“Mummy, can I have a story?”

This is one of my anxiety triggers!

It whisks my mind back to a time of extreme tiredness and desperation for the little person to ….. please ….. go ……. to …… sleep…….. But it is also one of the happiest parts of my early parenting too!

Happy and uplifting stories, tales of adventures, kindness, courage, working together and good winning out over the baddies.

Seems to me we could do with a storybook for climate change. I guess we are writing it right now. I hope it’s a happy every after with lots of dering do! and against all odds kind of success. That would be some tale, wouldn’t it?

I’ve been listening to a few podcasts while I’ve been recovering from cancer treatment. The Climate Question is one of my frequent haunts – it’s a podcast from the BBC World Service. Two episodes I caught up with recently had a real impact: “Does climate change have an image problem” and “What role has the media played in climate change”. I won’t spoil the content for you, both are thought provoking but they both emphasise how important it is for each of us to share our sustainable tips with friends, family and more widely.

Interestingly both episodes conclude climate change isn’t (shouldn’t be) a topic on its own and we need to stop debating the effects and start talking about our actions, because climate change is woven through every action and decision we take every day. It is in business decisions, finance, development, education. It is affected by what we eat, how we travel, what we buy etc and sharing our choices or the changes we make helps others see how their own choices might look.

On a similar note Jane Goodall is quoted

You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you.

What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

Remember being little and tossing a pebble into a pond or jumping in a puddles in the rain?

The ripples start with us. Our action.

So, this week start a ripple: become a story teller. Share a recipe. Entertain friends with your travel adventures, be that a walk through your neighbourhood or a car free holiday. Talk about the butterflies in your garden or flower seeds you planted to help the bees. All of it counts. We can make change happen.

I can’t remember if I have shared it here already but my story this week comes from the makers of Blue Planet II podcast, episode 7 “Do everything what is good”. In amongst talking with children about what they know about climate change and everybody’s favourite marine creatures there is a short section on where you are in the ocean food chain and the influence you have! As individuals we are all plankton – only capable of influencing our own actions. Our individual actions have more of an effect when we join together as a community but if we are at the top of the food chain then the change we could bring about knows no bounds.

Happy New Year everyone. Lets start working for the happy ever after.

Sarah x