It’s not just gay men and women who are coming out.

We’re all feeling the urge to show ourselves and express what’s really in our heart and soul. We’re all coming out, truth be known. More people each day are feeling the calling to speak up, to challenge what is, and to express their opinion in a more deliberate and dedicated way.

Yes, people, it’s high time to let loose and rattle some feathers—or shake your feather boas if you prefer—and come together like never before (pardon the pun). Read on if you’re ready to rise and roar!

Humanity has reached a pivotal point in history. There’s no going back. We can’t un-know or forget what we have been witnessing in recent years. The traumatic scenes on the news every day of polar bears and their babies isolated and starving on ice floes, or the all-consuming fires currently destroying “the lungs of the Earth” one hectare at a time—906,000 hectares so far to be exact actually—sickens those of us connected and committed to the cause, to our absolute core.

We have all dreamt the horrors, we have all seen the horrors, and now we are living the projected horrors—some more intensely than others—but that is all going to change, and sooner than projected.

It won’t be your next-door neighbor or your relatives overseas, the refugee families you hear about losing their children to disease or their homes to terror and conflict, or the problems facing “them.” It will be us. Our homes. Our livelihoods and our loved ones. We will be on the front line with them and make no mistake, there will be no reprieve from this world war.

Maybe then—when it really hits home that we have just as much to lose as the next person—we will be inclined to take notice and birth change.

We no longer have any time to sit on the sidelines and pontificate. We must speak up and we must do it together. Like, yesterday.

Climate change really is the modern-day “plague.” It is a generational affliction, one caused by accumulated ignorance, flagrant environmental abuse, and consistent, unconscious social dodge and denial. It is not a fallacy as many have described it over the years, nor is it something that “just happens” every few millennia or so by its own volition.

While we humans cannot assume to understand the myriad ways of the universe while only being able to (apparently) access 10 percent of our brains at this point in our evolution, we are smart enough to get that our constant and collective habitation has undeniably agitated the cyclic and transformative nature of the Earth and exacerbated processes that would normally take a lot longer to intensify and evolve. If we weren’t here to the contagious degree that we are, She definitely wouldn’t have such a massive itch to scratch.

We are most certainly the parasites in this scenario and we need to change that.

Imagine for a minute, waking up and realizing there were no more animals in the world. Your beloved elephants, dolphins, or orangutans gone, forever. Your favourite holiday destination, gone. Burned, flooded, or imploded. Imagine all the magical places where you carved childhood dreams and ran amok with your imagination and in wonder at your surroundings, now overrun with industry, machines, and technologies that rape the earth 24-7. Imagine knowing by the time you have stretched, gotten out of bed, and taken a shower, that another species or ecosystem would have disappeared—for good.

That’s if you are lucky enough to have clean water to drink, let alone bathe in.

We live in extreme times now, the future of the planet literally balancing precariously in the palms of all our hands, and if we are not careful and if we don’t act consciously and collaboratively, we will all find ourselves on that extinction shortlist. We are, in fact, already on it and slowly nudging our way to the top. Ironic really, when the truth is, we wrote it.

Humans have been on this Earth for the least amount of time and yet we have managed to royally stuff it up for every other living being that shares it with us.

We slaughter the whales who actually produce the very oxygen for all life forms to breathe. The great cetaceans are actually responsible for oxygenating the entire planet, more than the Amazon rainforest, in fact, because they produce phytoplankton that basically transmutes thousands of tonnes of carbon each year. They are the invisible climate change warriors that we are taking for granted. Whale poop fertilizes these organisms. As they migrate, they have to defecate at the surface and when they do, they spread the love by delivering vital nutrients to these tiny organisms.

It’s fascinating and certainly makes you think about why certain countries still insist on whaling, especially when you learn that each dead whale that sinks to the ocean floor takes millions of tonnes of ingested carbon with it, hence making our surface world a lot healthier and greener.

The great trees of the Amazon, of course, assimilate gases and transmute them into oxygen for us to breathe, but in reality, it is the oceans and the animals who transverse their songlines, who activate life on Earth for all beings. Not real smart to be harpooning them under the guise of “research” or corralling their sentient cousins, the dolphins, in pools of blood to sell to the highest circus bidders, now is it? Some countries really need to wake up and start changing their barbaric ways if everyone is going to survive and if we’re going to maintain any semblance of what it means to be human and merciful.

“Traditions” like this are just BS—belief systems and bullsh*t—that have been given too much importance and they always end up destroying civilizations instead of helping them evolve to the next level. These are precisely the paradigms that need to dissolve from our reality as we transition from an unconscious to a conscious collective.

We drill holes in the ground to excavate precious resources from the guts of Mother and yet all we achieve is short-term profit and benefit (for the minority) before long-term problems and pollution (for the majority). By annihilating the very earth that nourishes us, we erode all foundations of security, integrity, and the potential to regenerate. When all the juice has been sucked out of the fruit, what do you think remains? A weakened, empty shell that’s what, one that we carelessly discard before searching for another? And one that has lost its ability to propagate any further.

The probability of “finding another” anything to satiate our desires and provide continued sustenance, is waning brothers and sisters. We are running out of places to destroy in the name of growth and expansion. We are decimating the land to the point where it cannot rebirth itself anymore. Just like our bodies, Mother Earth has a use-by date and She can only take so much.

If you’re reading this and freaking out about what your future looks like, then good! We need to be confronted by the reality of what is happening if we are going to be moved to do something about it. If we don’t feel something in our bones and aren’t motivated enough to start utilizing any of the myriad solutions that are on offer by scientists, environmentalists, and spiritualists alike, then we deserve what will eventuate by keeping our ignorant heads in the sand (or up our proverbials, if you catch my meaning).

If we aren’t prepared to sacrifice some creature comforts and put the health of others—people and animals and all life forms—ahead of our own selfish needs, then we’ll have to own what will come as a result of that choice.

I, for one, don’t want to look my grandchildren in the eye and admit I wasn’t on the right team when the chips were down. I don’t want to answer their imploring questions about why we didn’t do something to ensure the world was safe and healthy for them to inherit also. What right do we have to take what we want, to create beautiful memories of holidays, and swimming with turtles in unpolluted oceans when we were growing up and then act indifferently and without concern when those very environments collapse and no longer exist for the following generations to experience?

We have no right to do that but we have every right to change what is out of alignment. In my book, jobs don’t justify premeditated murder—and that is exactly what is happening.

It’s difficult to feel empowered nowadays with all the conflicting information being fed to us via mainstream media, social media, and of course, the big corporations who own half the world and who stand to lose power if the status quo shifts, but we need to investigate and we need to ask questions in order to discover the truth so we can define our own and take action.

On the front line, there are many things you can do—simple, everyday things—that will help ease the burden on nature and make you feel better about yourself and like you’re doing something constructive.

1. Stop buying products wrapped in plastic. Switch to beeswax reusable wrappers instead or reuse old jars and tins to store your food.

2. Keep a stash of recycled cutlery, containers, cups, and stainless steel straws in your car for any takeaway meals and drinks. Reducing single-use plastic is the only way we can make a dent on ocean pollution and put pressure on big companies to stop producing it. If we don’t buy it, they won’t make it.

3. Stop using plastic shopping bags. Take your own. Keep them in your car, your handbag, or tied to your dog’s lead for last-minute trips to the supermarket. Give them as presents to inspire friends and family!

4. Go back to your beautician for your pedicures and stop frequenting cheap nail bars that use plastic liners in their foot baths! Yes, it’s hygienic but it also insane and creates so much plastic pollution, it’s criminal. Don’t be a part of this just because it’s cheap and convenient. A professional beautician will keep you safe and clean without that crap, don’t worry.

5. Don’t buy commercial skincare and beauty products anymore. They are filled with microplastics and polluting chemicals that poison marine life; the marine life that you later go on to consume. Not to mention the excessive packaging that creates landfill. FYI, microplastics have been found in over 114 products. If you eat any kind of seafood, you are eating MPs, have no doubt.

6. Don’t buy supplements like Krill Oil or any others that contain organisms from the ocean. Leave the krill in the ocean for the whales to eat! It’s their food, not ours! There are plenty of other options on the market.

7. When someone asks you, “Would you like a bag?” say no! You actually don’t need a bag; you have a handbag and you have hands! We need to stop asking these automatic, mindless questions and become more mindful and, basically, less bloody lazy!

8. Pick up rubbish when you’re out on your bush or beach walk and put it in the bin. Just because someone else couldn’t be bothered tidying up after themselves, doesn’t mean you have to follow suit. Think of the wildlife.

9. If you’re a mum, please ditch the commercial, plastic-filled nappies and switch to eco or cloth options. They are just as effective, trust me, I’m a mum, I have researched and tested this to the eyeballs with my own child. FYI, each baby will generate up to 4,000 nappies by the time they are toilet trained and that is way too much landfill for anyone’s liking.

There are so many other things you can do to do your bit, but these should get you started and help you build a more conscious routine every day.

They’re not hard things to remember, people, they really aren’t. I have been advocating these in my own community for years and am still perplexed when I see people wandering around oblivious to their own actions (or inactions in this case). Sadly, a lot of people just don’t think. They are caught up in their heads, busy, pressured, or juggling too many things at once.

But you know what, wake up and shake yourself up because the time is well and truly up for that kind of behavior! We all need to start taking responsibility for the world we live in and contribute to. These things don’t take a lot of time to do and they certainly don’t cost a lot of money for you to execute but they will make the world of difference, literally.

Mother Earth is the one place we all love and the one thing we all share in common, so let’s get busy being conscious and embrace our role as custodians of this beautiful green and blue globe.

If we don’t, the cold hard truth is, She won’t be around to hold or help us anymore.

Come out consciously, before it’s too late. You won’t be alone in doing so and I promise you won’t be rejected. What you will find is a loving tribe ready to embrace your courage and your conviction and that kind of support is plenty enough to dissolve any fears you ever had about making a change and showing your true colours.

Come out of the closet, Earth warriors! We’re waiting for you.

~