113 and smiling...

Recently a friend invited me to write a letter to the future. Here were her instructions: Imagine writing a letter to your loved ones in the year 2046. Describe BOTH your darkest moment(s) during the COVID-19 era, AND your very brightest. How did it feel? What did you learn? How did it change you?

2046- I'm 88...what a wild ride this river of life has swooped me up. I remember the year of the pandemic lockdown, 2020. In bed for 10 weeks seriously morphing COVID symptoms after having been Xposed in several ways including being the speaker mom at TEDMED in Boston March 2, 2020.  For 9 months I did not drive. For 2 years I did not fly. I listened quietly and invested in myself to go to climate activation faster, easier by joining a Live Event Acceleration Program (LEAP) to learn online event production skills so I did not have to reinvent the wheel, but learn from masters in this skill set.  I am a vessel for travel, still serving from my center. 

I decided I wanted support from my family and friends. After all I was going outside the the banks of the river of my family's usual ways in which money flows. Also I was going outside the boundaries of TEDx...serving beyond ideas worth spreading by focusing solely on climate activating Xclusively. So I led with weekly check ins with two TEDx groups: Saturdays for a global group checkin and Sundays for a global group karaoke. 

When I could finally role out of bed and breathe a bit more reliably, I put out the call for help and assembled TEDxers from Fountain Hills, Arizona, San Francisco, Boulder, and Wilmington, Delaware. We were inspired to assemble 28 online conversations using zoom and learning zoom by using zoom with hundreds of local leaders and global innovators in a series called \"pause...COUNTDOWN: COVID Clues, Climate Acts, Local Impacts.\" Editing these still... and then we helped assemble 100 speakers for \"Climate Across the Americas\" from Antarctica to Alaska.

Meanwhile I was scribing in zoom chats with Humanity Rising, groups focused on climate, and nuclear non proliferation, and the arts. Those 15 years of piano lessons finally paid off! Jim Garrison just said at the one year anniversary, \"Spirited in time of duress, reaching deeply to find hope and grace in the darkness, showing up receiving, thanking, embracing ourselves thru Jim in our endeavors, long way to go til 2030 more assured abundantly in being, soul that was a year ago, deeply confident in mysterious ways beyond our imagination, traverse the challenges bring healing into the world, 1st anniversary of George Floyd his death in highly paradoxical ways focused challenges of race, domination, separation>>>Humanity Rising at a moment to embrace unity, celebrate diversity, each crisis fashion opportunity vector thru Humanity Rising pandemic, recreate state of the world Forum online-Lisette spurring us all on in service to the world, all partnering, DOUGHNUT sprinkled says it all, little circle in the middle to nurture human thriving, happy, healthy, living in resonance with outer circle Earth, GAIA, we are nature/Earth? Gaia, challenge of being human either remember who we are or we are going to forfeit all of what we’ve become birthed. Deepest gratitude to you and all the staff and guests of Humanity Rising for this year of wisdom, inspiration, and hope. I’m also grateful for the archives.  Amen to your words just now, Jim!\"

At the closure of that one year celebration the poet reads, Derek Wolcott's \"Love on Love\"

LOVE AFTER LOVE
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

You can listen to it read here.  It was fused with “Into the Majesty” by Gary Malkin. Humanity Session finished with Schubert...chords of harmonic sensual celebration.

Skiing gave me a physically rarified recovery. From 30 minutes in November to nearly 4 hours in April my lungs recovered to about 50%. My heart still beats irregularly, neuropathy tingles my fingertips and toes and the fourth round of really raw rashes seems to have finally subsided last month. The joy, wide open white spaces and silence  kept my spirits up until my physical being could recover, not wasting my privilege in this planetary crisis. Leadership rises from humble beginnings. 

Unprecedented time (and on top of all this TRUMP still refuses to concede), unprecedented opportunity. Time to create an incredible business as I see that my 80 year old husband with 4 bladder cancer surgeries this year in Alaska has never included me in our financial decisions. I am meant for more responsibility than this. McKenzy, now 24, has stepped up and made sure his dad pulled through. There were a few days I did not know if I would ever see my husband alive again. I'm so grateful for the bond of father-son, those two fly fisherman.  

Peak moments almost always involved teens and mentoring them. TEDxYouth@Vail, delayed a year because of COVID19 (the 19 for the year in which it erupted), finally gifted to our mountain community at the Gerald. R. Ford Amphitheater (named after President Ford who helped put our sister ski area on the map at Beaver Creek, Colorado). IMPACT, the theme carried over from the year before prescient as it was, was the first public event after that year of isolation, lockdown, no large public events, and mask wearing everywhere. Teens planned and produced a full blown TEDx event for the 5th year.                                                                                                                                  LANA GOLLYHORN - Psychotherapist, M.A., spoke of childhood not being a checklist.
LILLY REYNOLDS - STUDENT ANTI-VAPING ADVOCATE, changed 4 county and ultimately state policy on vaping
ELLA SRHOLEZ - Artist, mental health advocate, spoke about vulnerability and abuse in her powerful red, whit, and black images
ELLA DUNN - Student of public speaking, ironically was the first ever TEDxYouth@Vail speaker to walk off the stage. She rerecorded her talk later-big growth lessons.
WILLA HEALY - Student, diabetic, drug price control advocate, compared the cost of insulin to life and called for far lower life saving drug prices
ROBYE NOTHNAGEL - Anti-distracted Driver Advocate nearly died from a distracted driver texting. The crashed car in the open area woke many to listen to her truth.
MARK MATSON - Comedian - There are one set of facts and multiple truths on climate change. It's happening. It's real. We chuckled through beginning to tackle the crisis. THOMAS SINGLETON - Coach, delivered a tearful finish on getting outside of our comfort zones.

The other teens that year, in Moonshot Pirates, were from Europe-London, Sweden, and Austria. Imparting life experience to their angst, bulimia, and depression gave them proof that it is possible to get through teen uncertainty in a time of immense uncertainty for us all. We started each session with sea shanties, revealed deep secrets with each other and opened hearts to serve the decency of our humanness. Our dialogues respected, reflected, guided us to appreciate the daily drama we each were Xperiencing in the midst of the pandemic when so many were locked in fear, forced to see/feel what was happening in our disrupted worlds. We turned struggles into solutions. In serving, my own health concerns seemed to vanish.

Then I was 2 weeks away from launching a new company TRUST Climate Action Strategists. People needed to make an urgent mindshift for living brightly and being ready to right their relations by being raving fans for this theory of change. Climate typically taught in a tone of doom-and-gloom, shifted to FUN & DONE made many move more quickly to climate resiliency. People before were confused, overwhelmed, and paralyzed. I believed that people were ready for clarity, simplicity, and personal carbon reduction. So I designed a colorful playbook, curated passionate climate responders to speak with our attendees and assembled a purposeful platform for transformation. Most importantly every talk was linked to a layer of action for packing a solid personal climate action plan. 

The team learnings continued. I attracted a group of powerful, committed women who took on partnerships and social media because I was so focused on assembling the Xperience to deliver on the promise of Fun & Done. I was nervous, overwhelmed, and focused. Learning was super steep that year of pandemic lockdown-2020. Over 20 new tech tools to make the magic appear. I was fired up, ready to go, listening to former President Barack Obama tell the story of the woman who generated Fired Up, Ready to Go! I've heard it so many times. I even felt it the summer of 2020 when 15 minutes from my house the raging Grizzly Creek Fire threatened our Rocky Mountain communities. Go back ready to go. I am not forgetting it.

Emerging from my bed beginning to breathe a bit lighter, I decided that I would invest my remaining breaths in giving what I could for preparing the world in responding to climate. This was the next big thing that mattered. Our collective decisions of LIVING BRIGHTLY in Earth mattered more than ever before. We were together right then. 

Pivoting to climate activations was the wisest gift in which I could have invested my remaining breaths. We shifted the culture from one tiny group of mostly friends to major multinational corporations. We masterminded and modeled climate action that was community and team building, that brought accountability to ever widening circles of good, that enhanced the range of opportunities to millions for surviving what was a pulse of unsustainable consumption of life in Earth. We gave up Xtraction, domination, and distraction. We focused on solving our survivability with communities of joy, creativity, and generosity. 

Now we live Lighter and Brighter, more connected, respectful of all our relations. The song of birds is heard. Whales sing undisturbed in a sea again silent space for their whaling songs to be signals to each other, swimmingly free. So many parts of nature have recovered. Most importantly the piece of nature that has come the furthest is the nature of humans. We have again understood that we are part of, rather than separate from and dominating over, nature. We are nature reflecting its evolution back to a universal goodness, ever widening circle of good. At the next 25 years into the future beyond 2046...may we find peace in all our places inside and out. I'll be 113 and smiling.