On my 39thh birthday I was on top of the world. I had made my way along a winding path that took me from western Canada to New York City and the United Nations (UN), where I travelled the world for an organization called the International Monetary Fund. Along the way I found my prince charming and now had two beautiful babies, 19 month a part. 

Along came my 40th year, the stress and pressure of two young children, and how to manage a more than full time job, when suddenly buildings came down in lower Manhattan and my world was turned upside down. All bets were off and my husband wanted us to reconsider our future, including if living and staying in the wonderful city we called home, would make sense as I morphed into a full time stay at home mom, and he commuted out of the city each day.

 Fast forward one year and I landed in suburban New Jersey, working part time as a consultant in NYC and wondering how my perfect world had been moved a ½ hour and a world away from where I thought it was.

 Time to smell the roses, plenty of which now grew in my own backyard, and look at how much I had to be thankful for. It was time to reinvent myself, to transform my hopes and may passions into my reality. Through the UN I had watched from the sidelines as the world took baby steps at protecting our “mother earth” and how we were using and not caring for her very well. At the UN my job was both as a “reporter” and observer, I felt removed from how it all filtered down and had an impact beyond the hallowed halls of the UN. Becoming a mother heightened my desire to ensure that the world my children grew up in was as least as wonderful as the one I was born into. I wanted to role up my sleeves and be part of the solution, but how? I watched as Al Gore reinvented himself, as he followed his passion and worked tirelessly to alert people to the dangers of climate change and global warming. He was looking for people to be climate messengers, and low and behold, I applied and was accepted as part of The Climate Project team.

 A new door opened and I found myself sought after as a speaker and an expert on climate change in my local community and more broadly in the New York metro area. While global warming was a concern outside the US, here we seemed to be just waking up to this great problem. Unknowingly to many of us, it was one we had in large part created ourselves.  What was the next step? I found that when I spoke with parents at soccer games and PTO meetings, or at public meetings or business events, although well meaning, most people seemed to be disconnected from how their actions were directly impacting climate change the world over. As well, the urgency of the issue didn’t seem to resonate with them. I decided it was time for me to “take it up a notch” and this past October I launched ClimateMama.com.

ClimateMama is website and blog, targeted at parents of all ages, working to empower and educate them about the incredible challenges we all face with climate change. The Native American saying, “We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, but borrow it from our children” is one we need to always keep front and center.  Our children get it, but many of them are too young to vote for their future. We need to do this for them. The time is now, and it is our turn as parents to make the world safe; to be better stewards of the earth, for our children, and for ourselves!