Calling Generation X: is it up to us to save the planet?

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Gudrun Cartwright Will Generation X please stand up? It is time for us to own our power and create a world that works for everyone, now and into the future. To truly grow up. As more than a million young people strike around the planet to demand action on climate change, please join me in committing to showing them that we are listening and responding. That they can rest assured that the grownups are on it. As Gen Xers, we seem to get forgotten. We’re the middle sibling. Not boomers. Not millennials. As a result, we can fall through the…

What does it mean to be an adult in the 21st Century?

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Gudrun Cartwright What does the term ‘grown up’ bring to mind for you? In a society where growing older is seen as a bad thing, is it appealing? As children and young people, we want more than anything to be adults. To feel in charge of our own destiny, be taken seriously and exercise agency in the world. However, when we reach adulthood, it’s easy to get distracted from the privileges and responsibilities being grown up bring us. But we will become adults. To reach the peak of our powers. To be the ones who take care of things.…

Thou Shalt Not Unhamster

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Julia Pereira Dias Not everyone is frustrated about not having followed their dreams. I know a number of wonderful people that live the ‘normal life’ of doing some kind of job that pays their bills, raising their kids and going on a vacation every now and then. The job is not a dream job, but they appreciate what it does for them. They appreciate the sense of security it provides them — the security of blending in, of regular pay checks, a cosy family and the comfort of little rewards to enjoy. They are self-aware. They know that their need for…

Where have all the grownups gone? Ecological responsibility

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Gudrun Cartwright Having recently had a birthday that makes me closer to 50 than to 40, I am, if we’re honest well into middle age. The response to this thought has been that I am being silly, I am still young. Even though, technically, it isn’t true. So, this got me to thinking, why are we so reluctant to face getting older? To accepting we are in the middle of our lives when we actually are? To embrace the responsibility and opportunity of being the grownups? After all, this is what our teenage selves wanted more than anything. It seems…