3 Ways To Embrace Imperfection & Be A Gentle Environmental Activist

On the outside, I was pretending I was still managing. But the pressure I had placed on myself to have it all and look good while doing so was a pressure cooker waiting to explode.

I was inconsolable. You'd think that that straw meant the demise of all sea life. You'd think that that straw was the cause of all the methane in our atmosphere. But really, what that straw represented was overwhelm. I was completely and utterly overwhelmed. I was overwhelmed by being a full-time medical student; I was overwhelmed by being a new mother; and I was overwhelmed with trying to live a perfect, zero-waste life.

Since becoming a mother, I've experienced "mother's guilt" on a regular basis. Unsurprisingly, as that day in the café shows, this guilt has also expanded into other areas of my life, including a newly formed eco-guilt. For the first time ever, eco-anxiety has entered the psychiatric lexicon. It's a term used to describe the anxiety that we face about the future of our planet. Eco-anxiety is a real thing; we should be anxious about climate change, plastic pollution, dying ecosystems, and mass extinction—but this anxiety should fuel our fire to want to make a change (no matter how small) rather than overwhelm us.

As I write this now, my hair is unwashed, the dinner isn't ready, the baby is crying, and I haven't prepared for my medical exam tomorrow. I am tired. This tiredness is more than just a general sense of fatigue. It is a bone-tiredness that comes with sleepless nights, and the guilt of not doing enough. Not enough for your child, not enough at work, not enough for the environment. Enough. Enough of that. Here are three ways I'm trying to embrace being an imperfect environmentalist.

As a parent, I've learned to be flexible and not to try to control the outcome. This mindset also applies to activism. It is important to be adaptable and flexible when adopting your zero-waste lifestyle. Some days you'll be kicking butt, and other days you might be succumbing to plastic-wrapped snacks that your children are nagging you for. Don't beat yourself up about it. It is important to know that tomorrow is a new day, and you can always try again.

Being a parent has made me so much more attuned to nature and the world around me. I think this is because I've come to realize how precious life is. Embrace the nurturing attitude that comes with being a parent, and use it to fuel the new habits you'll be adopting as a family.

Adapted from an excerpt of A Zero Waste Family © 2022 Anita Vandyke. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Apollo Publishers. All rights reserved.