Linus, cackling, is doing his best. He crawls after Lukas and the blue blanket as fast as his hands and knees will go. The blanket snags on a chair, and the chair gets dragged into the kitchen island before crashing to the ground.

More cackling ensues from the boys. It’s chaos. Pure chaos.

That night at bedtime, Lukas reaches for a book we’ve already read a million times: Where the Wild Things Are.

We really do love this book.1 I think Lukas recognizes himself in it. Max’s wild rumpus looks a lot like our living room at 5:15 p.m.

And this past weekend Lukas dressed up as Max for the second Halloween in a row. Linus and I dressed up as his Wild Things. Lukas spent the whole night running ahead of us telling everyone, ‘I’m Max’.

Every so often, my partner comes home from a trail run in the Wasatch Mountains close to our home and tells me he saw a moose. Wild moose!! I get so excited every time, because I love a moose.2 They’re wonderfully strange. They can seal their nostrils shut and plunge their whole heads underwater to graze on pond plants. They’re gangly, knobby-kneed, and so incredibly tall.

They’re also very fast and very protective. A mother moose will charge a hiker, a dog, or anything that gets too close to her calf. And every fall, a bull moose grows a crown of antlers that can span six feet and weigh close to forty pounds. Moose antlers are some of the fastest-growing bone in the animal world. And they’re triggered to grow by a surge of testosterone timed to the shortening days.

Moose, it turns out, are a lot like us... Or maybe we’re a lot like moose. Because we also change when we become parents and with shifting seasons.

A few weeks ago I was listening to a Radiolab episode about hormones. Reporter Molly Webster had read that her menstrual cycle changes her brain every month, and she set out to find out if it was true. It is. Researchers scanned one woman’s brain every day for a month and watched it shift along with her hormones.

I couldn’t stop thinking about my own brain. If one menstrual cycle can reshape it, what had the last four years done? In pregnancy, estrogen and progesterone climb to many times their usual levels, the highest they will ever reach. Within days of giving birth, they crash. And since 2023, I’d done that twice.

No wonder I felt untethered.

The Radiolab team describes all of us as living at the mercy of “a crashing sea of chemicals.” And it’s not just women. The same lab scanned a man’s brain every day for a month, and watched his hormones rise and fall on their own daily rhythm.

Learning this helps. It explains what we’ve been experiencing. Over the last few years, my partner and I have repeatedly acknowledged that things are changing, things feel different, and we’re not the same as we were in 2022.

One study followed more than 600 young men in the Philippines and found that new dads’ testosterone fell by roughly a quarter to a third. The dads doing the most hands-on childcare had the lowest levels. And in marmosets, where fathers carry their babies most of the day, dads’ brains actually grow new connections in the region that handles planning and focus.

But this is where I also struggle because… I like schedules, plans, order, the comfort of knowing what comes next.

Parenting doesn’t allow me to always be in control. And the more I settle into becoming a mom (still settling btw), the more I find myself having to embrace the chaos.

We’re a house of wild things, growing and changing in real time, together.

Almost a year ago, I wrote about how much I love how wild, curious, and adventurous my boys are. And I want to take that further here. Because as I walked around as a wild thing for the second Halloween in a row... I realized not only do I love how wild my giggly boys are. But they are teaching me to be wilder, freer, sillier, and more curious. And how freakin’ cool is that.

Books give us room to explore identities beyond our own and recognize parts of ourselves we didn’t have words for. They helped me in my teens. In my twenties. And in the last few years, they’ve helped me figure myself out through motherhood.

Stories can challenge what we think we know, help us understand people whose lives look different from ours, and make us question the boxes we put people in. We need that in order to grow, and so do our kids.

📚 Jodi Picoult handed out banned books in Salt Lake: The first-ever Salt Lake Book Festival happened this month. And I got to be a part of the team that put it all together. Headliner Jodi Picoult gave away 600 free copies of Nineteen Minutes, the novel Utah banned from every public school.

✍️ Two-thirds of Utah's banned authors are women: Utah added seven more books to its statewide school ban list. That makes 44. And 19 of the 28 authors on the list are women. A Weber State professor says that ratio doesn't match publishing at all. This is a fight over who gets to be seen in the stories we read.

🥕 In happier, cozier things about books: I feel like I’m mirroring this book energy these days. also has some fun posts that will match you with a book based on your favorite vegetable or sandwich.

This month, I also got to share with about that one time the internet was right. Spoiler: Touching grass really does help.

Becoming Mom

Mom Hack: The 20-Minute Reset That Actually Worked

Note: This is a guest post and the 8th installment in the Becoming Mom Real Talk series, where I create space for women to share their journey to becoming a mom…

Read more

a month ago · 19 likes · 16 comments · Vaughan | Becoming Mom and Helena 'Ellie' Huizenga

And that brings me to this month's ramble. It took almost three years and two babies. But I'm starting to know (and love) this new version of me. If you've ever felt like a lungfish sorted into the wrong box, this one is for you….

Kaikeyi felt like a fitting read for a month spent thinking about which stories we get to read. It digs into who gets to tell their story, who gets labeled the villain, and how many versions of ourselves we might grow into.

Thanks for being here. If you know someone else who likes to ramble about parenting, would call themselves a treehugger, or loves a good book, forward them this newsletter so they can join us too.

Until next time, take care of yourself, your people, and the patch of earth around you.

I had my 9-month-old baby on my hip, and I was walking in to get my oldest from daycare. Somewhere in those 30 feet, it hit me: I was doing it. My two little humans were fed, loved, and happy. And I was actually starting to feel happy too.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t been happy before. I just didn’t feel like myself. I loved my kiddos more than anything in the world. And there were moments of extreme joy. But most of the time I felt like I was having to work really hard to be happy. (Plus, postpartum had been hard.)

In my 20s, I always knew I wanted kids to be part of my future. But I didn’t spend time daydreaming about being a mom. I dreamed about backpacking in the Himalayan mountains and seeing Mt. Cook with my own eyes.

So when I became a mom, the hard part wasn’t the responsibilities. It was that I didn’t recognize the woman in the mirror. I didn’t know what this new life would look like. I didn’t know who I was supposed to become, or what things would bring me joy.

And it wasn’t just me. A few weeks after we started a nanny share, our nanny asked Jesse (my partner) a question we didn’t see coming. “Do you want me to call you Dad or Jesse in front of Lukas?” We stared at her, confused. Dad, obviously. Then she explained. She’d noticed Jesse always greeted Lukas with “It’s Jesse,” never “It’s Dad.” Calling ourselves Mom and Dad still felt weird. We hadn’t settled into it yet.

Part of why I struggled is because for most of history, when a woman becomes a mother… that’s all she’s allowed to be. We have to give up the other parts of ourselves once we take on the role of mom. My disorientation was never about my kids, or about not wanting the role. I just didn’t want to be reduced to one thing.

Years ago, before I became a parent, my friend Schylar and I read Why Fish Don’t Exist, by Lulu Miller, together. The book follows a nineteenth-century taxonomist named David Starr Jordan, a man obsessed with sorting the natural world into its proper categories. The guy found and named almost a fifth of the world’s known fish. (I mean that’s like a crazy amount of fish to categorize.)

The trouble, as Miller shows, is that most of us don’t fit in a tidy little box.1 Take a lungfish. It looks like a very fishy fish, all scales and fins. But it breathes air, and it’s more closely related to humans (what!) than a salmon.

Since becoming a mom, I keep thinking about that book. After I gave birth to my son, I’ve felt like the lungfish. Sorted into a box that doesn’t quite hold me. I’d been carrying mom the way Jordan carried fish, like it was fixed and final, a category I had to fit into cleanly.

But I’m learning it isn’t about going back to who I was before. And it’s not about fitting into society’s version of what mom is. It’s about figuring out what my version of motherhood looks like.

And I think that’s true for all of us who call ourselves moms. There’s no one right way to do this. We need to give ourselves permission to become mothers in the ways that fit us, rather than trying to squeeze ourselves into someone else’s version of what motherhood should look like.

I’m starting new things (like going back to school to get my MFA in children’s literature.) And I’m re-exploring the things that have always brought me joy. But now I do them with my kids. I still read, still write, still swim, still travel, still hike. It all just looks different now. Shorter trails. A kid on my back instead of a pack. Picture books mixed in with the novels. Louder plane rides.

Flashback to daycare. We’re leaving now. Linus is still on my hip. And now, Lukas’s hand in mine. We’re walking back to the car. I feel like myself. It took almost three years and two babies, but I’m starting to know (and love) this new version of me.

And there’s another layer to all of this too. I want to raise boys who won’t box themselves in, or box anyone else in. I want them to push back on the toxic masculinity boxes society puts them in. Through my own life, I can show them what it looks like to find your own version of yourself in this messy, tangled but still beautiful world.

Thanks for being here. If you know someone else who likes to ramble about parenting, would call themselves a treehugger, or loves a good book, forward them this newsletter so they can join us too.

Until next time, take care of yourself, your people, and the patch of earth around you.

My family and I have slipped into our new fall rhythms, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. How about you? Is the shift in seasons changing your rhythms too?

🔥 The end of a brutally hot summer: It was one of the hottest summers I can remember in Salt Lake City. And it seems the heat was extreme everywhere, with fires like these happening all over the world. We had our own summer of fires here too.

🍼 I stopped breastfeeding: After what often felt like a full-time job, my youngest weaned me this month. He seemed to lead the charge in being done. It’s the kind of ending that’s equal parts relief and grief. And apparently lots of us feel like this. Breastfeeding was a hard journey for me. It was filled with pain, discomfort, and issues. But despite all of that, I can’t help but be a little sad that this chapter seems to be over.

🥩 The tariffs are ending. But only for beef: Of all the foods to make cheaper and easier to import, we picked the one with the biggest climate footprint. The administration suspended tariffs on 300,000 tons of it this month. Imagine if we made it this easy to import foods with less environmental cost to the planet...

Also, if you haven’t seen it yet, started a really beautiful series about small actions that build big hearts, and I’m so grateful to have contributed this month. See my favorite picture books about climate change and how we both bring climate action into our homes. 💚

And that brings me to this month’s ramble. The one I didn’t know how to end. But ain’t that just life? The hillside burned, and then it grew back. Summer ended, and fall showed up. I stopped nursing, and my son started crawling. Endings are just the start of new growth.

I read another book by one of my favorite authors. Backman takes a bank robbery gone wrong and turns it into a tender, funny story about broken people finding each other. Perfect reading for a month that seemed to be themed about endings, since it quietly showed once again how endings can lead to the next thing.

Thanks for being here. If you know someone else who likes to ramble about parenting, would call themselves a treehugger, or loves a good book, forward them this newsletter so they can join us too.

Until next time, take care of yourself, your people, and the patch of earth around you.

The first fire came in June. This one was behind our house. As I was making lunch, my partner yelled from our bedroom, “Elle, quick come here”! Together we watched the firefighters fight the flames from our bedroom window. For the second time in three years, the trails I love were burning.

About two weeks later, the hills behind our son’s preschool caught on fire too. This fire was even bigger. From nearly anywhere in the city, you could see the helicopters and tanker planes flying low, dropping red retardant across the University of Utah’s foothills.

A few days after that, I was flying home with Linus, after visiting my grandmother. We flew straight into the smoke that was clouding the air from the fires down south. I had never experienced anything like it. Out the window, the sky went hazy, then red. I felt like I was inside a climate dystopia. We couldn’t see the ground. We couldn’t see clouds, or sky, or anything at all. Just red and haze. And then, almost as if someone had drawn a line across the sky, we came out the other side into clear air, like nothing had happened at all.

Once we landed, I immediately looked up what we had flown over. They were calling it the Cottonwood Fire, and at the moment I was flying through its smoke, it had grown past 92,000 acres and was the largest active wildfire in the country.

And then, finally, the fires seemed to dissipate. For the first week of July, the air cleared, and I let myself believe the worst was behind us. Maybe this summer of fires would ease up after all.

Until we went to Minnesota for my MFA residency. The summer of fires continued.

On the way to a children’s bookstore with my mom and both boys, the smoke descended. I turned to look at my mom in the passenger seat, confused, and from the back seat my son announced, ominously, “there’s a storm coming.” He wasn’t wrong. We were driving into what turned out to be the worst smoke the Twin Cities had ever recorded. Air quality monitors logged readings so high they shattered the old records across the metro, and for a stretch of that afternoon, Minneapolis had the worst air quality of any major city on the planet.

We could all feel the smoke in our lungs. And smoke is hardest on the smallest lungs. I could see it affecting my six-month-old: the new runny nose, the cough. I found myself watching him breathe, worried if he’d be okay.

It felt like the fires were following me.

Turns out they weren’t following just me. It was happening all over the world. Europe was having one of its worst fire seasons on record. More than a million acres had already burned across the continent, roughly triple the recent average. Crete evacuated entire villages as olive groves went up and three firefighters died. Around Bordeaux, in southwestern France, whole towns emptied out as the fires advanced. In Spain, a fire near Ávila became the largest in the country’s recorded history.

Was this “summer of fires” my climate dread coming true in real life? The slow loss of the planet is one of the things that keeps me up at night. And the world was literally burning around me.

Typically, when I write an article, I come to the page and outline my thoughts. Before I begin writing, I know the beginning, the middle, and the end. But this time, I don’t know how to end. I can’t seem to find a way to give this article closure. Every time I sit down to try and write the ending, I see a report of another fire around the world.

Maybe I end this article by talking about action. By saying that as the earth keeps showing me her strength, I’ll keep standing up for her in the small ways I can. I’ll vote. I’ll lobby.

Maybe I end it by admitting that after a summer like this one, it’s easy to feel like the small things don’t matter, and that some days I just feel sad and scared.

Or maybe I try and find a way to end it with hope.

Linus’s cough cleared up a few days after we got home. The hills behind our house are black again, but I know from experience that green will come back to them. And when we hike on that charred path this year, I’ll talk to my sons about what it means to be resilient as we look for the sprouts of green shooting through the black dirt.

Thanks for being here. If you know someone else who likes to ramble about parenting, would call themselves a treehugger, or loves a good book, forward them this newsletter so they can join us too.

Until next time, take care of yourself, your people, and the patch of earth around you.

But it was all-consuming, exhausting, intimidating, inspiring, and empowering. My whole family came with me, and somehow we managed to juggle our toddler, a six-month-old, two working parents, and a week full of workshops, lectures, readings, and very little downtime.

My biggest takeaway was how fun, enjoyable, and important children’s literature is. Not just for kids, but for all of us (more on this below). And as you’ll see by this month’s peek at my bowser history, most of my brainspace in August was taken up with all things kid-lit.

📖 Why children’s books?: Rundell, who writes fantasy for children and nonfiction for adults, makes the case that children’s literature is the purest form of storytelling. And if there’s one thing I’m learning, it is that we (as adults) should be reading them too.

P.S. I’m reading this book for school, and I’m finding it really interesting. I need someone to read it with me so we can discuss. :)

💩 Apparently, 94.7% of children’s books are crud: Back in May, Mac Barnett, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, caused a bit of chaos after writing that nearly 95% of children’s books are “crud.” The kidlit community promptly lost its mind. Some kinda agree, some are offended, some are mad. I think I land somewhere in the middle. Maybe he could’ve said it better, but I do think we should have high expectations for children’s literature.

⛔ But even if children’s books are 'crud, does that mean we ban them? I mean, I don’t think so. I went to a read-in at Utah’s Capitol to protest all the books being banned in our Utah schools. I understand wanting to limit your kids' exposure to certain content. I am super conscious of limiting what my sons consume! But I also believe books are one of the safest places for kids to encounter complexity, difference, and difficult emotions. Taking those stories away narrows not just what children can read, but what they can imagine.

Another P.S. I’m signed up for Book Riot’s literary activism newsletter, and it helps me stay pretty up to date on what’s going on around book bans.

This month, I wrote about one of my favorite places in the world. And why I think the library might be one of the most radical and important institutions we have.

I’d love to know: what’s your relationship with your library? Is it somewhere you visit regularly? A place you haven’t been in years? Share your favorite library memory with me in the comments of the post. I’d love to hear it.

I think as adults we often don't give YA enough credit. TBH, there's a good chance you're reading YA books without even realizing it. The Hate U Give, Code Name Verity, The Book Thief, and the original Throne of Glass series are all technically YA.

The line between YA and adult fiction is blurrier than most people think. YA isn’t a genre; a book typically lands in YA if it has a younger protagonist. And some of the best storytelling happening today is in what gets classified as a YA book.

Thanks for being here. If you know someone else who likes to ramble about parenting, would call themselves a treehugger, or loves a good book, forward them this newsletter so they can join us too.

Until next time, take care of yourself, your people, and the patch of earth around you.

Over twenty years later, I’m on the way to the library again. This time with a crying toddler in the back of my car. Stressed and over-stimulated, I throw open the car door, and the dry, hot air of Salt Lake City’s summer instantly sucks the moisture from my skin. I grab my son and carry him inside. We step through the doors, and both of us take a deep breath. As I set him down, he beelines straight towards the picture books. “WALK,” I whisper-yell at him as I follow. Before we can make it to a chair, he opens a book and pulls me down. Like twenty years before, I plop down right in the middle of the aisle and start to read.

In every city I’ve moved to, getting a library card is one of the first things I do. And the library has been with me through all the different versions of myself.

As a broke intern in D.C. I could only afford to do free things. So I’d go to the Library of Congress and romanize my work as I sat under its painted dome. As a slightly less broke but still broke intern in Philadelphia, I’d walk to the Parkway Central Library from my sublet in Fairmont. I’d wander the marbled halls to escape the summer heat and read in the heavenly air-conditioned rooms.1

Then, as a new grad working my first job in Seattle, I’d go to my neighborhood library in Magnolia.2 I’d see kids picking out books after school and join them in scouring the aisles for my next read. I eventually moved to Phoenix during COVID. By then, I was in my late twenties, working a corporate job and trying to make sense of everything. So, I’d put on my mask and go to the library. During one of the most uncertain times in the world, the library was still there.

Now, I live in Salt Lake City, and the library is still a huge part of the new stage of life I’ve entered. I take my kids to the storytelling times and meet other moms. I check out books for my book club. I’ve even got my sons’ passports with help from the SLC library.

The Salt Lake City library also has a seed library, where you check out actual seeds, grow a garden. They provide free language learning through Rosetta Stone. They host STEM workshops, tinkering labs, yoga, and story times. And when the heat settles over the valley during summer, the library opens its doors as a cooling center.

I’m currently getting my master’s in creative writing for children and young adults. I am spending my free time learning how to write stories that open new worlds for kids, help them feel less alone, and teach them important life lessons.

And this all feels particularly precarious because right now it feels like books are under attack. Especially in Utah.

Utah has banned more than thirty books from school libraries. The list includes Forever... by Judy Blume, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Looking for Alaska by John Green, The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, and Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. Utah now leads the country for the most books banned by any single state.

I can understand why parents want to limit what content their kids consume. I 100% monitor and limit what books, shows, and music my kids consume. But just because content is heavy or sad doesn’t mean kids shouldn’t experience it. In fact, I think if something makes you uncomfortable or forces you to face hard truths, it’s more of a reason for kids to read it. By reading it, you learn how to move through trauma, grief, hardship, belonging, and identity.

In February, my sons and I joined about 300 people in the Utah Capitol Rotunda for a read-in. Organized by the coalition Let Utah Read, it was exactly what it sounds like. People gathered in the rotunda and read aloud from banned books. I held my son on my lap. Librarians were there. Teachers were there. Parents like me were there.

Just like the planet, the library is easy to take for granted until it’s gone. So I keep showing up. I check out the books. I take my kids to story time. I sit on the floor in the aisle. I fight for the place I’ve felt connected to in every city I’ve lived in. Because I know just as it shaped me, it will be so valuable in helping me raise thoughtful, empathetic, curious boys. So how about you? Do you love your library too? Have you gotten your library card yet?

2

The Seattle library was the first library I connected to my e-reader. And a whole new world was unlocked. Books now could magically appear on my Kindle. The fact that I can get library books on my e-reader is one of my favorite things in the whole world.

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Thanks for being here. If you know someone else who likes to ramble about parenting, would call themselves a treehugger, or loves a good book, forward them this newsletter so they can join us too.

Until next time, take care of yourself, your people, and the patch of earth around you.

I then dragged my whole family to Minnesota for the start of my MFA program. Ten days of conversations, workshops, and lectures. Yes, I’m tired, but I left inspired and full of ideas.

It did make me re-face that ever-persistent feeling of imposter syndrome. (Does this ever go away as a writer? Or a mother? Or anything else for that matter?) I think I may have found my uncomfortable thing for the year?

I bookended the month by running my first race since having my second baby. It was a 10K trail run in the Wasatch Mountains behind my home. It was brutal. I ended up walking most of it. But I did it with my sister, which made it worth it.

So many exciting new experiences and new beginnings packed into just a few weeks. I’m going into August feeling grateful, a little overwhelmed, and excited to see what’s next. How are you ending July?

⚽ World Cup fun things: Maybe it’s because my month was so packed that I didn’t follow the World Cup as closely as I usually do. Even so, I still carved out time to watch a few games, laugh at the funny quirks of the U.S. that visiting fans were discovering, join in on the Norway team hype, and learn a bit more about how climate change is affecting the tournament along the way.

📚 National lands are shrinking again: President Donald Trump has once again signed an executive order shrinking the boundaries of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in southern Utah red rock country (my backyard), this time by almost 90%. It’s the largest rollback of protected land in American history. Honestly, I’m just so tired. But the fight for land that can’t protect itself must persist.

✍️ Is publishing about yourself a trap?: It’s no surprise, since a lot of my writing includes personal anecdotes, that I liked this post. It’s a thoughtful piece about the risks of personal writing, especially for women. It talks about how it can define you, limit you, and shape how your work is perceived. But this piece also highlights the value in it, and how it makes us feel less alone, too.

This month, I'm unpacking what boycotts can—and can't—accomplish, and whether they're still worth participating in even when the impact isn't always obvious.

I want my dollars to reflect my values. But I also know one person skipping their chicken biscuit isn't going to topple a billion-dollar corporation overnight. Do you boycott certain companies? If so, what helps you decide when it's worth it?

With my MFA program beginning this month, it felt like the perfect time to finally pick up A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf’s classic meditation on writing, independence, and what women need in order to create.

Thanks for being here. If you know someone else who likes to ramble about parenting, would call themselves a treehugger, or loves a good book, forward them this newsletter so they can join us too.

Until next time, take care of yourself, your people, and the patch of earth around you.

That was my first real attempt at aligning my wallet with my values. And over a decade later, I’m still trying.1 But it’s hard, and I can’t help but wonder if boycotts even make a difference anyway.

Boycotts have definitely led to measurable change in the past. We learn about the Montgomery bus boycott in school; it’s inspiring and empowering, and it’s what I think about when I think about a successful boycott.

But what’s often glossed over is how long the boycott actually lasted. After Rosa Parks was arrested in December 1955 for refusing to give up her seat, residents of Montgomery, Alabama, stopped riding city buses for 381 days. I repeat: 381 days. That’s over a year of walking to work in the Alabama heat and cold, organizing carpools, and enduring harassment and violence.

It wasn’t a single moment of refusal. It was a sustained inconvenience, repeated daily, by thousands of people. The boycott worked not because everyone did something one time, but because thousands of people made the same inconvenient choice over and over again.

Today’s boycotts feel different. They tend to be less localized, and they feel more ‘social media viral’ to me.2

In early 2025, Target rolled back its DEI commitments, walking back a $2 billion pledge to Black-owned businesses it had made in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. The boycott that followed was led by Rev. Dr. Jamal Bryant, a Georgia pastor who launched what he called a “Target Fast” during Lent. Foot traffic declined for months, and Target's CEO acknowledged on an earnings call that the boycott had played a role in the company's first-quarter sales decline. But, as the company is still very much around, Target obviously did not experience a catastrophic long-term collapse due to the boycott.

Another recent example is the Tesla boycott. Once a car that environmentally conscious buyers were proud to own, the Tesla brand became something many owners wanted to distance themselves from as Musk's politics moved further to the right.3 After he spent early 2025 openly campaigning for far-right parties, the internet did what the internet does. Videos of people returning their Teslas went viral. Protesters showed up at dealerships. By the end of 2025, Tesla recorded the largest sales decline in their history.

But despite that, the research seems to show that if it’s a big enough company, boycotts rarely hurt revenue in the long run. What seems to be the number-one predictor of a boycott’s effectiveness is how much media attention it generates. Boycotts seem to play a larger role in branding and reputation than in actual finances.

Which brings me back to Chick-fil-A. When the boycott hit in 2012, customer visits actually increased in the months that followed. There was a counter-movement of Chick-fil-A supporters who purposefully spent their money there. And yet. The decade-plus of sustained pressure did eventually push the company to pull its donations from the most overtly anti-LGBTQ+ organizations.4

So do boycotts work? It depends on what we mean by “work.” Will my individual choice to stop buying Chick-fil-A send the company into financial ruin? No. It definitely will not.

But collective, sustained, organized economic pressure, combined with media attention and customer demand, does force companies and institutions to address their choices. Collective action is powerful not because every individual choice moves the needle, but because enough people making the same inconvenient choice, over and over, adds up to something companies can’t ignore.

When I stopped eating at Chick-fil-A in college, I didn’t see any immediate change. But it did help me start to pay attention to where my money goes.

Boycotts are not going to solve the world’s problems. But they are another pillar among the many pillars of trying to live in alignment with what I care about. Purchasing power isn't just about toppling corporations. I like to believe it’s about our agency too.

I know I’m not perfect, and there’s privilege surrounding this issue, but every time we’re spending money, we're casting a small vote for the world we want to live in. The vote doesn't always count the way I might hope. But we still get to cast it.

4

Advocates argue the changes are cosmetic. The cynical part of me thinks they’re right.

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Thanks for being here. If you know someone else who likes to ramble about parenting, would call themselves a treehugger, or loves a good book, forward them this newsletter so they can join us too.

Until next time, take care of yourself, your people, and the patch of earth around you.

But in an ideal world, the kiddos are in bed around seven. So anything that goes past 6:30 p.m. (don’t judge us… okay maybe you can judge us a little) feels too late. And our midsummer morning party was a success. It was full of rock painting, mud kitchen playing, bagel smorgasbords, and even some elderflower mimosas.

Wherever you are, I hope you find your summer joy (like mountain hikes or morning parties) and lean into it.

📚 Throw the party: If I learned anything from our midsummer morning party, it’s that it’s important to get people together to eat, talk, and be around each other. And I’m always so grateful when our friends host get-togethers that bring multiple groups of us together. And you never know what kind of impact celebrating a friend might have years later.

👗 In clothing news: Pretty sad about the Everlane sell-out. They felt like an eco-option. But alas, it was a lie. Reformation too. I knew we shouldn’t be buying—and instead thrifting—but it still makes me sad that these companies aren’t what they claim to be.

🥾 Anyone have hiking with kids tips?: As you can see with my ramble this month and the before-mentioned ‘Mountain Sundays’, I like to hike. But going with the kids is hard, and it always takes so much longer than we think it will. It’s always worth it, but it does feel like I spend half the time just trying to convince my toddler to put his shoes on.

I spent much of my twenties chasing mountains. And now in my thirties, I still can’t get enough of them. It’s one of the main reasons my partner and I moved to Salt Lake City. We want to ski in the winters and hike in the summers.

Climate change can sometimes feel like a story about data, policies, and distant futures. But I think it's also a story about love.

Thanks for being here. If you know someone else who likes to ramble about parenting, would call themselves a treehugger, or loves a good book, forward them this newsletter so they can join us too.

Until next time, take care of yourself, your people, and the patch of earth around you.

Suddenly, there she was. Towering in the distance, her snow-covered peak glowed in the fading light. She was massive, commanding, and beautiful. I was in absolute awe.

It was love at first sight.

At first, I thought my love with Mt. Rainier would just be an infatuation. I’d get over her beauty. I mean, she couldn’t always be this amazing? But she could, and I was obsessed.

I started checking for her every morning, looking out our window to see if “the mountain was out.” I would find myself gazing at Rainier from different spots around Seattle, mesmerized by her ever-changing moods. Sometimes, she would wake up happy, radiating a soft, pink light. Sometimes, she wouldn’t wake up at all, her peak hidden in mist and clouds.

The mountains I grew up with are gentler. I grew up in Georgia, where the trails are green and wind through dense forests. They are beautiful, but you rarely reach a point where you rise above the treeline. The mountains in Washington are different. If you hike long enough, you’ll eventually break beyond the trees and step into flower meadows. Hike even further? You reach jagged rocks and mountain tops.

I’d plan hikes and weekend getaways all with the goal of getting even more views of Mt. Rainier. It wasn’t long before I needed to see her up close. I’d go to Mt. Rainier National Park so I could walk through the old-growth forests and high-altitude flower meadows.

My obsession grew. I wanted more. And so I sought other mountains like her.

I looked in awe at the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. I wandered through the Himalayas. I hiked through the peaks surrounding Cusco. I summited Humphreys Peak, the tallest mountain in Arizona. I walked through the Sierra Nevadas. I climbed a volcano in Bali. I explored the mountains of Banff.

Each place offered something different. And I fell for them all. Each mountain, a new love.2

But like most epic love stories, my mountain love comes with heartbreak. Climate change is altering these places. Glaciers are retreating. Snow arrives later and melts earlier. Summers grow hotter and drier, raising the risk of wildfires that reshape entire landscapes.

It was impossible to ignore the effects of climate change on the mountains while standing in front of Mount Cook with my son.

It was my first time seeing New Zealand’s highest peak in person.3 From a distance, the glaciers looked vast and permanent, like something that would always be there. But up close, the change was undeniable. You could see it in the exposed rock, in the way the ice no longer stretched as far down the valley as it once had. What should have felt solid and enduring instead felt fragile.

I held my son as we took in the beauty of Mt. Cook. But alongside that awe, I couldn’t help but wonder: What did this look like ten years ago? What will it look like ten years from now?

Getting to share my love of mountains with my sons is one of the things that gives me the most joy. But it comes with responsibility. My love for these places is what drives me to advocate for The Great Salt Lake, to leave no trace, to lobby for policies that protect our environment, to teach my son not just to cherish the mountains, but to stand up for them. Because when you love something deeply, you don’t stand by as it disappears. You fight with everything you have to keep it alive.

Sometimes, I wonder what life would have been like had I not moved to Seattle and stared at Mt. Rainier every morning from my apartment. Would I still feel this love for the mountains? This need to lace up my boots and hike?

Yes. I think so. I loved hiking and exploring long before I moved to Seattle. And though Rainier was my first mountain obsession, she definitely won’t be my last.

I spent the last two months getting my applications together. And at the beginning of May I found out that I’ve been accepted into the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Hamline University. Yay! [Insert my nervous, excited yelp here.]

Motherhood has given me a lot of things. And one of those things is clarity. Motherhood makes me ask over and over again: what do I actually want to spend my time on? I keep coming back to the same three things… my kids, the environment, and writing. This next step feels like a way to bring all three together in a more intentional way.

If you’ve ever gone back to school later in life, I’d love any tips, advice, or “here’s what I wish I knew” thoughts.

😭 When a humor writer gets depressed: Speaking of figuring yourself out through motherhood, I loved this really thoughtful and silly and vulnerable read by Lindsey Smith. It weaves together grief, shifting self-image, getting older, and poop jokes.

🧪 Has your scientific work been cut? The New York Times wants to know. Research can feel abstract until you remember it shapes the air we breathe, the medicine we take, and the future we’re heading toward.

🌳 How to build a thousand-year-old tree: A really great read about an old, gnarly tree and the role it plays in supporting all kinds of creatures. It also looks into what it means to accelerate the age of trees to foster these environments. It makes me want to find an old tree with bendy branches that I can climb and read a book on.

This past winter, we got almost no snow in Salt Lake City. Utah recorded its lowest snowpack since monitoring began, and it made me wonder: What actually happens if all the ice melts? So I went down a research rabbit hole to try to figure it out.

The findings can feel overwhelming. But I keep coming back to the same thing: none of this happens overnight, which means there is still time. And that I should just keep doing what I can, when I can.

Thanks for being here. If you know someone else who likes to ramble about parenting, would call themselves a treehugger, or loves a good book, forward this newsletter to them so they can join us too.

Until next time, take care of yourself, your people, and the patch of earth around you.

The moment that love turned into worry is easier to pinpoint. I can trace it back to a single image: a lone polar bear, stranded on a shrinking piece of ice, surrounded by open ocean.

I know. I know. Melting ice has been the poster child for climate change for so long that it’s a cliché. For decades, we’ve been shown B-roll footage of glaciers falling into Arctic waters. But just because we’re oversaturated with photos and headlines about ice melting, it doesn’t mean it’s not true. And it doesn’t mean it’s not a major problem.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reports that Arctic sea ice is declining 13% every decade. And it’s not just Arctic ice that’s melting. Inland ice is disappearing, too. Greenland’s ice sheet has lost an average of 279 gigatons of ice per year between 2002 and 2020. That’s almost an impossible amount of melting ice to picture. It’s enough water each year to cover the entire state of Rhode Island in about a foot of water. Every single year. Yikes.

I had climate anxiety before having kids. But now it’s even stronger. I find myself thinking about their future in very real terms. What will the oceans and coastlines look like for them in 50 years?

I went looking for answers. I dug into reports from NASA, the National Snow and Ice Data Center, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, trying to understand what it all means.

This makes sense. The water from melted ice has to go somewhere. And if all the ice sheets and glaciers on Earth melted, global sea levels would rise by approximately 70 meters, which is about 230 feet. Entire cities such as Shanghai, Amsterdam, Miami, and New Orleans, as well as large parts of New York, would be underwater.

One of the clearest signs this is already happening is something called "sunny day flooding," where high tides alone are enough to spill into streets, even without a storm. Charleston, South Carolina—where two of my siblings went to college, so I’ve been to a lot—now sees an average of 14 flood days a year, just from tides. No storm present. It's a quiet but persistent reminder that the ocean is already rising, and already redrawing the lines.

Did you know ice is like a reflective mirror, bouncing sunlight back into space? Ice reflects more than 80 percent of the light that hits it. When that ice melts, it exposes darker surfaces like ocean water, which absorb heat instead of reflecting it.

So the less ice we have, the more heat is absorbed, which warms the planet more, melts more ice, and absorbs even more heat. On and on and on.

And here's what that actually means for the world my sons are growing up in. Droughts get longer. Wildfires burn hotter. Rainfall becomes more intense in some places and disappears in others. The polar jet stream gets destabilized and can dip south, bringing brutal cold snaps to places that rarely see them. So yes, hotter summers. But also stranger winters. Weather that no longer follows the patterns we built our farms, our cities, and our lives around.

I’m seeing this in my backyard. I live in Salt Lake City, which means I live in a state where 95% of our water supply comes from snowpack. Mountains store snow in winter and slowly release it as melt through the warmer months. This past winter, Utah recorded its lowest snowpack since monitoring began in 1980, with some regions projected to receive as little as 20% of their normal water supply this spring.

The ice melting is affecting my drinking water. And it’s not just my drinking water.

Glaciers hold about 70% of the world’s freshwater. Just like I depend on slow-melting snowpack, hundreds of millions of people depend on the slow melting of glaciers flowing down from mountains to fill rivers, irrigate crops, and supply clean water through the hottest, driest months of the year.

We're back where we started. And the polar bear isn't the only one losing its home. Walruses, arctic foxes, reindeer, beluga whales (and more) all depend on ice. Walruses use it as a resting platform between dives. Polar bears hunt from it. Ringed seals give birth on it. Ice isn't scenery for these animals.

When you look at it all laid out like this, it feels overwhelming. It makes me wonder why I even bother with my little old composting. The problem feels too big, too systematic for any one person to fix. But then I remind myself, I don’t want to be apathetic. I want to teach my sons what it looks like to love something enough to fight for it.

This isn’t an all-or-nothing scenario. Ice doesn’t vanish overnight. It thins, fractures, and retreats gradually. The polar bear is still out there. And that means there’s still time. We can take action. We can lobby, and advocate, and vote, and boycott. We can raise kids who understand why it matters.

But underneath this feeling of being untethered, there’s this quiet sense of hope. Like I’m standing right on the edge of some new version of myself I haven’t fully figured out yet. And it gives me hope—which as you’ll see through all the links below—seems to have been my theme for the month.

🌬️ Salt Lake City emissions are going down: As a local who’s maybe a little too aware of our air quality, this gives me hope that it can get better. There’s still a long way to go, but it’s proof that policy changes can make a difference.

🎵 This music may contain hope: Raye’s new album is worth the long listen. Is it jazz? Is it a musical? Is it pop? Who cares. I love an album that tells a story from start to finish. And this album delivers that and so much more. (I have a guess that the Hans Zimmer track will be my most listened to song this year.)

🧠 To keep climate science alive, researchers are speaking in code: I was expecting to feel discouraged after this read, but it left me with a quiet kind of hope. Scientists aren’t stepping back. They’re adapting and reshaping how they communicate to keep the work moving forward. So here’s a small thank you, sent out into the ether, for the scientists who keep showing up despite it all.

In this essay, I write about taking my three-month-old son on his first hike and how that walk brought me back to the wildfire that burned the hillside behind our home two summers ago.

It’s a piece about motherhood, postpartum, hope, climate change, and the kind of resilience that doesn’t mean returning to who you were before, but growing into someone new.

But I love this hike. I’ve carried my first child up it many times before, so I know where the path narrows, where it gets steep, and where the view begins to open up. And yet, as I took those first steps with my new son against my chest, it felt different.

I remember it clearly. My partner, my eldest son, and I were driving home when we saw flames. At first, we couldn’t tell what we were looking at. Then it became clear; there was a wildfire just a few miles from our home.

The neighborhoods around us were evacuated, and firefighters worked hard to contain it. By the time the blaze was extinguished, acres of brush and grass were gone.

As I walked that same trail now with my second son, I thought about the scorched ground just beyond the ridge. Much of the damage sat just out of view. And yet… I knew what had happened here. I knew what the land had endured. And I was in awe of the regeneration, resilience, and new growth.

Like this trail, motherhood has made me grow in ways I could never anticipate. But it hasn’t been easy growth. It’s been painful, exhausting, and disorienting. Both of my pregnancies were hard. The first weeks of postpartum were even harder (hello, mastitis). Much like a fire, it stripped me bare. I was burned down to my roots. And it was because of that hardship that I discovered how strong I actually am. It’s because of that hardship that I found that growth I never could have anticipated.

When I reached the top of the trail, I slowed, taking in the view of the city in front of me. I couldn’t help but think about the toxic, polluted haze that often envelopes our valley. Climate change in Salt Lake City rarely announces itself as a single dramatic disaster. Instead, it shows up as hotter summers that dry out the foothills and increase the risk of fire (like the one that burned this hillside). It shows up as reduced snowpack in the mountains, reducing the region's water supply. It shows up in toxic, polluted air due to the exposed lakebed of the Great Salt Lake.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Taking it all in, I also can’t help but have hope. The view reminds me that growth is not about waiting for conditions to return to perfect. It is about moving forward with awareness, kindness, action, and intention. It’s about working towards the change you want to see around you.

Walking back down the trail, I realized that this is what true resilience looks like: not returning to what was before, but embracing and moving forward from all that burned.

This hillside I’m so familiar with will never be exactly as it was before the fire. But neither will I. And the truth is, I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to be stagnant. I want to keep growing. I want to keep moving forward. I want to keep discovering more.

Then last weekend, we flew with both kids.

And I definitely did not watch a full movie. There’s no relaxing with our energetic toddler in the mix, but the flight itself was still incredibly fun. He loves airplanes as much as his dad and I do, and his excitement was contagious.

Hope you had a great month and did something that brought you joy, too.

📰 As climate disasters pile up, coverage drops: I found this piece about NBC’s top climate reporter resigning really eye-opening. It’s unsettling that the networks that reach millions are covering less climate news than ever, and that staying informed takes more effort than it should. [Insert my tired sigh here.] Here’s to trying to keep “staying informed” on my already way-too-long to-do list.

📚 Do you judge books by their covers? I definitely do. That’s why I loved this fun, thought-provoking look at the powerful role book covers play in whether we pick a book up or pass it by. It also made me think about how much a book cover shapes our expectations before we’ve even turned the first page.

🐻 Little Bear: Since my second son was born (help! two kiddos are hard!), we’ve been watching Little Bear in the mornings with our toddler. It’s become a really sweet routine. My partner and I drink our coffee while we all ease into the day. I love how slow, gentle, and simple the show is. Nothing flashy or overstimulating, just cozy storytelling. Does anyone have any other slow-paced kids' shows to recommend?

Sooo I lobbied for the second time… and this time, I brought my newborn son with me. It was uncomfortable and intimidating just like last time, but I care about protecting the Great Salt Lake, so I showed up anyway.

In this month’s musing, I reflect on what it looks like to choose discomfort on purpose. What would you choose to do if you had to do something uncomfortable?

My first thought was, we just had a baby! Isn’t that difficult enough? Do we really need to add something more to the list? But that thought only lasted 10 seconds. Because I love this idea.1 And I 100% understand why my partner wants to do it.

Like my partner, I know it’s the uncomfortable and challenging moments that shape you. They are the ones you remember years later, and I don’t want to look back and feel like I wasted time.

I started thinking about the things from past years that left an impact. Almost immediately, I thought about last year when I walked into the Utah State Capitol and lobbied for the first time.

I was scared, overwhelmed, and uncomfortable. I didn’t feel like I belonged there. I wasn’t a lawyer or a politician who knew the right things to say. I was just a mom who wanted to advocate for our environment so my sons can grow up in a place where it’s safe to be outside.

That first time lobbying was empowering. I conquered my discomfort and fear to do something I felt was important. I knew I wanted to do it again.

So this year, when the local environmental nonprofit I volunteer with put out a call for lobbyists, I signed up. And this time, my partner, my brother, a friend, and my six-week-old son came with me. Together, we showed up on a Monday morning to urge lawmakers to protect the Great Salt Lake.

Despite my eagerness to lobby again, I still felt that familiar knot in my stomach. Arguing and challenging people (especially strangers) makes me uncomfortable. But I know that this discomfort is worth overcoming. The science is clear. As the Great Salt Lake shrinks, it exposes toxic dust that hurts public health. It also devastates local wildlife and negatively affects local weather patterns.

Standing in the ornate Utah Capitol halls, I couldn’t stop thinking about my sons growing up in a completely different Utah because I didn’t want to face my discomfort of advocating in person.

I’m not an expert or an insider. I’m a parent and a self-proclaimed tree hugger speaking out from a place of concern and love. I don’t think I’ll ever feel completely comfortable lobbying. It asks me to speak up when my instinct is to smooth things over. But I know discomfort usually means you’re doing something right. It usually means you're stretching yourself. It means you’re growing.

I can check lobbying off my 2026 “do something that makes me uncomfortable” list. But it wasn’t exactly new territory for me. I still feel the need to find something that makes me grow this year.

So what else should I try?2 Maybe I’ll decide to summit Mt. Whitney. Maybe I’ll commit to biking my kids to daycare. Or maybe this year, my challenge will be to focus on my postpartum recovery, giving it the extra attention it deserves.

Whatever I decide, I don’t want to be complacent. I want to move through my year with intention. And I want to show my kids that love (for them and for nature) requires action. And taking that action can be hard, inconvenient, and uncomfortable sometimes. But you take the action anyway.

And although it feels right, it also feels a little surreal to realize I’m firmly in my 30s with two young kids and a mortgage. So much has changed. Just four years ago, I was living in a van with my cat and sleeping in a new location every week. Now, I’m responsible for two small humans and have lived in the same house for four years. Life changes fast.

I’m learning that life with growing kids means my world is constantly changing. But I like change. Because change usually brings growth and excitement. So, bring the rest of my 30s on! Who knows what life will look like in another four years? Kind of exciting, right.

⛷️ Did you watch the Winter Olympics?: I did!! I love watching the mogul skiing (which makes my knees hurt), the curling (even though I have no idea what’s going on), and the figure skating (I gasped in awe at the backflip). I also love the sense of global unity the Games seem to bring. Of course, that unity is complicated.

📖 The lost art of reading a book: This thoughtful piece explores how we’ve traded deep, immersive reading for bite-sized social-media-esque content. I love books and our libraries so much. It was a lovely reminder for me to be intentional with what I consume.

📜 What’s going on with climate policy?: Over the last year of Trump’s administration, I’ve been feeling whiplash watching climate policy swing. This piece from Grist gave me some perspective. It breaks down which changes will stick, which won’t, and why climate action is more resilient than it sometimes feels.

My son and I often debate, “Who loves cheese more? Mom or Luka?” The truth is, we both love it. But I also know that our love of cheese comes with a real environmental cost.

In this month’s musing, I explore what it means to love something that isn’t aligned with my values. If you haven’t read it yet, let me know what you think!

I get why people ask. There’s a lot of confusion about what I’m “allowed” to eat. Many people think I eat a vegan diet, which avoids all animal byproducts. But being vegetarian doesn’t mean giving up eggs, cheese, milk, yogurt, or honey. It focuses on avoiding meat, chicken, and fish.

Ten years ago, I shifted to a vegetarian diet. Once I realized the significant role meat production plays in agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, it felt like the right way to live more in line with what I care about.

Research shows a vegetarian diet lowers a person’s food-related greenhouse gas emissions by roughly one-third. Plus, it frees up land, since growing crops as direct food for humans uses far fewer resources than growing feed for livestock. Water use drops, too, because producing plants typically requires much less irrigation than producing beef.

Being vegetarian is one way I’ve tried to align my actions with my values. Going vegan, however, takes that impact even further. The production of milk, yogurt, eggs, and other animal products requires most of the same resources as meat: large amounts of feed, water, and land, plus methane emissions from cows. One systematic review of dietary habits found that going vegan can reduce an individual’s food-related greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 50–60%.

Vegetarianism makes a difference. But going vegan. That’s even better.

And yet. I’m not vegan. I love cheese way too much. I love pizza with mozzarella, pasta with parmesan, grilled cheese with tomato soup, and just plain old cheese on crackers.

But just because I’m not giving up cheese today doesn’t mean I should ignore its impacts. If anything, it means I should be even more intentional about how I eat it. Every time we shop, cook, or pour milk at the table, I’m not just feeding myself and my kids. I’m leading by example, showing what we prioritize and why.

One thing I try to focus on is buying from ethical places that prioritize animal welfare and sustainable feed practices. Choosing cheese from farms like these feels like voting with my wallet and supporting a system that tries to do better for the land and the animals. I also try to buy local. Cheese made close to home usually requires less transportation, packaging, and refrigeration, which helps reduce its environmental footprint.

I also think about the trade-offs I can make. I might not be willing to give up cheese, but milk? That I can let go of. My partner and I use oat milk or coconut milk as much as we can. It’s a small shift, but it lowers our overall dairy consumption. (My kids still drink milk. Here’s why.) I know none of these are magic fixes, but I believe doing little things is better than doing nothing.

I’m not perfect at any of this. Some weeks—and especially these first weeks postpartum with my second son—convenience and ease win. I usually don’t have the energy to think about making sustainable choices. Parenting has a way of humbling even the best intentions.

Will I ever give up cheese entirely? Probably not. But I can love it with more awareness. It feels similar to how my family approaches travel. We love exploring new places and climbing new mountains. Travel brings us joy, perspective, and connection. We are not going to give that up, but we try to make those choices with context, intention, and responsibility.

So please do not make me give up my cheese. But do remind me to love it sustainably.

During this postpartum period, I find myself comparing my experience to others, which I know is unhealthy. So I deleted Instagram from my phone, which helps a lot. And since I’m not actively taking on new writing assignments right now, I suddenly have a lot more time on my hands.

Well, maybe not a lot of extra time, but definitely more time to pick up my Kindle instead of my phone or computer. If you have any book recommendations, let me know!

📚 Best books of 2025: On the topic of book recommendations, what do you think of this list of the best books of 2025? I actually haven’t read any of them yet, because I tend to put myself on waitlists at my library. This means I don’t often read the hottest new books… while they're hot. But I just got Harlem Rhapsody from the library, and I’m on the waitlist for Wild Dark Shore and Automatic Noodle.

🌳 What to expect (for the climate) in 2026: I’ve been thinking a lot about what 2026 might hold for the climate. There are some reasons for cautious hope and some predictions about the global forces that will shape the year ahead.

📱 Would you consider a digital detox: I mentioned above that I deleted Instagram from my phone, and it’s been great for my mental health. Apparently, over half of us can’t get through dinner without picking up our phones. Yikes.

This month, I shared a post about how I’m teaching myself to raise two little boys. I unpack the assumptions I carried into motherhood and how they’ve shifted as I’ve watched my son(s) grow.

Parenthood is teaching me how to learn, grow, and change in ways I never expected. And I love discovering new parts of myself alongside my boys.