Author: Cylvia Hayes

Nine Ways to be a Better Friend to the Planet

Posted on by Cylvia Hayes

9-ways-to-be-better-friend-to-earth-graphic
We focus a lot on relationships — relationships with our lovers, our brothers, ourselves, our gods. This article is about another, often overlooked relationship — our relationship with our home. I don’t mean our house, where we store our things and hang our pictures. I mean our home in the big sense, as in Earth, this planet that supports us.

Most articles on taking care of the environment include things like turning off the lights when you leave the room and recycling your pop cans and beer bottles. These are good things and everyone should do them but the bigger bang for the buck actions are less politically correct.

They may make you uncomfortable but, surprisingly, many of the actions we can take to stop trashing the environment may also bring pleasure and peace into our lives.

  • Stop buying crap you don’t need. It is very difficult in this culture not to base our sense of self worth on how much stuff we have. But all that stuff comes out of the Earth one way or another. It is mined, logged, mixed up in toxic chemical plants, etc.

Not only does it take a toll on the planet, but the constant drive to buy, buy, buy also keeps us in debt and struggling even harder to pay bills and make ends meet. It may surprise you how liberating it is to simplify and reduce the amount of stuff in your life. It may also surprise you to learn the beauty and peace in valuing who we are instead of what we have.

  • Get a grip on reality. The reason we are bombarded with messages to buy stuff we don’t really need is because big business, mainstream economists and politicians tell us that the economy has to keep growing all the time to be healthy. This means constantly increasing our consumption of natural resources. But here’s the part of reality they gloss over — we live on a planet of finite natural resources! Right now humans are consuming 1 and ½ Earths-worth of natural resources every year, basically overdrawing our natural resource bank account.

Rascally western novelist Edward Abbey once pointed out, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” What good is the economy if we don’t have a habitable planet? A colleague of mine has written an important book titled, What’s the Economy For Anyway? The book is great. The question is critical.

There is a burgeoning New Economy movement striving to create muscular healthy economic alternatives. You can learn more at www.3estrategies.org.

  • What you do buy, buy local. Products made locally usually require far, far less fossil fuel to reach store shelves, which means they produce far less pollution. This is especially true of locally produced food. Many communities, including Central Oregon, have growing Locavore

In addition to being gentler on the Earth, buying local creates jobs for people right in our communities and provides opportunities to build community as we get to personally know the farmers growing our food, the sewers making our clothes and the brewers crafting our beer.

  • Eat less meat. According to some sources, production of meat, especially beef and pork, is contributing to global warming even more than driving cars. For you big-time meat lovers I’m sure this feels like a major sacrifice but cutting meat just one day a week is good for the Earth and for you – reducing the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity.
  • Drive less, consume less electricity and purchase renewable energy. Plain and simple we are going to have to commit to moving beyond fossil fuels.   It’s doable and many entrepreneurs are already making lots of money creating and providing post-fossil fuel alternatives. As a side benefit reducing energy consumption will save you money on energy bills and perhaps give you a bit more exercise.
  • Have fewer children. I know this rankles some, but the truth is we have both a human population challenge and a resource consumption problem. Each new person adds to both problems. Another uncomfortable truth is that on average each child born in the U.S. does far more environmental damage than a child born in a developing nation because of the huge rate of consumption in the U.S.
  • Just think you’ll be doing something great for the planet and you’ll spare yourself immeasurable hassle, heartache and expense! OK, OK, just kidding – I couldn’t help myself!
  • Get ‘em outside. For the vast majority who feel children are just to magical to forego, be sure to get them outside early and often immersed in the miracle of Nature so that they can learn to love rivers, and forests and wild creatures. Then they too will want to help protect and restore the richness and beauty of our natural world.
  • Kids are naturally enthralled with the wonders and adventures of nature. Making the commitment to give them those opportunities will keep them more active and physically fit, which is a growing challenge in our sedentary, video screen-saturated lives. It will also get parents out moving and exercising.
  • Show a little humility. We humans like to think we are the be all and end all. It is startling to consider that all humans could disappear from the face of the planet tomorrow and the planet would go on just fine, probably even better given how we’re treating it. However, if bees or earthworms were to disappear, taking their pollinating and soil conditioning services with them, Earth’s food web would crash and countless species would vanish. We push back against racism and sexism. Why are we so blasé about speciesism.
  • Broadening our sense of community to include other species doesn’t diminish us as human beings. Just the opposite. It adds rich new layers of connection and wonder. We see beauty in new places.
  • Celebrate our successes. It’s easy to feel that environmental problems are too big for us to do anything about but in fact we’ve had many huge successes when we’ve focused our collective minds and hearts. We came together and put a global ban on chemicals that were eating a hole in the ozone layer and now it is beginning to heal. Due to recovery efforts once-endangered gray wolves, bald eagles, and brown pelicans are now growing in numbers. Just last year the Oregon Chub became the first fish species to have recovered enough to be taken off the endangered species list. Nature heals when we give it a chance.

It’s a lovely planet. It’s our home. Instead of a battle it could be a love affair.

An Explosive Issue: Oil Trains

Posted on by Cylvia Hayes

Ticking time bombs are rumbling through the Pacific Northwest. Nearly overnight the railways of the west have become primary transport routes for trains filled with highly flammable crude oil. Studies report a 5000-percent increase in oil by rail in North America since 2008. With this rapid increase in traffic has come an enormous uptick in derailments, spills and explosions. It is likely a matter of when, not if, one of these trains spews crude into the Deschutes or Columbia Rivers or explodes in someone’s neighborhood.

I first became concerned about oil trains in 2011. As a long-time energy and climate expert and at that time the first lady of Oregon I began researching the logistics and dynamics of oil by rail as well as the options available to states to regulate oil trains. My findings were troubling.

How We Got Here:

The reason for the massive expansion in oil train traffic is due to breakthroughs in drilling technology that make it possible to extract crude and natural gas from shale deposits that were previously inaccessible. Through horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (commonly known as fracking) highly pressurized fluids are forced deep underground to crack rock and allow trapped gas and oil to be pumped to the surface.

The rapid increase in production outpaced the infrastructure for transporting the crude. Lacking sufficient pipeline capacity to handle the enormous uptick in supply, the oil industry’s default option has been to ship the crude by rail in miles’ long chains of black tanker cars.

Prior to 2008 very few crude oil tank cars passed through the Pacific Northwest. Today, it’s estimated that 25 trains a week travel to refineries in Washington State. Each train consists of approximately 100 cars carrying 700 gallons of oil a piece for a total of 30,000 gallons per train. That’s three quarters of a million gallons each week, yet only a fraction of what’s being planned.

Until recently the oil coming through the Northwest has been destined for domestic markets. However, in December 2015, the U.S. Congress removed a forty-year ban on exporting oil. This means, the Pacific Northwest, given its proximity to Asia via shipping channels, stands squarely between the most voracious energy markets in the world and huge North American fossil fuel deposits including Powder River Basin coal, Bakken shale oil and the Alberta tar sands.

Oil Train Derailments and Explosions:

The massive expansion of oil by rail has led to numerous crashes and spills. According to records from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration 2014 saw a six-fold increase in “unintentional releases” from railroad tankers compared to the average number of spills between 1975 and 2012. In 2013 the 1.4 million gallons of oil spilled in train incidents was more than the total for all oil by rail spills since record keeping began in 1975. These incidents are especially dangerous because most of the crude coming from fracking is far more volatile and flammable than conventional crude sources.

The most sensational and tragic incident occurred in July 2013 when 47 people were killed in an oil train inferno in Lac Megantic, Quebec. Other spills sparked a fireball in Virginia, contaminated groundwater in Colorado and poured across acres of ground in Montana. Based on railroad industry data, more than 25 million Americans live within a one-mile blast and evacuation zone of a potential oil train fire.

Moving Forward from Here:

Despite the clear risks associated with oil by rail there are currently plans for massive expansion throughout the Northwest.

According to Eric de Place, Policy Director, for Sightline Institute, “There is currently enough built capacity to handle 300,000 to 400,000 barrels of oil per day. What we know is the industry wants to build the capacity to handle over one million barrels of oil per day, which is way more than we can consume in this region.”

There are approximately a dozen proposed fossil fuel export projects in the Northwest. The Tesoro Savage’s Vancouver project with a capacity of 360,000 barrels per day, is the largest proposal of its kind in North America. According to some calculations this facility alone could increase oil train traffic through the region five-fold.

Last year the federal government did take some steps to increase the safety of oil trains. This incudes a scheduled phase out of older tank cars with newer models that have stronger shells, valves and protective shields to withstand a collision or derailment. The new regulations also require that tank cars on long trains be equipped with an advanced braking system to cut the time and distance needed to stop.

The Inconvenient Bigger Picture

Preventing a massive oil spill in the iconic Columbia or Deschutes rivers or ensuring that neighborhoods don’t blow up in raging firestorms are worthy goals in and of themselves. However, even if rail transport of oil becomes safe there is still a terrible threat.

Research using detailed data and well-established economic models, shows that in order to avoid overshooting the 2 degree Celsius rise in Earth’s temperature that would bring cataclysmic consequences we have to keep a lot of the remaining fossil fuel in the ground, unburned.

Research published in the journal Nature builds on these findings by not only explaining how much fossil fuel would need to be left unburned but also showing regional variations. The study reports that meeting the 2C target would require keeping 82% of today’s coal reserves in the ground. In major coal producing nations like the US, Australia and Russia, more than 90% of remaining coal reserves would need to remain underground. For natural gas 50% of global reserves must remain unburned. And, a third of all remaining oil must be left belowground. The study suggests that keeping the necessary reserves of fossil fuels in the ground through the most economically viable scenarios would require leaving Canada’s tar sands oil virtually untouched.

This means the oil and coal trains plowing through the Pacific Northwest are carrying fossil fuels from the very places that most need to remain un-mined to prevent catastrophic levels of global climate change. Infrastructure isn’t a sexy topic but it is one that is crucial to our futures. Just like the baseball stadium in Field of Dreams, if we build it they will come. In this case, they will be more trains carrying more of the fossil fuel that needs to remain in the ground.

Our Crossroads

The Pacific Northwest, for many good reasons, claims to be a leader in clean energy and climate change action. However that claim is incompatible with allowing our region to become the Gulf Coast of oil train exports. A growing movement is stepping up to this dichotomy.

In British Columbia, Washington and Oregon Native American Tribes, environmental groups, firefighters unions, sports fishers, doctors and public health advocates have all joined the effort to stop the advancement of oil train infrastructure. Sightline Institute has begun calling the region the Thin Green Line. Approximately 20 organizations have formed a coalition called Stand Up to Oil.

There is evidence that this opposition is causing change. Both the Portland and Seattle City Councils recently passed resolutions opposing and restricting oil train transport through the cities. These actions are largely symbolic because, due to interstate commerce laws, cities and even states have little regulatory control over railways. However, the combination of citizen and governmental actions combined with artificially low oil prices is having an effect. Port Westward, the major oil export facility in Oregon has switched back to exporting cleaner ethanol and a facility in Gray’s Harbor Washington has decided to stay with ethanol rather than expanding to crude oil exports.

In the volatile world of fossil fuel extraction, export and addiction the next several years will be a defining era for the Thin Green Line of the Pacific Northwest. This is a time for vigilance and action.

Birds and Bees

Posted on by Cylvia Hayes

Do you think that humans are more important than bugs? Before you scoff consider that we are at risk of losing flowers, fruit trees and much of the global food supply because we are wiping out bugs. We are losing our pollinators. Bees, butterflies, bats and numerous pollinating bird species are all in decline in the U.S. and globally.

According to an important study by the United Nations, 2 out of 5 species of invertebrate pollinators, such as bees and butterflies, are headed toward extinction. Of vertebrate pollinators, such as hummingbirds and bats, 1 in 6 species are facing extinction.

This is no trivial matter. It has enormous environmental, economic and food security implications. There are approximately 20,000 species of pollinators on the planet and they are key to hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of crops each year — from fruits and vegetables to coffee and chocolate.

There are many reasons for these declines although not all are well known. At the top of the list is pesticide use, including the sprays and various poisons people use in our backyards. Another factor is that industrialized agriculture has switched to growing huge monoculture crops that have eradicated plant diversity and wild flowers that pollinators use as food. Paving over paradise has led to massive destruction in habitat in urban settings. Finally, global warming appears to be adding to the pressures by reducing habitat, especially for some species of native bees.

Both the cultivated European honeybee and indigenous native pollinators are struggling. The latter is particularly serious. While honeybees aid in pollination the native species are much more effective. Scientists studied pollination in dozens of crops in every populated continent and found wild pollinators were twice as effective as honeybees in producing seeds and fruit on crops such as coffee, onions, almonds, tomatoes and strawberries.

In 2013 one of the biggest recorded single event bee die-offs took place in Wilsonville Oregon. A landscaping company had sprayed a neonicotinoid pesticide on linden trees in a Target Store parking lot. The trees were in bloom, which attracted bees. At least 25,000 mostly native bumblebees died as a result. In an attempt to reduce further bee kills, workers wrapped protective netting around 55 trees. Visiting the site was disturbing. Looking at the plastic-covered, chemical-soaked trees poking out of an asphalt parking lot left me with a deep sadness and sense of bearing witness to apocalypse. (get photos of this for article).

Although native pollinators may be more efficient, cultivate honeybee hives are critical to large-scale food production and aid with native pollination. And honeybees are facing serious challenges of their own. A variety of factors including an invasive varroa mite are hammering honeybee populations. According to the USDA, just over 40% of commercial honeybee colonies collapsed in the 2015 survey, which was down slightly from the 45% loss of two years earlier!

Growing awareness of the demise of our pollinators has led to a growing movement of hobby and urban beekeeping. In 2012 I joined the buzz, when I had honeybee hives installed at the Oregon Governor’s residence known as Mahonia Hall. The Willamette Valley Bee Keepers Association approached me with the idea and took care of the basic maintenance. I, with the help of my First Lady assistant, created a “brand” called Mahonia Gold, Political Pollen. It was delicious and a highly sought after little gift.

Shortly after that I installed a hive at my personal home in Bend, Oregon. (include photos of my hive, me in bee suit). It was something of a neighborhood affair since my good friends, Jason and Marla Jo Hardy, also got a hive. As with so many things in my life, they have been incredibly helpful me care for the new addition. We were immediately hooked. I put a little stool next to the hive and also had a little Plexiglas window installed so that I could peek into the hive’s inner workings. Throughout the summer I watched them do their work in my yard and my flowers, veggies, raspberries and strawberries thrived.

But sadly, like so many others, my first colony didn’t make it through the winter and one of the Hardy’s colonies failed as well. It was like losing a beloved pet and disturbing in its ramifications. We started over.

Just about a month ago, here in Bend, we had a bout of relatively warm weather and I checked our neighborhood hives to find the bees alive and abuzz. They made it through the winter. When I posted this happy news on Facebook many of my fellow bee enthusiasts reported that their hives had not survived.

I recently attended a “Bee Academy” in Tumalo Oregon to learn how to best care for my colony of pollinators. For anyone interested in keeping bees and supporting pollinators (and getting some delicious honey in the process) there are many resources to help get started. For a general starting point to find resources in your area check out the Pollinator Resource Center at Xerces Society (http://www.xerces.org/pollinator-resource-center/).

And for general rules of thumb for protecting pollinators and therefore our food supply think about the following:

  • Avoid using pesticides in your own yards and gardens. There are many safe, healthier alternatives.
  • Fill your gardens with plants that attract and nourish bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.
  • Support local and state bans on neonicotinoid pesticides that are particularly destructive to pollinator species.
  • Buy organic food whenever you can and demand it more, and more affordably, when you can’t find it.

Pollination is needed for approximately three-quarters of global food crops. It’s really insects, not humans, who have the ability to protect global food security. The next time you think about swatting that buzzing insect think about how important she might be.

The Delta 5: Ordinary People Taking Extraordinary Actions

Posted on by Cylvia Hayes

On July 24, 2014 at 2am a train carrying 100 cars of highly explosive crude oil went off the tracks under the Magnolia Bridge in Seattle. Each tanker car held 28,000 gallons of oil. Fortunately the train was moving very slowly and none of the oil spilled or exploded.

All of this took place within a mile of where Abby Brockway’s daughter goes to school. For Brockway, that was a defining moment, “After that day, I realized that I couldn’t wait any longer – I needed to take action.”

Two months later Brockway and four others — Michael LaPointe, Patrick Mazza, Jackie Minchew, Elizabeth Spoerri — erected an 18 foot tall metal tripod over Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway tracks at the Delta Rail Yard in Everett, Washington in protest of oil trains and inaction on climate change. Petite Brockway climbed to the very top of the tall structure and the other four locked themselves to the foot of the poles. Eight hours later, with the help of a fire department ladder truck and the jaws-of-life, they were arrested and charged with criminal trespass and blocking a train. They were dubbed the Delta 5.

In January, I travelled to a small courthouse tucked between strip malls north of Seattle to attend the Delta 5 trial. For four days the typically quiet courtroom was overflowing with observers, supporters, reporters and television cameras. It was so packed that many times many of us had to sit on the floor. From the beginning I sensed I was witnessing something historic.

This was to be the first time the necessity defense was argued in a U.S. climate or fossil fuel-connected civil disobedience trial, and only the second climate necessity trial in the world. The necessity defense makes the case that any crimes committed were necessary to avert greater harms from climate change and fossil fuel pollution. After hearing the entire necessity defense arguments, Judge Anthony Howard determined that the defendants had met most but not all of the requirements to have the jury consider it and instructed jurors to make their decision based solely on the legal definitions of criminal trespassing and intentionally blocking a train.

The jury eventually delivered a surprising decision, finding the defendants guilty of second degree criminal trespass but not of intentionally obstructing a train. Ironically, the railroad said that the specific train the Delta 5 had blocked was not scheduled to leave until later that night.

The final two hours of the trial delivered extraordinary moments. One took place during a break after the jury had delivered their decision. The Delta 5 and their legal team were huddling in a narrow hallway outside the courtroom. Three of the jurors joined the group. As reporters and photographers crowded around the jurors and defendants addressed one another.

The jurors expressed remorse for ruling guilty on any charge. Sixty-one year old truck driver Joe Lundheim wiped away tears when Abby Brockway said, “I’m actually really pleased with what you delivered to us, because we have options now and there’s more we can do with this, and this was probably the best verdict that could have been returned to us.”

Lundheim went on to say, “That was huge in itself, that you guys were able to bring this matter to a jury trial. … There’s this very narrow window of time when traffic is going to exponentially increase on this toxic product coming through our neighborhoods to make a buck—while a buck is able to be made—before it closes … And I know this because I’ve been listening to this stuff all week long, so thank you for that.”

“We don’t want to be the corridor,” juror Sue McGowan added. The jurors and defendants hugged and then, through a big smile Delta 5 defendant LaPointe said loudly, “May I say welcome to the movement?” The crowd erupted into laughter and applause.

Shortly after Judge Howard delivered extraordinary closing comments:

Frankly the court is convinced that the defendants are far from the problem and are part of the solution to the problem of climate change . . . they are tireless advocates that we need in this society to prevent the kind of catastrophic effects that we see coming and our politicians are ineffectually addressing. People in the courtroom learned much, including the guy in the black robe.

The defendants were sentenced to 90 days jail with credit for one day already served and 89 suspended provided they did not violate a two-year probation period.

There will be more to come. At least three of the Delta 5 defendants have filed an appeal. Their goal is to have the necessity defense considered by a jury.

When I asked Patrick Mazza why he had decided to complicate his life by crossing the line to direct action civil disobedience he said,

My day on the rails was the day before my daughter’s 18th birthday, the last day before she became a full adult. By the time she’s my age it will certainly be hotter, more storm tossed and troubled. She knows it too. A few years back I was sitting on the porch late on a sunny afternoon, she came up and asked, ‘Dad, is there hope for the world?’ That’s the kind of question for which a parent needs a positive answer. When I sat down on the railroad track, I did my best to supply one.The 

Of Sows and Selves

Posted on by Cylvia Hayes

Sow and pigletEarly on in my public shaming ordeal, when the frenzied media were spewing speculation and misinformation was spreading like a virus, I began regularly attending services at a Buddhist dharma center near my home. One day the teacher shared a poem that moved me deeply. It is titled, Saint Francis and the Sow, by Galway Kinnell.

The bud
Stands for all things,
Even those that don’t flower,
For everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
Though sometimes it is necessary
To reteach a thing its loveliness,
To put a hand on its brow
Of the flower
And retell it in words and touch
It is lovely
Until it flowers again, from within, of self-blessing;
As Saint Francis
Put his hand on the creased forehead
Of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
Blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
Began remembering all down her thick length,
From the earthen snout all the way
Through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
From the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
Down through the great broken heart
To the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
From the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
The long, perfect loveliness of sow.

The poem stirred something deep within, my own desire to relearn, to be told in words and touch.  I found myself thinking of it often over the next days.  Then, not long after, with the media feeding frenzy still in full force, an organization that I cared about deeply asked me resign from the board because they feared the media would turn on them due to their association with me.

Their abandonment and willingness to throw me away cut me to the quick.  At that moment it felt as though the media assault was taking everything from me — my reputation, my work, my relationships, my identity.   When I got off the phone with my once fellow board members, I crumbled into deep, spine racking sobs.  John held me.  It was the hardest I had ever cried in front of him.  As my tears and shudders began to ease he reached out and stroked my forehead and said, “You’re a beautiful person Cylvia.  You care so deeply about things.”  With his hand on my brow I recalled the poem and “the perfect loveliness of sow,” and I felt a flutter of the perfect loveliness of myself.

I came across this poem again just the other day and now, with all these months of distance, I am deeply and profoundly grateful for the healing that has taken place, for the growth I am experiencing.  I can see, now, that in the process of losing so much that I was deeply attached to, I found truth and a depth of self-approval I’ve never known before.  It is a lovely gift that has taken decades to unwrap.

Right now, in this moment, as I reflect on all that has taken place these past many months, as I am thinking of the long, thick loveliness of sow, I am so deeply grateful to those who saw the loveliness in me when others would not and I, at times, could not.

Cylvia Hayes

Love this post?  Please share it on Facebook.  Thank you!

Dreams Goals and Winding Pathways

Posted on by Cylvia Hayes

lion-scars

                                                                                                         
What lies behind us 
and what lies before us
are tiny matters
compared to
what lies within us.
     —Ralph Waldo Emerson
​I think that very often we define ourselves by what we dream of being or becoming — I am studying to be a doctor; I am a lawyer, I am a musician; I am hoping to become a millionaire, etc.  Often we set goals for achieving certain things, for moving us toward the dreams that we use to shape our image of ourselves.

But so often our dreams don’t take the shape we expect.  Or at least the pathway toward the dreams doesn’t meet our expectations.  Or the goals don’t hit our deadlines.  It is easy to view those un-envisioned forks in the path as limitations, obstacles and setbacks.  It is easy at those moments to feel like a failure.

And yet, there may be another way of looking at life’s unexpected and unasked for situations.  I have always wanted to do important things with my life.  For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to raise awareness and motivate action to take better care of this planet and one another.  I’ve wanted to feel as though I have used my life well to make a positive contribution.  I’ve set a lot of goals and worked really hard toward that end.  I became a first generation college graduate.   Straight out of college with no financial backing I launched a non-profit organization to work on environmental issues.  I’ve taken courses, served on non-profit boards and volunteered for causes I cared about.  I’ve been politically engaged, even running for office and serving as first lady of Oregon when my fiancé was elected Governor.  It seemed like I was on a trajectory, slowly but steadily, toward my dream of making a positive difference.

And then, a year and a half ago, my life seemed to blow up and my career came to a screeching halt.  It felt like my whole life was off the rails and my dream of being a powerful force for protecting the environment and increasing kindness in the world was now completely out of reach.

For months the pain of that seemingly lost dream literally took my breath away, sent me restless nightmares and made me question the very core of who I was/am.   In my effort to cope with the loss and shame, feeling like a failure and a fool, I spent a lot of time writing.  And in that process I remembered that in addition to my dream of being an effective change-maker for good, I have long held another dream.  I have always wanted a big life, but I’ve never wanted to achieve that through becoming a famous singer or actor or musician, or even politician.  I have always, always wanted to become a successful writer and speaker in a way that served our common good.

And yet, for twenty-five years I had worked so hard on my education, my non-profit work, my consulting business and my political roles that I only occasionally wrote anything beyond personal journaling or technical work.  I wasn’t acting on that vital piece of my dream.

But when all the consulting, the political position, the busyness was yanked away, after several months of just grappling to get my feet back under me and start healing, I returned to my True North, which was not just to continue my lifelong effort to bring about healthier relationships with the Earth and one another, but to do so primarily through my writing.

Last August I started a blog about my personal journey through these challenging times.  I was super nervous about how it would be received and if the media would rip me apart, but I took the leap.  Taking that scary step resulted in my blog taking off and I hope and have been told that some of my posts have been helpful to readers who are navigating their own personal challenges and emotions.  That feels so good.  After learning how to blog I finally also set up my professional New Economy blog, which I’d wanted to do for a few years.  The blogs led to my becoming a salaried staff writer for a new exciting publication, Issue Magazine.  I have full freedom to write about the topics I care so much about and have worked on my entire career.  Who could have seen that coming?!

Next, by the end of this year I will have completed my first book.  I never expected my first book would be about the unbelievable experience of becoming click-bait and the bulls-eye in a sensationalist media-driven feeding frenzy and learning how to cope with being publically shamed.  But I have always dreamed I would write books and this is the obvious before me.  Who knows what’s next?

Many times through this transformational phase of my life I’ve encountered and been captivated by caterpillar and butterfly images and stories.  Right now I find myself thinking about how caterpillars in the cocoon, before they can transition, must reach the point where their previous form is in its most disintegrated, unrecognizable identity.  But under all of that mess, that seeming chaos, is their True North, and they emerge beautiful winged creatures taking to heights a worm that believed itself just a worm might never have seen.

May we all find our True North and our wings!

Cylvia Hayes

Love this post? Please share it on Facebook.  Thank you!

My Last Pair of Running Shoes

Posted on by Cylvia Hayes

5606443_orig

Twenty-seven years ago I had a life changing accident.  In the attempt to gentle a young horse to be ridden he freaked out and threw himself to the ground, I leaped off and as each of us were trying to get away, he hit me with his leg and put my left knee to the ground sideways and backwards.  I would later realize that the loud “shotgun” sound I’d heard wasn’t his hoof hitting a rock; it was the sound of my ligaments snapping. 
 
I tore apart the ligaments in the interior of my knee, the inner side of my knee and even laid open the cartilage sack that holds the knee joint together in total.  The surgeon said it was, “as if I’d guillotined the joint.”  Many surgeries and a year and a half of brutal physical therapy later that joint carried me to a soccer scholarship that helped me become a first generation college graduate and after that a multiple-time state racquetball champion. 
 
However, once a knee suffers that type of damage it wears unevenly — like an out-of-balance tire.  In my case, this has ground down the cartilage on the inner compartment of my knee.  And now, after many flare ups, adjustments, and clean up surgeries the wear and tear has finally come to a head. 
 
Over the last several months I’ve had a golf ball sized lump of inflammation on the inside of my knee and I have been hurting!  I was recently interviewed on TV and they videoed me walking upstairs.  It was cold and I was wearing a big winter coat and my doggone knee was so sore that I sort lumbered and lurched up the stairs.  When I saw the footage I thought, “Good Lord. I look like a Grizzly Bear!”. 
 
So this week I saw the orthopedic cartilage expert.  I was hoping to hear that there had been some sort of breakthrough in cartilage regeneration and I had options.  Nope.  As X-rays and examinations would reveal, not only has my cartilage thinned, but the replacement ligaments have worn and stretched and bone spurs have grown in an attempt to stabilize the joint.  With all the screws and staples in my knees the X-rays look like a frickin’ hardware store! 
 
The long and short of it is I can do a couple of cortisone and cartilage enhancement injections but, barring a miracle, I am headed to a knee replacement in the near future AND – this is the biggest hit for me – my running and racquetball days are over.  I now have to stop running in order to be able to continue to keep walking, hiking, biking functionally. 
 
This is very hard for me.  So much of my identity has been that of a hard-core, hard-pounding athlete.  Now I have to let that go.  It’s another piece of the huge identity redefinition I’ve been undergoing over the past 18 months. 
 
I cried a bit and worried a bit with thoughts like, “Will I gain weight if I can’t run for exercise?”  And, almost just as frightening, “Will I have to give up good, microbrew beer to not gain weight?!”  But seriously, much more importantly, will I still be able to stay as strong and fit and physically capable as I’ve been lucky to be able to be so far?
 
And yet, surprisingly, mixed in with those fears there’s also relief.  I have worked and worked out so hard all these years, and because of the injuries that has involved “pushing through” a lot of pain.  Perhaps now, I can drop the hammer and move through life with this damaged, but wonderful, resilient body a lot less painfully. 
 
This is yet another phase of life, another stretch of the path.  Perhaps I will learn new things I might never have looked at, like paddle boarding which I’ve never done but the surgeon recommended.   Perhaps really falling in love with my mountain bike.  Perhaps I will welcome being able to exercise without gritting my teeth in pain. 
 
Perhaps this is my chance to switch from pounding my way through life, to gliding through it.  Perhaps this is my chance to learn that that’s really possible. 
 
Cylvia Hayes
 
Love this post?  Please share it on Facebook.  Thank you!

About Time

Posted on by Cylvia Hayes

9275356_orig

This weekend I will be speaking at the annual Land Air Water conference at the University of Oregon.  My panel will be addressing the connection between how much time we spend at “work” and environmental damage and climate change.  It’s a bit of an unusual topic for me to speak about but as I’ve been working on my speech I’ve realized how much my relationship with time has changed over these past really challenging but hugely growth-filled eighteen months. 
 
I’ve had a lifelong struggle to be a human being instead of a human doing.  I have based so much of my identity, my goals and my time prioritization on being productive and delivering in my professional endeavors.  This has certainly partly been based on my oh-so-human self-fabricated ego seeking validation and recognition.  And I think it’s been greatly exacerbated by the fact that I feel such urgency to make change, to reverse the tremendous damage we are inflicting on this miraculous blue planet that I love.
 
It is hard to describe the shock, when my life blew up, of having all of the work I had been so deeply immersed in, abruptly yanked away.  My environmental and clean energy work, my work on poverty, all of it, even most of my colleagues, gone.  At first, I railed and thrashed and tried to force my work forward even in the midst of the terrible turmoil and pain.  It was to no avail and I finally gave in to the fact that I myself was too damaged, too worn out and freaked out to really “work” anyway.  I reached a point of surrender, realizing that all I could control or “Do” was the inner, spiritual work.  For the first time in my life I really slowed down.  Once I did, I was actually sort of shocked to realize how hard I had been working and pushing for so long. 
 
I had meditated for years but always treated it as a discipline, something to cross off the daily Do List.  Over these past months I have spent hours meditating …  unhurriedly.  I’ve studied spirituality and consciousness, and made space for lengthy conversations about those topics instead of the “work” that I had been so focused on.  I’ve read novels and watched movies.  I’ve volunteered building fences for dogs living on chains and rehabing injured wildlife.  Sometimes I forewent the intense, pound it out run in exchange for a long, slow hike.  I’ve taken time to really be present with, talk and interact with strangers. 
 
And lo and behold I like it!  I have realized, once I was forced to stop driving so hard, I didn’t want to drive so hard.  This has been a period of reflection, deep healing and powerful insights that is adding so much richness and depth to my life.  
 
Now, over the past six months or so I have been resuming the “Work”, moving forward again with my career and my efforts to protect and restore Nature.  I am working with some great clients again and doing a lot of writing, including for a new magazine I’m helping to launch called Issue Magazine.  It feels great to be working again, to be making a contribution to my clients and my cause and I am deeply grateful to be rolling once more. 
 
And yet, I am not rolling quite so fast or working as long or as “hard” as I did before.  I’m not allowing my meditation time to be the first thing to go when I feel the pressure of a deadline.  I’m committed to maintaining this new, gentler, more open relationship with time. 
 
And I am seeing amazing results!  Solutions just seeming to come easily, opportunities laying themselves before me and deeper, richer personal connections with my clients.  It is fascinating and exciting. 
 
I’ve always known that my work on behalf of the Earth was spiritual work, but in reality I was mostly giving that lip service, skimming along the surface.  This recent unasked for and greatly resisted sabbatical was something of a spiritual intervention and a gift.  Shifting how I prioritize time has brought me full spiral back to my roots but on a slightly higher rung.  I’m no longer spending time; I’m investing it. 
 
Cylvia Hayes
 
Love this post?  Please share it on Facebook.  Thank you!

Birthing the Past

Posted on by Cylvia Hayes

2948399_orig

I have recently realized the past isn’t set in stone.  Much of it isn’t even real.  And we can control it.   
 
During the recent very challenging period of my life I was shocked when the hurts I was suffering in the present took me back to old traumas I thought I’d moved beyond.  I was staggered and incredibly angry.  Are you kidding?  After all this time, all the counseling, all the processing, my father, decades dead, still had that much power in my life?  Angrily, resentfully even, I leaned into working, once again, to heal those old wounds. 
 
Now, after a year of therapy, tears, facing deep primal fears and meeting my fuller self, I am finally free.
 
I realized I’d built my own self-identity on my past.  I saw myself as a victim… and a survivor.  As someone harmed but strong enough to escape.  For years I’d felt my hatred and anger toward my father was a sign of strength, even though part of me always recognized the ever-present love underneath. 
 
Now I see that those old experiences I allowed to define me aren’t even true.  It’s not that they didn’t happen, that there wasn’t abuse.  It happened.  It’s just that as I grow I’m finding that even my past can evolve. 
 
I’m not talking about magical thinking or denial of events that took place.   I’m talking about releasing old perceptions and the old need to view those events through a hard, narrow lens. 
 
The real truth is I can’t know what was going on with my dad to cause him to do what he did.  I can’t know the terrible difficulties my mom faced trying to cope with all of it.
 
I do know that along with the sickness there was a lot of love in my family and a lot of fun.  There was also a lot of good parenting in the mix. 
 
In the grand scheme of things maybe all these events, dark and bright, this crazy combination of experiences, is exactly what I needed to do my best with this life.  I gained a resiliency that has served me well this entire life, never more so than over these past sixteen months. 
 
But now, going forward I am going to harness it differently.  Up until now I’ve viewed myself as a tough survivor, a scrapper, someone who could fight my way through.  That, I think, has set my course and generated a lot of fights.
 
The other day I read a piece by Mark Nemo that got me thinking, or I should say rethinking.  Nemo explained that with miraculous breakthroughs in medicine it is now possible to operate on unborn children in utero.  Also miraculous is that those procedures leave no scars as the infant grows.  At our deepest level our repairs can become so much a part of who we are that they leave no scars. 
 
In many ways our inner selves are always in utero, always growing, fluid.  It is always in our power to treat, repair, heal and give birth to our perfect unscarred selves. 
 
I’ve realized that staying bound to my old perspectives on my past, holding rigid memories, was limiting me, keeping me in a certain mold.  And so I’m choosing to lower my fists, drop the fight and instead of fighting my way through life I intend to love my way through.  As part of that, at nearly fifty years old, I am choosing to have a perfect childhood.  I am birthing my past and my future simultaneously. 

By Cylvia Hayes

Love this post?  Please share it on Facebook. Thank you.

I Just Want My Mama

Posted on by Cylvia Hayes

2709399_orig

One of the most precious beautiful jewels unearthed during all the ugliness of the past year is the transformation of my relationship with my mother.
 
Although Mom was very loving and supportive in my early childhood, due to a whole variety of family dynamics things fell apart in my early teens and my mother had not been my go-to person or safe harbor since. 
 
In fact, I was almost two weeks into the horrendously painful public shaming before I called her.  I did not know how she would respond to the mess I was sitting in.  She floored me with her fierce protectiveness and kindness.  She let me know with greater fervor than ever before in my adult life that she was extremely proud of me and respected what I had done with my life.  She ranted about how “mean and nasty” the media was and that she wouldn’t have anything to do with them, even though they kept calling her. 
 
Her words of love and support and safety flowed over me like warm rain or soft tears.  I found myself wanting to share with her how the current, ongoing attacks were triggering, once again, in a devastatingly powerful and inescapable way, the deep, dark family traumas that I had worked so hard to heal from.  This had always been something of a landmine subject in my family but that day, lonely and wounded, my need was overwhelming and I opened up to her. 
 
More than ever before she just listened, intently, warmly.  And then she blew my mind when she said, “You know those experiences from our childhood really affect us.  I’m 77 years old and I am dealing with that from my own childhood right now.”  She went on to explain how, having lost her husband of nineteen years only two months prior she was struggling to overcome fear of living alone due to events and programming she’d received as a young girl.  I was astounded that she was dealing with such things at her age and amazed and grateful that she shared them with me. 
 
This turned out to be one of the deepest, most mutually supportive conversations we had ever had. 
 
Just a few days later, still in the heat of the media firestorm, OregonLive posted a follow up piece in which my mother had spoken to a reporter in Oklahoma.  I was stunned, angry and deeply upset.  Although everything she said was supportive of me I was shocked that she would talk to the media without even telling me.  Feeling utterly under-attack, with stomach roiling, I called her. 
 
I asked why she had talked to a reporter when she said she wasn’t going to.  She stammered and said a strange man had knocked on her door, and, already unsettled being in her home alone it rattled her.  Yet, in her southern hospitality style she opened the door.  He jumped her with questions.  She tried telling him she had just lost her husband and was uncomfortable with him being there.  He just kept at her with questions about me and explained that he was there on behalf of the Oregonian. 
 
She told me all this nervously and then said, “Cylvia, I’m sorry.”  In that instant my anger melted, replaced by compassion and guilt.   I told her I was the one who was sorry, so sorry that she had been put through that as a result of my mess.  And then, for the first time in a long, long time, that warm fierce urge to protect her, to keep her from pain, surged up from below old, tired wounds and layers of armor. 
 
A few months later I decided to visit her and embarked on a long, car-camping road trip, just me and my beloved big dog, Tessa.  Over the next week, camping in beautiful, remote places, I crossed nearly two thousand miles.  It was a peaceful, soothing quest, but over the last several hundred miles I grew unsettled.  Uncomfortable remnant memories dashed around and poked at old deep bruises. 
 
I kept taking deep, belly breaths, focused on staying calm and open.  At the entrance to the long dirt road leading to her house I stopped the car, took several breaths and focused my intent on staying in a place of love, toward her and toward myself. 
 
Mom was waiting for me at the end of the driveway.  She looked very small and bright and familiar.  I got out and let a car-weary Tessa out to stretch her long legs.  And then I embraced my mother for a long, long time as tears welled in my eyes. (I am in fact crying right now, as I relive this memory through writing this post). 
 
Much later, after the best visit we had ever shared, and the long trek home, my mom told me that that hug felt different.  She said it felt like I had “accepted her back as my Mama.”   I realized the moment she said it she was right.  I may have been nearly fifty years old but I was at a place where I just wanted my mommy.  I got over myself, our past, the old identities and just let my heart fall. 
 
I am deeply, immeasurably grateful that hers was there to catch it. 

By Cylvia Hayes

​Love this post?  Please share it on Facebook.  Thank you.