You need perspective and hope (not more anxiety, overwhelm, guilt, or despair). And practical suggestions that don't require you to be super-human.
Is that how you feel? Me too.
A Real Green Life is about support for you to...
care for your inner self tenderly
care for your family and community sustainably
care for Earth and life ethically
Hi. I'm Kate. I am ...
a wrangler of anxiety, overwhelm, and insomnia ... a nature lover ... a homeschooling mother... and many other things besides.
I believe...
that sincere intentions count and that Everything is connected -- so caring for anything is caring for Everything.
I advocate for...
individual, family, and community empowerment ... real, local food ... simple, healthy living ... stronger connections to ourselves, each other, and nature.
Everything is connected...
- How we care for our inner selves is how we will care for things in our outer world
- Our physical health is connected to our mental/emotional and spiritual health
- What we eat impacts our own health AND the health of food-growing communities and ecosystems
- What we clean our houses with and put on our skin impacts our own health AND the health of soil, air, water, and everything that lives on and in them
- An individual's health and well-being is tied up with that of their family
- A family's health relies on the social and ecological systems that surround it
No matter which angle you take, health is complex. Individual health is a unique puzzle, inter-laced with puzzles at the family, community, and ecosystem levels, all of it alive and interconnected in unpredictable and complex ways.
That's why you don't need to be CEO or a billionaire to make a difference - because it doesn't matter where you start and no action is too small to matter.
******
Learn more about me, read 9 ways to know if you're the kind of person who might enjoy my work, or keep scrolling for more about A Real Green Life 🙂
A Real Green Life is about caring for ourselves and our families sustainably and ethically
- growing some of your own food in small, easy ways
- making some of your basic bathroom and healthcare needs with ingredients from your kitchen and garden
- increasing your awareness of how simple and inexpensive it can be to care for yourself and your family in home and community-based ways (as opposed to relying on institutions, governments, and experts)
It's also about rebuilding inner resilience and restoring connections
- less anxiety and overwhelm; more meaning, purpose, hope, and empowerment
- parenting your inner self compassionately, so you can take better care of whatever your outer self needs to take care of
- understanding that everything is in relationship to everything else, and that tugging on any one strand in the web of life makes the whole thing tremble (in other words, your sincere intentions and your smallest actions matter)
"Well researched, honest and inspiring..
Kate is a regular contributing author to Permaculture News and I always look forward to receiving her articles. They are always thought provoking, well researched, honest and inspiring.
Kate's articles either present different perspectives (Thinking for Ourselves) or share valuable knowledge, hints and tips (Caring for Ourselves). I know the wider Permaculture community also appreciate Kate's contributions; many comments are shared on her posts.
Thanks Kate."
Anna
Permaculture News Editor - PermacultureNews.org - 2023
On A Real Green Life I write about two main topics:
- Caring for Ourselves as sustainably and ethically as we can
- Thinking for Ourselves in ways that build inner resilience and restore connections
Here's a bit more about each of them.
1. Caring for Ourselves as sustainably and ethically as we can
This is about practical skills to help you decrease your dependence on industrial foods, pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and cleaning products. I write about how to:
- grow some of your own food (One Small Serve is my ebook about how to grow and use 7 beginner friendly plants to establish a home-grown food habit that's easy to maintain).
- gradually replace packaged convenience foods with real, whole, foods and wise, frugal kitchen strategies, without taking as much of your time as you might be thinking (check out these free posts)
- ditch the two most toxic aisles in the supermarket—the cleaning aisle and the bathroom aisle—and replace them with simple, healthy alternatives that you can make at home from basic ingredients for a fraction of the cost
- make some of your basic healthcare needs cheaply and simply, to reduce your exposure to the health threats hidden in pharmaceuticals
You can browse all of my free "Caring for Ourselves Sustainably" posts here.
2. Thinking for Ourselves in ways that build inner resilience and restore connections
In this category of writing I explore topics like:
- why tending to our inner world is critical if we want to make a positive difference in the world around us
- developing our ability to live a self-directed life as opposed to a life directed by the consumer culture that surrounds us
- how our attention, interpretations, and intentions shape our experiences and our world
In this category of writing, I examine the stories we've been living in--our stories about how our world works and our role in it--so that we can make a conscious choice about whether we want our own lives to continue to express these same stories or tell different ones.
You can read more about my philosophy and browse my free "Thinking for Ourselves" posts here.
"Food for thought...
I subscribe to quite a few homestead/green lifestyle newsletters. Yours is so relatable, informative, and gives excellent food for thought; Get Off the Bus is a great example. Thanks so much for your work. Cheers from a Nova Scotia!"
Jessica
Raven's Ridge Permaculture
"Wisdom I can sit with...
Kate, I really like "When Nothing You Can Do Makes a Difference." It's wisdom I can sit with -- wisdom I've been looking for as I think about how to prioritize things going forward. I have it right next to my journal as a reminder."
Lorraine
About the "real" and the "green" in A Real Green Life
I use the word "Real" partly in the sense that it's focused on what's real and important to you. It's living according to your values, as opposed to allowing your life to be driven by capitalism and consumerism. I'm also referring to things like real food, real relationships, and real connections to nature.
I use the word "Green" in the sense that it's about
making choices that are as regenerative as possible, or at least that do less harm. Industrialization and colonialism have conditioned us to live in ways that are extractive and destructive. A Real Green Life seeks to undo that conditioning.
You and your family are inextricably connected to the Whole. So, when you sincerely commit to caring for your self and your family with a focus on your truest values, you are also taking care of the Whole. This is what I call living a Real Green Life.
"Business as usual" vs "a real, green life"
Business as usual | Real and green |
|---|---|
Industrial farming and food manufacturing, supermarket food, fast food, people eating in a rush or eating alone | Real food, grown in healthy ecosystems, local, seasonal, slow, homemade, people eating and sharing with enjoyment |
Giant mono-culture farms, depleted ecosystems, shrinking biodiversity, disappearing top soil and dwindling indigenous knowledge about food and place | Small diverse farms, cottage industry, stable farming communities and ecosystems, room for indigenous people to continue their traditional lifestyles and ways for them to share their wisdom and perspectives |
A growth-at-all-costs global economy dominated by a few giant corporations who sell to the entire world | A steady state economy dominated by millions of small businesses who serve local communities |
Low-quality mass produced products, poorly paid workers, world-wide distribution, a linear progression from raw material to disposable products to landfill | Locally made, fair trade goods, designed to last, a circular economy recycling and re-using materials |
Dependence on supermarkets, superstores, government institutions, and experts; loss of personal autonomy | Increasing self-reliance, learning/remembering how to think for ourselves, re-building the skills of self-sufficiency and interdependence |
People living lives of quite desperation on the up-sizing treadmill | A meaningful life, with fewer possessions and richer connections to family, community, and nature |
On HOMEGROWN FOOD and HOME HEALTH CARE
(Caring for Ourselves posts)
Real food is regenerative, not extractive. Small-scale, regenerative agriculture can help address our food, climate, and community crises.
Taro is an easy-to-grow, nutritious homegrown alternative to rice and pasta from the supermarket. It can be a self-renewing food source, especially useful for when extreme weather events cut supply chains — because the wetter it gets, the happier taro is.
Sweet potato tubers + greens combined give you a calorie AND nutrient dense food from one growing space. Here’s how to grow them at home, including ideas for protecting them from rodents.
Aloe vera is so easy to grow and so useful when you need it. Here is a story, mostly told in pictures, of a nasty chemical burn and how aloe vera came to the rescue.
This post shares two tips to make sure your small scale homegrown food production keeps trucking along even when Life happens and your best gardening intentions go out the window.
If we make our food gardens as much like natural ecosystems as we can, full of diversity and interconnections, they’ll be more vigorous and productive with less effort on our part.
7 small ways to start growing your own food, improving your nutrition, and lowering your grocery costs – even if you’re short on time, space, or confidence.
Once you know how to tell a male pumpkin flower from a female one, it’s a simple matter to hand pollinate your female flowers and be sure of more pumpkins, especially in rainy weather when pollinating insects aren’t on the job. (Or your pollinator population has been decimated by pesticides.)
In frost free areas we’re blessed to be able to grow tropical food plants in the summer and better known European style veggies in the winter. This time of year, spring, is especially abundant with its overlap between the cool weather and hot weather plants. This post shares pics and links to info for a small selection of food plants from our garden.
Recent Thinking for Ourselves Posts
Volition is a source of energy that informs our intentions and energizes our actions, but not all volition comes from the heart. When we’re swept away by clever, compelling messaging from outside of ourselves, we lose touch with our internal volition — with our values and our authentic desires.
If you grew up without learning that mistakes are ok you may have developed a strong inner critic who, like a 5 year old trying to prevent trouble, now controls your adult life to keep you from taking risks. The antidote is to give your self the compassionate leadership you missed out on when you were growing up.
Simple full moon journaling and breath work rituals to help you celebrate achievements and illuminate the obstacles blocking your path.
Each time I benefit from the perspective that hindsight offers, it adds a little to my ability to surrender to the present moment.
When we feel disconnected, everything falls apart. What if instead of scrambling to try to control everything in our lives, we just focused on restoring our spiritual connection, whatever that means for each of us?
Locating power outside of myself leads to me trying to create safety for myself by controlling the people and events around me. Conversely, locating power within myself liberates me to change my internal experience regardless of my outer relationships or circumstances — and that makes a difference to how satisfied and effective I can be both personally and in my efforts to make a difference in the world around me.
In this post I share my definition of a village, why we all need one (whether or not we’re raising children), and the paradox you need to grasp that may enable you to start building your own village even when doing so seems impossible.
What if we lived in a fundamentally intelligent and playful universe in which we could choose to participate, rather than just going along for the ride?
In this essay I share the three aspects of our culture that make it difficult and counter-cultural to live a real green life, and how we can turn those three challenges inside out to unpack the solution (the key) from within the problem.
Here are some of the things I have absolutely had enough of, and some of the changes I want to contribute to. Do you feel the same way? What would you change, in this list?
What if the universe was intelligent? And what if our sincere commitment to developing clarity, integration, and alignment within ourselves, as part of that universal intelligence, really mattered?
The Inner Critic is here to stay. But it doesn’t have to be a source of anxiety and overwhelm. Here are 4 steps for making it your ally.
“REAL” – genuine, authentic, true; not artificial, imitated, or virtual. “GREEN” – regenerative/doing as little harm as possible. If all you do is take this approach to caring for your self, your family, and the places and things you love, you’ll be making a difference.
It’s uncomfortable to be around someone who is suffering because it wakes up all that’s untended to within our own selves. We can’t stand that, so we hurry to put a band aide over what-ever is hurting in the other person, to quiet things down again, so we can get back to pretending we’re fine.
Science is when someone asks nature a specific question and receives a specific answer. Science is ALSO when a bunch of fallible human beings all interact with each other in complicated ways to finally agree on what scientific theories they will then present to the rest of the world.
Choices are like coins – they always have two sides, and both sides stack up in terms of the direction we’re going.
A short post on how we use our time and those uncomfortable feelings of “not enough time,” and “not good enough.” Turns out, they might all be connected.
Our “story,” of how the world works and who we are, is like a script that prompts our choices and actions. There is a new story available to us that prompts cooperative and life affirming behaviors rather than competitive and exploitative ones. Indigenous peoples and eastern spirituality have been indicating it, and the newest sciences are finally now “discovering” it. It’s a story that would put us on an entirely different trajectory.
Sometimes change asks more of us than we have to give, and we break. Sometimes we recover, but whether we recover or not, there is no going back to what we were before the change. We’re transformed us, forever, into something different than we were before. Here’s why I feel that this degree of change is upon us collectively now, and why I feel hopeful even in the midst of all that’s happening around the world.
The “bus” I’m talking about is entire populations of people all gabbling without listening to one another and without thinking clearly. The bus is hurtling toward a cliff, with no-one in the driver’s seat. The opinions, the conflict, the angst, are all fueling the bus. Here’s how to understand what’s going on, and how to disengage from the insanity.
You have a limited amount of mental space and its up to you to choose what to fill it with. In this post, I’ll share 3 practices for using our thinking to “bring ourselves home.”
On HEALTHIER SUPERMARKET HABITS
(Caring for Ourselves posts)
Reducing our supermarket reliance means we can spend less, live better, and look our grandchildren in the eye. This post shares 3 strategies to get you started.
Strategy #4 to help you dethrone the supermarket giants. Includes a link to the previous 3 strategies.
Our physical and social environments have huge influence on our habits and behaviors. People who design supermarkets and sell products know this and take full advantage of it. This post will help you examine what’s shaping your shopping routines and your buying decisions, and learn how to change them.
Whole foods require more planning and organization than processed convenience foods, but the pay-off is worth it. The benefits include: better nutrition, a feeling of empowerment and reconnection as you learn to engage with your food closer to its source, and the satisfaction in knowing you’re taking better care of the Earth just by how you eat.
7 small ways to start growing your own food, improving your nutrition, and lowering your grocery costs – even if you’re short on time, space, or confidence.
"Honest, genuine, thought provoking...
As a homeschooling Mum pursuing a more meaningful life for my family, ARealGreenLife supports me in questioning and expanding my existing world view."
Melita
"No fluff.
So much interesting and important info, neatly packaged, no fluff. "
Gunter
"Insightful ideas and concepts...
I love your stuff - you come up with very insightful ideas and concepts. For example, I never realized that essential oils had become such a big industry that it was impacting on the environment.
Cathy
"Lucid insights...
Thank you Kate. You express your insights and understandings lucidly...
I appreciate the broad perspective you share on subjects that are meaningful to you—social, spiritual, environmental, economical—and the research and reading you do to inform your writing."
Meg
"Realizing how numb we are...
Dear Kate, Thank you for posting such deep and thought provoking blog posts. ... I think you are doing a great service to make us all aware of the consequences of our actions. It makes me realize how numb we are, and how comfortable it is to be numb, just doing what everyone else does and not questioning the real impacts of our lives."
Anonymous
"Non-threatening, easy to read, commonsense...
Reading A Real Green Life offers people the opportunity to question why they live the way they do."
