Episode 22 - Rewriting Joy Amidst Crisis

Photo Credit: Gerry Kingsley

How do we balance joy with sorrow in the midst of ongoing crises? Seeking freedom is not frivolous but rather essential, so that we are able to care for ourselves as we protect wild places, and so we can be resilient in the face of environmental and social breakdown. This conversation explores the importance of strengthening our relationships to our ancestors, protecting the places where we live, and reconnecting with our own inner child in this search for joy.

Guest Danielle Daniel is an award-winning author and illustrator of settler and Indigenous ancestry, who has written two novels. Forever Birchwood is a middle grade novel set in her northern hometown of Sudbury, following Wolf, on the crest of adolescence, as she fights to protect a beloved forest. Danielle’s bestseller adult novel Daughters of the Deer is an historical fiction novel inspired by the lives of her ancestors— an Algonquin woman and a soldier/settler from France, and their first born daughter who was murdered by French settlers. Danielle joins Reseed to talk about her novels, and to delve into environmental protection, polarization, finding common ground, the power of stories, and reconnecting with joy. 

In the words of Mary Oliver, joy may be life’s “way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world”. Joy and childhood wonder need not be an escape from everything we collectively face, but rather they can coexist with the sorrow, give life meaning, and support us in being the caretakers that we need to be.