects the right of married couples to access contraception.

Though Thomas didn’t note it directly, the 1972 decision of Eisenstadt v. Bard used the same 14th Amendment interpretation to protect the right of unmarried folks to access contraception. “Both of these decisions [Griswold and Eisenstadt] were based on the right to privacy and the liberty to make one’s own reproductive choices, which have been thrown into question with the Dobbs decision,” says Daniels.

Underscoring the Dobbs decision is an approach to interpreting the Constitution called originalism. “This tries to figure out what the Framers were thinking when they drafted the Constitution and the amendment in question—so, in this case, that would put us at either 1791, when the Bill of Rights was drafted, or 1868, when the 14th Amendment was ratified,” says Khiara M. Bridges, JD, PhD, professor of law at University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. “And in both years, I can assure you that the Framers were not thinking about reproductive rights. And they were certainly not thinking about the ability of people to use contraception. So, it simply wouldn’t be a right that the Constitution explicitly contemplates.”

The reason contraception was legally protected in both Griswold and Eisenstadt is the establishment of substantive due process, a term that refers to the Court’s ability to protect rights that are not explicitly listed in the Constitution. And now, Thomas is suggesting, from an originalist approach, that we reconsider all the decisions springing from that perspective. Ostensibly, that could tumble an entire edifice of cases, says Dr. Bridges, including all of those above (affecting key LGBTQ+ rights and contraception access) and dating back to cases from the 1920s, like Meyer v. Nebraska and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, both of which surround the right to raise a child how you see fit.

How the threat against contraception access is likely to pan out

While contraception could certainly get swept up in the crackdown on privacy rights if the Court starts reversing other cases decided with the same logic as Roe, it’s unlikely that this will happen until the Court is pressured by state legislators—in the same way that Roe was only judicially called into question when certain states proposed abortion bans. “Right now, there are no similar trigger laws in place for contraception, and criminalizing it is still an unpopular opinion,” says Dr. Bridges.

“Right now, there are no similar trigger laws in place for contraception [as there are for abortion], and criminalizing it is still an unpopular opinion.” —Khiara M. Bridges, JD, PhD

But, public opinion can change fast, and anti-abortion rights activists and legislators are likely to garner the political momentum from Roe‘s reversal to push an anti-contraception agenda. In fact, some anti-abortion rights politicians have previously claimed that certain types of emergency contraception (like the Plan B One-Step pill) and IUDs actually constitute abortion and should be similarly restricted.

This logic stems from their belief that life begins at conception, or the moment a sperm fertilizes an egg. Using this line of thought, it follows that any type of contraception that they suspect may prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg—including Plan B, certain IUDs, and progestin-only birth control pills—could be effectively terminating a life (as they define it).

But the very belief that a just-fertilized egg is a person is not the medical consensus, says Dr. Bridges. By contrast, the medical community is aligned on the fact that pregnancy begins only when a fertilized egg implants into the uterine lining (and not beforehand). And, notably, this medical consensus is also separate from the question of when life begins, at some point after implantation.

It’s also worth noting that medical evidence does not support the claim that any of the above-mentioned contraceptives typically prevent implantation, either. Instead, according to reproductive endocrinologist and advisor at reproductive-health company Natalist Aimee Eyvazzadeh, MD, they make the uterus inhospitable to sperm (copper IUDs) or prevent fertilization of an egg by a sperm (progestin pills and Plan B). “Even so, particularly in the trigger-ban states and others looking to criminalize abortion, we should be on the lookout for the criminalization of these kinds of contraception, too,” says Dr. Bridges.

In certain states, recent political action already points to that potential. For example, in Missouri, lawmakers tried to restrict Medicaid funding from covering Plan B and IUDs last year in legislation aimed at Planned Parenthood; Idaho Rep. Brent Crane announced that he would hold hearings on legislation banning emergency contraception earlier this year; and just this past month, a Louisiana house committee passed a bill defining human personhood as beginning at the point of fertilization, which could be used to justify outlawing both emergency contraception and certain IUDs. (While these actions predate the overturning of Roe v. Wade, they serve as compelling evidence of what we may expect to come.)

Notably, access to other types of contraception—like combined estrogen-progestin birth control pills, Depo-Provera shots, patches, vaginal rings, and hormonal IUDs—is less at risk right now, mostly because these work by preventing ovulation, says Dr. Eyvazzadeh. And that makes it tougher to conflate them, in any way, with abortion: By preventing the ovaries from releasing an egg, these contraceptives remove the potential for an egg to be fertilized in the first place, eliminating any gray area about whether they’re interfering with an already living thing.

What this means for contraception methods available to you

Though none of the above anti-contraception stances have been codified as law just yet, political movement in that direction doesn’t just threaten access for all people; it also stands to widen an already existing contraception gap. That is, any restriction in access to contraception will disproportionately affect people of color and folks of lower socioeconomic status—people who are already more likely to live in contraception deserts, or areas lacking in federally funded reproductive-health clinics.

Anti-contraception stances stand to widen an already existing contraception gap.

In the meantime, experts suggest getting ahead of your reproductive-health care, if possible, by considering getting an IUD (if you have long-term contraception needs) or replacing yours, if it’s nearing its expiration date. And given that there have been reports of increased interest in IUDs following the leaked draft opinion for the Dobbs case in May, it’d be wise to consider your options sooner than later.

The same goes for purchasing Plan B now, if you suspect there’s any chance you might need it in the future. (Already, Amazon and several drugstores are running low on stock, and, in some areas, sales are restricted to three units per person.) Alternatively, you may also be able to get birth control or Plan B online by turning to telehealth providers like Favor (previously known as The Pill Club), Nurx, and Hims & Hers.

Potential shortages aside, “in general, it’s most important for people in states where abortion has been banned or a ban is forthcoming to stock up [on these contraceptives], since those are the states that are most likely to extend those bans to IUDs, emergency contraception, and potentially even hormonal contraception in the future,” says Daniels.

I grew up in the Catholic Charismatic tradition and was a youth leader in my faith community. I realized I was a lesbian at an early age, and that awareness served as a gateway to spiritual discovery as I unpacked my beliefs about sin, sex, and gender. My self-acceptance, mental health, and, really, survival hinged upon my ability to develop a loving, compassionate relationship with the divine. I’ve explored Christianity, Buddhism, spiritualism, Wicca, esoteric traditions, and more along my spiritual path. I began my astrology and mediumship studies in the 1990s, around when I came out as a lesbian. 

My sexual orientation and gender are integral components of my personhood, and my spirituality informs my service, politics, and contributions to the world. They are all inextricably linked. Knowing about Jordi’s work, I suspected our stories would overlap, and they did in surprising ways. Here’s our conversation.

Rachel Lang: As an astrologer, I like to start with this question: What are your sun, moon, and rising signs?

Jordi: My sun is Taurus, my moon is Scorpio, and my rising is Libra. I was born a day before the full moon. My mom and I share a Scorpio moon and Libra rising.

RL: I find patterns repeat themselves within families. I’m a Libra sun, Taurus rising, and Gemini moon. We’ve got that Libra-Taurus thing going on, and how perfect that we’re having this conversation on Venus’s day, Friday?

I was raised in the Catholic tradition, and one of the things that I struggled with in coming out was self-acceptance. Coming out was hard. Religious rhetoric about the “sinfulness of homosexuality” reinforced shame and internalized homophobia, and I lost relationships with some of the people I loved.

I turned to spirituality for healing, which meant loving and accepting myself and then forgiving the structural wrongdoing. I had to “come out” as a lesbian and as an astrologer. The core aspects of my life—whom I loved and what I did—were unacceptable to some of the most important people in my life. Fortunately, things have changed since then. What is your experience of queerness and how it relates to your spirituality?

J: That is very similar to me. I grew up in the Church. I spent multiple days a week at church, attending children’s services, and rehearsing for the hip-hop praise and worship team. The people I was close to at that time were all going to church. I wasn’t necessarily unaccepting myself as much as compartmentalizing my queerness. I was like, “Well, clearly it’s not accepted here in the environments where they’re celebrating people who ‘prayed the gay away.'”

I just knew it wasn’t safe environment for this aspect of who I am, so I explored myself behind closed doors and kept it a secret. But in the same breath, I was expanding into my queerness. So, it was a lot harder later in life to merge myself again. I didn’t have the space to do that until I left home.

I was in college, and I was finding God within myself and my ancestors, considering who they traditionally prayed to in the languages that were stolen or kidnapped from their native tongues. I was retracing my steps through the colonial violence of the Church.

As I was making my way, I was open to things in my lineage that have been suppressed: clairvoyance, clairaudience, talking to spirits, and vision and dream work. I come from a long line of magical people who have had to suppress that because it was seen as demonic. It was at that time that a lot of my identities came to a head, and it wasn’t even just sexuality at that point; it was gender as well.

RL: We can’t separate our sexuality or gender from our spirituality. It’s how we experience our soul in our body and feel connected to the whole. I think the colonial mindset perpetuated the idea that magic, ritual, and the expression of spirituality we’re talking about are evil. That mindset has done so much damage.

In researching the witch trials of the early modern period and the relationship between power, gender, and magic, I learned colonization was a factor in spreading fear about supernatural power and magic. I can still see remnants of it today in the way many people fear witchcraft, for example.

I would love to hear some of your thoughts about what it was like for you to reclaim the spiritual practices of your ancestors.

J: It’s so interesting that you bring up the witch trials, because I always go back to that as a teaching point of disconnecting whole generations and cultures from their roots. We’re also talking about disconnecting from the land through gender-based violence.

It was a lot of protesting that activated me. In 2016, I saw livestreams online of murders and executions; it was rendering me helpless in bed, watching them. It was so surreal to witness death in that way. At the time, somebody invited me to a BLM rally. We were surrounding the families of victims of police violence. I had to bring healing, love, and prayers. So, I was praying in public with my hands up.

There were thousands of people in the street saying the names of the dead up to the heavens. I remember looking at the sky, and there was a quarter moon between Mars and Jupiter. The sun was setting, and they all made a circle. We never turned our back to that alignment, and I had to keep my hands up and pray.

After that, I was thrust into an awareness. I’ve been reinforming my identity through retracing the steps of history, and that took place as a racial conversation. But I also feel the complexities of race, gender, and sexuality as part of my identity. Everything’s connected.

RL: My spirituality has always informed my dedication to justice. The more I decolonized my spirituality, the more motivated I became to participate in movements to promote equity and liberation. In 2016, many people woke up to the injustices that pervaded our culture. Some movements merged spirituality and witchcraft, specifically, with activism. I was at some of those rallies and in those movements. You said 2016 was a significant turning point for you. How have spirituality and activism intersected for you since that time?

J: Spiritual warfare is real. We were holding hands in a circle in the street, and the amount of violence that was met for something so sacred showed me the power of a gathering like a ritual.

RL: Now that more people are owning their gifts and evolving their spiritual beliefs, I’m hoping these shifts can lead to the world’s healing. We’re healing not just our trauma and those we’ve inherited from our ancestors but also the collective trauma we’ve experienced in recent years.

I’m going to shift gears a little and talk about Neptune. Since 2012, Neptune has been in Pisces, and Neptune relates to larger cultural movements. The last time Neptune was in Pisces in the 1800s, we saw a similar interest in mediumship, magic, and occult sciences as we do today. It’s a time when we can all use our collective imagination to shape the world. So, put on your envisioning or psychic hat: What kinds of movements might happen in these next few years?

J: I see a lot of spiritual leveling up, especially with this pandemic. With all the people leaving the planet, we’re gaining angels. There’s more connection to spirituality and communication with spirits. It’s interesting—a spirituality informed by a lot of death and trauma. I think this time is informing and shifting the nature of people regarding spirituality and spiritual connection.

RL: I think as we have these shifts, we will become more intolerant of the abuses of power that contribute to inequality and exclusion. I’d love to see us be in ritual with one another, holding a vision for the world we want to create.

J: For me, I feel an urgency. Violence and pain have traditionally been the reactants, and it doesn’t have to be that way. So, I want us to stretch the muscles allowing abundance to be the core of how we share and connect—allowing love to be the core.

The planet’s going through a lot of changes right now, and so are we. Prioritizing pleasure and healing makes a lot of sense to me. That’s what I’m trying to do in my corner of the world; radiate that from my epicenter.

RL: I’ve been exploring how pleasure relates to power for a new book project. As a lesbian, pleasure and shame go hand in hand. Part of my spiritual practice recently has been grounding in my body and feeling my senses. Loving what it feels like to be in a body on this Earth. I love that you spoke about pleasure. What are some things you do to nurture that part of yourself?

J: I enjoy taking baths every week; I got this massage wand…I also got a new vibrator. The pandemic was the first time I ever lived alone, and now I’m thrust back into living in shared spaces. I navigate autonomous healing in a collective space where everybody might not be on the same page by prioritizing myself and time with myself. That means going on walks. It is a special part of my self care.

RL: I hear you. I’m married to my wonderful wife, Tisha, and I think the pandemic put a lot of pressure on everybody, regardless of relationship status. Time alone was so important because we were right there in close proximity all the time. We both work from home.

It was art for me. I needed to ground myself in beauty and creativity to process the dynamic energy of what was happening in the world, and so I made that a part of my spiritual practice.

I realize we didn’t talk about relationships. That’s so me—talking about work, activism, and everything else but relationships. Are you in a relationship?

J: That’s real! I’m such a lover, it’s ridiculous, but I do not have a lot of activation in my romantic life. The pandemic initiated the end of my first and longest relationship. I thought moving into a house on my own in New Orleans would allow for more freedom and excitement in that area, but the only way I was meeting people with the intention of romance was through dating apps/social media apps, which come with their own special set of challenges. So, when things felt a little out of my control physically with regards to solidifying dates or long-term potential lovers, I prioritized ceremony. Burning candles, talking to the moon and my ancestors about it, and journaling were helping me navigate romantic longing.

I feel quite depleted in the ways I’ve been manifesting. So, I’m single and very recently trying new things, like releasing control, trying to limit the amount of time I talk about romantic lack, or reading about love. I asked a friend of mine about how they would attract lovers or align with them, and they said to just do what I love. The more I find myself in environments I am happy to be in, the more people who are interested in that same energy will find me. I wish it were a little bit easier from what I’ve seen others able to do romantically on this planet, but I’m a very different person. So, I know my loverships will be just as different.

RL: Manifesting love is complex because two people are involved in the manifestation, and more people are involved if you count potential children or family.

I resisted love for so long, but I did this exercise when I was ready to be in a relationship. I’d write love poems and letters to my future wife in a journal. I didn’t know who she was, but I could feel what it was like to be in love. I did this almost every night for a year.

Tisha and I had known each other as friends for a long time. I didn’t know she was the one until I was ready to see her as the one. It happened on November 14, 2016—the Taurus full moon. My manifestation process was all about being in love as if she were there, but she was also doing her part to manifest love at the same time. When we were both ready, it happened effortlessly.

I can be a romantic. Just talking about it now, I’m feeling the love. When they say love is love, I feel it in my core. Loving women felt so pure and natural to me. I couldn’t see how it could be considered wrong, especially because it required so much of my heart—my courage—to come out.

How has being on a spiritual path and developing your gifts shaped your experience of love?

J: It has deepened my relationship with love. I feel like I am able to feel more of every emotion and empathize more than I ever have with the people, places, and beings I love. In that same breath, I think love has become more intense for me. Even just in processing spaces or experiences in which love is not present or not being expressed. I think from what I’ve been learning from life, especially recently, is my strong desire for communication in love, about love, with love. I’ve written about love a lot more. I’ve shared with more people that I love them. I usually don’t think of myself as a bold person, but I am. And the more I am truthful with myself and my emotions, the more expressions of love I’ve been able to share with others.

Want more Love Out Loud conversations? Here, Claire Wasserman and Ashley Louise discuss (and celebrate) their marriage. And here, Hannah Schneider and Jaclyn Moore discuss queer representation in media.

Below, we explore trans representation in media, what it means to be one of very few people like you in a room at work, how that informs how we tell stories, what questions we ask, and—maybe most importantly—what it feels like to be part of our own trans community’s story.

Hannah Schneider: We have a bit in common and also some contrast—I’m a trans butch lesbian health reporter and a writer, and I know that you’re a trans writer, but I think we have had very different writing experiences in terms of subject matter. I am familiar with the experience of being one of the only trans writers in a room—are you? If so, I’m curious about how that influences your work.

Jaclyn Moore: I’m still often the only trans writer in the room. There are not, unfortunately, that many of us. There are fewer of us who get to do these things [such as work in media and the entertainment industry], and that’s why it’s such a responsibility. Or, at least, I feel such a responsibility to try to not pull the ladder up behind us, and instead try to fortify it, try to put in some stairs, and an escalator, and a ramp, and make it as easy and accessible, and more possible for there to be more of us.

I’m very lucky I have gotten to do what I’ve always wanted to do, which is to tell stories that matter to me. I’ve always told stories that mattered to me, or I’ve always tried to. Since transitioning, I feel like I’ve been able to tell stories that I was scared to admit mattered a lot to me because before I came out, I was scared they would give me away. I’ve known this about myself for much, much longer than I have been out, as is I think usually the case.

HS: I know that I’m planning to ask a lot of questions about being trans, but I have other questions about you, too.

JM: Oh, it’s okay. I get why, as a community, sometimes we’re like, “That’s not what defines us,” but it’s going to be in the first line of my obituary—it’s how the world perceives me. Being trans is a big part of who I am, whether I like it or not, and I do like it. I think it’s a wonderful thing.

I think there’s something very profound about people who experience the world from multiple perspectives of lived experience. I think that’s one of the magic tricks. There’s a level of empathy among trans folks because, in a lot of ways, our lived experiences are, I feel, like a Joni Mitchell song: I feel like I’ve seen gender from both sides now.

HS: My reporting as a health writer juxtaposed to being fat and trans gives me a lot of privileged insight into questions that other people aren’t asking. One question I have for you is how do you think your lived experience gives you unique strengths as a producer and writer?

JM: I think a big part of being a good writer is being empathetic; being able to put yourself in many different sets of shoes and to write obviously your own lived experience, but also to be able to capture the lived experience of people who are not you. That doesn’t mean that you go out and tell any story you want to tell, but I think a good writer can bring humanity to a whole host of different people. And I think that’s true of a lot of lived experiences, right?

I was a sex worker for a long time. I think that is also an experience that has helped me so much in my writing; so much of that job is putting yourself in another person’s shoes, reading the room, feeling their energy, and trying to show up for what people want and what they need.

In a lot of ways, I think those skills translate very directly into telling stories because you need to be able to capture a whole lot of different perspectives. That’s where the drama comes from—where different perspectives meet.

HS: That is so true. The way that empathy develops in a person has so much versatility. So, for your career, what does a producer do? I feel like I get a different definition every time I talk to a producer.

JM: What a producer does varies because there are a lot of different kinds of producers, and a lot of them have the same title. So it’s confusing. There’ll be 10 executive producers on a show, or more than that sometimes in a movie, in a TV show, and they all do different things. They can be the line producer who manages the budget. They can be a creative producer who helped develop the project in its early days. My job as an executive producer on TV shows is to help make the script come to screen. So that means working with directors, working with costume departments, working with makeup departments, working with production design, and getting us all on the same vision; that’s a lot of what a showrunner does, too, so that you’re telling a story that is cohesive, and then all those things are working together.

But that’s just one version of being a producer; I think that version of what I do, I think, again, benefits from being able to see things from multiple perspectives and be able to put myself in other people’s shoes.

HS: Absolutely. And also, so much of gender is following a script of what to do.

JM: That is such a very insightful and profound saying. For everyone, gender is performative. No matter what version of the gender you’re performing. When I was pretending to be a boy, I was performing a version of masculinity, and now I am performing a version of femininity, but so are cis women. People who are nonbinary and agender are performing whatever version of gender presentation feels true to them.

HS: I definitely relate to that. For me, femininity was always about “am I doing a good enough performance enough of this?” and masculinity is just, still a script but a script that I am happy to have now.

A little left turn here, but I was looking at your IMDB page and saw that you’re from Cleveland, Ohio. I am from Indiana—would you identify as a Midwesterner?

JM: Yeah, I would. I have a complicated relationship with the Midwest and the Rust Belt. I don’t feel like it’s an easy place for trans people to exist, but the irony is that I feel like there’s a lot in common between the Rust Belt experience and the trans experience. There’s an innate resilience to both of those things; the Rust Belt has seen better days and yet is still there.

HS: That’s so true. You couldn’t exist in my family without my grandmother of the Great Depression era reminding you that there is a history that came before you—that you’re part of a story that started a long time ago. As I move through the world as a butch lesbian, I feel similarly: I feel I am part of a story that is so much older than I am, and I should respect that history.

JM: Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. I often think of our brothers and sisters, and aunts and uncles, and they/thems of yore in the queer community, and the ways in which our stories rhyme with theirs or the ways that we need to take inspiration from them. Because the truth is, being trans in 2022 in America is a really f**ked thing.

There’s a huge segment of our country, and I would say the Western world, that is actively trying to redefine trans people as threats, predators, and groomers. It can feel overwhelming. I personally take comfort in the ways in which our queer elders overcame so many seemingly insurmountable things in the past, like the HIV/AIDS crisis.

HS: Yes, remembering that so much happened before us and so much was paved by trans women of color and queer elders reminds me that we are resilient. That actually brings me to one of my last questions, which is: What is it like to collaborate with other queer people when developing a show like Queer as Folk, which is focused on telling queer stories?

JM: Being in a room where it’s a bunch of queer people, and considering what stories we’re telling, I think it’s our job to be like, “No, I want to tell a story about a messy, fucked up, trans woman, who’s still lovely and worthy of love, and is complicated and complex.” That’s because a room that I’m in is the only room that’s going to be able to do that.

It’s my job to allow, at least in my opinion, our characters the dignity of being messy in the way that straight and cis characters are constantly allowed to be messy and still worthy of narrative, worthy of being in the center of the frame. Our industry has begun to allow a lot of different kinds of people to be messy, and still be worthy of being at the center of the frame. And I feel like queer people, and trans people especially, are often not given that same dignity. We are often relegated to being best friends or being saintly and beyond reproach.

I’m not throwing shade at anything that has done that, but it is because, on some level, it’s work that’s trying to argue our basic humanity. I think our humanity is self-evident, and I would like to tell interesting, messy, complicated stories, because queer and trans people are. We are messy, just like everybody else.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Want more Love Out Loud? Here’s a discussion about queer representation in yoga between Nicole Cardoza and Jessamyn Stanley. And a here, Ladies Get Paid cofounders Claire Wasserman and Ashley Louise discuss (and celebrate!) their marriage.

Ahead, two leaders in the yoga community, who are also each part of the queer and BIPOC communities, share how they believe yoga could grow into a practice that accepts and accommodates all folks. Meet Jessamyn Stanley, yoga teacher, body-positivity advocate, and author of Yoke: My Yoga of Self Acceptance; and Nicole Cardoza, award-winning social entrepreneur, public speaker, and author of Mindful Moves: Kid-Friendly Yoga and Peaceful Activities for a Happy, Healthy You. In this conversation, Stanley and Cardoza discuss how the yoga industry has historically excluded people in marginalized communities, how it could evolve toward inclusion, and why a home practice can provide space to fully embody and accept yourself for who you are. 

Kells McPhillips: To start, I would love for you both to share how you found your way to yoga in the first place and how your practice has evolved amid the pandemic.

Nicole Cardoza: I stumbled into yoga when I was in college. For many years of my life, it really provided a refuge where I could find myself and manage some mental-health struggles that I was going through at the time. As my practice has evolved throughout my professional career, I think I found a level of patience with it that I haven’t had previously.

I think that patience came from being able to practice in isolation over the past couple of years during the pandemic, which also consciously removed me from the yoga industry. I’m in a very reflective and intimate space with my practice, which I haven’t been in previously.

Jessamyn Stanley: I started practicing yoga when I was in graduate school, also when I was experiencing mental-health struggles. I was in a nonprofit arts management graduate program, and I was like, “Is this even what I want to do with my life? Do I even know anything about myself?” I was also going through a breakup at the time, which tends to facilitate some sort of life change.

A really good friend of mine was like, “You should come to a yoga class with me!” and I really thought that yoga was just for thin white women. I didn’t know that it had anything to do with me or anybody who looked like me, but I ended up going to class. And what I most appreciated about it was that every part of it seemed impossible to me. It seemed like everybody had gotten together and practiced together beforehand to come to class to do it all in tandem.

What I appreciated was this opportunity to just see my boundaries, see my barriers, and see what I’ve decided that I’m allowed to do. And then I could say, “I’m just going to try—even if I fall down, even if everyone in this room sees that I don’t know what I’m doing, even if I’m going to be embarrassing myself in the biggest way. I’m still just going to try.” At the time, I didn’t realize how revolutionary that would be to just try. I didn’t realize the many parts of my life in which I was not trying.

Yoga pushed the boundaries of what I thought I could do. And that is why I continue to return to my practice to this day: It’s just because it always gives me that exact same medicine. Ultimately, yoga is about how we connect with each other by how we connect with ourselves.

The pandemic made it so that you had to stay at home and be by yourself, period. Then on top of that, you had to manage yourself through the worst thing that has happened in living collective history.

KM: Do you consider your yoga practice in conversation with queerness? If so, how?

JS: I definitely think that they’re linked, but I don’t consciously think about it all the time. Yoga, ultimately, is about acceptance, and the literal translation of the word “yoga” is often closely translated as “union.” Union as in bringing together the pieces of yourself that don’t always make sense and don’t always seem to go together, but that do go together. That union is the process of acceptance.

To accept yourself means to accept the parts of yourself that puritanical culture would hope to breed out. We live in a very puritanical society where divine sexuality and sensuality and eroticism are cast down as being dangerous and bad and scary and problematic. So if you’re in a process of self-acceptance through yoga, then acceptance of that which has been deemed dangerous and bad is inevitable.

From that place, you see that what is really feared in sexuality and sensuality and eroticism is creation. What’s being feared is generation: that which will lead to something else. All that eroticism really holds is our ability to manifest new life. And if you are resting in that place of self-acceptance, then you’re resting in a place of generation and creation.

NC: That’s really powerful. It’s not something I think about often because I think that my relationship to queerness is just as much of a practice as yoga itself. My practice simply extends the space and expands the possibilities of who I am and how I can show up. If you can accept yourself proverbially on your mat, you create that space for yourself. You have an awareness of how you want to be received in the spaces that you wish to occupy as a person off the mat.

My practice has helped me understand how to eliminate some of the chatter that comes from broader society about what spaces I should take up and which I should occupy. It’s a practice. My identity is certainly not set in stone. It develops and becomes more nuanced, beautiful, and whole as I continue to explore it. I think that’s why I keep coming back to it, because it offers the tools and the grace that are necessary for self-reflection and evolving my identity.

KM: You both have spoken so much about your home practices. Why does this setting help you feel free on your mat?

JS: Studio classes are great—but having your practice fully rooted in a studio means that it’s dependent on that studio. The pandemic was a test of what happens when you can’t go out to the studio. But if you have your home practice, you always have a safe place to come back to. It’s reminding you that the real home that you’re seeking is not a physical place. It’s living within you. It’s also really normal in a studio class to be totally distracted by the people on the mat next to you, trying to do a good job for them and not thinking about practicing for yourself or just experiencing it for yourself.

Now, I don’t mean that you shouldn’t have teachers. If you have access to an Internet connection, you don’t have to subscribe to a specific platform. You can literally go on YouTube, and there are thousands of videos taught by all different kinds of instructors. Each teacher is not going to resonate for everybody—but if you find a teacher who resonates for you, that is what you need to be able to guide your practice.

The teacher who has had the biggest impact on my personal practice is Kathryn Budig, and she’s taught on a variety of platforms—notably on Glo and now on her own platform, the Haus of Phoenix. Kathryn led me to the teacher that lives inside of me. The best teachers hold your hand, and then, eventually, you can let go.

NC: I also just love that home practices have platformed so many teachers who might not have been given a chance historically to reach the community that they want to work with through the traditional studios model. That’s really beautiful because there are a lot of people who started practicing yoga over the past couple of years. And they started because they saw those people, because they were able to take an Instagram Live class, or because that person started their own platform. They may not have ever seen them in the studio when they were walking down the street. So it’s really interesting for representation, and I love that it took some of the power that these brands often used to exclude people away.

KM: As the two of you have articulated, there’s solace and self-acceptance that can be found in a home practice, but how can we work toward a yoga industry that is more diverse, equitable, and inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community and otherwise in the future? What are your hopes for yoga in the US?

JS: My hope is that yoga will be used as I believe it is meant to be used: as a way for us to be present in this world and hear each other through the difficult times that lie ahead. I think that’s why yoga has always existed. I hope to see everyone who has ever wanted to teach at all having some sort of practice on whatever platform they would like, however they would like to do it.

Yoga has survived for thousands of years, and there are going to be ups and downs. When things are popular, there’s going to be discrimination—and there is so much rampant discrimination in the yoga world now. It’s currently trendy to talk about that, but less trendy to do something about it. So we need our practices to do the internal work, yes, but we also need to use the practices to actually assess the ways in which we are homophobic, transphobic, racist, ageist, ableist—the list goes on. We need to actually assess this on a personal level and then see how the personal impacts the collective. I think, that way, yoga could be used to heal our world in a larger sense.

NC: My first gut reaction was like, “I don’t care about the future of yoga.” I have lost a lot of faith in what the yoga industry has become. We have a lot of conversations where we say that we need to decolonize the yoga industry, and make it more inclusive. I’m just, quite frankly, really tired of that conversation. Oftentimes, I think we talk about the industry as something that can be solved instead of something that is inherently broken. I care deeply about this practice, but I don’t think that the yoga industry can itself be solved by representation and inclusivity because it’s swimming in the world of white supremacy that we live in.

My real hope for yoga is that, instead of us trying to use it as a tool to solve some of these inequities that we’re seeing, we ask how can we break this model? How can we use the yoga practice itself as a model for how we want to live? What would it look like if instead of trying to dismantle these systems, we instead tried to actually reimagine them?

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Want more Love Out Loud? Here’s a conversation between sex educators Gabrielle Kassel and Clark Hamel about how their respective pelvic-floor dysfunction uniquely impacts their sexual and gender identities. And another between Ladies Get Paid co-founders Claire Wasserman and Ashley Louise about why they each love being married to another woman.