Survivor’s Manifesto

I have the right to live. I have the right to eat, drink and enjoy my fair share of the good things in life. I have the right to search for happiness until I find it, on my own terms and by my own definition. I have the right to love and be loved.

Active Beauty

Have you seen this article, about how nearly 50% of kids don’t spend time outside each day? And, sad but not surprising, little girls are far more likely to spend their days indoors than than little boys.

Not at my house.

P. S. yes, she did eat the dandelion. 🙂

Sticks and Stones and Broken Bones Never Sounded Better

There is no doubt that Western children inhabit a frighteningly gender stereotyped, sexually-charged world. The world my children are growing up in feels foreign to me, unlike anything I’ve even read about, perhaps aside from Atwood’s all-too-believable version of our society’s possible dystopian future.

Concerned parents are anxiously trying to protect their children from what has been aptly termed a “sexualized wallpaper” of media and marketing directed at our kids. How do we combat something so pervasive?

Could it really be as simple as just #notbuyingit?

Only time will tell, but I can tell you this: you will not find Barbie pink or anything adorned with skulls and flames anywhere in nature. Our prescriptive gendered color palettes were invented at a marketing meeting, not discovered by children engaged in healthy, active outdoor play.

Reconnecting with the earth may turn out to be the only way to protect our kids from the media’s narrow understanding of what it means to be human.