Growing Up Green

When I was growing up, the term “being green” wasn’t in vogue. Today, you see it everywhere. Regardless, I think I have always had the “green” instinct.

There were some things that my parents did that would be considered green today. We grew most of our own fruits and vegetables, raised a lot of our own meat and caught our own fish. My mom even sewed all of our Halloween costumes.

But most of the “green” things I did as a kid were things I discovered on my own. Maybe it was the “leave things in better condition than you found them” philosophy that the Girl Scouts instilled in me… who knows… but I’ve always wanted to make the world a better place and hope to instill similar values in my girls.

I was the geeky girl who would organize the neighbor kids to pick up trash in the neighborhood and surrounding streets. I was the one who whined, begged and nagged until my parents started recycling.

The one who refused to eat or drink anything that came in Styrofoam packaging for many, many years. And the one who refused to use anything that came in an aerosol can after reading that HCFCs were destroying our ozone.

And this is all before I was even a teenager ☺

I was kind of the oddball in the family for these things. And that hasn’t changed one bit today. I’m still the oddball for many of my beliefs and actions. But I’m okay with that. These are things that make me who I am.

I find myself becoming more and more green as I get older. My girls will grow up living a green lifestyle, and I don’t think they’ll know otherwise. I hope that what they learn growing up will become part of their adult lives as well.

I hope their passion will extend beyond what I can teach them, and that they’ll learn things on their own they can share with me. Because I want them to understand the reasons why we do things a certain way, not just dictate to them that this is how things are. That’s the only way true passion and understanding can grow.