Thank you for sharing this, Desiree. As a lifelong fellow Gaian, I am with you all the way. Guilt is useless, as is despair--despite the overwhelming evidence that we are screwed. What we need most is what you have shown abundantly right here: mindfulness and determination. I boil this process down into what I call three essential disciplines: (1) Tonglen meditation (to cope with, and transform, anguish for the suffering of our planet and people); (2) Satyagraha--the Gandhi/King/Mandela discipline of nonviolent noncooperation with evil; and (3) Permaculture--our path to healing the planet one backyard at a time, and engendering a Gaian future for our descendants where humanity lives in a symbiotic, rather than parasitic, relationship with our biological support system (Gaia).