A couple of nights ago, listening to Aidan snore lightly in his cot, my mind began to race with fears about the future.   I was tired, hoping for an early night before a busy weekend, yet sleep eluded me.

Dramatic images of extreme weather, food shortages and chaos flooded my mind. My stomach churned with anxiety. Worst of all, I knew my worries wouldn’t be gone in the morning or be eased by nighttime tricks such as camomile tea.

I was so restless, I woke up my poor husband!  Luckily he was sympathetic.  As an environmental lawyer, he has had to confront similar concerns himself whilst battling with climate change legislation. Sleepily he admitted that he had hidden his own fears from me as he didn’t want to scare me!

He gave me a useful piece of advice which I have been thinking about over the weekend; the trick of owning our fear.   This practice involves fully confronting our fears in order to learn from them and move towards positive action, as taught by the influential environmental activist and author, Joanna Macy. Naomi Klein also urges us to face our fears in her persuasive book about climate change, politics and parenthood – This Changes Everything.

Sleep finally won and when I was allowed to sleep until almost 7.30 (a great result!) I did feel a bit better.  I’m sure I will have many more restless nights but facing my worries has made me even more determined to become actively involved.  I want to help avoid those dramatic images from being realised.

I have been researching campaigns during Aidan’s naps this week and I keep uncovering exciting ideas.  To pick one example from many, I discovered a Australian group called 1million women (onemillionwomen.com.au) which encourages women to campaign for action on climate change.  I was really impressed by this model for inspiring action.

Please let me know if you have ideas or campaigns which we could discuss here.  Let’s truly own our climate fears and move towards positive action!