Mom Love Contest!

Watching Mandy (my wife, pictured here with our son Hucky) take on motherhood over the past 5 years has been a site. She is a force. Researching, reading, engaging and playing.

It came naturally to her, but maintaining the balance between who she is as a person and who she is as a mother is not easy. Especially in this era of expectation. Mom's are often expected to be everything to their kids, while also holding down a job, exercising their bodies and souls, supporting partners and still having time for friends and hobbies.

It's a lot, and for our family, the great pause has given me an opportunity to appreciate how much my wife has done for our little guys (aged 3 & 5) to ensure they grow into caring and courageous boys and men.

A big part of this has been environmental stewardship. Mandy has found courses (if you're in Toronto, check out the Pine Project, it's amazing) and books, games and lessons to guide them on a path of understanding, connection and appreciation of the natural world. And I love her for it.

Tell us how your Mom has helped guide you (directly or indirectly) to become more sustainable and connected to the natural world. We'll choose five answers and send your Mom an etee hit kit!

Put your answers in the comments below!

------- Contest Closed! ----------

Congratulations to the commenters below, we'll be contacting you shortly about your etee hit kit !

Mika
My mom instilled in my brother and I from birth a respect for and need to not only protect, but also engage with the planet that sustains us.

From growing out own food to recycling or reusing everything we could, to not teaching us not to buy single use and individually packaged items.

But it wasn’t just teaching us, my mom lives the message. She was an activist and included me in all of these actions. She helped when my friends and I started an environmental awareness organization, Kid’s F.A.C.E (for a clean environment) in the late 80s. She attended the UN Environmental Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1990. (I was supposed to attend with her but she was nervious taking a young child with her to a country where we didn’t speak the language and there were reports of mass sweeps of homeless children being rounded up and transported out of the city before the summit.)

She ran a recycling company at one point to help businesses have an option to recycle (wasn’t a commercial pick-up in the city at the time), ran the local Peace and Justice Center for over 10 years, became a sustainable building expert with my step-father and led workshops around the country on strawbale and cob buildings, living roofs and permaculture.

I think it was seeing her live the message more than her specific teachings that led both my brother and I to also be conscious of and strive to live as sustainably as possible. And now, she is helping to instill those same lessons and values in my children.

Mark Burgess
My Mom is like a plant, she loves the sun and it gives her energy. She also loves flowers and gardening. I always joke with her that she lives on photosynthesis! She is also a long time vegetarian for around 35 years and I’ve become one around 3 years ago. Our neighbors have chickens and we use some of their eggs for food. We have been buying a box of produce from a company that normally sells to restaurants but because of the pandemic, they are selling to everyone rather than throwing them away. We also grow tomatoes and basil at the end of May so it’s almost time to plant them again. Mom loves your soap packets when I showed her how it works so when we run out of our other soap, we are going to use them. I also have 3 glass pumps for the soap so we don’t have to keep buying plastic dispensers with soap in them. It’s difficult to be sustainable during a pandemic but I’m trying. She also helped take care of Dad and I when we were sick during the entirety of March and into April (even when she didn’t feel good as well). I definitely appreciate my Mom today and everyday!

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Comments

My mom instilled in my brother and I from birth a respect for and need to not only protect, but also engage with the planet that sustains us.
From growing out own food to recycling or reusing everything we could, to not teaching us not to buy single use and individually packaged items.
But it wasn’t just teaching us, my mom lives the message. She was an activist and included me in all of these actions. She helped when my friends and I started an environmental awareness organization, Kid’s F.A.C.E (for a clean environment) in the late 80s. She attended the UN Environmental Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1990. (I was supposed to attend with her but she was nervious taking a young child with her to a country where we didn’t speak the language and there were reports of mass sweeps of homeless children being rounded up and transported out of the city before the summit.)
She ran a recycling company at one point to help businesses have an option to recycle (wasn’t a commercial pick-up in the city at the time), ran the local Peace and Justice Center for over 10 years, became a sustainable building expert with my step-father and led workshops around the country on strawbale and cob buildings, living roofs and permaculture.
I think it was seeing her live the message more than her specific teachings that led both my brother and I to also be conscious of and strive to live as sustainably as possible. And now, she is helping to instill those same lessons and values in my children.

Mika on May 11, 2020
My mom raised me and my brother to respect and love our world, nature, and our environment. We were very poor growing up, so frugality was the name of the game, and what we couldn’t purchase at a discount or thrift, we made or did without. She taught us not to waste, that our world is a finite resource that should be highly valued. We were always watching nature documentaries and exploring outside. I remember when I was 5, we came home one day to see construction being done on across the street from us and I felt so upset seeing the earth torn apart so I asked my mom if sharing my gum (lol) with the dirt would make it feel better! When I was 9, we would always make Shark Week a big deal and she provided me with art materials to make flyers to send to “poachers” to get them to stop killing sharks. As a mom now, I’m sure I was a hoot, but I know I’m the compassionate, thrifty mom I am today only because of my mom and how she raised me!

Christine on May 11, 2020
As a single mom of two with a low income, we unintentionally lived more sustainably for budget reasons. We wore hand-me-downs and thrift store finds, sat on secondhand furniture, and never let leftovers go to waste. My incredible mother has an unbeatable knack for picking up the best end-of-driveway freebies. She still continues to collect bottles and cans at her job, ten years after our Girl Scout fundraisers ended.

She also made sure playing outside was a big part of our childhood. We grew up in a rural town and had the coolest backyards – outdoor play kitchen, campfire circles , creeks and forts in the woods. We ate dinner at the picnic table every chance we got in the summer. and when not at home, we were likely at our grandparents farm. She also made sure we were able to participate in a local environmental student organization.

Everything from her thriftiness to her love of the outdoors help lay the foundation for my current journey towards a more sustainable lifestyle. And she gladly listens with an open mind every time I make suggestions for changes she can make too. Love my momma!

Keri on May 11, 2020
My mom grew up during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and resources were scarce. That never left her, and I grew up in a house where we didn’t waste anything. The peanut butter jars that so many threw away were washed and re-purposed to hold flour or rice. Glass jam jars became drinking glasses. Saran wrap was a luxury that we would re-use to cover similarly seasoned leftovers. Paper towels used to dry washed fruit were laid out to dry so we could use them again. Before reduce, reuse, recycle was brought to the mainstream, that was how we loved.

Karen Chang on May 10, 2020
My mom is 91 years old. She grew up in the dirty thirties. How she lived then was mostly how we lived when we were children. There was never saran wrap or paper towels or microfiber cloths in our house. We covered leftovers with a plate. Newspaper and brown paper bags took the place of paper towels and old diapers were used instead of microfiber. We bought seconds in vegetables and fruit from the farmer or the reduced bin at the grocery store. She sewed everything we wore. I shop thrift stores. She used thread off of a wooden spool to floss her teeth. So this is largely how I function today as well. It always chokes me if I have to buy one use products or something encased in plastic products. My mother was a woman ahead of her time by necessity and by choice and I am a better person because of it.

Melinda Bensler on May 10, 2020

Mom Love Contest!

Tell us how your Mom has helped guide you (directly or indirectly) to become more sustainable and connected to the natural world. We'll choose five answers and send your Mom an etee hit kit!

Put your answers in the comments below!

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