 And I am starting the webinar. Here we go. And we're live. All right, we'll wait for some folks to come in. Welcome, welcome. All right, I'm going to put some chat links into the chat box right now. And this is for tonight's event. I'm going to jump in and give you some library news links to our presenters links to our soulmates of the natural world, the National Park Service. We'll give it a moment, but I'm going to jump in and give you some library announcements. We are celebrating her story. And we just finished celebrating more than a month. And we will continue to celebrate all those things all year round. So more than months are black history month. Her stories are women's history month. And I'm going to jump in and give you some examples. I've met the most amazing women. And tonight is no exception. So as I mentioned, we are celebrating her story. We have a lot of things coming up, but first I want to. Give a land acknowledgement. The San Francisco public library acknowledges that we occupy the unseated ancestral homeland. Of the wrong, of the wrong. Yes. Well. As an invited guest, we are from their sovereign rights of first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders and relatives of the wrong teams. Community. And I'm also going to put a chat in the chat box and link. To a great. about land rights, also websites are in there. One of our favorites is Segorte Land Trust, who you could donate to. They have a system called the Shoe Me Tax. You pay a certain amount, like they calculated for you on what you should pay. And it's very reasonable. I think mine was, I wanna say $150 for the year. And it just gives back some way at some form. And anyone can do that. They base it on whether you own a home, whether you rent and what land you're on. It's really amazing. And they are an all women led organization. So we really love them and hope to one day get them into the library. They're very busy. San Francisco Library has a reading campaign called On The Same Page. And this is a bi-monthly read where we encourage all of San Francisco to read the same thing. And it's been going on for 17 years strong. This March in April, we're celebrating the amazing book, Post-Colonial Love Poem by poet, surprise-winning poet, Natalie Diaz, will be in convo with Michelle Cruz Gonzalez on April 26th. And just a couple of more women's history events coming up, March 16th, author Jasmine Darsnik. We'll be talking about her book, The Bohemians, a very San Francisco set novel. It's a historic novel. And then on Saturday, March 19th, we have these amazing humans led by Wanda, I'm spacing on her name, it's there, Wanda Sabir. And she is just, she is an amazing human too. And not only that, but she brings the amazing humans with her. So come check this out. It's gonna be a dialogue about woomfulness, gathering and should be interesting Saturday. The amazing cookbook author, small business entrepreneur, Michelle Pozine, who used to own 20th century cafe in San Francisco. Oh, I miss it, I miss it very much. So she's gonna talk about what it was like owning a business, what it was like going down during pandemic in her business, and what she does now, as well as being a cookbook author, I wish we could meet in person and eat cake and drink butterscotch with her. All right, with that, I'm gonna go ahead and stop sharing and I'm gonna turn it over to our partner at the National Park System, which we are so honored to be with. This has become a monthly event with different members of the park service, the park conservatory, and it's called Nature Boost. So this is a perfect one for women's history and poetic. I think it fills with April, I believe too, which is poetry month. So I'm gonna turn it over to our friends at the National Park and that's Yakuta Punawala. Take it away. Thank you, Anissa, such exciting and wonderful opportunities coming our way. So I'm excited to be a part of those and then part of this evening. Good evening, everyone. So happy to be in this space with all of you. I can't see you all, I can only see our amazing storytellers, but I hope you're well, I hope you're safe. My name is Yakuta Punawala and I have the wonderful, wonderful opportunity of working with the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, which is the nonprofit partner of the National Park Service here, based in San Francisco, California. And I am in the company of amazing, wonderful, beautiful storytellers who you're going to get to meet and whose beautiful heartwarming stories you're going to get to see this evening. And this morning I had another presentation and I started by making an offering of this heart. And I'm gonna end today by making this offering of this heart. It was given to me by a friend and it comes from all the way from the Gandhi Ashram in India. And behind this heart is, it says love all and serve all. And this heart reminds me to lead with love and to show up with a heart full of love and a mindful of love. And Earth Stories was a project that we piloted a year ago in collaboration with a wonderful organization called Story Center, which is based in Berkeley in California. And Story Center works globally to support everyday people like you, like me, like all our storytellers in telling and crafting personal stories from their own lives, just stories of lived experiences. And the Earth Stories that we're going to watch this evening were created during the pandemic in a very unique online participatory storytelling and video production workshop. And the storytellers you see here and the storytellers whose photos I'm gonna pull up in just a second. All these stories, they reveal the hearts and spirits of a unique and diverse group of women grappling with the complex interconnections of racism, sexism, gender oppression and environmental destruction. And I am so honored to be able to share these films with you this evening. And before we begin, I would love to share a quote from a beautiful piece of writing about these stories right after these stories were produced. They're up on the Story Center block. So we'll share the links in the chat box and they were written by Cami Bontethis. So here's her writings for you. How does one hold the threads of a language, weave them with the context of destruction and death and use them to honor, to forgive and to heal? White supremacy, the eradication of cultures, the oppression of women and trans people, the destruction of natural resources. These concepts are frantic, tyrannical, to face them, to name the loss and pain they have wrought and then to answer by speaking words of acknowledgement, humility and gratitude. This creates an aperture toward hope for the future. Let us listen as these women teach this graceful practice. So here are the women whose films you're gonna see. And I wanted to create a space for you to just take a moment to know who's behind these stories. And all of them are not present here today, unfortunately, but I hope you get a chance to meet these storytellers someday. But the storytellers that I have with me today are Catalina, Tanya, Georgia and Sharon. And after we watch the films, we will first watch the videos. And between each video or film, we'll take a one minute break, just one minute in silence so we can process and immerse in what we heard and what we listened and what we observed. And during that one minute in silence together, I invite you to use the chat box to share something that came up for you, to share something that emerged, maybe a word of encouragement or inspiration for the storyteller, something that you felt, something that you heard. Please feel free to use the chat box to interact with the storytellers and with us this evening. And I think we're ready to share the films. So Anisa, let's take a moment. I'm gonna invite you to get the films ready. And while Anisa does that, for all our participants who are joining us today, as Anisa pulls up the films, I have an invitation for you. If you can take a moment to think of three words, or a word, a single word describing what feeling or state of mind you're bringing into the screening event. I know it's the end of the day. I completely admire you for showing up, for being present here. I completely admire you for all the things that you did today and still made time for this. And so if you could share a word or two describing what feelings or state of mind you're bringing into the screening event, we would love to hear from you. And welcome to introduce yourselves. You're welcome to share your name, the origin of your name, whatever you're called to do or however you're called to introduce yourself in the chat box. All right, are we ready? Okay, showtime. We were segregated and poor. As a child, I didn't see it. We lived in unmeasured beauty and deceptive dangers. And as a child, I felt it as awkward mystery, fright and wonder and common magic. Where do these feelings and flow of mystery, wonder and magic come from? From storytellers, witches and magicians, daughters of forest Mississippi, the sharecroppers, head cheese maker, butter churners and fish catchers. With Jim Crow flying unnoticed behind her, this storyteller drove far north into eastern Washington to a place called the area. After years of tumbleweeds and dust devils along the east side of the rail tracks, she received notice her silent wish was granted. A little girl born in secrets and scheduled for abandonment would become her apprentice. And the lessons began. I don't know how old I am. Your mama could be 35 or 55. Don't matter to me as long as I'm living. Can get some nightcrawlers, my pole and sit by a river. Any old hole of water with some fish in it. And her cigarettes. Stories and magic come from fire, smoke and water. For words to be believed, they must be felt. And along the banks of the snake and Columbia rivers, Casey's pond and the boo boo hole, because that's where a man named Boo Boo drowned. And the invisible radiation seeping from the area. Here, where beauty and danger co-mingled, smoking Rosetta gave fishing lessons. The art of conversation while waiting. Leisure in the guise of a well-fought and caught dinner. And the joy of the struggle to reel in from below while guessing on the banks what might be at the end of the line. I don't eat sturgeon. That's a ugly fish. Mama don't eat ugly. Bluegills and sun perch. Now that's a pretty fish and good eating. But this little one here we got hooked. We gonna let it go. Send it back to the river to grow. Who knows? We might hook it again when it's grown. Then we can look into each other's eyes and holla. Remember us? Yes. Remember us. We lived here. Thank you, Anissa. We'll take a moment of silence and if you have any thoughts of encouragement, any words or feelings or emotions that come to your mind, please feel free to share them with me. I'm reminded of all our times together during the workshop. This was a journey for all of us. We were experiencing so much during the pandemic with all the challenges that we were facing across the country with all the racial justice uprisings and reckoning and all the issues that surfaced that were always there and not visible and were becoming very, very visible to a lot of folks. And we came together during that time holding space for each other, holding space for our feelings and our emotions and our thoughts and our ideas and giving life to these stories was such a special time. So I'm feeling nostalgic right now and missing Ellen. I wish she was here. But I know she's with us in spirit. Thank you, Anissa. Can we move to the second floor? I am not at home in the forest. A 19th century copy of Grimm's fairy tales was passed down to me by my great-grandmother and the kinderfresser or child-eaters peered from the thickets of my dreams on restless nights. This fearfulness has persisted into adulthood and anxiety hangover that accompanies each new dawn. Leaving England, the least forested country in Europe, I develop a complicated relationship with British Columbia's temperate rainforest. I marvel at the Arbutus tree, the color of fire and rust and Roybus T. Yet as my footsteps are absorbed by the spongy moss that glows underfoot, a small voice in my mind worries, what if there's a bear around the next tree or the next? One of my favorite podcasts releases an episode that features a man convicted of violently assaulting and raping a female hiker. I start carrying bear spray with me again, even though it's the bleak midwinter and life is hibernating on the rainy west coast. I am not at home in the forest, but I want more from life than to observe it out of my apartment window while watering my house plants. I take up mushroom foraging. Engrossed in the damp earth, my mind is quieter. I dance the mushroom stumble, tripping over complex root networks, visualizing the miles of my celium entangled beneath my feet. I feel more connected to this land. There is a small island in a river, shaped by a flood, or was it a giant's palm? I'm unclear. As the psilocybin takes hold, I nestle into warm gray sand, flecked with fool's gold. Douglas Furs sway above me, putting on a rainbow kaleidoscope that pulsates through their leads. I know it's only for me, a private performance. One tree takes on the spirit of my beloved grandmother, Penny. And suddenly I feel the matriarchal line of my ancestors like a thick braided rope stretching through time, anchoring me, keeping me safe. I am aware of each egg inside my ovaries, tiny, precious, perfectly formed. Daughters who may walk barefoot on cool earth one day, at home in the forest. Thank you, Georgia. Daughters who may walk barefoot one day, may we all walk barefoot one day, without any fear. So, Georgia is here with us, and I'm gonna clap for her. Thank you, Georgia. So proud of you. While you all watch the films, Jata and any questions you might have for the storytellers, and we'll have time after we view all the films, we'll bring the storytellers, and we have some questions for them, and we'll also have time for you all to ask questions. So, if there's any questions, feel free to put them in the chat box, or you can hold them close to your heart and leave them for the end. On a summer visit to my hometown of Bogota, I convinced my Tiesperanza to take us on a road trip to Suesca, a small town about an hour's drive away. I'm connected to this place through my great-grandmother, Adelina Suesca. We visit the valley between the boulders that the town is named after, a favorite spot for rock climbers. We stroll through the plaza, stopping to post a photo in front of the fountain. I asked my Tia if we can visit Laguna de Suesca, a rain-fed mountain lake on the outskirts of town. Such lakes are sacred to the Muisca people. Many are protected areas within Colombia's national park system, but Laguna de Suesca is not. We drive down a winding road leading away from town in search of the lake. It looks more like a big puddle, my Tia remarks, upon seeing its diminished size, ravaged by years of drought. What is left of the lake is surrounded by cattle ranches, mining operations and flower farms that consume water in this area at a faster rate than the rain can replenish it. Most of Colombia's fresh-cut flowers are grown in the Sabana de Bogota region, making the country the second-largest flower exporter in the world. Bouquets from stores or street vendors in the San Francisco Bay area, where I now live, usually say made in Colombia somewhere on the cellophane wrapping. I know these vendors, like the young women who work for low wages and long hours in Colombia's flower farms are just making a living. But at what cost? The amount of water used daily to grow flowers in this region is equivalent to what nearly 600,000 of its residents consume in a day. While flower farms soak up dwindling water supplies, neighborhoods where their workers live face chronic water shutoffs. Pesticides and fertilizers put workers at risk of reproductive illness and cancer. Their residues also affect the health of plants, fish and migratory birds. Workers toil for up to 20 hours a day for piecemeal wages during peak harvest times leading up to Valentine's Day and Mother's Day in the U.S. A website for a flower company with a farm in Suesca advertises that they obtain 80% of their water from rainfall, one of the strategies being promoted for greening this industry. I can't help but wonder if the rain captured to grow these flowers would have otherwise flowed into Laguna de Suesca. We look for holes in the barbed wire fences so we can approach the lake shore. My shoes sink into the soft mud of exposed lake bed that extends far around it. As my ancestors did, I leave a small offering to think what remains of the water, not knowing if it will still exist the next time I return. Thank you, Catalina. And Catalina is here with us, smiling away. This is such perfect timing for your film, Catalina. I'm thinking about spring and the arrival of spring and how we are surrounded by these beautiful blooms everywhere and our farmers markets and our markets are filled with flowers and how much do we know or how little do we know about where our flowers come from. And what stories do those flowers hold? Right? Thank you for that film. I've been digitizing old home movies, transforming the box of VHS tapes sitting at the back of my closet into electronic files that I can email family members and back up to the cloud. One video is from a childhood trip to Starved Rock State Park, a series of canyons, waterfalls and hiking trails located a few hours southwest of Chicago. My brother and I, me about six years old, him about eight, scramble up and down rocky inclines, jump from rock to rock across creeks and streams, while our parents slowly follow, dad always the one filming. Illinois isn't known for its canyons or waterfalls, so there's something shocking about the topography of this tape. The amount of verticality takes me by surprise. The name Starved Rock supposedly comes from a Native American legend. In the 1760s, the Ottawa chief Pontiac was murdered by a warrior from Illinois Confederation. During one of the battles that followed, a band of Illinois came under attack and sought refuge atop a 125 foot sandstone butte. Enemies surrounded them, laying siege until the group of Illinois starved to death. Hence the name Starved Rock. Of course, that story leaves out the part about settlers pushing west across North America, forcing more and more tribes into less and less space and more and more conflict. Watching these old videos gives a feeling of constancy that I know is an illusion. I see a younger me, still decades away from my gender transition, looking up to my brother. My younger dad, still years away from divorcing my mom, looking up at her through the camera lens. My younger mom making leaps and jumps that 30 years later would be dangerous for her to try. Meanwhile, the climate crisis brings changing weather, impacting the plants and animals that call Starved Rock home. The canyons themselves, which have stood for tens of thousands of years, aren't permanent. They were carved by floods from melting and receding glaciers and who knows, the canyons may someday disappear. Even the name Starved Rock is questionable as there's limited historical evidence for the story that gives the area its name. But I rewind and watch the videos again anyway. Despite, or perhaps because, I know ultimately that everything is impermanent. Rebecca's not here with us, but oh, Rebecca. I know she will watch the screening soon, so let's give Rebecca some love and care and high fives. Thank you, Kim and Billy. We see your comments in the chat box. Thank you. Before we move to planting seeds, let's all take some deep breaths. There's a lot we're witnessing here. And thank you for deeply listening. All right, let's get ready for planting seeds. There wasn't really one big moment. Just lots of gentle invitations, just appreciation for all living things, trees, spiders, worms. There wasn't ever pressure, but after two decades and two children, I moved back to my hometown. And the other day I joined my mother in her vegetable garden. She was speaking about current events, truths about family, truths about this nation, asking questions up into the air, venting frustrations, letting them compost into the soil, turning them in with their hands. I felt how her voice had been silenced, her wisdom not seen. I witnessed the wind taking some of her words and carrying them off like bees. I thought about the songs that our ancestors may have sang together. Where were they now? Could they ever be retrieved? I thought about the great, great, great grandmothers uprooted from homelands, disconnected from the traditions they were once trusted to carry, pulled from the centers of communities into more socially isolated, pushed aside places in the name of progress. What is true progress? To feed and nurture your children well, to feed and nurture all the world's children well. These questions rise up into the skies, but mothers do not drive how progress is defined. We, being the descendants of colonizers, hear growing sweet berries on stolen land, offering these questions up into the prayers of many other mothers and circling earth and back to this breeze on our knees in my mother's garden. How do I put sound to a song that blows through me when my hands and bare feet touch the earth? When I stir a pot in the sense that this act connects me back for centuries, the steam steadily carrying the story, maybe without a melody, without a chorus or seasonal ceremony, but a subtle beat that is barely there, whispering of the wind that invites me to move, to dance, to plant seeds. What is true progress, us, Emily? Let's sit with that question. I remember first watching Emily's film and wanting to go and visit her mother's garden and eat all those delicious vegetables and that delicious pot of soup she was making. Yes, Billie, it also reminded me of my mother and my mother's a really good cook and it made me think about how I wanted to, how much I miss her food and how I can never cook like her. Do we feel ready for no traces? Thank you, Anisa, for handling all the behind the scenes. First mother, I come to you humbled, soil to which my ancestors return that nourishes me, that returns me to myself when feet are bare, that supports my back at rest. I ask that I may know you, respect you, honor you and sing your praises. May I hear your cries and embrace you. May I return to you whole, unencumbered when it's time, giving back all that you have given to me. We are like nomads in the place my parents named me, pushed out by eminent domain and desired green that has not yet come. Destroying the homes of watchful neighbors who skillfully tie face-to-blood relation. Don't let me call your parents or you know better. Separating after-school children from grandmothers who watch them, women who remind them of their worthiness and love them without condition. Plowing up hopscotch sidewalks, trees, playgrounds, self-sufficient merchants, stained glass churches and freedom school. Sorted by urban planning, placed by zip code, so they are hemmed in, easy to watch, easy to move if the congregation gets too frightening, severed, erased. Even in death, unwelcome, relegated to the back of cemeteries near train tracks, under buildings and highways, buried in grounds gifted by Quakers. No one else would have the bodies of black people, not even people who were dead anyway, people with no idea who lay beside them. The ghosts of the long dead should rise up for their disrespect. They do not. Their dust returns to the land, earth replenished. Their spirits overjoyed to leave this world behind. Thank you, thank you. I'm finally home, leaving no trace behind. Oh, Sharon, Sharon is here with us, so please send her some love and some words of encouragement, some high fives. I know we don't have the heart emoji, otherwise there would be millions of hearts. I keep going back to that little emoji button and there's no heart. So I'm just gonna, I'm gonna hold this, this heart. Ready for silence, Sierra. And we have Tanya here with us as well. It happened on an afternoon in September on a bike ride through the Eastern Sierra covering over 100 miles. I was leaving the most remote part of the course and stopped to see if my flip phone had a signal. I wanted to call my husband to tell him where I was because it had been hours since I last spoke with him. I stopped my bike on a remote road and reached for my phone. But then I froze. I became distracted and startled. What startled me was silence. Highway 395 was too far away, so I couldn't hear any cars. There wasn't a breeze, so I didn't hear the air. There wasn't any insect activity, so there were no buzzing sounds. There wasn't a cyclist in sight, so there were no sounds of pedaling and heavy breathing. I didn't even hear myself. I knew this was a once in a lifetime moment. I was experiencing genuine silence. I made my phone call, put my phone away, and then stood still. I stopped moving and breath cautiously so I wouldn't hear myself inhale and exhale. I absorbed as much of the moment as I could before moving even one millimeter. When I felt I captured enough to carry this moment with me through the rest of my life, my mind returned to the ride and the miles still ahead of me. This wasn't just a quiet moment in the Sierras. It was pure silence. Something that only the earth experiences. It was the loudest silence I have ever heard. The loudest silence I have ever heard. That gives me goosebumps every time I read it or hear it. Thank you, Tanya. That's true, Kim. Every time I watch Tanya's film, I feel like I'm with her experiencing that silence. Let's get ready for some mona butterfly love. This one's by Rebecca. When you tug on one thread in nature, it pulls on many others. Across cultures, monarch butterflies are symbols of beauty, hope, resilience, migration, and connection to the spiritual world. Many of us have seen the monarch butterfly, large with black and orange stained glass windows on its wings, as it flies long distances across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. My own love for butterflies began when I was six years old in my mother's vegetable garden, when I discovered a hornworm caterpillar in the backyard tomato plants. I named it Freddy and fed it tomato leaves and watched it grow bigger and bigger. One day it simply disappeared. I later learned that it had dropped into the soil to overwinter as a pupa. I never saw the hornworm moth that it became, but from that time onward, I've been fascinated by moths and butterflies and have shared my learnings with youth, colleagues, and anyone who's interested. For at least a century, our forests on the coast of California and in central Mexico have provided the trees that monarchs need to live through their winter rest period. Unfortunately, monarch populations have been declining rapidly since the 1980s due to land development, milkweed clearing, and pesticide use. More recently, the numbers have dropped from millions of butterflies counted 30 years ago along the coast of California to just 1,900 individuals counted in 2021. When I went out to the Presidio of San Francisco this winter to help count monarchs, only a single female butterfly was seen. In the moment, my heart jumped at seeing her and then I thought about the absence of mates when she emerges from her winter rest. I also asked myself, what is my responsibility and what role do each of us have to play? The monarch is just one of many threatened species, one that happens to fly across borders and hold cultural value. Our human choices impact species every day, how we manage our lands, the plants we grow in our gardens, the chemicals we use, the foods we purchase, and how we vote. Our daily decisions play into whether the monarch will continue to make its journey. I harken back to my six-year-old self when I go out to the field on a sunny day to observe. Watching the pollinators as they delicately alight on a sweet plant to subnector, I lose track of time as I notice their diversity. I celebrate their journeys to this moment and place and savor the experience of seeing a butterfly in its spectacular flight phase so many years after that first metamorphosis. I feel the threads pulling at me to do what I can to protect them before it's too late. Rebecca is not here with us, but she's a dear colleague and I have witnessed her and when she's in the company of butterflies, I feel like she becomes one, ready to fly. So we have one more film before we invite all our storytellers and all of you participants to engage in a conversation with all our storytellers. Anisa, can we pull up the last one? This one's by Christina. There's mint in my water and soil under my nails. A rotting rose bush sits on my living room floor and I'm trying to urge it back to life. Excess water I read somewhere is the greatest threat to indoor plants. A budding bright green shoot gives me hope that this story isn't over yet. The auto playlist on Spotify is playing Agua Water by Valeria Castro and as I dig my hands into the pot, a teaching from the Navajo comes up on my Instagram feed. It says, tell your children that the soil holds the ashes of their grandparents, that the earth is full of the lives of our ancestors, that the earth is sacred. Synchronicity happens every time I open my heart and follow my path. The magic of small miracles happening all around like butterflies fluttering just within reach. I remember the blue-winged Mariposa landing on my right-ring finger at a butterfly farm in Costa Rica and staying there for what seemed like an eternity. The baby spider with a smiley face falling right on my bosom while I sat under a tree. The tiny ant passing by as I bit into a chunk of sweet-scented papaya inspiring me to write my first children's book. The bold cricket jumping right up to my feet at the Hindu temple in Maputo. The utter ecstasy of lying down on the grass, arms stretched out, gazing at the clouds hovering in the sky above. The simple wonder of watching freshly hatched turtles as they found their way back home to the ocean at a beach in Oman. I also know what it feels like to shut down. And disconnect. Much like the rose bush, I have found myself in dark, sodden soil drowning in the murky waters of my own ego. But when the ant seemed near, out came a budding green shoot. Such is nature's sacred cycle. This story isn't over yet. So much I want to say about Christina. I'm with you, Kim. I was transported and absorbed. Amisa, may I request you to stop sharing? I'm going to wait for a moment just to make sure that you're there. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And just to make sure there are no questions or anything that the participants would like to know. I'm just gathering all the questions. And in the meantime, during our storytelling journey, I remember us sharing a lot of bear hugs and I remember our butterfly hug, which I think we should definitely show the audience. And so if you all are ready, ready. I learned this from a friend. Oh, y'all know the drill. And so you bring your hands out. Nice, beautiful hands. And then you join your thumbs. And then you make a little twist. And then you give yourself a butterfly hug. Thank you all. Thank you for listening for being here. And we have our beautiful storytellers here with us. And I see that there's a question in the chat box. So I'll make sure to address it. But I just wanted to take a moment to just say thank you to all our storytellers. And there's two folks in in our participants group, who I would love to also bring attention to and just share my thanks and gratitude Amy Hill and Cassidy. And Amy for the past 20 years has been bringing people together to share social justice and human rights stories and make media through her work at Story Center. And and Cassidy wields multimedia storytelling to build bridges between experts and the communities they serve. And at the moment she is at the Frog Hollow Farm demystifying the science behind regenerative agriculture. So please say hello to Cassidy and Amy and share your gratitude with them as well. Amy is the one who brought us together. It was her dream, her vision. And it was a very informal conversation between Amy, Cassidy and myself and all of us nature lovers, lovers of the earth and just deeply madly in love with everything that the natural world has to offer us. We we thought it would be wonderful during a pandemic to bring people together to create a space where we can share stories during these hard times and learn from each other and grow with each other. And it was a really magical space. We laughed together, we cried together. There was poetry, there was music. And what was really special about our journey together is that many of us have never met in person. We all I still can't believe it. I feel like every single person in during that journey was became my soul sister. And we were walking this path together, never having met each other and creating these beautiful stories together. So that's how this project came to life. And it is a project that's evolving. We would love to see more earth stories, we would love for you to create your own earth stories and we'll share in the chat box a link. Amy works with the story center and has been creating spaces and finding ways to create spaces for people to tell stories. And so if you're interested, or if your organization is interested, or if you just love to, if you'd love to, if you want to or are excited to learn storytelling techniques or crafting your own stories, please reach out to Amy Hill from the story center. She's, she's just a magical, wonderful human creating spaces for us to to craft our stories. So with that said, storytellers, are you all ready for some questions? So, Tanya, I'd love to invite you to share a little bit about what was it like for you to share your story during this journey and develop it in the Earth Stories workshop format as part of a group of other storytellers whom you, you didn't know and had never met before. So I'd love to hear from you. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I, I've shared that experience a couple times before, but I never really told it as a story. I mean, it was, it was a, it was a deeper retelling, for sure. In, in the workshop, and doing that through the workshop. And it also made me think about that it wasn't just, you know, after the fact that it wasn't just silence, it was also, you know, on a bike, you're experiencing the atmosphere and the air and the terrain, and so many other things about that that made that particular, that makes that ride period so challenging and so meaningful. Yeah, so it was, it just, it drew out of me a, the whole experience, the workshop experience drew out of me a deeper retelling of the story, for sure. Thank you, Daniel. Catalina. Yeah, Ben, everyone here, it's really such, I'm just so humbled to be a part of this amazing group of women that participated in the workshop last spring. And I think for me, as an immigrant woman, the pandemic really punctuated, you know, the, the, what the meaning of home really was, spending so time, so much time at home, social distancing and thinking about, you know, how to bridge that, that distance and space and time that I was experiencing with my home, home country of Columbia, and my own identity, you know, as an immigrant woman in the US. And I think I just became really fascinated with this idea that, you know, we, you know, goods we were consuming could still travel. So we couldn't. And what was connecting me still to, to where I was, the place, my place of origin was, you know, things like flowers and coffee and, you know, just thinking about, you know, women as culture keepers and as, you know, transmitters of tradition, language, family history, which many of the women in my family had a very profound influence on me. And that way, as I kind of shared through the story, and just that whole experience really helped me to reconnect to what it really means to carry those places with us, you know, as immigrants, how, how can we use that as an opportunity to share, you know, connect and share part of ourselves with, with other folks in community who may have very different, you know, trajectories and histories. But knowing that, you know, creating, kind of knitting together that a new sense of belonging through that process and the work, the process of creating the story and community, even on zoom had that really beautiful kind of impact on me was like that really feeling that I had this sense of community, even though I was feeling really isolated. At the time, also, social distancing was very meaningful for me. And so I'm really appreciative of the opportunity that have been able to do that and share that experience with the women here and others in the workshop. Thank you, Catalina. Georgia, may I invite you to share a little bit about your experience? Absolutely. It's so wonderful to be back with this. Some of this group of amazing women. I think I would echo certainly what tenure and Catalina have said, you know, during that time we had, I'm based up in British Columbia and, you know, restrictions and I just moved to a new town on the traditional territory of Squamish Nation and was certainly feeling that isolation and this was such an unexpectedly in my experience strong community that formed through the intimacy of sharing these stories and holding space for one another in the vulnerabilities, you know, that we've through each of those stories and the strength as well. And I think for me, I think as well that I wasn't expecting what a powerful experience it would be to share this story in this way. You know, I thought it would be an interesting experience and I would get to meet some other storytellers and all of that would be wonderful and great motivation in itself. But I one didn't expect to connect so deeply with the, you know, the rest of the women in this group and two, for the experience of really reflecting on these different, you know, themes that you saw in my story, the way that I walk through the world with a lot of privilege and yet have as well different different senses of unbelonging and discomfort and to be able to have a space to really think through some of those things and be accountable to the to the rest of the group to work alongside them and bring my best self to work on my story. It was incredibly powerful and and accessible. You know, the the tools that we use, it made it opened up this world to me and you know, I shared with this with the some of the group that I found this whole experience so inspiring that I'm now doing a master's in storytelling and have propelled me into this these other directions. So yeah, it was can't do it justice, but it was magical. Thanks, Georgia. And if you if any of you get a chance to meet Georgia and personal chat with her, her project is amazing. And you have to ask her what she's doing right now. Sharon. Well, gosh, I don't know where I don't know where to start. I learned a lot in the workshop. A lot about what is going on in the environment. I remember the the the flower story. And the next time I went into Trader Joe's, I didn't look at the flowers the same way. And I wondered where they came from. And before I used to just buy them all the time. And you know, never even consider where they came from or how they were grown. And the I don't know, it was just it's hard to express what it's like to listen to, you know, the hearts of other people. Because I think that's what Oh, that was your theme. When you it's almost like when you're in a group with a group of people, with a group of people, a group of women, not a group of people who have opened their hearts. And I feel like that's what happened. And it created some sort of harmony and connection that I can't believe happened on zoom on a computer. You know, I was really grateful for it, because you really didn't get outside. Because the nearest I got outside was opening my window. So you had to go back and remember, you know, grass and what that feels like under your feet. And I live in a city. So I had to think about what my earth story was. And I my earth story became re gentrification and urban renewal, and how that affects people. And how that was affecting me. And that that process didn't change during COVID, it was still going on. And so it was real to me in in real time. So I that kind of inspired my story. And I made friends here. You know, and I think that's the I think that's the key. I wish I could, I think, I think the project is a doing. And it is hard to express in words, how important it was, and how much I learned, and how much I learned about myself, and expressing myself with perfect strangers. That's not a easy thing. You know, to speak from your heart, about the things you care about, and things that are on your heart, are not an easy thing to do, you know, on a computer, you have to trust people. So I don't think I answered your question. But you did, Sharon. It took me a minute, because I was like, what was the question? Okay. And isn't it amazing that stories can bind us in this way, even in, in the zoom world? There's a question in the chat about how long this process was, it was a six week long journey, where we would meet once a week on a Monday evening, and spend a couple of hours together just discussing different aspects of storytelling, the techniques of storytelling, spending a lot of time learning about each other and building trust, as Sharon said, it takes a lot to be able to open your heart and your mind, and you have to trust someone to hold your story with care, and respect. And so there was a lot of that. And thanks to Amy and Story Center, there's a beautiful format that was already created for us, there was a framework. And so every week there was discussion sessions, and then we would go back with some homework, some reading material. And there was just so much, there is just so much wisdom and knowledge in, in this group that gathered during this journey that we would share books and articles that would open our minds. And there was just so much of learning and growing together. And that's what's so beautiful about a storytelling journey as well, right, like we're learning and growing from each of the stories that we hear. And so, yeah, stories bind us in ways that we would never even think and imagine. I have another question for you all and participants who are still here with us, feel free to share any other questions that come, come to your mind for any of our storytellers. What, what do each one of you hope to get? What do each one of you hope to hope that participants take away from your story? And I'm going to invite Catalina to get us started. This one. Thank you. Yes. Well, I think as someone who works with many community groups on club or education and participatory research projects, I think, for me, really, it's such an honor to see the comments that the people's people are sharing about how the story really resonated with them. And when they saw flowers, it kind of evoked the story because I think that was part of what I was hoping to gain was figuring out how to weave digital storytelling into some of the popular education work that I do around environmental health and justice issues. And so, for example, I think that just this workshop really helped me a lot. And I think that really helped me this whole experience really helped prepare me to work again with Story Center on a project that the last summer with farm worker leaders from Lidadas Campesinas and Mystical Community Organizing Project in Ventura County to create digital stories on their experiences with extreme heat and wildfire smoke exposure in the fields and in their communities. And it was such a powerful experience to be on the other side of, you know, helping to hold space. For the leaders to develop their stories and also incorporate an element of language justice where the stories were also there were many of them were recorded in both Spanish and Mixteco, Indigenous language from Southern Mexico that many farm workers in that area speak and used in a community health education context as part of a community resilience building project around climate change impacts and farm worker communities. So I think that that's to me that that's I guess the main thing I carry from from the experience is really wanting to be able to also just continue to to bring this during storytelling as a medium and a resource to many of the communities that we work with, especially communities with limited literacy and or, you know, oral communication language traditions where, you know, written materials aren't the best way of sharing information. I think this is a really amazing tool to do that. And I'm just so thankful to having I feel like, you know, if you can't really bring something to someone if you haven't, you know, challenge yourself to really deeply like engage in it yourself, especially when you're asking people to, to share really reopen wounds or trauma or, you know, very, very challenging experiences that they've lived to retell them in this format. And so, so I think that that that process was a touchstone for me to know, you know, how how much people really you're really asking of people to engage in this kind of a process. Thank you for that, Kathleen. And I'm also looking at the time and I'm going to respect everyone's time. So I'm wondering if maybe a couple of you can share a little bit about what you hope people who view your story take away. So maybe Tanya may I invite you and then maybe you all can quickly share a little something. Sure. Yeah. So thank you. Yeah. What I hope people take away from my story is more of an awareness of the landscape and that there's more there than what we see or understand when we drive by it, ride past it, fly over it, that there's a lot more, more there. Thank you. Georgia. I hope that people if they watch my story reflect on their place in the landscape, because as I said in my story, I didn't spend any time in the forest as a child. And it wasn't until much later when I really was in the forest in the middle of nowhere for a long while that I realized I had this anxiety. And it makes me wonder, it makes me think about the importance of spending time in nature for us to, you know, give that gift to our children, for them to care about it, for them to understand it, respect it, love it, and want to protect it with every fiber of their being. Thank you. Sharon. What I'd like people to take away from this is that when zoning boards and councils are making changes to improve the community, that they realize that people live there, that people died there. And that that too is sacred. And that's what I'd like them to take. That's what I'd like people to take away. And I'd also like people to speak up. You know, speak up when things are happening in your neighborhood, even if they don't listen. Go to that meeting, say something, do something. Politicians work for us. They work for the community. So that's what I I'd hope they take away. Thank you, Sharon. Hey, it's, I, I could keep talking. There's so much joy in this company. But thank you all for taking the time to be here. I am just in awe and in deep admiration of all the storytellers. And we hope we hope that we hope that each one of you was inspired to go go back wherever you are, find your journal and write your own story. And what is your connection to Mother Earth? What is your connection with the species that we share the space with? What is your connection with the communities that you feel a sense of belonging to? So if you're inspired, come talk to us. We would love to support you in creating stories. And I know there's many other folks who would love to support you in telling your stories. So may we all create many, many stories together. And thank you once again. And thank you to Anisa. Thank you to Amy. Thank you to Cassidy. Just I'm, I'm filled with gratitude. Oh, my God, me too. Me too. I said this was going to be another non exception of meeting such amazing women. But I just thank you all for bringing this to the library community. And to me, I'm feeling, I'm feeling the love. I think that was so amazing. And what you all have shared in such a short time, six sessions is not long really to create such amazing magic. So thank you so much for joining us from all over the place. And thank you for our partners. And thank you library community. I put in the chat one, I'm gonna put it in there one last time. This is the story center, but I'm going to put in this link which has all the links to tonight. Things that came up library news. And let's do it again. Oh, you guys are amazing. I told you. Thank you. Thank you all. Good night.