Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer and artist, said something to me more than a decade ago that I still think of often. She was talking about living in a part of Ontario that has been a site of intense industrial pollution, and the draw of moving to more "pristine" wilderness. But, she said, "when I think of the land as my mother or if I think of it as a familial relationship, I don't hate my mother because she's sick, or because she's been abused. I don't stop visiting her because she's been in an abusive relationship and she has scars and bruises. If anything, you need to intensify that relationship." You visit her even more. I related to this on many levels, as the daughter of a mother who became severely disabled and as the mother of a child with what is officially classified as a disability (though we prefer to see it as a different way of being human). Simpson's formulation calls on us to reckon with the sickened and impaired state of our world, but not to use that as an excuse to walk away in search of perfection. On the contrary, when we are surrounded by need, we are called upon to become better caretakers.

XREF: Connects to disability studies and care ethics — the parallel between damaged land and a disabled mother shifts the imperative from fleeing to intensified caretaking. SEED: Promising essay angle: reframing environmental degradation as a relational call to care rather than a reason for despair or escape.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 1112