Eco-Grief and Ecofeminism | Heidi Hutner | TEDxSBU
Summary
TLDRThe speaker shares a deeply personal journey after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease at 35, amidst a family history of cancer. She explores the environmental links to cancer, including the impact of chemicals and radiation, and her own struggle with chemotherapy. Despite the odds, she becomes a mother and later discovers her mother's involvement in the Women's Strike for Peace, which led to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. This revelation inspires her to embrace ecofeminism, highlighting the power of collective action in addressing environmental and health crises.
Takeaways
- 😷 The speaker was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease at 35, following her parents' deaths from different types of cancer.
- 👨👩👧👦 A family history of cancer sparked a deep personal connection and concern for environmental factors contributing to the disease.
- 🌱 The speaker's chemotherapy reduced her chances of having children by 50%, highlighting the harsh realities of cancer treatment.
- 📚 She researched environmental links to cancer, discovering works by Rachel Carson, Theo Colburn, and Alice Stewart, which emphasize the impact of synthetic chemicals and radiation.
- 📈 Shocking statistics: one in four men and one in five women will develop cancer in their lifetimes, with childhood cancers increasing since the 1950s.
- 🤰 Despite a careful and organic lifestyle, the speaker realized the impossibility of shielding her unborn child from environmental toxins.
- 🌎 The concept of 'eco grief' is introduced, reflecting the emotional toll of environmental degradation and its effects on mental health.
- 💪 Historical examples of women leading environmental movements, such as Rachel Carson and Lois Gibbs, inspire the speaker to action.
- 📚 The speaker teaches 'eco feminism', integrating stories of environmental activists to empower and educate.
- 👵 A personal revelation about the speaker's mother's involvement in the Women's Strike for Peace movement leads to a profound sense of connection and empowerment.
- 🌏 The Fukushima nuclear disaster and its personal impacts on families further emphasize the global reach and importance of environmental activism.
Q & A
At what age was the speaker diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease?
-The speaker was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease at the age of 35.
What types of cancer affected the speaker's family members?
-The speaker's mother died from lymphoma, her father from a brain cancer which was a metastasis from melanoma.
How did the speaker's chemotherapy treatments impact her chances of having children?
-The chemotherapy treatments reduced the speaker's chances of having children by 50%.
What environmental factors did the speaker research in relation to cancer?
-The speaker researched the connections between synthetic chemicals, radiation, and cancer.
Which historical study did the speaker reference regarding the impact of X-rays on unborn children?
-The speaker referenced a study by Alice Stewart from the 1950s, which found that one single X-ray to the womb doubled the child's chances of developing cancer.
What was the speaker's reaction upon learning about the prevalence of childhood cancers post-1950s?
-The speaker was shocked to learn that childhood cancers spiked after the 1950s when synthetic chemicals, radiation, and environmental pollution became more prevalent.
What personal achievement did the speaker celebrate after her chemotherapy treatments?
-The speaker celebrated getting pregnant and becoming a mother after her chemotherapy treatments.
What book did the speaker read while pregnant that deeply affected her?
-The speaker read 'A Civil Action' by Jonathan Harr while pregnant, which is a story about a childhood leukemia cluster in Woburn, Massachusetts.
What is 'Eco grief' as mentioned in the script?
-'Eco grief' refers to the profound sadness and grief people feel in response to environmental loss and the impact on all living beings.
What historical event did the speaker's mother participate in that the speaker was previously unaware of?
-The speaker's mother participated in the 'Women's Strike for Peace', a movement that led to the partial nuclear test ban treaty in 1963.
What was the speaker's call to action at the end of the script?
-The speaker encouraged the audience to feel the eco grief, to be called to action, and to join the efforts to fix environmental issues.
Outlines
😷 Personal Struggle with Cancer and Environmental Concerns
The speaker shares her personal journey of being diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease at 35, following her parents' deaths from different types of cancer. She expresses her fears about undergoing chemotherapy and the impact it would have on her chances of having children. As a researcher, she delves into the potential environmental causes of cancer, citing works by Rachel Carson, Theo Colburn, and Alice Stewart. She also presents startling statistics about cancer rates and the increase in childhood cancers post-1950s, suggesting a link to environmental pollution. The narrative ends with her successful battle against cancer and the joy of becoming a mother despite the odds.
🌿 Eco-Feminism and the Power of Activist Women
The speaker discusses her feelings of eco grief and how she channeled them into action by studying women environmental activists like Rachel Carson, Lois Gibbs, and others. She teaches a class on eco-feminism and is inspired by the stories of these women. During a family gathering, she learns about her mother's involvement in the Women's Strike for Peace, a movement that led to the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. This revelation motivates her to include nuclear history in her work on eco-feminism, highlighting the power of collective action.
🌐 From Personal Healing to Global Activism
The speaker recounts her obsession with nuclear history after learning about her mother's activism. She becomes deeply involved in researching and writing about nuclear issues, particularly after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. She interviews mothers affected by the disaster and includes their stories in her work. The narrative emphasizes the global impact of environmental issues and the interconnectedness of activists worldwide. The speaker feels a sense of empowerment and a lifting of her eco grief as she sees the collective efforts of people across the globe working towards environmental justice.
🌍 A Call to Action in the Face of Environmental Crisis
The speaker acknowledges the difficulty of facing the harsh realities of climate change, pollution, and extinction but urges the audience to feel the eco grief and be motivated to act. She shares her own journey from ignorance to awareness and activism, using her personal transformation as an example of how engaging with these issues can lead to positive change. The speaker ends with a call to join the movement to protect the environment and all living beings on Earth.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Cancer
💡Chemotherapy
💡Environmental Pollution
💡Eco Grief
💡Rachel Carson
💡Infertility
💡Organic Food
💡Climate Change
💡Nuclear History
💡Ecofeminism
💡Superfund
Highlights
At age 35, the speaker was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease, following her parents' deaths from cancer.
Chemotherapy reduced the speaker's chances of having children by 50%.
The speaker's research into environmental causes of cancer led her to read works by Rachel Carson, Theo Colburn, and Alice Stewart.
One in four men and one in five women will develop cancer in their lifetimes.
Childhood cancers have increased since the 1950s due to environmental pollution.
The speaker's oncologist confirmed seeing more cancer cases and linked it to environmental pollution.
After chemotherapy, the speaker worked with an infertility specialist and successfully got pregnant.
Reading 'A Civil Action' during pregnancy led to a panic about the impact of environmental toxins on her unborn child.
The realization that pollution crosses the placenta and babies are born with chemicals in their bodies.
The speaker's eco grief and subsequent activism were inspired by women environmental activists like Rachel Carson and Vandana Shiva.
The speaker's mother was involved in the Women's Strike for Peace, which influenced the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
The speaker's eco grief was lifted by learning about her mother's activism and the power of collective action.
The speaker's work in ecofeminism and her book include stories of mothers affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
The speaker emphasizes the importance of keeping 'blinders' open to environmental issues to drive action.
The speaker calls for a moment of grief to motivate collective action on climate change and pollution.
Transcripts
so when I was 35 my life completely
changed I was diagnosed with cancer
Hodgkin's disease but not only that my
mother had died the year before with
cancer lymphoma and five years before
that my father had died with a brain
cancer a metastasis from melanoma so you
can imagine I was devastated and reeling
but more than that I was 35 and I hadn't
yet had children and I really really
wanted to be a mom and the chemo that I
would undergo would reduce my chances of
having children by 50% and given my age
I felt pretty doubtful about it and I
was really really upset so whether I
would survive or have children I was
just devastated three cancers and a
family of five I couldn't understand it
so I went through the chemo and let me
tell you it was brutal and while I was
going through it I'm a researcher so I
wanted to understand what were the
reasons for this cancer in my family
what was going on so I read a lot I read
Rachel Carson and her work on DDT in
which she looked at the connections
between chemicals synthetic chemicals
and cancer
I read the work of Theo Colburn who also
looked at chemicals and the connections
to cancer and I read the work of Alice
Stewart who in the 1950s did this study
and she found that one single x-ray to
the womb doubled that child's chances of
developing cancer I also found out some
interesting things I found out that one
in four men will get cancer in their
lifetimes one in five women and I
found that childhood cancers which were
practically non-existent before the
1950s when we started using all these
chemicals and radiation and polluting
our environment it didn't exist but then
suddenly it spiked and today second
accidents it's the leading cause of
death and children nearly 16,000
children will be diagnosed with cancer
every year so I'd go into my
chemotherapy treatments armed with all
this information and lots of questions
and I would ask my oncologist are you
seeing more cancer over the years and he
would say yes and I asked him do you
think it's related to environmental
pollution and he would say yes so I
finished the chemo and my cancer went
into remission and yes I'd have to go in
for appointments to be checked and there
was a secondary cancer they had to worry
about from the chemo which was leukemia
so I was going in pretty often but I
still really really wanted to be a mom
it was what I wanted more than anything
in the whole world so for two years I
worked with an infertility specialist
and lo and behold I got pregnant and I
was thrilled my my daughter's father was
so happy and it was just a really joyous
time for us we could put some of that
grief behind us a bit and then one night
I was pretty pregnant and I was in bed
and there's a storm raging outside and
I'm reading a book called a civil action
by Jonathan Harr it's a story of a
childhood leukemia cluster in Woburn
Massachusetts now if anyone's pregnant
out there I recommend you do not read
this book not a good idea I went into
quite a panic as you can imagine I
literally threw the book across the room
I started crying and crying and wailing
because I realized no matter how good
I'd been and I was good I ate only
organic food I ate practically all vegan
I made sure that I use nothing toxic on
my body I had we had no cleaning
products in our house that were toxic we
were so careful or so we thought but in
that moment I realized there was no way
to keep these toxics out of my body
because scientists now know that
that stuff all that pollution it crosses
the placenta and babies today are born
with hundreds of chemicals in their
bodies so I'm weeping I'm crying I'm
wailing and not just for me but for
everybody because it wasn't about and it
isn't about my cancer or my family's
cancer or my baby
it's about all babies everywhere and
everyone because this is affecting
everybody an all biotic life and it's
not just chemicals and radiation its
climate change its natural disasters its
water issues its species extinction its
deforestation
I mean it's so vast and I felt so
overwhelmed with grief I felt what I now
call eco grief psychologists are even
recognizing this they call it ego grief
for all that tremendous sadness that
we're living with it I I found it
unbearable now I'm not one to sit and
grief for long I'm a doer anyone who
knows me knows this I'm a pretty busy
person so I got busy and I started
thinking about the women I studied when
I was sick Rachel Carson the mother of
the American environmental movement
right Lois Gibbs a housewife who's
called the mother of the Superfund Act
because she found toxic hazardous
chemicals in it and Love Canal and she
fought with other and mothers and other
activists and this led to the Superfund
Act so now places are required to clean
this up the EPA goes after them it's an
act
I found one Gauri Maathai a Nobel Peace
Prize winner from Kenya who has
reforested she's passed away now but
she's a Nobel Peace Prize winner and she
has a she had a movement and has a
movement it's still active called the
green belt movement reforesting
tremendously all over Africa and an
inspiration to others around the world
I found Vandana Shiva a seeds rights
activist and a water activist and an
activist for farmers in India I found
Petra Kelly the co-founder of Germany's
Green Party movement we'll look at
Germany right now it's a leader in green
activism and renewable energy it's a
country that's really at the
forefront of where we need to go for
climate abatement so I found lists and
lists of these women
Peggy Shepard who's in New York City
working really hard to protect black
children from environmental pollution so
many women I couldn't possibly list them
all now
well this information was so empowering
to me it really helped me lift that Eco
grief and then I started to teach a
class called eco feminism and in this
class we looked at these women and we
looked at the issues going on in our
environment and the different ways that
they acted if it looked at the science
we looked at the literature and I
started to write about it well my
daughter's now nine years old and we go
into New York City I live in Long Island
we go into New York City and we have
lunch with an old family friend of my
mother's Phyllis and we're sitting in a
restaurant and its really really noisy
and there's my healthy daughters 9 and
we're all having a nice conversation
family family gathering and Phyllis says
to me so Heidi what are you working on
these days and I said ecofeminism and
she said ecofeminism well you must know
that story about myself and sow our
other family friend and your mother
woman's strike for peace women strike
for peace now I'd never heard of this
and I certainly didn't know this story
but my mother and her friends let me
step back a minute now my mother in my
mind was pretty much you know your
typical 1950s housewife I mean yeah she
did a few things but she was this
brilliant woman who didn't live up to
her potential so I thought she was under
my dad's shadow and she raised the kids
and that's the way women were then and I
kind of felt bad for her so Phyllis goes
on to tell me in the 1950s there was a
nuclear arms race between the US and the
USSR and these countries and others were
detonating nuclear bombs above-ground
nuclear test bombs and right here in the
US they detonated hundreds and hundreds
of them in the Nevada desert and
radiation was spreading clear across the
u.s. it didn't just stay in Nevada and
some
that radiation was strontium 90
strontium 90 was getting into children's
bodies it acts like calcium in the body
the body thinks it's calcium so there
was a study called the st. Louis baby
tooth study and these scientists
gathered baby teeth from all over and
they did find in fact that there were
strontium 90 in this baby in the baby
teeth so mother's organized across the
u.s. 50,000 of them now remember this is
the time before social media before
Facebook before Twitter even making a
long-distance phone call was a big deal
so that 50,000 women could organize
across the country in this grassroots
way was pretty phenomenal and the head
of this organization was Dagmar Wilson a
very good friend of my mother's friends
and Bella Abzug the future congresswoman
they organized and they organized
something called women's strike for
peace lobbying day and 15,000 of them
went to Washington and they lobbied and
they marched and they talked to their
senators and they it was an amazing
amazing thing well three of those 15,000
was my mother and her friends they left
their kids at home not done in those
days to leave the kids with the dad to
take care of and they took the train and
they went and they marched and they
lobbied well guess what the result of
this was the partial nuclear test ban
treaty in 1963 the USSR was on it
the US was on it and England this blew
my mind when Phyllis told me this story
I got chills it was if the whole
restaurant went quiet all I could see
was my mother and her friends and these
women and what they've done and I
couldn't believe it
my mother had done this and what an
amazing thing to do think about it all
that radiation no longer spreading
across the planet for all these years
what an incredible feat mothers mostly
stay-at-home white middle class mothers
organized this movement I felt myself
healed
I felt that eco grief lifts
of me it was just an amazing moment I
can't even tell you so now I go home and
I am obsessed with nuclear history okay
I was writing this book on ecofeminism
and suddenly now I have to include
nuclear history in it I didn't even know
of this piece of it so I'm watching
every film probably that's ever been
made since 1945 on nuclear history
rethink everything I can
I am deeply immersed in it it's deep of
winter it's dark out I wake up and I'd
look up in the afternoon at mists
picking my daughter at the school bus
because I was so obsessed with this
information and guess what three nuclear
meltdowns and Fukushima nuclear power
plant meltdowns
well I'm riveted um I couldn't believe
it
and I kind of could go there were a lot
of things that suggested Japan's very
seismically active place not necessarily
the best place to put a nuclear power
plant and I'm watching I'm watching the
stories and a few months later a group
of mothers comes to New York City to
speak about what's going on in Japan and
the issues with their families and the
children and their concerns and I went
into New York to hear their talks and I
heard unbelievably heartbreaking talks
one mother
Sachiko Sato an organic farmer six
children had to whisk her children in
the night from their farm big family
farm this is her life school on the
property teaching kids for ever gone
can't go back there
the kids her children spoke they told
their stories how hard it was to never
go back home to not be at school to not
be with her friends to lose their
bedrooms so I heard these stories and I
became really really taken with them and
I began including them in my book and
writing about them in other places and
recording them and after they left I
continued this recording and talking and
interviewing through Skype and in one of
my Skype interviews with Aileen me OCO
Smith who's a leading green activist in
Japan who's been working on this issue
and anti-nuclear issues for many many
years she's the author or co-author of
the Minamata book and had gone and
interviewed people at the Three Mile
Island after the partial nuclear
meltdown there and she came back to
Japan and she became active
in the 80s and she told me in all these
years she's been going around talking to
women's groups and every time she does
she says if women strike for peace could
do it we can well I again I I can't
believe this are the chills are up and
down my body I I'm just overwhelmed
I again that eco grief is just lifting
and I see this connection between my
mother and all the mothers here and all
the women doing all this work around the
world and I see it clear across to Japan
and I feel these women's arms linking
and men to because lots of men are
involved with this work
linking linking across Asia India Europe
South America u.s. South Pacific
Australia all the countries in the world
with all the amazing women and men doing
this work and I felt the power of these
stories and the retelling of these
stories and how important it is for us
to know them and to see the incredible
things they've done and are continuing
to do and how they pass these stories
down now I want to say something for a
minute I'm sure you're feeling like I
you know I don't want to hear about
climate change and pollution and cancer
and you've got your blinders on and you
would just like me to stop right now I
know a lot of people feel that way about
all these problems but remember I
understand
I had my blinders on to when I got
pregnant I knew about all the chemicals
around us I already knew there were 254
Superfund sites where I lived and all
the chemicals leaking and leaching and I
knew all about the 70,000 plus spills
I knew all about the plumes I knew all
of that and I didn't want to think about
it I just wanted to be a mom I just
wanted to have a good pregnancy and
enjoy my life a little bit and not be
worried all the time but I read that
book I read a civil action and the
blinders flew open and I couldn't close
them and then I felt eco grief and it
hurt and it was hard and I did
and I did cry and it was difficult but
it led to something else it led to a
call to action it led to actually
lifting that Eco grief I want to ask you
for just one moment because I know you
feel it
I know as closed as you might be and
don't want to know there are those
moments when you see that image of that
polar bear on a little piece of ice and
you hear the tick tick tick of the clock
and you know you know there's not much
time and when you hear about the the
rhinoceros no more they're just about
extinct and elephants look what's
happening to them
lions are about to be extinct I know you
feel heartbreak it's impossible not to
and you might shut it down but deep down
you feel that heartbreak so I'm gonna
ask you for just a moment try to leave
those blinders open just try and feel
that grief feel it because when you do
you will be called to act and then you
will join us and then we will fix this
thing thank you
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