✨On ethical climate storytelling and the need for intention w/ what we engage with and create✨ “Those who love us never leave us alone with our grief. At the moment they show us our wound, they reveal they have the medicine” - Alice Walker. This year (+ beyond!) I'm committing myself to the Hurston-Walker Test (coined by the brilliant @brookeObie) to guide the climate content I choose to engage with + create. We’ve recently seen an influx in climate aware media (like in films like “Don’t Look Up”). Seeing climate change ascend into popular discourse + entertainment has been exhilarating because it represents the labor of love of those who fought to make it happen. However, it has also revealed an important truth: It’s not enough to simply tell climate stories. Representation for representation sake is never the answer. While integrating climate into the framework of media is necessary, so too is ensuring that the narratives that are presented are whole and truthful. And the truth is: “giving up” is not in the fabric of who we are as humans, and it never has been. To grapple with the saga that is climate, we must understand that while the wounds of existential threat/grief are omnipresent, so too is the human desire to fight to LIVE another day. It’s in our DNA to persevere because tomorrow has never been promised. The environmental justice movement (and every other social justice movement) is a breathing example of this. Telling stories that ignore this truth is not only irresponsible, but incorrect. There are ways to tell the heartbreaking truth of our planetary circumstance (to reveal the wound), while also appreciating the human “nobility of a soul that has suffered to the point almost of erasure, that still struggles to be whole, present, giving” (present the medicine). This is the essence of the Hurston-Walker Test. We don’t need all the answers to know that if there is a will, there is a way. We deserve to engage with + create stories and futures that present us with a mirror, not a closed door.