Gudrun Cartwright

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Gudrun Cartwright As a woman in my late forties, I am definitely approaching menopause. I feel in that ‘peri’ state. Even though I am perpetually altered by chemical hormones, due to suffering from pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). My doctor tells me I can’t be feeling this because I am on the pill, but I know my hormones are still there. Just masked. I feel them every month as I move through my cycle. And I am also childfree. Purposefully so. It’s not that I didn’t want children. For many years I did. But for my husband and I, we…

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Gudrun Cartwright As always, I was fascinated by what happened in Davos this year. If not necessarily encouraged. Donald Trump criticised climate ’prophets of doom’, pronouncing the amazingness of the USA and promoting their fracked gas as a safe solution to energy security. On the same stage, Greta Thunberg gave all the adults in the room a good talking to about the rapid action needed to tackle climate and ecological breakdown to provide her generation with a future that they can thrive in. HRH The Prince of Wales told us that we have just ten years to get our…

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Gudrun Cartwright Today I need to write. For the last few weeks I have been consumed with work. I have written for that purpose, but not for me. Not for my website. My mission. My sanity. Yet again, life is getting in the way. I have such great plans. Such lofty ambitions. But I get caught in the day to day. As Stephen Covey famously said in the 7 habits of highly effective people, in the urgent, but not so important, when I consider my overall mission. How do you go about redressing this balance? Find the time, when…

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…

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.…

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…

Permaculture Womens Guild

By Gudrun Cartwright I was born in 1972. This means, that by any stretch of the imagination, I am halfway through my life now. Depending on which grandparents you look at, it could be just there, or significantly over! Having just had my 46th birthday, I am in reflective mood. Which is not just because of my age — although I am not quite sure how I got here this quickly! I was born in a significant year, although most people wouldn’t recognise it as such. 1972 saw the first Earth Rise picture and the publication of the Limits to Growth for…