I started off thinking that i would write about how i changed from a 12-year-old vegetarian convert who gave her pocket money to mostly mainstream environmental organizations to a 23-year-old (born 1976) mother who desires to live so as to cause the least harm, but the more i think about it the less simple that transition seems. I've never been an urban activist; i was always too shy for that. I couldn't relate well to my activist friends; they were all living lives with too many contradictions which i felt unable to accept in my own life. Now i've begun to believe it is not possible to initiate change through critisism alone, one needs also to do something, to offer an example of how to live. In my search for a constructive alternative i stumbled upon both Gandhi Farm and my husband. Very suddenly i was hitch-hiking with Derek, whom i had only just met, from Toronto to Nova Scotia with a half empty backpack containing everything i wished to own. I stepped very suddenly out of the mainstream world and into a life of simplicity and hard work. I feel that i'm easily able to live within my life now and no longer spend my days dreaming of the perfect future. I desire to live my life directly. (By that i mean producing the food, shelter, clothing and so on my family and i need to survive. There is no employer to whom i am responsible. I'm not relying on poorer people to produce and process my foods and other survival needs. I'm also not dependent on the market to provide what i need nor am i endangered by its flucuations.)
Some Thoughts About Children, Mothers and Families
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"We must be the change we wish to see in the world." -- Mahatma Gandhi
