Fear Not
By: The Planet Magazine
Tags: Parenthood, Environmental Issues, Fear

By Casey Trinkaus, Huxley Class of 2011

Gemma Trinkaus with pumpkins. Photo provided by Casey Trinkaus.

Your perspective shifts completely when you become a parent.

You’ll always have fear once your daughter is here. It’s just part of parenthood.

Just wait, what scares you now will be nothing compared to what scares you in the future.

These were all sentiments passed to me by well-meaning individuals at the grocery store. Total, random strangers who took one look at my growing baby-bump back in 2018 and decided that I needed some elder wisdom imparted that day while looking at what granola blend I should purchase.

What those individuals didn’t realize though, was that I was already scared before they started talking. Every. Single. Day. I was scared about the future and what it would hold for my child.

I knew about the climate crisis. I knew about mining and conventional agricultural practices poisoning our air and making our water undrinkable. I knew that superbugs were becoming more commonplace and that there were entire cities with infrastructure so old, and lawmakers so cheap, that young kids were being severely harmed just by drinking the tap water. So yes, I was afraid. Afraid for myself and for my unborn daughter, and afraid for all of humankind and our beloved Earth.

I was already scared before they started talking. Every. Single. Day. I was scared about the future and what it would hold for my child.

I graduated from Huxley College of the Environment with a degree in Environmental Studies back in 2011. Eventually I found my way to Pennsylvania and got my Master’s Degree in Sustainability Marketing, and then I proceeded to work in organic agriculture for the next six years. My focus has always been on making the world a better, safer place. Ever since I started at Western I knew this is what I wanted to do, even if I wasn’t sure how.

The importance of a healthy environment is exemplified when you are growing a life. You become more conscious of everything you eat, drink, and do. You suddenly realize that everything you’re exposing yourself to you’re also exposing your baby to.

Making the world a better place was a key life goal of mine in 2018. As you can imagine, with all of the big environmental events happening around me, the year was filled with trepidation for me and how I could possibly make a change big enough to counteract all the negative news. I was just one person, growing another person. What were the possibilities?

Trinkaus family hike in Pennsylvania. Photo provided by Casey Trinkaus

But 2018 was also filled with beautiful, life-changing moments that were so small on the news-scale, it’s hard to quantify them. These were what I set out to find. In 2018, Elon Musk donated almost $500,000 to the Flint school system to pay for UV filtration devices in all the schools in Flint, Michigan so the children would have safe, lead-free drinking water. The U.S. Government included organic agriculture funding in the Farm Bill for the first time, signaling its importance to the citizens of the country. Starbucks and McDonalds both launched initiatives to make their cups fully recyclable and compostable. And Greta Thunberg, at age 15, gave her first climate talk in Poland and told the adults that they needed more maturity to face the climate crisis head-on. I really hope my daughter has her courage one day.

Yes, bad things were happening around us. But as I saw, there were also some really good things happening as well. Stores were no longer providing non-recyclable plastic grocery bags; our city started sending quarterly water reports to all interested residents; and our local CSA (community supported agriculture) farm grew by 20%, showing that more and more people were interested in local produce.

I started seeing that the small steps people were taking to improve the world were adding up. So instead of listening to the bleak (and rather terrible) parenting advice about the future and fear for my child, I decided to seek ways of acknowledging the beauty of our world and the small steps being taken to make it a better one.

I meditate daily and use the mantras to match my life goals, always striving for a positive mindset when I begin my morning. I joined a local environmental group that gets more children outdoors, and my husband and I volunteer at a local park cleaning trails. And most importantly, we’ve begun showing our daughter what it means to appreciate, and take care of, the world around her. We hike and look for native plants and wildlife, we draw pictures of our local river with sidewalk chalk, and she knows how to (mostly) sort our recyclables into the blue bin and green bins.

The quotes I think about now, with an 18-month-old at home, are much different than those playing in my mind in 2018.

“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.” ―Noam Chomsky “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world”. — Anne Frank “There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for”. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I still recognize that we have a lot of room for improvement as far as the environment goes. But as a mother trying to raise a tiny human in this world, I’ve decided to be optimistic that all the small things do make a difference, and that together, we can leave the Earth better than we found it for future generations to come.

Casey Trinkaus and baby Gemma. Photo provided by Casey Trinkaus

About the Author

Casey Trinkaus holds a Master of Arts in Food Studies and Sustainability from Chatham University (’14) and a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies from Western Washington University (‘11). She is currently the Director of Communications for the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Pennsylvania, working to promote and create more opportunities for low and middle-income students to go to college. Prior to this, she was the Manager of Marketing for an organic agricultural company in Lancaster, PA for 6 years where her focus was working with small and mid-sized farms across the US to follow sustainable agricultural practices while producing profits.