Minibabble: Motherhood changes the environment

Posted on by suki
The Babblery
The Babblery
Minibabble: Motherhood changes the environment
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From Babblery host, Suki Wessling:  On my radio show, the Babblery, I talk to women of all ages and backgrounds about their work and life experiences and how those experiences shaped their worldview. The conversations I have are always thoughtful, but they are never more intimate than when we talk about mothering. In this short version of the full episode, environmentalist Shilpi Chhotray reflects on how motherhood changed her career trajectory and her personal life forever. [Click for transcript]

Visit the full episode, “Finding Community in Environmental Justice with Shilpi Chhotray,” for show notes and links.

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Minibabble: Motherhood changes the environment

[00:00:00]

[00:00:26] Voiceover: This is your host, Suki Wessling. On my radio show, the Babblery. I talk to women of all ages and backgrounds about their work and life experiences and how those experiences shaped their worldview. The conversations I have are always thoughtful, but they are never more intimate than when we talk about mothering.

[00:00:45] Shilpi Chhotray: My name is Shilpi Chhotray. I’m a narrative strategist, a podcast host, and the co-founder of Counter Stream Media. I started my career in ocean conservation. Kind of came to see that the real crisis isn’t just ecological, it’s about who gets to tell that story. So that’s sort of what brought me to the work at Counter Stream. And I’m also hosting a climate justice podcast called A People’s Climate for the Nation.

[00:01:12] Voiceover: My show guest, Shilpi Chhotray, has an impressive resume as an environmentalist, but it wasn’t until we talked about being a mother that we got to a truly personal exploration of her career and her life choices. Before I asked about motherhood, Shilpi first talked about the career pivot that led to the development of her first podcast.

[00:01:31] Shilpi Chhotray: I headed communications for an incredible movement called Break Free From Plastic. And at that point we were like 2,500 groups all around the world. A lot of my work focused on global South, um, and a lot of media liaisoning and ensuring like frontline folks, organizers in the Gulf South of the United States and the global South were uplifted in media and I was just noticing massive gaps in, in what the media was choosing to cover. That was such a foundational experience and I started People over Plastic, the first podcast, out of my garage when my son, my first son was eight months old. And literally my, the same guys that are doing the sound engineering now, like put up, you know, soundproofing in this garage like four or five years ago.

[00:02:17] Voiceover: That four or five years ago sparked a question for me.

[00:02:21] Suki Wessling: And you mentioned that you had kids and, and how old are they now?

[00:02:25] Shilpi Chhotray: I have a four and a half year old and an eight and a half month old.

[00:02:30] Suki Wessling: Okay, little ones.

[00:02:32] Shilpi Chhotray: in a thick of it.

[00:02:33] Voiceover: Not surprisingly, the big pivot in Shilpi’s career happened with motherhood and she’s not alone. Study after study finds that in general, motherhood changes women’s lives much more than fatherhood changes men’s. Some of this is imposed from the outside. Workplaces often make it hard for women with small children and heterosexual couples often don’t question when women take on a larger load of the childcare.

[00:02:56] But much of the change is also on the inside. When I asked Shilpi how having children changed her perspective, her answer was:

[00:03:03] Shilpi Chhotray: I mean, it was, it was everything. In fact, Zevi, my son, the one who was with me in the garage a lot of the times I was recording, I could hear him in the background. It, I mean, it was massively changing in, in a couple different ways. Um, one was purely logistical. Before I had kids, I was that person that was wearing 10 million hats and I was constantly burning myself out and you know, very fulfilled by my career, but not really had the capacity to have any other types of, hobbies and, and really joy in my life and it was, it was pretty detrimental to be operating in that way. I think, you know, I talked to a lot of my activist friends and they’re in similar boats until something really forces them to, and for me it was becoming a mother.

[00:03:55] So very practically speaking, I had to think about, okay, you know, what are the things I’m kind of good at, you know, and what are the things I’m not so good at and where do I think I can make the most impact? And, and for me, you know, I’ve always been a communicator, whether it’s, it’s speaking, writing, the research to do the speaking and writing, you know, it always, you know, kind of came together um, and also the ability to build bridges. So that’s where I wanted to focus.

[00:04:23] And the other gift that Zevi gave me was when I was on maternity leave, I talked to a lot of other mothers. Um, I just got connected to fo you know, moms in the neighborhood. We would take walks with each other, social distanced walks ’cause it was still COVID and they would be like, well, what do you do? And I’m like, well, I work on plastic. And they had no idea that plastic came from oil. They didn’t understand the term racial redlining in it, how that kind of played into it. They didn’t understand why just banning the bag wasn’t enough. And so that was a bit of a wake up call because I think when you’re in movement spaces, you’re so hyper fixated on an issue and you just think everybody’s aware of this is what everyone’s listening to, and it really forced me to start thinking about what kind of media people listen to, what they have access to? Are we making things relatable? And just doing my own research there.

[00:05:18] So yeah, in two ways, you know, that really shaped, I think, my next steps and sort of even where I am now.

[00:05:26] Voiceover: Shilpi’s story resonated with me personally. I had my first child at 34, and by then my life had formed grooves that I hadn’t even noticed once I had a baby, I realized that contrary to the truism, that my life would be more limited, I was exposed to so much newness. Like Shilpi, I found myself with people I never would’ve connected with before I had children. I realized that it was the first time since high school that I would have daily interactions with people from all different backgrounds. Like Shilpi, motherhood expanded my networks and challenged many of my ideas. Like Shilpi, my world was expanded through motherhood.

[00:06:03] Shilpi Chhotray: Some of the people I’ve gotten really close to over the last few years are because of those play dates and like, it’s who your kid wants to play with. It’s not whose parent you want your child to play with, you know? But those moms and dads have become some of like our most cherished friends over the last couple years and probably not people we would’ve met normally.

[00:06:27] Voiceover: Melding her career as an environmentalist and motherhood, Shilpi sees the everyday waste that many people just take for granted.

[00:06:35] Shilpi Chhotray: if you are not living under a rock, you know we have a plastic pollution crisis. There’s no excuse. We have to go beyond skipping the straw or bringing our clean canteen. Okay? There is waste being shipped to other countries of the world being openly dumped and burned. That’s still our planet, you know, this is, we are all part of the same ecosystem. I don’t want what’s happening in my curbside in Oakland getting picked up and dumped to Indonesia. I get really frustrated when I see massive headlines being celebrated, like, okay, we’ve banned the bag in this place. Okay, well what about the straw? The fork? The cutlery, the styrofoam, the plastic clothing? Right?

[00:07:17] Voiceover: As a mom, Shilpi stresses that all of us should feel empowered to do our part, to solve problems in our own homes and neighborhoods.

[00:07:24] Shilpi Chhotray: Thinking about it all together should be helpful, not more stressful, like having the knowledge is actually really empowering. And I’m not beyond individual choices. Like we have a very plastic free home. And I also do that ’cause I care about the leaching and the chemicals and the microplastic, you know, getting into my kids’ food and I’ll, I’ll just share one little antidote is my son had a, his graduation party with his friend from preschool, and of course the, the family was like, well, we’ll bring, you know, all these, all these cups, plates and whatever. And my son was like, no plastic, no balloons, like screaming at them. I’m like, great, I don’t have to have this conversation. So it was a pretty big party. It was like 40 people. But we had invested in reusables like years ago for these purposes. So over time it’s going to pay off and it’s just, you know, great steel wear that it looks really nice and you’re going to take it all home and clean it up and put it away for next year.

[00:08:28] Voiceover: Shilpi’s experiences with parenting demonstrate that the personal really is political. The lessons our children learn in our homes will move out into the world with them.

[00:08:52] Shilpi Chhotray: I think that’s something also as a parent, like, it’s great to see my kids kind of take on these issues for themselves. My son’s big takeaway cause he listens to all my episodes. He’s like, no plastic, no police. Runs around the house, you know, when anyone’s over, that’s what he has away. And I’m like, well, that just cut through all the work I do. I could just say that and be done.

[00:09:17] Voiceover: Thanks to Shilpi Chhotray for sharing her life and work with us. You can find the full episode and show notes at B-A-B-B-L-E-R y.com. The song, Carbon Neutral Barbecue is by Stevia Sphere and the Song Fire Next Time is by Mélissa Laveaux. You can find both artists on Band Camp. Thanks for listening.

[00:09:55]

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