How to Start Singing Again

“I thought of myself as a former Peace Corps volunteer who had loved living in a mud hut, and now I had more bathrooms than I could keep clean. I thought of myself as a person who used canvas shopping bags twenty years before it was mainstream, but now with two cars and two electronics-addicted teenagers, I’d developed a low-level despair about my inability to protect the planet they would inherit. I’d been reading about how global warming was withering maize crops in Botswana, the southern African country where I had taught decades earlier – the place that had originally taught me about social responsibility. Our new house was so big, no one heard me when I cried…

At forty-nine, I began taking small steps toward a renewal I couldn’t yet name. I went back through decades of journals, trying to pinpoint when and how I had lost touch with the pieces of myself that were struggling to resurface. I gave away half the stuff in the basement and sold our fossil fuel stock. I also joined a group of spiritually grounded activists who were working to stop mountaintop removal coal mining, a devastating practice that contributed to both global warming and high rates of cancer in Appalachia. At the group’s monthly meetings, I started singing again, which felt symbolic of some deeper transformation that involved claiming my power and my gifts. Most importantly, I remembered I was not alone.”

— Eileen Flanagan, 2015
Quaker activist and speaker