Earth Day

This Earth Day, I feel two things at once: deeply in love with the planet and also incandescently livid that corporations keep lighting it on fire for profit. If you’re plus size and/or queer and you care about the earth, social justice, and the weirdly tender field of ecopsychology (hi, same), you probably already know this: what happens to land and what happens to bodies is connected. Indigenous folks have been saying this forever. Extraction culture doesn’t stop at oil. It shows up as colonization, ableism, fatphobia, transphobia, and the constant pressure to make everything “useful” and “productive.”

Ecopsychology says what a lot of us feel in our bones: when the world is hurting, we hurt too. Grief, anxiety, numbness, rage, dissociation - none of that means you’re broken. It means you’re paying attention. The nervous system isn’t designed to calmly scroll through mass extinction like it’s a menu. So if Earth Day hits you like a wave, you don’t need to “stay positive.” You can be heartbroken and still show up. You can be tired and still care.

As an outdoor portrait photographer (family portraits + outdoor boudoir), I spend a lot of time outside with people who are trying to come back to themselves. Nature can be a mirror and a medicine. Not in a “go touch grass and your trauma disappears” way, but in a real, grounded way: breathe with the wind through the trees, feel your feet on the dirt, let the water hold your attention for five minutes. Outdoor sessions are basically permission slips to be in your body without performing. To laugh, to rest, to be feral, to be soft. To remember you belong here.

Earth Day isn’t about being a perfect eco-saint with a mason jar and zero contradictions. It’s about relationship. With the land. With your community. With your own body. So plant something if you can. Donate or mutual aid if you can. Vote, organize and call people in when it’s safe. And also go outside and let yourself be loved by the world for a minute. The earth deserves care, and so do you.