What if helping address climate change were akin to trying to start a fire without matches? In this beautiful conversation, Bonita draws a parallel between her attempts to start fire with a bow drill and the way she hopes we can all keep showing up in the world, and not give up. Building the muscle, figuring out the bow, overcoming certainty of failure, confronting self-doubt, making a daily practice of building strength, and then, against all odds, when you create an ember, stoking it to take off in a flash. What an incredible metaphor for how change can happen.
She says we don’t know the outcomes, and how we show up in community matters more than what we do and achieve and measure. She asks us to all think about what gifts we offer the world, and give them so we can feel that reciprocity of belonging and support and most importantly, love. All of this is from her beautiful book, Embers of Hope.
I hope you feel inspired by this conversation, and note to listeners: do not try to start a fire on an enclosed wood porch!
Works cited:
Embers of Hope: https://www.embersofhopebook.com/
Climate Mental Health Network Gen Z cohort: https://www.climatementalhealth.net/genzers
On “hypernormalization”: “Systems are Crumbling– But Daily Life Continues. The Dissonance is Real.” The Guardian, May 22, 2025.
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TRANSCRIPT:
FORD: Progress is not linear. Our engagement in this work, in the climate movement, in the environmental movement, when the conditions are just right, change can happen in a moment.
RAY: Welcome to Climate Magic, where we talk about the relationship between climate change and our hearts and minds. As we dive deep into the emotional life of climate politics. I'm Sarah Ray, a professor at Cal Poly Humboldt.
FORD: I think that sense of death, acceptance and peace around our endings still serves us well, no matter what the outcome. And I do hope so much for as many beautiful outcomes as we can create together.
RAY: Yeah. That's beautiful. I was going to, delicately tiptoe up to death… [LAUGHTER]
RAY: Today on the show, I'm speaking with Bonita Elouise Ford. Bonita is an author, facilitator, and speaker who supports people and coping with and addressing eco and climate breakdown. Bonita has an MA in Holistic Health Education and a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry as well as a diploma in permaculture. Her book, Embers of Hope: Embracing Life in an Age of Ecological Destruction and Climate Chaos, was quickly listed as one of the top 20 best all time permaculture books by women. She's working on a next book, Climate Care, which is set for publication by Orca Books in spring of 2027. The land she calls home is a fifth of an acre in Perth, Canada, which is unceded Anishinaabe Algonquin territory on Turtle Island.
In our conversation, we charged straight out of the gates with the hefty topic of death and grief as practices for figuring out how to live in a climate crisis. She says that there is medicine in the smallness, that our heroic work is to be preparing the ground for change in whatever ways we feel called.
Enough of that. You want to taste some of Bonita’s beautiful soul medicine. So let's dive in.
RAY: Thank you for joining the show, Bonita.
FORD: I'm so delighted to be with you, Sarah.
RAY: I just finished reading your beautiful book, Embers of Hope. The book is an exploration of what you call inner capacities to support ourselves in facing death and ecological destruction. This is all based on your work in permaculture, nonviolent communication, Reiki, academic training and you and your life experience, your own journey. What an incredible gift of climate magic your book is. Thank you. In the introduction, you write that you hope that reading the book will feel like we are sitting around “sharing heroic visions and humble ideas over a pot of tea.” I love that so much. What an invitation! It just made me want to read on. And I hope that's kind of what today's conversation will feel like.
FORD: Oh thank you Sarah, I'm so excited. And I just want to share with listeners that this morning I was hanging out with your book and… So our books came out at the same time in the same year in 2020. And when I started reading it, I first found a sample of your introduction. And so I downloaded that and I started reading and it started highlighting and highlighting and highlighting and just doing that thing that they tell you that. I remember high school teachers telling me not to do, like don't highlight everything that's not useful. And I just kept highlighting and it was like, oh no, this is okay, I have to buy this book first. And first and foremost. So I bought the book and then I kept highlighting. And there are stickies everywhere in this book. And I came back to as I read it, you know, I read it soon after my book came out, and I spent more time with it again this morning. And I'm looking at it today through the lens of work that I'm doing now. So working on I'm, I'm in the middle of edits for my second book, so just starting to work with the editor. And so I'm thinking about things that I haven't said yet or I'm wanting to say more clearly. And I'm also thinking about a new Gen Z cohort that I'm leading with the Climate Mental Health Network and thinking, oh my gosh, right. We have to say that. Oh, right. I have to find some research to back up this point. Yeah, we really got to spend some time on this. And so it's it is kind of a high school teachers nightmare. Like there's just stickies everywhere. You're not supposed to do this with books like it's I've marked it up like a reference book, but it's not a textbook. But there are just… Anyways, I just wanted to let you know that and let readers know that you're having a little bit of a fangirl moment, because I'm it's just it's such a joy for me to have this time to talk to you.
RAY: This is about your book, not my book [LAUGHTER]
FORD: I know, but and I said this to you ages ago, and I remember thinking, you know, if my book was a baby, this would be, Sarah's book is like my baby's cousin. And if they were little kids growing up together, I would want them to go play in the forest together because they have so much in common, and they would really love hanging out together because there's just so many threads.
RAY: That so very funny. Your voice in your book and I want to, we will get to your book too. Your voice is so unique. And so what I found so beautiful about reading your book is your voice. For example, I really dance around the painful feelings. I don't really even go there. And you start off your book with “the world is going to end.”
FORD: Right?
RAY: How do we live with that?
FORD: Right?
RAY: I love it's like so straight. So yeah, your tone, your writer's voice is just so beautiful. And I hope that that invites readers too, and I also love the idea of these books as our babies, because I often think about books as babies. So that's so funny that you should bring that up. I always feel like this is a weird metaphor in my own head. It feels like I'm in the labor of it. Yeah. Anyways, like, what a great metaphor. And that they would have kin… I love it.
FORD: Oh yeah.
RAY: Yeah. Oh in the forest or playing. Okay. Well I love that. So Embers of Hope is your book. And you come at it with all this just rich experience that I don't, I don't I barely have a green thumb. Reading your book makes me want to go and become a permaculture expert. And the experiences that you have accumulated over your life. Can you tell me a little bit of your journey with climate despair and how these tools kind of, I don't know, felt like lifelines for you?
FORD: So I think so. As you mentioned, my background is in permaculture. So I taught permaculture for about a decade. And so that's my background as an environmental educator. And in that time I was also doing, I've always been both attracted to. So I did a Bachelor of Science. I was in biochemistry. And so I have a science background, and I've always been really drawn to spiritual teachings, to things that we might call esoteric and so in that period of very actively practicing and teaching permaculture and also. Engaging more actively in our, in the community where we are now, I had this little it was like the seed of the book baby. I had this little, this tiny little voice inside me that said, oh, maybe it's time for you to start writing your book. I thought, what am I? What am I supposed to be writing about? And I mean, I still have these moments wondering, who am I to say who? Like, who's going to read my story? What do I have to share that's so important or so unique? And so the first kind of the first outline of this book was about social permaculture. It was about permaculture design applied to human and social systems. And it wasn't that and it would have been unique, but it just didn't. It didn't get beyond that outline.
And then within a few months, I had a very dear friend who was diagnosed with a life threatening disease and it was really just the process of supporting her in that, in her healing, in her in her living and her loving through that process that taught me so much about how I want to live in this time in the world. And I think some of the lessons that I took from that. And for me, it was just such a direct metaphor. And walking with her, she was just her living and dying experience was such a teacher around how I want to be with the changing climate and with, with civilization as we know it slowly unraveling.
And for me, being with her in that, you know, being part of this small circle of spiritual community with her and I heard about just the breadth of her emotions, her denial, her anguish, her fear, her worry, as well as her joy and her gratitude and her celebration and her hope. And so she allowed all of this. And she was also so clear that her intention and her vision was to heal and recover her health fully. And at the same time, there was a day that she said to me, I was I was at her house with her and her husband, and she said to me, Bonita, I just want to show you these papers. This is my power of attorney. This is so this is my kind of the health care papers. I don't think we will ever need them, but I want you to be aware of what my wishes are for my health care, if we get to that point. But really? So here it is. Read through it. Let me know if you have any questions, but I really don't anticipate that we're going to need it because my intention is to heal. And that's how she lived with she, she held both of these baskets.
This beautiful, full, overflowing basket of joy and gratitude and of just being, like, embracing life every day and contributing actively to her community and doing everything that she could to heal. And also seeing– and I do have a plan B in case I'm wrong. And so she was she was also cultivating this acceptance around her dying and the uncertainty and the lack of control.
And so for me, that has been such a balm and such a medicine for me in this journey of not only for my of how I want to hold the climate challenges and realities of our time, but also how I want to support others in that we can hold both – that it's and that it's actually very helpful and can be very empowering to hold both for us to really work very actively towards creating the kind of lives, the kind of world, the kind of futures that we that we just that we dream of, that we that we hold so dearly in our hearts as well as cultivating more acceptance and more peace around loss and around death.
Because even if we make it through this, even if we make it through the climate crisis, we are still mortal beings. And so I think that sense of death, acceptance and peace around our endings still serves us well, no matter what the outcome. And I do hope so much for as many beautiful outcomes as we can create together.
RAY: Yeah. That's beautiful. I was going to… delicately tiptoe up to death.
FORD: Sorry.
RAY: So what do you think? This conversation is exactly like your book and my style and your styles. Like meeting in the forest, over our pot of tea. Yeah. I'm like, we're going to get there at the very end. No, you're like, let's just go there right now. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about what death has to teach us. You answered it in terms of the question of what was your climate despair journey, and it was about your sort of desire to have a book baby, and how having your friend's death changed what the book baby was going to be about, and what your climate magic in the world was going to be in your writing. And you have a beautiful quote in your book where you say, except dance and hope can coexist. And that, to me feels like exactly where you come to a death practice. Or thinking of the metaphor of our own mortality as a way of cracking open what's required to confront the climate crisis. Why is that a lesson?
FORD: For me it was sometime in the process of writing my book, I was having a conversation with my partner. And so just to share with you and to share with listeners, I tend to be, like my emotions bounce up and down very easily and I can get into very low and very dark places very easily about the state of the world, about ecological degradation. It's very easy for me to slide down that very slippery slope. And again, it's, it's for me, it's, it's this balance of wanting to I think it's, it's so important, especially for us who are working in these circles actively to have a capacity to be present with the challenging and painful realities of our times, as well as learn to process them and find the places where we do have agency, where we do have power.
And so I think, I think this both and piece, it came to me, I was having a conversation with my partner and I was just in one of those, I don't know what we were reading in that moment or what we were watching. And I just said to him, what we were just kind of we were chatting about the future of humanity. And he said, yeah, we're we're just “yeah, that's it. I think we're kind of toast.”
And so it was kind of on that, like we were at that place. He said something like, “you know, most people either think that we are totally doomed or that we can totally turn things around.” And when he said that, I thought, oh, that's so interesting because I actually believe both of those things. I want to keep trying. The story is not done yet, and kind of like in my in my friend's experience and just in her journey, we don't know what the outcome will be. And so every moment and every day, we have opportunities to engage in our lives and I've really found that it's been important for me to allow space for both of those, like the part of me that despairs so deeply. I do want to validate those feelings. And it's about also holding at the same time and actively cultivating a sense that I still have. I have this moment I have today. I have so much choice in my life still, and it's on me to use that. And so I think that's why this for me, the spiritual practice has been so much about honoring both honoring, as you said, acceptance and hope. For me, it's also about just honoring despair and gratitude and just honoring kind of the depths of my, of loss, as well as holding the possibility of holding possibility, the possibility of creation.
RAY: Yeah. There's something about that binary that, acceptance versus hope that your conversation with your partner and the kind of spirit of my follow up question was like, what are we up against here? We're up against this binary thinking and the kind of toxic positivity and or doomism option. You know, you make so much sense. You're hitting on something about agency. I want to pick up on that thread because part of what I love about your book is that you explore the complexity of agency without going, without getting too technocratic or saying, you know, pseudoscientific.
I was just reading an article this morning about how we're living through a period of hypernormalization under our current political conditions in the U. S and I know you're you're coming in from Perth in Canada. So you're watching, with interest, I'm sure, one symptom of this idea of hypernormalization was described in the article as “this feeling that everyday life is inconsequential in the face of the crisis.”
This feeling also is really what I think most of my students feel. They sort of walk in the door with that every day. Maybe that will change, but that seems to be a chronic thing or pervasive sort of year after year. I'm curious what wisdom you might have to offer us about this feeling of our lives not having any consequence or not mattering. You've obviously touched that intimately yourself, too, in the monumental scale of these problems. Yeah. The agency thing. Yeah. Can you can you help us with that?
FORD: Yeah, what comes to mind– I've been so, in this period, I've been, I just come to circle back a little bit just to this theme of balance. I think in this period, I would say in the last 6 to 12 months in particular, not to a year and a half, I'd say I've been very actively trying to balance my engagement on social media and also just being really mindful of creating kind of a mental, emotional state of just having clarity in my internal space so that I can do the work that I'm in my paid work, in my volunteer work. And there was a post that struck me recently, and it was really it was I think it was. In response to genocides going on in the world in response to the crisis, the ongoing crisis, the ongoing, oh, just everything going on in Gaza. And it was what really stood out for me was that so there was a post and it was about how the messaging that we are too small and that we cannot do anything and that our actions are meaningless, is actually part of. It actually serves those who are in power. So the elite 1% who are ruling our world, who are trashing the planet, who are, who have, who have and continue to in various ways oppress, enslave, use and discard marginalized communities, be those communities of color, be those, you know, brown or black folks, be those, women and some folks be those queer folks, or folks with disabilities. They just, you know, the list goes on and on.
RAY: And the more-than-human.
FORD: Yeah. The more-than-human world. And it really serves them when we give into this belief that there is nothing we can do. And I'm not saying like, again, it's, it's a both/and sort of a thing. I think there is. I think there is. I think it's important for us to honor this sense of smallness and the humility within that, because I think sometimes in Western in kind of the dominant paradigm, it's so and, you know, maybe for those of us who have grown up with, beliefs around humanity being the epitome of creation, the pinnacle of creation, we're falling from a high place. And I think having that sense of smallness in the grand scheme of things, I think there is medicine in that as well.
And at the same time, just because we are small, it does not mean that we cannot be part of social change. You know, both are true and we can be this theme of climate magic. I think one of the magical pieces in the book that I really love to share with people is around making fire. So for listeners, there's kind of a couple of stories at different points in the book about how learning to make fire without matches has been also such a humbling learning journey for me. So as I was learning to try and make fire with a bow drill, which is basically a stick and a piece of cord, it's a really hard skill. And there were so many points where I just wanted to give up and say, okay, wow, I will never master this skill. This is not worth trying. And it's that same kind of attitude that can really block us as individuals and collective in moving forward in this time of crisis, that even though it's so difficult and we may not see any progress in the moment, getting up is what is going to cause our defeat.
RAY: I love that, and in your book you also describe small, medium, and big changes we can make to help people tease out that and not be in binary thinking. Locking into– I'm either totally inconsequential or I have to be a savior. That kind of egotism and the sort of humanistic hubris that you described about how far we're falling as humans to sort of embrace and honor the smallness. That's so, I love that. This seems to be a theme in some of the conversations I'm having. Is this kind of the more you embrace your smallness, and the more you embrace your death, the better you are. And it's very counter to the Western way of thinking.
I wanted to ask you about this beautiful question because you have figured out what your small part is. You've figured out your climate magic. You have included writing books in that. I don't know how you do the writing books and the permaculture part. I'm like, either I'm writing books or I'm gardening, I can't do both. It's like, I am so stuck in this, like I don't have time for actually being in right relationship with the land. Oh, but I want to write about how people should, so yeah, I just I just want to honor how like, you're walking the walk, but you wrote and this is sort of my indirect way of getting to you. How did you figure out what your smallness was going to be? You wrote about love. Oh, my gosh, this is the way you write in your book. And I just want to share this with listeners because it just makes my blood rush. You say, “how do I know I'm following my purpose and passion? When I cannot contain my love.” Can you share what was going on in your mind when you wrote that? Because that is so beautiful. Yeah. And for you specifically, you know, what does that feel like for you?
FORD: I feel like just my eyes get watery when I hear you read that, and I think, I think I remember the passage that the chapter and maybe that's why I dive into the deep places so quickly. It's because I think one of the stories that went with, the piece of just my love overflowing was meeting a man, that I saw periodically outside the grocery store who was houseless, and we would chat every so often, and one day he asked me for money, and I said, you know, sorry, my friend, I don't have anything. I don't have any money for you today.
And as I walked around the grocery store, I just he was still with me in my heart. And I wondered, how can I connect with him in this moment, but I don't want to give him money. And so I realized, okay, so like, I bought my groceries, ran over to, there was a store next door and I bought, I think I bought him a hat and a scarf. It was it was a little it was cool. It was in a cooler season. And I went back up to him and said, I just wanted to offer to these to you, my friend. And he looked at me and we just had this moment of and he just hugged me and he said, I love you, sister. And I said, I love you, brother. And we just cried together. And that was like it was just this exchange with a stranger. And that is this overwhelming sense of love and humility. And it's also like there's this element of the, there was sadness in that, you know, like recognizing that I could buy groceries. And he was outside asking people for money. And there was an element of just, of injustice and the unfairness of the world, and that this beautiful person maybe was not, you know, living the life that he had dreamed of. And for me, I think that's why I so easily dive into those deep places, because they're just so wrapped up in my love that it's easy for me to cry with a stranger because I could feel my love for him so deeply in that moment. And I have a lot of those experiences for the world.
RAY: Yeah, you frame it in your book as a gift you're offering, and you also say, you know, you asked the reader, “what gifts do you want to offer? What gifts do you long to give?” I think is, as you put it– what is growing in you that you want to offer, and those invitations to tap one's own capacity for love require that grief and the sadness that you just described in that real confrontation with injustice. So yeah, I can see what you mean.
You say that's why you always dive into the dark stuff. I think you're just in the dark stuff, you don't even have to, you don’t make an action to go there or, you know, in a good way, I think it's a model. I think, I think part of many people are writing about, and this is not my own revelation or yours even, but you're living it out, though, is, I guess, what I'm trying to say about how you even open your book with death. You know, the fact that we have created such a consumer culture around dopamine and avoiding difficult emotions, and even I can feel the sense of, “oh, don't despair, Bonita,” because you just said you despair all the time. “Please don't despair.”
You know, and I realize, and I recognize in my own self-awareness, a part of my own inadequacy as a person in the world. Doing my work is always been my inability to allow other people to have uncomfortable emotions with me. And this is something I work with. And it's so beautiful, though, right? Because the depth of that despair is directly connected to the depth of love and that intensity of those both those emotions at all times.
I think about people often ask me, what should I teach my third graders? You know, your work applies to college students. What should I teach my third graders about emotional intelligence and the climate crisis, and how we can confront this together with resilience? And I often think, don't don't teach them about I mean, we shouldn't be teaching about the climate crisis. We should be teaching them how to love. And like, how do you love the world? Because the people in power right now obviously were never taught how to love and specifically know their bird neighbors. Right, I mean, like, this may sound all very hokey, but, you know, that foundation of love is what keeps us in the game despite all of the terrible things. And so that's why I wanted to explore that with you. This kind of you say, “how do I know I'm following my purpose and passion? When I can't contain my love.” And I just, I love that so much. So thank you.
FORD: I would love to say something else around that.
RAY: Just please!
FORD: I'm really enjoying unpacking this piece around love because yes, when I feel so good, it feels so good. And that's.
RAY: That's what we need.
FORD: We need it, we need it. We absolutely need it. When I think about activism, when I think about climate activism, when I think about the reality of burnout, I think this piece of what do you want to offer to the world, you know, and what do you long to create and what do you long to celebrate?
Because when I you know, when I think of that interaction I had with this beautiful man whose name I don't remember, but I can remember his face. And I just remember that moment so much I can feel that so deeply in my heart that it wasn't just me giving to him. I probably received more from that interaction.
And that is kind of the high bar that I want to have from my own activism, because it's I think it's very easy for me and probably for a lot of people in our urgency to just in a very reactive, panicky way, just try to do. Lots of everything in a very willy nilly sort of a way, and not be intentional with our energies and not be fully aligned with our own climate magic. And I think the more we can be aligned with our own climate magic, the more we have this sense of, oh wow, when I give, I receive all of that and more in return, that sustains us and that prevents us from burning out.
RAY: Yeah, I love the story in your book about the fact that you had done all this, you had put energy into building community when you moved to Perth and really built your life around in the kind of when you talked about the small, medium and big changes. This was the category of big. You designed your life around community.
And when times got kind of difficult in terms of resources or the winter, the fact that you had community got your vegetables, right? And that was this kind of gift economy you were living into, like Robin Wall Kimmerer’s kind of framework and her newest book, Serviceberry, which is so good.
But yeah, this is the way you're practicing it. And it's something that doesn't have immediate yields, you know, in an economic or capitalistic framework. And it might be considered by many in, sort of Western colonial capitalist frameworks as being a kind of waste of time or gets in the way of your personal advancement and growth and achievement. Because on a daily basis, when you lean into those relationships, it doesn't seem, you know, feels sort of like it is taking away from your day like it's not in your schedule. You know, it's not on my Google calendar, you know? So I just admire that part of your book and that description of what it actually gives back.
FORD: Well, and again, I think it's that idea that, you know, whether just what I was saying earlier about when I'm really giving from this full hearted place, I receive so much in return. It's the same with building community that I'm not just giving out of and some altruistic whim, but it's actually with full awareness that I am helping to really weave a web that will hold all of us. So I make time for that.
But it's not about seeing myself as separate. It's actually fully investing in a future where I see that there are more and more challenges, and the more we can invest as individual tools into re-weaving this web of community, of building a sense of trust with neighbors and reciprocity and mutual aid. That is what makes us and will help us become resilient to all of whatever is coming down the pipes.
And there was that amazing article you wrote. I think it was in the Scientific American, that indigenous communities and black communities have experienced for centuries already for, you know, for those of us who have the privilege of growing up safe and the pretense of safety is something that we are entitled to.
And I want everyone to have that. And there are many communities in the world that have not had that for generations already because of colonialism, because of capitalism and those communities. In order to survive, they had to learn to be resilient and support one another. So in ways that the dominant structures would not like. Nobody was giving that to them and nobody is giving that to us now. And so I would love for it to be a right for everyone. But apparently it's a privilege, and it's a privilege that some of us are very actively losing now in, you know, in countries that we expect democracy to be some sort of God given right. But it's not. Yeah, we're still actively working on protecting these things, and we're actively working on trying to collaborate with those who have been squashed for generations by the powers that be.
RAY: Yeah. And what and how much we can learn from them. And this sort of welcome to the party moment, you know, like, after exactly George Floyd and Covid. It was like, oh, now you would like to join the world of people who feel vulnerable.
FORD: Yeah. Exactly.
RAY: Yes. And you oh, now you want to rely on community. Okay. Right. So yes. The humility there to, thank you for spelling all of that out.
If you're just joining us, you're listening to Climate Magic. I'm Doctor Sarah Ray, and I'm speaking with Bonita Louise Ford about the inner capacities we need to face ecological devastation.
How does your experience working with Gen Z as a program lead with the Climate Mental Health Network? What does that teach you? What do young people teach us about inner capacities, and what do they need? What wisdom do they need from their elders?
FORD: You know, it’s so interesting. I've been chewing on this question recently. I was part of a webinar a couple of weeks ago, and one of the Gen Zers from our cohort and I were having a conversation as part of this webinar and just really exploring intergenerational relationships. And one thing that's really interesting to me is that with Climate Mental Health Network, with our Gen Z cohort, we didn't actively frame our work and my relationship with them as an intergenerational relationship, which it absolutely is.
And I think part of it is that I don't see myself as so different from them, even though I have 20 years more experience. And I absolutely remember what it was like being a teen, being in my mid-twenties, having kind of my own little existential crises, wondering what the meaning of life was looking at the state of the world and thinking, oh wow, like, why are we so, why am I going to school the time just so I can get a job so I can retire and die? Like, is that really what all this is about? And so what?
What do they need? I think. So just from my direct experience with them, what I have heard from them in this last year is that they really appreciate places to come, to share their feelings and times, for them to engage in self-care and just to be received with care and compassion and support. And we can all give that, and we can give that to anyone of any age. It's so simple.
And I think what I learn from them is, the stakes are higher for Gen Z. They live in this dark place. They are just immersed in this dark place. And so it looks much darker. I think for many of them than it was for me when I was that age. And it's about for me being a friend, being a mentor. I think it's just really about learning how to be learning how to listen, having humility and learning how to support myself through those dark places. And in that offering threads that may be lifelines for some of them. Yeah.
RAY: Yeah. This work around intergenerational wisdom exchange seems like such an important offering you're suggesting here, too. And I think there's, there's a gap, a generational gap where young people often feel like older people have left them with a set of problems and have benefited immensely from extraction. And all these systems that are now they're inheriting and they're falling apart as they inherit them. And there's a resentment there. And so how to heal some of that resentment and get some coalition-building to happen, because there are people in older generations who have been working on all kinds of justice movements for a long time and have a lot to offer too.
And so there's this kind of work: What do the older generations have to offer, that is not condescending? You know, that's not patronizing, because I think I hear a lot of older people saying things like, oh, well, we had our difficulties too. And, or it was just so dismissive. Right. Or, you know, young people are just always worked up and emotional or, your generation doesn't have any grit, or, you know, all kinds of things, dismissive about young people's idealism and the reality that they believe the darkness that you describe them in and the lack of compassion around that can create a lot of tension between these generations.
So, yeah, I'm loving that you're, you're offering this bridge and this exchange, and I think we need to find more opportunities for that. I wanted to ask a question on, just maybe you can talk a little bit about the inner capacities. You have a whole chapter that describes inner capacities. You don't have, there's quite a few of them. I recommend people go look for it, look at the list themselves. But maybe your top couple of favorite inner capacities.
I'll set us up by reading from your book. You say “I want to help the world. I wish I knew how to do this most effectively and how best to direct you. Although I do not have any clear answers, these four key questions guide how I live: 1: How might I create meaning and happiness in my life through helping others or taking care of the earth? 2: how can I apply my passion and purpose to helping my community or the greater world? 3: how might I live so that I might be at peace when I die? 4: how might I share love and nourishment today?”
How do those four questions help you wake up in the morning? I don't know if you still do that, but how do those four questions help us understand these inner capacities that are going to keep us feeling agential, having agency, you know, being full so we can hug the stranger?
FORD: Oh, you and I could unpack this for another hour, I'm sure.
RAY: Can you make it quick? [laughter] Oh my goodness, I'm okay. You know. What's your favorite? What's your favorite? You know, there's something there. Maybe if it helps you filter– one of the things I really love about your book is it didn't ask for anything grand. It wanted heroic visions and humble ideas. Right? I mean, this is like every day we have many choices we make. How can every single choice live out our alignment with our values? This kind of daily practice, rather than thinking, I have to wait until I have more power to make a difference, or I need to wait till I have more money to make a difference, or I am simply not big enough ever to make a difference. Or the world. The problems are so big. I'll never make a difference. So kind of going back to our sense of, you know, having our lives not be consequential in the face of the crisis. Perhaps maybe your wisdom around those daily questions.
FORD: I think a couple of things that tie those questions together for me are meaning and gratitude. And so the questions around how can we, how might I create happiness while contributing to the life around me like it goes back to what I was talking about before of like, when we're really giving from that full hearted place. It's a very reciprocal giving and receiving and that also connects with how might I live my life now so that when I die, hopefully I can be at peace in those last moments?
And to me, that’s so much about meaning, about creating a sense of, you know, not just taking from the world and extracting from the world and getting, you know, squeezing every last drop of, of goodness we can from a day or for a moment. But it's really about how can I it's this, and you write about it, Sarah, just this kind of sacred abundance that I think when we're really aligned and we're really giving from this full, rich, meaningful place, we're giving and receiving and just feeding our hearts and our souls so deeply and nourishing ourselves so deeply.
And I think gratitude is also part of that, because gratitude as a practice for me is a very regular part of my life. I would really encourage listeners to, if you don't already have some sort of gratitude practice to explore that, whether it be through journaling, through prayer, through meditation, I just find that going from the mind's negativity bias to really actively refocusing on what is positive in my life, in the world, what are all the things that support me? What are all the things that went the way I had hoped today? What nourishes me? What supports me in my life?
All of these things, big and small, I think can really help to, you know, refill that cup and yeah, so I think, I think meaning and gratitude are simple. And in some ways they're also very big spiritual concepts that sometimes in some moments of my life, I have a hard time wrapping my head around. And I think of them more as practices, as verbs than as nouns. It's something that I can work towards cultivating moment by moment.
RAY: Yeah, I really love that too, because, it feels like you said, it's so small and simple and yet timeless. Timeless. I'm, I'm sort of thinking towards, you know, the arc of our conversation. And you wrote Embers of Hope. You're going to write another book? Yes. You're working on it now. You are obviously updating or going some other directions. What's what are you chewing on now? What is lighting up your, that inner spark for continuing to have consequence in your daily choices, despite things feeling even worse than when you wrote your book?
FORD: The world looks a little bit darker now than it did in 2020 when I was wrapping up my first book. So my new book baby, is called Climate Care, and it's written for a younger audience, so it's written for Gen Z, Gen Alpha.
RAY: And so my children, yay! Thank you for doing that.
FORD: You're welcome. Well, and I hope adults will read it as well. Of course, I hope my generation, I hope our generation will read it. And it's a continuation of the threads and the themes I explored in Embers. And it's also just a deepening of the learning that I've had in the last few years, especially in working with youth and collaborating with youth, and in holding space for Gen Zers. I think one of the big things that stands out for me that didn't get into Embers, and I really highlight it now when in my more, in my right, in my writing, and also when speaking with groups is just that research has shown that those who experience climate distress are more likely to participate in environmental behaviors, and also that engaging in collective action and in collective environmental action actually buffers our mental health. And so and to really underscore that piece of collective, it's not just individual actions, but it's really about collective action that actually it's this piece around community.
And it was it's it's there in Embers. It's there in my life. And I really bringing that to the forefront more in my writing and in my community engagement, in my volunteer work. Now, just the importance of leaning into community for a sense of care for just whether and like for emotional support as well as physical support when in times of crisis. Yeah. So it's just looking like in this period, just really listening more deeply and speaking more deeply to a younger audience and really bringing to the forefront the role of community.
RAY: Yeah, thank you for that. I am, of course I am thinking about that too. And, even the research suggests that it's not even the action part. It's the collective part that buffers the mental health. Because we're social beings and social inclusion is such an essential part of our mental health. And the background story of the fact that young people are coming of age in such an incredibly difficult moment historically, politically, ecologically is, you know, with a backdrop of their mental health and their loneliness and the social media stuff, you know, is just like.
FORD: Wow.
RAY: I feel like we need the book. So thank you for that. Is there anything else that you'd like to shed light on that other people are doing the work climate magic you want to sprinkle into the end here?
FORD: Yeah. So a little just going back to so maybe this is a one way of tying a neat temporary bow and putting a pin in this conversation. And maybe we can revisit this in a year or two.
RAY: Let's have another conversation.
FORD: Yeah. I'm just, I'm thinking about circling back to this piece around learning to make fire without matches. And so I just I want to again just set the listener up for this. And so me learning to use the bow drill, it was, it sucked. Like I really suck at the bow drill. I wanted to give up all the time. I wanted to throw the thing out the window. I wanted to throw it in the fire, regularly pushing up against this inner voice that said, you're not going to be able to do it. Just give up. And what I was actively doing in that process, too was, okay, well, let this just be a practice for me. Even if I never see any progress. Once a day I'm going to work with the bow drill until my arm gets tired. And so there was one night I was getting ready to go to bed and I thought, oh, I forgot to work on the bow. Okay, I'm just going to grab my stuff and I'm just going to go in the front porch, and it's an enclosed front porch. Our house is made of wood.
RAY: That's how little faith you had.
FORD: Yeah, it's like I had no faith. Like I'd been weeks of only making fire and smoke when I had. There was a weekend where I was with a group of friends. We were learning wilderness skills with a another friend who's a teacher. And I think all of us manage to make smoke and squeaky noises and some ash by the end of that weekend. And I took and weeks later, I was only still making smoke and dust and squeaky noises.
And so I took my bow drill and closed the door very daintily. And I'm making my squeaky noises on the front porch. I feel my shoulder getting tired. It's like sprinting or you're sprinting like the 100 meter dash. And then it's like telling my body, okay, just do 50 more. So I'm doing this, I do this, and one side, I do it on the other side.
And then I stop, I'm panting and I put the bow drill down and the baseboard, which is what, we're trying to make fire through friction. And so the baseboard is what everything is pushing down into. I put everything down. The baseboard is still smoking. That's kind of unusual. Okay, I blow on it, and then there's this little orange thing in the middle that I had never seen before in my baseboard, and I blow on it. I'm like, oh my gosh, wait. I blow on it again and it's getting brighter.
And so I'm scrambling all around me because I actually had not anticipated being able to make fire in that moment. Like just grabbing kindling. I'm on the front porch on the enclosed wooden front porch, grabbing kindling to try and take it to the next step, and I managed to get the kindling smoldering. And so, for the good of the front porch, it's really good that it was not making massive flames.
But the fire starting. Part of my brain was like, oh, Pooh! I wish I had more dry kindling and I wish I had a little bundle to put this ember into. And this thing is slowly catching, and the front porch is getting smokier and smokier and smokier. And then I realized, like, I'm actually making fire indoors and this is not smart. So then all of a sudden I'm looking for water. I run out and get a watering can. And I very sadly, because I want to see if I can get it. I want to get big flames.
RAY: Your first fire. You want to make it, yeah!
FORD: But it's not safe. I'm still indoors, so I have to dump water on it. So I dump water on it and I look at it again. But it's still smoking, so I have to dump water on it again. And so I end up dumping most of this watering can of water onto my first ember. And it was fun and it was funny and it was silly. And it was, again, such a lesson that progress is not linear and that our engagement in this work in the climate movement, in the environmental movement, when the conditions are just right, change can happen in a moment. And the only way that we can prepare is to keep showing up and to keep giving our best.
RAY: 50 more, 50 more, 50.
FORD: Just 50 more. And it can be tiny because when the conditions are right it can just take a spark and we can be that spark or we can be the ones to help make some of those conditions. Right. And so for most of us, our heroic work, we won't be on the front page of Time magazine. You know, our heroic work will be to keep showing up and to keep trying to make those embers and to keep preparing the ground in whatever ways each of us feels called. Because this is community work, this is social change. We need each other. We're finding the way forward. And there are also communities, including, you know, indigenous communities and black communities that have struggled for generations, that we get to look to us as teachers and the natural world that we get to look to as teachers, like looking out to the garden and to our compost bins and to fire and to, you know, to the little seedlings outside into the springtime. And all of these teachers.
RAY: So beautiful. Bonita. I love that you took the invitation to say some more because that was just so beautiful. I am struck as you're speaking by the deep gratitude I feel for you taking the time and energy spending this hour and a half or so with me. And I'm very honored and humbled by that. Thank you.
FORD: Thank you so much, Sarah. And this is as much for you and me as it is for all of the people who will listen to this and all of the places where they are. And that was that is so often my prayer in this work when I come to groups. And what I started with today is just a prayer and intention for all of the places that the people who come to this and all the places that need them and that need their love and that need the healing medicine that they bring to their lives and their communities. So thank you for this. Thank you for your beautiful work.
RAY: Well, the prayer that the healing commence and that the medicine that people can offer that they do. Yeah. Thank you so much, Bonita.
FORD: Thank you Sarah.
RAY: You've just been listening to my conversation about heroic visions and humble ideas over the proverbial pot of tea with Bonita Ford, permaculture practitioner, intergenerational climate activist, mentor, and author of Embers of Hope. Check out our show notes at KHSU.org, and thanks for listening to Climate Magic.
Produced at Cal Poly Humboldt.
