In this episode of Homeward Bound, I’m talking to Isabelle Drury, author of the Substack Finding Sanity.

I wanted to talk to Isabelle because of a post she wrote back in July, describing a moment in her relationship, shaped by the way she had been dwelling on thoughts of climate catastrophe and societal collapse:

I was discussing with my partner what our plans were for the next few years of our lives. What I imagine are the usual conversations one has when your future still seems wide open: ‘Shall we have a baby?! Shall we move abroad?! Shall we buy a van?!’ Yet every answer felt wrong, because my future didn’t feel wide open. My future felt very small, and like there was only one possibility: the aforementioned end of the world.

The thing is, as I heard the words come out of my mouth garbled by tears, I realise I don’t actually believe this. Deep down, I don’t actually believe we are totally, irrevocably, and unequivocally fucked.

I’ve known Isabelle for a couple of years, she’s been part of the conversations that Anna and I host at a school called HOME, and one of the themes that’s been coming up for me lately in that work is the difference in what it asks of us when we show up to the trouble the world is in, depending on the season of life we’re in.

I want to lean into this further and record some more conversations with folks of different generations who are wrestling with the questions I wrote about in At Work in the Ruins, asking how we show up for each other across the generational differences that Isabelle and I talk about in this episode.

I hope you enjoy our conversation – and do check out Isabelle’s Substack.

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