Rose B. Simpson

It was really frustrating when I had to catch the bus at 6.30 in the morning, but I am so grateful.

My mom is always, still to this day, searching for ways to root and to figure out how to apply

the innate values of relationship to Earth and being in all walks of life.

And so part of that was growing all our own food and figuring out how we could live completely sustainably.

And we have the privilege of living in our ancestral home,

having seed and relationship to spirituality that can foster the farming.

So those seeds have been adapted to that environment for a very long time.

We have tradition that's passed down for a really long time to be able to support ourselves in the high desert of northern New Mexico.

And turning off the electricity.

was one step towards remembering what it's like to not be dependent on a system.

And now, because of the fact that she turned off the electricity, she homeschooled us for a long time, we grew our own food, I can actually hear electricity.

Really?

Yeah, I'm really sensitive to, like, yeah, it's all, we adapt to all the things that we add to our lives, and when we take it away, then we start realizing how much we're affected by it, yeah.

I feel like understanding true sustainability means that we always have a choice.

Because my mom didn't put us into the school system, she intentionally homeschooled me and my brother from early on, and we chose to go to school later, and now we keep going to school.

And I think that was a way of her building a capacity in us to choose.

There's always a choice.

We're not victims to the world that we live in.

We can always, if we're taught how to be sustainable and how to innovate and figure out how to survive in any situation, then we are in our agency when we navigate the world around us.

How do I sustain that?