 I am joined today by three really amazing speakers. I'm really excited to introduce the speakers that we have today. So we'll be having conversations with Caroline Hickman, who's a psychotherapist and lecturer at the University of Bath in the UK, researching children and young people's emotional responses to climate change around the world for over 10 years. She's examining eco-anxiety, distress, eco-empathy, trauma, and moral injury, as well as the impact of climate anxiety on family relationships. We're also joined by Brianna Ruin, who's a 23-year-old Samoan climate activist. She's been leading community grassroots projects, pushing for climate justice for most of her life. And she's a proud Pacific climate warrior on the Council of Elders, fighting for the survival of her islands. Welcome Brianna. And finally, we're also joined by Stuart Feather, a member of the Gay Liberation Front in the UK since 1970, fighting for a volitionary change in society and paving the way for a more liberated gay community. And he's also active with ACT UP London, Sexual Avengers, and Gay Liberation Front, we claim pride. So I'm really, really excited to have this conversation with the three of you. But before we start and get into that conversation, we're lucky to have four words in the shape of recordings by Rebecca Solner and Reverend Bertha Morgan. So first, a four-word by Rebecca Solner, who's a writer, historian, and activist, author of 20 books on feminism, Western and Indigenous history, popular power, social change, and change and insurrection hope and disasters are very relevant. So we'll listen to the words of Rebecca now. Thank you, Mark. Mark, we don't have sound. Bear with us for one second. We'll just... Sorry, one second. We did actually play this just before. Yeah, it worked just before. Uh-huh. It's always like that. Of course it is. One second. No worries. Let's try again. Yeah. Okay. The world. I think... If you're a climate activist, you're my hero. If you're a climate activist, you're changing the world. But it might be hard to see how much you've changed it already. And daunting to contemplate how much more there is to do. If you've been a climate activist for a while, you may feel bruised or disillusioned by years of encounters with the amoral and difference of banks, politicians, fossil fuel executives, or the people around you who are checked out. Please seek and cherish their opposite, the visionaries and idealists, the truly committed, horse springs from which we can all drink. And perhaps you yourself can be the spring that quenches someone else's thirst. And remember that we have achieved so much, changed so much in the past 10 and 15 years, including the collective imagination, which then was uninformed and unengaged, and is now so different. You did this. The climate movement did this. You got the public across the world awakened to the largest and most complex problem we've ever faced. That was the biggest task of all. Climate chaos itself has also woken people up. The heat, the fire, the floods, the crop failures, the strange weather. But those dots needed a narrative connection and an answer as to what to do. We have it. At the not too late project, Thelma Young, Lutuna Tabua and I co-founded, we like to say we respect despair as an emotion, but not an analysis. You already know the scientists and energy systems engineers and climate strategists give us some margins of possibility in their appraisals of the situation. They tell us it is urgent, but not too late to choose the best path and steer away from the worst. Everything depends on us doing so. But still there is this grief, this fear, this sense of loss, this fury and frustration. I get it, I feel them too. But lately some of the wisest among us have begun to speak more directly to these feelings. Adrienne Marie Brown makes the crucial point that we feel these things because we love. We love justice. We love the earth as the oceans and the cycle of seasons and the migrating birds or one particular place we know as a friend or refuge. We love the young who deserve a future. We love the future as the grounds for our own hope. Recognizing that underlying love is recognizing your own moral core and its strength. I think we sometimes believe these feelings will break us. One of the dismal things about the positivity culture around us is that it tells us to believe that these are signs of illness or failure or grounds for shame that we're supposed to be happy all the time like we were supposed to live someplace where it was never night and always sunny. There is no such place on earth and no such place in the human psyche. There is sorrow that will not break you but there is denial that will flatten you out and make you a stranger to your own inner world and those of others. The insistence on endless cheer and false happiness is ultimately an insistence on shallowness. These other emotions open up your own depths to you and love takes root in the depths, the way that plants grow in the night. Mariam Kaba tells us that hope is a discipline. Not hope is optimism which assumes that everything will be fine and nothing is required of us. That's only the flip side of pessimism and despair which likewise require nothing of us and buffer us from uncertainty which somehow we dread and try to avoid by the most extravagant and ridiculous means but uncertainty is unavoidable if we're honest. The future is also a night in which we cannot see far. We can only navigate it by looking to the past where we can count our victories and measure change and see how power grows and imagination shifts. There will be losses. There are losses behind us and ahead of us but there are nevertheless things worth fighting for and will be every step of the way. The South Pacific climate activist Julian Aguion writes, part of our work as people who dare to believe we can save the world is to prepare our wills to withstand some losing so that we may lose and still set out again anyhow. Hope for me is the recognition that the future will be in part what we make it in the present. With climate this is very clear. Here we are in the decade of decision and the race to reduce emissions and transform not only literal power systems but beliefs and values. We know the future is being decided by our actions in this dangerous turbulent present. When I'm hiking or traveling or just trying to meet a friend I have a bad habit of losing faith just before I get there. Losing faith that I'm on the right path and will arrive at my destination. Sometimes I ask for directions or check my phone or map only to look up and see that the person or place I sought is already within view. With larger issues we can give up but I also sometimes look up and see that this new world of changed beliefs, changed histories, changed possibilities, changed relationships is well underway and we all have one foot in it. We are not starting, we are enlarging what has already begun. I believe we can arrive at our destination if we keep on going. It will not be perfect, it will not be everything. It will not be without loss. It will be necessary to learn to see in the dark, to see what did not happen, what did not burn, who did not die, who did not drown, which creatures did not go extinct because we did this work. Because a lot of our work looks like nothing, the pipelines not built, the money not invested, the forests not burned. We know the difference between doing what we can and doing nothing is profound. And we know this matters and we know one more thing. This is the best way to live with dignity, solidarity, imagination, integrity. I want to leave you with a reminder that we already live in the impossible world. Only a few decades ago, a world powered by renewables was impossible. These were weak, ineffective technologies then but we are at the inception of an energy revolution far greater than the industrial revolution and its steam power. Go back much further and women having the vote or slavery ending were wild, far-fetched things whose advocates were told they were naive dreamers of impossible things. I myself was born into a world in which gender inequality was universally the law and the custom and which to be queer was to be treated as criminal or mentally ill or both in which the civil rights movement was gathering power but its achievements were all ahead of it. I am the same age as the Berlin Wall that seemed like it would stand forever before it came down in 1989 and the Soviet bloc began to crumble and the Cold War fade out. I am a year older than Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring almost a decade older than the USA's Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency. The world I was born into no longer exists and the world in which we are now talking would have been unbelievable, even incomprehensible to people in 1961. The world you younger people will live in 60 years from now is likewise unimaginable but unimaginable is not impossible. Looking back we can see how stubborn idealism built the best parts of the world we are in now. Last week I had a drink with Mary Ann Hitt from West Virginia who co-led the Beyond Coal campaign for a dozen years. She wrote when she wound up her time on that campaign that shut down 358 existing coal plants and prevented 200 more from being built. Coal provided half of our nation's electricity when I came to the Sierra Club a decade ago and we were told it was always going to be that way. Well, we're now getting less than 20% of our power from coal and this year the US will get more electricity from renewable energy than from coal for the first time ever. As we sat on San Francisco's waterfront, long vis of brown pelicans kept flying by and I thought of Rachel Carson because her 1962 book and testimony is why we banned DDT and why those powerful birds came back from the brink of extinction. Those pelicans say maybe, they say possibly, they say don't stop. Thank you, don't stop. Thank you, Rebecca for these words. Even if Rebecca isn't here with us today, I'm sure those words will speak to you, call to you, resonate with you in some ways. I'm gonna now ask you Mark to play the recording by Wretta Morgan. So Reverend Wretta Morgan was an international professional singer for many years before completing studies at One Spirit Interfaith Seminary in New York to become an ordained interfaith minister. She's the founder of Ecclesiast Spiritual Center, an interfaith spiritual community that meets monthly in Philadelphia. And yeah, we recorded this contribution with Wretta as well as to play it today and to help us get grounded in this discussion. So I'll let her speak now. Greetings and peace to each of you. I'm Wretta Morgan, interfaith minister and singing healer. This is an invocation and blessing for the work you are about to do together. So I invite you to take a deep breath and settle into the place where you are and listen as best you can with centeredness and groundedness. Thank you Wretta, that was really powerful and I hope that helped your kind of arrive slowly and gently into the space and feel a bit more grounded in it. So with these two powerful and inspiring forwards, we're kind of ready to go into the conversation a bit more, open this discussion around sustaining activism in the long run. And we'll start with a presentation from Caroline Hickman. So Caroline, please, the floor is yours. Yeah. Thank you, wonderful women. Absolutely honored to follow them. And Wilfred, the puppy has woken up. So if you hear a background of hysterical barking, it's nature joining in my presentation. So he's new to this, so bear with him. He'll find his voice, he'll find his way. I can't help but not mind too much if he joins in. So I hope you don't mind. So I want you to look at a PowerPoint rather than have to look at me too much. So thank you for this invitation. I'm really delighted to be here and I want to talk about the importance of that balance of internal activism with external activism. I'm a psychotherapist and some of the work that we do as activists is internal, it's emotional and it's relational with ourselves and some of it is external. And I want to start with a really clear definition from my perspective about what distress about climate change and inequality and the moral injury and injustice is about. And this, you feel this, you feel this climate anxiety or distress or horror or fear simply because you care. If you didn't care, you wouldn't feel it. It's an emotionally mentally healthy response. So rather than feeling that it's a bad thing to feel, it may be uncomfortable, but it is essential. And it is something to feel proud of rather than frightened of or ashamed of or to label or pathologize or think what's wrong with me or what's wrong with other people. So I want to frame activism as care which is crucially important and you're acting on this care. And this is something to feel proud of. So this is love as Rebecca said at the very start but what is this love? Well, love for the planet. And I honestly think activists in environmental movements feel this care for the planet and you have to act on this. I no longer say as a psychotherapist that I work in a therapeutic dyad. That's a two-person relationship, myself and the other person. I work in a triad. I work with myself and the people or myself and the family or myself and the child and myself and the person and the planet. So I have the planet in mind, both physically, practically, emotionally and imaginably in all the work I do now. And that is a sustainable resilience. Resilience is tricky. We're gonna talk more about that as the morning goes on. Can't wait to hear what the other speakers have to say about it. Resilience is very much about failing, about getting stuck, about going wrong, about despairing and then recovering and trying again. I'll talk more about that in a moment. But I also want to start with the words of children that I've been speaking with around the world and I want to make sure that their voices are heard in what I'm saying because everything I'm saying is lent from them. I may be bringing my academic knowledge and my psychotherapy experience, but their voices are the most powerful. And this is the voices of young people in the Maldives who said to me this few years, but climate change is like Thanos in the Avengers Endgame film. This ideology is to kill off half of the universe, half of the planets that the other half can thrive. They said, but we're the half being killed off. So for me to keep in mind that knowledge, that awareness, that need for hope and that need for empathic resonance with the living awareness of young people because I'm speaking sitting in the UK and climate change and ecological breakdown is still very minimal here in the UK. And we know it's not elsewhere in the world. So I really feel the need to move between those. So this is the resonance we're talking about. This is called human needs to be seen, to be heard, to be understood. And then we don't feel alone. And this is so crucial for us as activists is this sense of belonging, not just belonging to groups and belonging to movements but belonging to that idealism, belonging to that imaginal future. That's what has to be shared because otherwise we do feel very alone a lot at a time especially when you're standing with family and friends and they don't seem to get it. Sally Weintraub speaks beautifully about the culture of uncare and this is what we're up against is this lack of care of others. And this is what activism challenges. This is what you are challenging. We need both the nightmares and the dreams of the future, different futures as well as looking at what's happening in the here and now as well as learning from the past. And then we can challenge this culture of uncare because that culture of uncare is what hurts the most. People say to me over and over again it's not the environmental distress. It's not the climate change that's distressing. It's the fact that people in power do not care. That's what causes the worst distress and that we could do something about today. That we can act on immediately. And it's this current dominant Western culture which encourages people to minimize distress and to cut it out as if it were irrelevant. That emotional resonance is crucial. So when we're talking about resilience, I feel like I've been very practical so I hope this is helpful to you but I've put in a few quotes from other people because I was thinking about resilience yesterday in preparation for this. I was thinking well resilience is practical but it's also emotional. And there are stories which are inspiring about resilience. This man, I guess who he is, he was cut from his school team. He's quoted as famous for saying he's missed more than 9,000 shots in his career. He's lost over 300 games. 26 times he's missed the winning shot. He's failed over and over and over which is why I succeed. I'm sure you know who this is. I'll tell you at the end. Or you might be just looking at now. I'll tell you now. It's Michael Jordan. So this failure into woven with keeping trying that engagement with that game, that struggle is what gives him success. This is another famous person speaking about resilience. You might never fail on the scale I did but it's impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all. In which case you fail by default. This is J.K. Rowling. She's saying the only way to really, truly fail is not keep trying. Gospeth is famous for the way he's framed environmental problems. He used to think it was very scientific in its orientation. He said, I was wrong. Our top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy. And to deal with that, we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. This does not sit alone in the hands of scientists. It sits with us, with people. We may be scientists too. This is transformational change that I'm talking about, not surface change, transformational change. This is about this. Yes, of course we need practical innovation. Of course we do. But of course we need political, social, economic change of course. But it also requires this psychological willingness to look under the surface face to the unknown. And that is what gives us transformational change. And to not defend against things that can feel unbearable or too big for us to comprehend. Just because they're too big for us to comprehend, it doesn't mean, this is where the imaginal helps us. We start to vision and imagine our way forwards. It's not always about finding practical solutions. Because in reality, we have not got an easy blueprint for the problems that we're facing. These are unique. I know people say that easily, but actually this is unique. This combination of threats, particularly the climate and ecological crisis. Humankind is having to learn how to discover, how to deal with this. If anybody says that they're an expert in eco-anxiety, people might say that about me. I've researched it for 10 years now. Seriously, I'm only just starting to understand what this is about. So people say, present themselves as an expert. That's really a defense against their own anxiety about it. We have to have the humility and the hubris. And we have to have the imagination and creativity to be learning about this as we live through it. And it's that learning about it as we live through it, that I strongly believe is important to us. Because we have to have a recognition of the importance of the unconscious here. And this is also why we're doing this. This is the relationship with the other, with the animals, with the creatures who inhabit the earth alongside us. And it's that strong empathy, particularly that drives children and young people. Because that powerful empathy and recognition that this is not their fault. They are genuinely innocent. And this, I always mentioned this little guy. This is the Bramble Quay Malamy. And this was the first mammal to go extinct because of human-caused climate change. And that's because they lived here on a low-lying island or quay, just off the coast of Australia that's now inundated in saltwater. Now, psychologically, emotionally, practically, you could say, we can live without this little guy. Sure, we can. It's sad for him and his family. Sure, we can live without him. Well, what happens? Do we then extend from that and say, well, we can live without giraffes. Well, we can live without polar bears. Do we then say, well, we can manage without the Philippines and Nigeria and Bangladesh? Do you see? It's not safe. It's not okay to not feel care at every level at which we're facing this loss, this grief, this wrongness. So I think it's important to grieve these creatures and remember that they are us and we are them because that relational approach is going to be crucial in rooting us in a way forwards, finding a way forwards, mapping a way through this and creating this culture of care. All of these emotions. So when I talk about the internal and external activism, when I talk about the emotional biodiversity, when I talk about sustainable activism emotionally, it's okay to feel all of this, preferably not all on the same day, all at the same time. But we're gonna feel anxiety, grief, solestalgia, which is love and loss for the space and place you love. We're gonna feel hope and hopelessness, anger, blame, frustration, guilt and shame, sadness, grief. We're gonna have fantasies of rescue and apocalyptic fantasies, nihilism, despair. We're going to feel all of this and this is the emotional range that we need, the depth that we need, out of which will grow the ways forward, the new futures, the new imaginings that we need. This is what gives us emotional intelligence and resilience. So it's okay to feel all of these things. The trick is not to be stuck in any of these emotions just to recognize all of them as playing their part in who we are as humans. This is what it means to be human and to be a human facing these unprecedented, enormous global threats and to find that emotional resilience and courage and hope, radical hope to carry us forwards, not naive hope. I want to skip to just give a few figures and then I'll go quiet and talk more later because I want to hear from other speakers. This is the research that we talked about right at the start and this was researched with 10,000 children and young people in 10 different countries. And I apologize for all the countries we didn't talk with. It was a real bun fight amongst us as a group of researchers. We wanted to talk to every country, of course. We couldn't, we had to do this quickly. So there are reasons we had to select and deselect countries, but we're looking for funding to talk with more countries. Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal, UK, US. Children and young people, eight out of 10 told us that they were frightened and scared and felt that climate change was threatening people and the planet. And 45% reported negative impact on daily functioning. This was lower in the UK and you'll see that it's lower in other countries such as, this is the dark blue line, such as France, Finland, UK, US because we're not facing this daily flooding, this devastating flooding, for example, that's happening in Pakistan at the moment in other places in the world. So of course it's not having that same impact at the moment. But if you look at the Philippines, look at India, look at Brazil, look at Nigeria, you can see 74%, 66%. That daily impact on daily living can't be avoided. And this was last year. So I anticipate it would have gone up now. So we look at this emotionally, climate change makes me feel these are the worldwide figures, 67% sad, 67% afraid, 62% anxious, 57% angry. So we've got the emotional impact from young people. But it's not just about feelings, it's also about thinking. 8 out of 10, 83% worldwide. And this is where countries like the UK are actually resonant and similar to other countries. 80% UK and worse, of course, 92% Philippines think that people have failed to take care of the planet. So cognitively the thinking capacity is more shared in countries like Finland or the UK or the US. So we know what's going on. We just don't have the same emotional impact. Three quarters or more globally think the future is frightening, 75% worldwide. And look, 73% UK, very similar, 70% Nigeria. So there is this empathy, this care from young people in the UK and Finland and France and the US, which is shared with countries like Nigeria, but countries that are absolutely facing the worst of this, such as Bangladesh, the Philippines is going to be higher, 92%, it's devastating, we should be ashamed. Over half think humanity is doomed, 56% worldwide, 51% UK, look, 42% Nigeria, 73% Philippines. The fact that my generation, any other generation, the fact that people in the global North, the fact that people in industrialized capitalist society in any way, shape or form think it's okay to leave young people anywhere in the world feeling like this and thinking like this is not okay with me. This is not okay. And this, we could also do something about today. And I think that's what webinars like this are very much about. If that was bad enough, this is worse. 48% of children and young people worldwide and in the UK said they were dismissed or ignored by other people when they tried to talk about climate change. What are we doing that we can't tolerate talking about this, that we don't show that care? 66% in Nigeria, 51% Philippines, this is wrong. And then this is the link to government in action. So we were asking what is it that hurts the most? What is it that devastates you the most? Who can help with this? And it was very clear that it was government in action. 60, this is the UK respondents. 65% of young people felt that governments were failing young people. 61% thought governments were lying about the impact of their action. What are we doing as a society when look at this, only 28% of this young group of young people think government can be trusted around climate change. We're taking their concerns seriously. So this is a generational and a human and a relational fracture of care. And showing young people that we're caring about their future and that we're taking their future needs seriously. And that is wrong and that is immoral. And that is moral injury. This is the group of researchers that did this work with me from six different universities and the US, the UK and Finland and the psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists. So I have to recognize them. I certainly didn't do this alone. So I'm going to stop there and hope that that opens up some more discussion for us later on. I hope that's a good introduction to where I'm coming from as a psychotherapist and researcher here. Thank you. Thank you so much, Caroline. This was very insightful. I guess I wanted to call on Brianna maybe as someone who's, I guess, both lived most if not all of her life with climate change being a very present threat, but also dedicated a lot of that life to the struggle for climate justice. Are there any points that Caroline made that particularly resonate with you or with this struggle as an activist for climate justice and for balancing this activism with care and looking after oneself? Thank you, Caroline. That was such an insightful moment of sharing. And a lot of what you were saying, I was just taking my notes down, but what comes to mind is the statistics that you just shared, because that just pops out in my mind automatically. And I really resonated with the stats that came from the Philippines. And that really stood out to me because I also come from a frontline island and I feel like the young people in the Philippines will most likely have similar experiences to young people from Samoa. And the stat of the 73% feel like the world is doomed. That's so heartbreaking, like you said. And I was just thinking about that emotion that those kids are going through and how young people in the islands would feel like that and how I used to feel like that too, sometimes growing up on the islands and it's not just the feeling of doom because of climate change. It's also about being from a community that has systemically been exploited. And so it's hard to believe in a world that has historically done you wrong. And so I really resonate with those stats because I feel like that's intergenerational cynicism as well, if their parents don't believe in the world because their parents' generation were part of the direct impacts of colonization, now they're a part of the direct impacts of climate change that can be passed down. And so I've just been listening to those statistics and feeling like you said, we definitely need to be doing right by these young people. And also just taking advice from your first part of your sharing around internal activism and I was just really trying to step into my emotions and how I reacted to those stats. And I'm really grateful just to be in this space and to be hearing this and to be reflecting on it all. Thank you, Brianna. Caroline, is there anything you want to add to this? Well, I think I want to acknowledge how uncomfortable and comfortable isn't quite a strong enough word. You know, it's a mixture of shame and guilt and grief and horror and anger that I feel listening to you, Brianna, and knowing that I'm part of the community that created this and caused this and have a culpability. And I think it's important actually, I know I'm not ex on mobile, right? I know I'm not, right? But I have my share of responsibility here sitting in relative privilege and comfort. And I think it's really important that we say sorry and it's wrong and move towards not just kind of glossing over that, but proper reparation. And some of that reparation should be financial and some of that, it has to be financial, right? And that financial reparation has been dropped from the discussion at the next COP, which just is wrong. So I think it's about relational reparation, which we need as well. It's not just that you need it, we need this. We need to say sorry and make something right around this. For our soul, for our spirit, for our connection and belonging. So yeah, there's something reparative here, which is important, and I'm glad to hear what you say, what you said. But it also makes me think, yeah, but you know, that's great, but we need to be doing something in the global north about this in terms of financial reparation. And we have a duty of care, a duty of responsibility and we're failing and that's shameful. So I am personally, I'm personally sorry, but I would very much like other people with a lot more power than me to also be hearing this and feeling shame. Thank you so much Caroline. I think it's such an important conversation to have between all of us and to be able to have like an open and honest conversation like that and acknowledge those feelings. It's funny you say that because I also feel that way too. And I think it's because of the privilege I hold as well. So I'm currently in New Zealand. So I'm from Samoa, but I came to New Zealand for a university. And the fact that I'm here in New Zealand is also because I spoke good enough English to get into university. Other girls from my village aren't afforded that privilege. And if I was in Samoa right now, I don't know if I'd be able to join because my internet wouldn't be as good. And so even me myself, I feel guilt sometimes because I'm like, while I'm in New Zealand, I'm not the one experiencing the king tide from last night and why am I on this panel and speaking? But I also know that like my cousins in the village can't join these calls. And so I think it's just naming the guilt we feel the question of sometimes like, why me, why am I given this platform? Why am I doing this work? You've been uplifted to this work. It's such important internal activism to check. And I work with a lot of young people here in New Zealand. New Zealand actually has one of the largest populations of Pacific people. So the third most spoken language in New Zealand is Samoan, which is from the island I'm from. We have more Samoans living in New Zealand than we have living on our island of Samoa. So that's how big our community is here. And I get to work with young people who want to get into climate work. And one of the things that they often speak to me about as someone who grew up in the islands is that they feel so guilty they didn't know about climate change early enough. And a lot of the times it's that guilt of living their lives, not doing anything that stops them from getting into this work because they think, well, I wasn't like you. I didn't start doing these projects in the islands. I grew up in New Zealand. And when we dissect more of that conversation of why haven't you been doing this work or why weren't you given access to the conversations that could have given you an entryway into climate work. A lot of it comes from people who grow up not being afforded a lot of privileges but also very time cool. So they went to school and also had to work a job because their mom tried to put food on the table. They didn't watch documentaries because they didn't have the access to them. They just watched whatever was on TV. When they got home from work they had to help their parents who were working two jobs to be able to cook food. And then after that, they were tired. They went to sleep. They weren't looking online at the green piece in the 350 pages. And so they didn't have access to this conversation. But all of a sudden they're feeling guilt because their someone's living in New Zealand with privilege but haven't been speaking up about climate change. And so one of the first things I always tell them because it's something that I'm still having to deal with with internal activism is forgive yourself. Forgive yourself. And it's hard but forgive yourself for what you haven't done because I think just beating yourself down and feeling horrible and it's totally okay to feel those emotions. But don't let that stop you from joining something great and being a part of this. And I think sometimes the young people that I've gotten to work with no one's ever told them that before. And so I think this kind of reminded me of parallels of that conversation that I've had with young people here that I've been able to work with. Yeah, Brianna, what you say is great. It's really good to hear. So I was scribbling frantically listening to you just then. I want to add to what you just said. I love your response to young people saying forgive yourself. Absolutely. But I want to add from the, I'm gonna be a psychotherapist for a minute because I hear similar from a lot of young people, young activists. So I'm talking with teenagers who feel this guilt and this is a disproportionate guilt just as you've pointed out. So there's something else going on. You're absolutely right. They need to forgive themselves. But there is also something else going on which is that collective empathy, collective sense of responsibility. And what I think is happening quite often is the young people, because I hear this over and over and over again from 11 year olds, 12 year olds, 13 year olds. And how can they have that responsibility for climate change? And I think what is often happening is young people are taking on the guilt and the shame and that disproportionate responsibility that should be being felt and held by my generation, by others. And in the absence of other people feeling that and holding that as a vacuum and we step in and go, I'll feel it. So I think often young people feel disproportionate guilt and shame and responsibility. And that's a psychological collective process. And it's because others are avoiding it or in defense or there's a disavowal. It's not just climate denial, right? Disavowal is our biggest problem. Now, it used to be denial. You have to be living under a rock really to have denial today. So now we've got disavowal where people minimize and they say, oh yeah, climate change is a real problem. We've got to do something about that. Oh, but I'm so happy COVID is over because I want to take three flights this year and it's like these two things do not join up in our minds. And there's a minimizing and a disavowal of how crucial and a refusal to feel. And in that absence of that capacity to feel this people push it away and minimize it. And I think often young people are feeling this on behalf of others. So I also say to young people, stop it. This is not yours. This is mine. This is theirs. This is the older folk. This is the other generations. It's wonderful that you have this empathy. It's wonderful that you care, but only take on your share and then stop. Put up a boundary. This is about boundaries and about not taking on a collective guilt and shame and responsibility on behalf of others and know where your bit stops and just don't take on everybody else's because if you take it on, they'll happily let you, right? So push it back to them and just go, no, this is yours. This is mine. This is yours. I just wanted to say thank you. I've written that down and such a great insight. Yeah, thank you both. I guess something that I want to maybe bring up. I think we do run into those questions of guilt and shame a lot when we think about power and privilege, whether it's whether it be around climate impacts or any other, I guess, structures of oppression and discrimination. And I guess it's that question of, okay, but how do we turn this really powerful emotion that is guilt or shame or to be fair, like any other of the emotions that we can feel around climate anxiety that you went through our line of anger, grief, sadness, how do we turn all these really powerful emotions into actual power, rather than into this kind of like paralyzed sense of not really knowing where to go from there? And I want to bring here a question from the Q and A of someone was saying that maybe activism is the way that we can deal with those emotions and channel them into something that is concrete and powerful. And I guess the question in the chat box was, I guess, exploring whether activism that connects us around the world, that connects young people, especially around the world that is more collective, is it that kind of activism that can help us deal with that climate anxiety even better than maybe more in little pockets? Like is it this like collectivity and this connection that helps as well? So I wanted to get maybe your sense Caroline on like what, whether that like collectivity is also an important aspect and also Brianna from your personal experience of finding yourself maybe in more global settings, whether that's felt helpful or not in terms of dealing with those emotions. Yes, absolutely. That transformative move from anxiety, distress, shame, eco-anxiety to eco-activism, eco-community, eco-empathy, eco-care, eco-community. Absolutely that is what transforms those complex emotions. But I don't want to get rid of those emotions. So don't take on that Western medical model. The Western medical model tells us that if we feel depression or anxiety, we should get rid of it. And we really need the wisdom to understand that those emotions are congruent. They make perfect sense. If we're committing this harm to other people and the planet, we should feel bad. We should feel uncomfortable. And it's okay. I was in a webinar in the Philippines at the end of last year and they opened with this brilliant question which was, is it okay to not feel okay right now about climate change? And we all said, yeah. So really it's about tolerating things, not being okay, but not collapsing into. So what we need is that balance between not, it's not okay. And I want to know, I want to stay in that not okayness, but we don't want to collapse into nihilism, hopelessness, despair. We visit, we can visit there, but don't live there. You can have your moment there or an hour there and then come back to, and now what can I do? And then equally we need to visit the other end of the emotional spectrum, which is determination, passion, clarity. I'm gonna do this, yes. So we need to visit there, but don't try and live there either. If you live there, then you'll get back in emotional balance by collapsing. So what we need to do is move between these spaces. So we will, we have to be okay and not okay. We need both hands. So it's that movement between them, which creates the resilience, which makes this sustainable. So we have to be able to welcome and make friends with, I know that sounds a bit patronizing and tripe. I'm sorry, but we have to make friends with our despair because it's that that connects us with the others around the world, with the despair and the frustration and the anger. And it's about signing up to that and saying, don't take away my distress. Don't take away my heart because I want to feel it because it's what connects me with others. And it helps me feel alive and part of this. And I'm not going to defend myself from this. I hope that's making sense. I'm talking all around about way I know, but I hope that makes some sense. Yes, I just wanted to agree to everything you said. I also feel the same with moving between emotions and not staying somewhere for too long. And something that I also do, I'm a very visual person. So something I do that helps me kind of, I guess let my emotions live is I pick what I wear depending on my emotions, so in color. So I chose pink today because I felt like it's very pink day. I also love oranges and yellows when I feel really happy. And so in Samo we wear these flowers or stays. So I also pick my stays depending on how I feel. Some days I feel blue and I'll pick like a colder color. And then some days I am really sad and I'm not feeling too good and I just feel completely black. And that's how I kind of visually and physically express my emotion. And that's just one way that I felt. And something that's also really helped me transform all my emotion into activism was I just found a community that I trust and that I can build boundaries with and that can also remind me of my boundaries because sometimes I forget them myself and then I have friends in the movement that say, that doesn't seem like something you would do. Are you just tired and saying yes because it's easier than saying no. And it reminds me and I think, okay, yes, you're right. And so I think that's a way that I've been able to streamline from strong emotions to strong activism has been finding an outlet for my emotions, which for me has been my clothes and then finding a way to sustain everything that I feel which has been finding my community and finding my people and being a part of an amazing group called the Pacific Climate Barriers who have really helped me stay focused in this work. Thank you both. And yeah, I can relate from having had the opportunity to organize closely with that with the Pacific Climate Warriors for two weeks around COP that it is an emotional roller coaster but a really inspiring one to work alongside you. So thank you for that. At this point, I would like to bring an additional perspective into this conversation and it's one I'm really excited to get to bring into those conversations around emotional resilience and I guess sustaining activism in the long run. It feels like our movement is still, the climate movement is still in relation to others quite young. And I think we have a lot to learn from other movements that have been sustaining the activism for much longer and specifically I guess I'm thinking about the queer movement as a movement that has both had to sustain activism for much longer than us but also has gone through I guess really traumatic events and experiences thinking about, for example, the HIV crisis as a really existential threat that was put upon queer communities. And so we have a lot to learn from these communities I guess in terms of care as well and of how to care for one another in those moments of existential threat and in the long run as well. And so I wanna give the floor to Stuart here from the Gay Liberation Fund to hear from your experiences and your thoughts on care in our communities, in our movements, but also on emotional resilience when we're I guess struggling in such a long, I guess a long, we're in it for the long run, right? So yeah, Stuart, I wanna give the floor to you and hear your thoughts on this. Stuart, you're so on mute. Yeah, perfect, thank you. Yes, hello, everybody. I've been really moved by listening to Caroline and Brianna and listening to their advice and their experience and delighted to think that the process I went through when I joined Gay Liberation might help people in climate change. I mean, the issue is already personal to everybody and one of the things we all agreed on is in women's liberation and Gay Liberation was that the personal is political. So that was a starting point for our campaigns. The primary thing that welded people together was that we formed into consciousness-raising groups as they were called and they consisted of about eight to 10 people and they talked about how they felt about their sexuality, how they felt about what happened to them at school, what happened to them in their employment situation, their, the kind of sex they liked and the social life that they had. And people spoke in turn and were allowed to speak for as long as they wanted with no interruptions until the end and then the others could ask questions and so forth. And out of that process came forms of common understanding where there were mutual understandings of the same problem. And so gradually over time, they began to realize that all of these things had been imposed on them by society who hated gay people and all the legislation against it. And that was a time when, well, for the first 15 years of my sexual life I was still classified as a criminal. So as a 30 year old in 1970, I found myself a lot among a majority of younger people from 20 to 25, the generation below me in a way and they were much less neurotic than we were. And so that was kind of an indication of how much we'd been affected by the criminal law that we were living under and the classification, well, of criminality. And even though by 1970 the law had been changed for three years since 1967, it had actually made no difference whatsoever to any of us either in gay society or to women or well, not to lesbians because they weren't included in the law but they were included in the whole idea that, you know, lesbianism was a criminal act equal to that between two gay men. So the thing was it was put into a political context and out of that came political action but the other great benefit was that all these people in these awareness groups became aware of the other's feelings and how they dealt with them. And they began to emotions crept in with understanding another person's position. And so there was great empathy and indeed love and care for each person in that particular group and that spread all over the movement. So by that means although GLF collapsed after three years, its revolutionary aspect was so strong that it just continued. And one can say that in the UK, perhaps 3,000 people over three years had come through the doors. They'd not stayed very long. And they had not stayed very long. They didn't become full-time activists like myself and others, but they got the message. And so when AIDS came along and we were treated at hospitals by saying, there's nothing we can do for you, just go away and don't come back. And so the question was, why are you treating us like this? And immediately all those people that we'd taught to stand up to authority started questioning the doctors and questioning the nurses and demanding answers. And indeed, later on, particularly in New York, the activists have act up there. Some of them who were able through their privilege and money turned themselves into virologists. And they went to the drug companies and the drug companies were amazed to discover that these guys had, had more ideas than their own scientists about how to cope with, in which directions to go in, exploring ways of suppressing the virus and trying to chop it up into little bits and stop it reproducing. And so they were invited in to work with the scientists. And that was obviously a great benefit because in the end, the drug companies succeeded through the activists making, suggesting other lines of approach and other ways of thinking about things. And so we've got a dual combination which put an end to the virus. And I think that was one of the legacies of the Gay Liberation Front, both in New York, both in America and in this country. And I think the, it's been fascinating to listen to Caroline talking about limits to care, limits to guilt, and what we're going to do and what you really care about. And it's like being an individual on one hand and part of a much greater movement on another hand. And I think that kind of political activism is the way forward for climate change activism to go. I think it builds solidarity among all the activists who take part. And that becomes so powerful. Thank you. Thank you so much, Stuart. I guess something I want to maybe pick on from what you just said, but that was also mentioned by Rebecca Sone in her forward and that came up in the Q&A. We have a question in the Q&A that is, how can we respond emotionally and remain activists when we're being criminalised by society and governments? And you've mentioned that and we've mentioned that several times since we've been here today. I guess it's a question both of how is that impacting our emotional resilience, that kind of constant having to not only deal with those emotions, but also defend ourselves against those narratives of us being wrong, us being criminals, us being inadequate and all these things. How does that impact our emotional resiliency, but also what have our movements? And by this I mean both the climate movement but also the queer movement would be great to hear those perspectives. What are the things, I guess the responses that we've built as movements to I guess respond to that. So it would be great to hear all of you three on this. Shall I go first? Throw something in. We're all being polite. We're at war. It is a battle. We have to fight. Yes, listening to you. Thank you for sharing your story. And as you talked about that criminalization it made me think about how that climate activists are increasingly being criminalized today as an attempt to silence and as an attempt to dismiss and patronize being called snowflakes and being told that they should go back to school and shamed. It's so resonant. It's so similar, isn't it? Those strategies of silencing those voices of people. So I think we're at war and we have to recognize that. And I think we have to push back against that. And we have to use the law because if we look at the work of groups like Client Earth we look at the group lawyers, the group of young people, six young people in Portugal who are suing 33 European governments currently in the European Court of Human Rights for failing to act on climate change. The case is currently in the court system. And they are arguing that failing to act on climate change is a violation of their human rights and is potentially akin to torture and failure of a duty to care. So I think we have to use the law and we look at the arguments about ecocide and the lawyers fighting for ecocide to be made an international law. And we have to recognize and call out that this is a legal battle as well as a personal battle and get behind those court cases because Portuguese case is a crowdfunded court case and it's inspiring if you look online look at those young people and how far they've come in challenging 33 European governments. So that's where I would go. It's like I think climate change denial is in itself a disease and we have to use science to try and break that up and break the links that connected all together somehow. Yes, definitely. I agree to both points and the fact that someone said in the chat as well that the problem is we don't have time and because we don't have time we need more people and we need people to be doing what they can do. So not all of us will be policy and law savvy but we have people that are really interested in that. We have people that may be more interested in pop culture and we need those people to be in those spaces as well and getting our message through there but I think it's about doing what we can do and not thinking that activism looks one way and that you have to be protesting to be an activist that protests and activism can take many forms and also when we talk about the speed of fight I also just want to acknowledge and I see people in the comments also saying they're from MAPPA communities, the most affected people in places that there are actual people putting their bodies on the line to fight this cause. Our indigenous brothers and sisters in the Amazon who are constantly being put in threat because they're trying to save their homes and we have activists who are trying to stop oil and coal being built on their indigenous land and being physically harmed and those being silenced around the world and having to be physical fighters and I just want to acknowledge that and also just show love and support to those fighters as well. Thank you Brianna, thank you for bringing that perspective it's really important to recognize that as well and to recognize that we're all part of the same movement but we don't necessarily experience those things in the same way or with the same intensity or the same frequency so it's really important to bring those perspectives in here so thank you for that. I guess it isn't interesting this comment around the but we don't have time and I guess sometimes that feels like that is also what is driving or driving more I guess inability to be emotionally resilient because not only are we constantly being faced with those feelings of climate anxiety and grief and anger but we also don't necessarily allow ourselves the time to feel those emotions and to deal with them because we feel like there's no time for it and that's true both of feeling that grief and that loss but also for feeling the joy when we do win fights it feels like our movement is one that really struggles to make space for pausing and feeling emotions because there is this urgency and we feel like there's no time for those emotions we just need to keep going and to keep pushing through and I was wondering whether you had any perspectives on this and on how you've maybe found in your experiences ways to both respond to that urgency that we feel in those struggles while still making the space and time for both feeling the feelings and for caring collectively Okay folks I'll go first again under pressure from my wonderful panellists yeah if we lose the joy and if we forget about beauty and love they've won actually and we must not let them win so this is about our soul this is about keeping beauty and joy and love and happiness and connection alive we're halfway through the story of climate change we're not at the beginning of the story we've already lost huge amounts even if we went to zero carbon emissions tomorrow the amount of carbon in the atmosphere means that sea levels will continue to rise we've already lost billions of animals thousands hundreds of thousands of people have already lost their lives and are displaced and distressed and we have to live with that knowledge and feel that grief and guilt and shame and regret and not try and avoid that discomfort I'm coming back to this is not going to feel okay it can feel okay and the only way I can feel okay is keep doing what I'm doing but not deny the other half of the story we're halfway through we can't change the story up to this point we have to recognise how we got here we can change the ending of the story and that means being able to sit with the trouble as Donna Harrowways talks about sitting with the trouble and being able to tolerate that I want to just read something we live in perilous times and the peril is our own making and many of us probably deserve it but the children and the native peoples of this world and all the other species sashing around in this dance of life do not deserve this peril the ecologist Raymond Dassman says that world war three has already started this is the war of industrial humans against the earth he's right all of us are warriors one side or another in this world there are no side lines, no civilians as is the last generation that will have this choice of wilderness clean air, abundant wildlife and expansive forests the crisis is that severe the problem is that was published it was written in the 1970s but it was published in 1991 so we're halfway through this story so we have to wake up to that face it, accept it we might not like it but that is our reality and then we need this radical hope which is we may be going off cliff but we're going down fighting and we're going down building these relationships with this heart, this soul this belief, this vision this imaginal care the one thing we must not let them take away from us is that capacity for love because then they've won so we don't allow that to happen well the welding together of people at the present time among the queer communities there is this call for intersectionality but from what I've seen because I've been active since active again since 2016 is that when people try to create some kind of intersectionality they are always misunderstood and obviously there's a reason for that and I think the reason is that we don't have a basic understanding of each other's position that there is no solid foundation on which to build intersectionality but in the Gay Liberation Front we built an emotional solidarity and we cared for each other and those were social acts and we were fighting to change society, we said it's not us who are going to change it is society that must change and so the only politics you have for that and we have to look at politics the only politics there is for social change is socialism now as soon as I say that people turn off and people begin to dismiss everything I'm saying because socialism has such a bad name but if we are going to come together we have to start talking from a social and a socialist point of view there is no other way I don't think there's no other politics certainly that I've overcome across that can do that and great changes have been made with socialism I'm not denying that the world is also in a mess today because of certain countries interpretation of socialism because it is as much as it is with capitalism but it needs our kind of socialism what we think is which is based on care which is based on the care and love of all other activists who are trying to do the same thing as you and if that happens then there is there is um you just don't know what's going to come out of that really because what's going to come out of it is unknown things to each activist because they will begin to feel different they will begin to feel more confident and they will begin to have ideas and this can change everybody's life and we can start hopefully topping the agenda every time and getting and if we're in the news and that's really important to be in the news and the media don't ignore us or we get to a stage where the media can't ignore us then other you know the doubters and so forth and all those people who are driven frazzled that ordinary people with a family struggling to live in this situation of complete bankruptcy with millions you know reliant on food banks and desperate to know where how they're going to pay their bills and so on we can't think of anything else but that and somehow they're the ones that are going to get very angry and can potentially begin to see that it's not just the deterioration of their economic survival but also the survival of human beings generally if they can make that link then we're starting to move lots and lots of people I totally agree and tell Toko I think also something that's helped me like you said makes time for joy I think for our conversation first started is that I've changed my thinking around joy and celebration and making sure that we talk about the wins as a reward I always see that as a reward like I would go and do all my work on my laptop go and do my meetings and then I would reward myself for something that makes me happy and I don't think that way anymore I've changed it this year I now see my joy and my happiness and my celebration of small wins as an ingredient in the revolution I make time out to see my friends I make time out in my day to make sure I'm checking in with myself and that's like an individual and an internal part of my activism that I've just grown to realize is crucial for me and so there can be so much happening and someone telling me that there's a time on I know that there's a time on out of time but I also know we can find time to be able to sustain ourselves because we don't want to be burnt out and if anything we need us to be okay first before we start helping anyone else and so I just wanted to add that in there I think you're absolutely right I don't think we celebrate our successes as much as we should tend to get bogged down in negative things and forget that even the smallest success makes everybody feel so much better and so one has to allow time for that and say wasn't that a good thing we did didn't that really worked out you know let's have dinner together or let's go out for a drink or whatever however you want to treat your celebration definitely yeah I want to agree with you both but I want to reframe I guess to think differently about what that feels like because I think when we're driven by this anxiety in this fear that we're running out of time then I think we do lose that perspective a little bit because this is really about being able to tolerate what I said before which is it is already too late and there is still a lot we can do and so if we're driven by the fear and anxiety we have this fantasy that if we just do enough or do more then we can save everybody and everything so I need I want to bring us back to that grief that we need to feel that it's too late and I'm sorry about that but that is about that capacity to stand in that despair and feel the joy otherwise we just because it's like the hamster wheel of doom we're just running and running and running and running and running and we burn out and we don't save ourselves let alone anybody else and we go all heroic like I can beat this I can win if only I work harder if only I try harder it's too late I'm really sorry to keep saying that I don't want it to be too late I wish we lived in a world where if we all woke up tomorrow and we all took action tomorrow then we could save everybody and everything and this is not the reality so we have to be able to grieve and that grief is paradoxically I think transformative and liberating because we're grieving because we love and because we care and because we value the creatures that we've lost the people that we've lost so we need to value them and remember them whilst feeling sad and bad about that whilst also feeling that joy we have to in psychotherapy we talk about the sort of the pushing a part of opposite feelings the splitting a part of opposites and that we have to hold the tension between them and feel both we have to feel the grief, the sadness and the joy and the determination simultaneously easier said than done I totally agree I fail frequently but you have to just keep trying to do that and that is what works because out of that comes that expanded capacity to do more but avoid burnout and it's not always about doing more more more more because then we're falling into the trap of this kind of technological obsession that has got us into this mess in the first place it's not always about growth it's not always about doing more it's sometimes about waiting and pausing and thinking and reflecting in all the stories all the teaching stories we have to fail we have to get it wrong we have to come up against something that humiliates us and defeats us because then we develop wisdom so get off the hamster wheel and if you really start ask a tree sit with your back against the tree until you hear the tree tell you what to do and if you don't hear the tree tell you what to do you know thank you Caroline it's this really important reminder that we can go beyond that binary of we either feel grief or we feel joy we're complex human beings who are able to hold all these different feelings and emotions at once I guess you touched on something that has been brought up in the Q&A as well that I wanted to address when you say we tend to go to go heroic when we feel like there's this kind of urgency and I think that speaks to something that's been brought up a lot in the Q&A of there is this inconsistency in between what our movements call for the world we want and we demand and how we working towards it in the sense that there is this huge problem of burnout across our movement in certain parts of the movement this kind of quite toxic culture of the heroic person who's going to burn out the fastest who's going to do the most who's going to work the longest hours and have the least sleep and there's almost a heroic image of this activist who's putting their own well-being on the side for the cause and I guess yeah this is something that is not always named but I guess it's important to bring up here and that has been asked a lot in the Q&A as well and I guess in there's also this kind of response in certain parts of the movement of a very individualistic response of like or if you're having trouble with issues of burnout just have a bubble bath just do a meditation exercise and I'm not saying those things aren't important but it's not enough those kind of individual well-being kind of tips that's not going to address the scale of the burnout and anxiety that we're feeling in the movement and so I guess my question to each of you three and maybe this is also an invitation for everyone on this call to maybe take this question back to your own self-reflection is what does radical and collective care looks to you or feel and how do you think we get there and I'm aware we're slowly getting to the end of this session so yeah maybe I'd like to hear the thoughts from you three on this big question let's see where we get to I give in, I'll go first so a couple of things I want to say I'm so glad you're bringing this in absolutely so psychologically let me frame it we've got this heroic doing more and more trying to beat something trying to win let's look at the opposite of this so you've got this this is non-gendered masculine heroic trying to win trying to beat something we have to look to the opposite of this which is the lunar, the feminine again this is non-gendered this is about the opposites and this is about this clash of opposites it's only by being able to build powerful emotional spiritual cultural forces that we will develop real wisdom because it's that heroic attempt to beat nature that got us into this mess in the first place that belief that humans know best and that human knowledge and technological development can always win that's why we're in this mess so we need to go back and have the humility to understand that we messed up badly there because we forgot about the wisdom of nature we forgot about the rules of nature all we dismissed them all we thought we knew best and we need to repair that and that is a spiritual soulful repair that is needed and this is going to be the making of humanity or the breaking of humanity and the stories, the ancient stories know this so we need to remember this and we need to tap into it and my favorite story on this is Who Speaks for Wolf a Native American learning story by Paula Underwood of people who have expanded beyond their living space and they need more space and they go and they move to another valley but they realize then when they get there that there are wolves living there and they think well do we kill the wolves do we put a fence what do we do to beat this to win and they realize they don't want to live in a world where doubts are the solutions so they leave and they realize that they should not be making these collective decisions without someone in the collective group saying what does the wolf want what does the wolf think somebody needs to speak for and speak with the other the animal other the trees we should we need to include their vote their voice in our collective decision making and remembering that I'm coming full circle I'm sorry long answers remembering that helps us with the burnout because it's not just you it's not just you on your own so when I am exhausted or despairing or I can't think or I go and sit with my back against the tree and I say help me help me I will sit there and I say you help me I'm trying to help you I remember my ultimate relationship is with nature I am part of nature and when we lose sight of that then we lose sight of our own nature so there is an opportunity here for us I think to deepen and transform our human nature relationship with the world that we inhabit which is patchy at best and to some degree we've forgotten how we need to learn from that and there is beauty in that learning there is connection but we have to feel the grief of what's been lost and not try and defend or get away from that and it's an honour to feel that I think that's very wise words Caroline thank you and I must say I do myself take myself away to somewhere like Hampstead Heath and I have a favourite spot under a tree where I go and just open my mind to the life that surrounds me the life of the trees and the plants and the animals and the insects and things and that refuels me it just helps me and about grief yes well we all deal with grief we all have grief for many things particularly for the past and the friends we've lost and either or who we've lost through arguments and so forth and disagreements and that is my kind of healing others in the queer world go off to locations and drum and dance and celebrate the phases of the moon and so forth but they're not really activists certainly not political activists anyway they're doing a sort of spiritual activism so I think it's absolutely vital for me and I guess for everybody when you're active with a group and you get caught up in all the group relationships you have to withdraw and just go and be yourself and feel what you feel and as you say if you're lucky nature will give you the answer thank you very much for that insight that's such a great question and I think I would like to offer the perspective at least my experience as someone who comes from a frontline community and I think it might be one that a lot of the MAPA activists may feel as well I've never felt like a hero doing climate work and I've never felt that that type of feeling that I know a lot of activists from the west may feel because activism is a choice it's one where a lot of people they decide to actively do something out of the norm to help bring change whereas I know for a lot of activists from frontline communities activism is like breathing or climate activism is like breathing because it's our service to our people so that's the way that activism has always been for me I've always seen myself as a serva and the way that I can serve my village and I can serve my island is by protecting it in this way and I know a lot of island activists feel the same and so it's almost it's it parallels but a little bit different where the burnout doesn't necessarily come from feeling like being a hero or the tiredness or the difficulties don't always come from feeling like you can do everything it's something a little bit different sometimes where you feel like you're serving well enough or that you're trying so hard but you're not doing your ancestors proud and you're not saving your island in time for your descendants and that's a different type of feeling and I think that's something important for us MAPA activists to remember is that we have each other there's no I in a lot of indigenous communities as we're kind of talking about this collective sense of existence and that's the way we live in our Samoan community I know a lot of indigenous cultures feel the same but I don't exist as one I exist as me that's a part of my family that's a part of my village that's a part of my island and there's no such thing as I or me and there's only us and so self-care is not really a thing it's collective care we feel pain when we feel hurt we feel it together when we feel joy we feel it together so I would say to our activists who are struggling with feeling like they're not serving the collective well enough is to lean on the collective as well with those feelings I think there's sometimes stigma in our communities especially young BIPOC activists and BIPOC activists part of a community that does not want to burden our already struggling community with our feelings but that's important for us to sustain ourselves is saying that we need help in allowing our collective to help sustain ourselves in this work and kind of carrying that weight of each other so I wanted to just add that perspective in Thank you so much Yisra and thank you so much I think it is really crucial to bring that perspective it feels very powerful to hear what you're all saying we have just under 10 minutes left so rather than ask you another question I just want to maybe go around to use free and if there's anything kind of like closing remarks you want to do for a couple minutes and then I'll just wrap this up even though I just happily stay a few more hours with you I think I'll go first so Caroline's not left of going first again I think if I could say any last remarks is just a big thank you I've learnt so much from Caroline and Stuart and something that I forgot to mention that's really sustained me in my activism has been intergenerational connection that has enriched my life as an activist in so many ways and so to sit here and to learn from Caroline and to learn from Stuart who I'm sure learned from generations that are different from mine has been a real blessing and if there's any tips I could give to a young activist is there's so much we can learn from activists who have been able to sustain themselves in this movement for much longer than we have and so it's been so great to sit here and take notes and be enriched by your wisdom so thank you yes I returned to activism in 2016 because I brought out a book on the history of gay liberation called blowing the lid and I had this approach from someone who in 2015 before I brought out my book had done a commemoration of the gay liberation front into Falca Square which I hadn't heard about so I was fascinated to meet him but and so I threw he insisted on me coming to act up and so I gave in and sort of went and I hadn't been in their meeting for very long when they started talking about they were didn't have time to think they were bouncing from pillar to post and not having any clear direction and I thought oh well I can answer that one for them so I asked if I could speak and they said yes yes of course so I said well when we had problems that we couldn't deal with in a general meeting once a week for an hour and a half or two hours we hired a room in a library and spent all Saturday with an agenda and going through it and discussing things in small groups and then coming back to the main group and reporting on what we thought and then collating all that and either passing the motion or not or the approving the construction of something or not and then as I got to know more and more people they started you know I was referred to as a hero and I just thought that really made me shudder I didn't like that at all and I I had read something about the French Revolution from one of its leaders who Rob Speer executed the day before Rob Speer himself was executed but he said no we fought the revolution for the revolution for ourselves not for anybody else and that was so for me and all of us in gay liberation it was a personal thing that we started out with and it was a personal thing we were fighting for and it was for our own liberation well GLEF was only half a revolution of liberation but it was something and and it was it depended it rested on everybody else and so that is so important to remember and so when you talk about your village and being at the forefront of it but just being part of it at the same time that I think is beautifully put and something we should all remember and follow developing these practices isn't it Caroline thank you both thank you for letting me go last but the trouble with going last after listening to you both is you know I just want to cry because what you're saying is so wonderful so I'm having to not cry I've got a lot of things I want to say burnout comes not from overwork or failure it comes from loss of meaning so for me this has been very meaningful these connections between us today for me is meaningful so if you're feeling that loss of meaning then get it back there was a question from Mercy about what I thought about Naomi Klein's essay about letting drown and the violence of othering and this being basically because this crime is the suffering of black and brown people with colour around the world you're right she's right exactly but it isn't simply for me it's not simply on cultural racial grounds it's because it's this lack of care about whether the other is generational because for me this is close to child abuse child neglect child harm and we're doing that to our children here in the UK we're doing that to our children in the US and in Finland so yes of course I absolutely agree that this is about racial cultural difference but it's also about children and it's also about animals and so it's the othering generally that is absolutely lethal and how do you heal that you recognise the other in yourself and you try to heal that I want to give my final words to the children who I've been speaking with for the last 10 years a child in the Maldives said to me he said I'm sad my friends are dying my friends the fish are dying another child in the Maldives said to me you know we saw online that people had a funeral for a glacier but we're going to be under water soon who's going to have a funeral for us and a young woman in Germany when the research was published she said this is the best email I've ever had in my life I've got permission to read this she said what this study what this research what this recognition of this despair does is make me feel I'm not alone with the future and the distress that I feel so it gives us this opportunity this distress and this facing into this gives us this opportunity to imaginary emotionally connect and visually realise that no one of us is alone with this huge issue so I wanted to give these wonderful young people that final word and thank you for inviting me here I feel honoured thank you so incredibly inspiring closing words we're slightly over time so I'm just not going to get very friendly or try on this but just to mention that this panel discussion was the first of a few that we are staying in the next couple of days I've put the link to our website in the chat box so that you can see what other conversations we're having and I want to thank everyone for joining today and I want to thank Cara and Mark for being on tech support throughout the two hours and yeah, mostly I want to say a huge huge thank you to Caroline, Stuart and Brianna it's been an absolute honour, a privilege a pleasure to be in conversation with you this morning and I feel really energised and inspired and a bit teary as well Caroline so I think all these emotions are valid so yeah, just a huge huge thank you to all of you and I hope you have a great rest of your day wherever you are and whatever you will be doing thank you everyone thank you