Christa Avampato's Blog, page 22

Revelations while running: the truth about brutal beginnings

Out for my morning run, every morning. Photo by Christa Avampato.

The first 10 minutes of my daily morning run are always the worst. As I slowly make my way down the block, my joints and muscles hurt, my breathing is uneven, and I often wish I was back in my cozy apartment. Thanks to the recent clock change, the sun is barely up. I have a dissertation to write, books to read, work piling up, unanswered emails that really need answers. Why am I running, especially in the freezing cold, when there is so much else I need to do?

This cranky voice in my brain prattles on as I put one foot in front of the other. And around minute 10 something starts to happen. The cranky voice gets quieter and eventually gives up. The flow finds me. My spirit lifts.

By the time I get to 30 minutes, I’m not ready to go inside. The endorphins are winning. I thank myself for persevering.

These daily runs are a good reminder that beginnings are often fraught with difficulty. We doubt. We question. We get distracted. We think about quitting, or at least pivoting, before we give ourselves a real shot to succeed. We contemplate doubling back and just doing what we’ve always done because it’s safe and familiar.

Maybe you’re at the beginning of something in your life or career. Maybe a door is closing and you’ve yet to find a window to crawl through next.

Consider staying with the trouble. Consider why you started. Consider what might happen if things go to plan instead of falling down in midflight. Maybe all you need to do is give yourself a bit more time, grace, and room to run.

My leadership practice framework is a forest

Illustration by Natural Areas Conservancy. https://naturalareasnyc.org/

In my Masters in Sustainability Leadership program at University of Cambridge / Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), Dr. Louise Drake and Dr. Tanja Collavo wrote a beautiful module on leadership. They feature Elspeth Donovan who encourages us to develop a leadership practice framework that helps us understand how and why we respond, make decisions, and act.

For weeks I’ve thought about what my framework might be. Finally, I’ve found a perfect fit: the layers of a forest — soil, understory, vinelayer, midstory, understory, and atmosphere. As a biomimicry scientist and storyteller, this model fits my passions for building my life inspired by nature’s wisdom and the power of story to shift hearts, minds, and actions. It’s fitting that the word “story” is present in the layers of this incredible ecosystem that fosters life.

Soil — home of the earthly nutrients that give rise to the forest
This is what I read, see, hear, feel, and experience that feeds into my imagination and creativity. This houses my personal history, my core memories from the time I was a child to the present day. In that way the soil and what feeds me is always changing and evolving.

Understory — seedlings and saplings that will be the forest’s future
This is where I constantly cultivate new ideas, interests, and connections. Not all of them will mature but they all teach me something. I’m always learning, growing, evolving, and living my life spherically, in many different directions. Here my imagination and creativity have no limits.

Vinelayer — connects the forest from soil to canopy
These are the throughlines of my life and work: nature, stories, and business. These are my vines that run through my work and feed my creativity, and the use of resources that make my creative work possible to share with the world.

Midstory — made up of diverse shrubs and young trees
This is yesterday’s understory, the ideas and relationships that began there that have emerged as those that I’ll cultivate and nurture to their fullest potential.

Overstory — the top layer of mature tree crowns that connect to form the canopy
This is where the ideas I’ve nurtured have come to fruition and reached their full potential. The books I write. The products I create. The relationships that are core to my community. This is also where I fully connect to the wider world, and where the exchange of ideas and perspectives happens.

Atmosphere — with the nutrients from the soil, the atmosphere’s sunlight, air, and rain allow a forest to be sustainable and create an ecosystem where other beings can also thrive
For me, this is the love, care, concern, and support I receive from my community and the wider world. Just as the sunlight, air, and rain pour down through the forest and back into the soil to create a full loop, love nurtures my spirit, refills my cup, and allows me to continue my work. Just like a forest, my work also involves nurturing the lives and work of others.

Your story is not about you

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Had the most fascinating conversation with an expert in audience segmentation who is an oceanographer and thinks deeply about climate change communications. For our climate message to reach someone in a way that impacts their behavior, he said we need to be entrenched in the minds of the audience member we want to reach and be willing to change our story and language so it is created in that audience member’s mind in the way we want and need it to be. In this way, our story is not our story in the traditional sense. Our story is the imprint we want the audience member to experience and visualize when they hear our story.

He gave me this analogy: if someone wants to send a microwave signal across the city of Los Angeles, that signal will be distorted and filtered between the start and end points. Therefore, the person sending the signal needs to re-engineer the signal they send so the signal at the end point is what they want it to be.

Our stories are no different. They are filtered through an audience member’s language, prior life experience, biases, hopes, wants, needs, and fears. This is information that isn’t and can’t be aligned with an audience member’s base demographics that are easy to collect. Understanding an audience member on this level requires deep, intense, curious, and radically empathetic listening, a skill that is sadly in short supply in today’s world.

We also need to let go of the idea that there is one story to communicate one goal or one experience to a general audience. This understanding of the audience requires us as storytellers in any form to develop a library of stories that will reach audiences that are more thoroughly and thoughtfully segmented.

How to do this is the crux of my dissertation for University of Cambridge. I don’t know the answers yet, but I’m excited to find out as this dissertation unfolds. My hope is that my research will move the ball forward for the climate community in a way that benefits all beings.

How I came to see cancer as a gift

Filmed by Jen Aks for The Power of Gesture

As breast cancer awareness month comes to a close, I wanted to share this clip of me that was filmed by Jen Aks from The Power of Gesture just as I completed active treatment in 2021. (You can see the full interview at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF8SWzj5Blq1S8KGan6FXCl8tvxTPUVZm). My hair had started to grow back after chemo and I was on heavy doses of steroids to repair my body from a near-lethal case of pulmonary pneumonitis (lung inflammation) caused by chemo.

Healing and hopeful, I turned my attention to my mental health, something we don’t talk enough about as it relates to physical illness. I made the conscious choice to see cancer as a gift, something that honed me as it harmed me. Though I don’t want anyone to ever go through cancer, I wouldn’t erase it from my own history if I could. It made me stronger, wiser, braver, kinder, and more compassionate. It taught me to ask for help and advocate for myself and all others who walk this road.

Because of what I went through, patients at my cancer center now have better care. My personal health data from this battle has been presented at medical conferences and written about in medical journals to better train doctors and researchers. I continue to contribute to research for better treatments and cures.

From food drops at my front door to gifts of comfort to messages of encouragement in every communication channel I have, my community had my back every step of the way. Though physically alone for much of my journey, they made sure I was never spiritually alone. They brought me joy and hope, and many times that was all I had to hang onto. There is no healing without grieving, and so I gave myself the space to grieve and mourn everything I lost. That process allowed me to recognize that while I can never get back my pre-cancer life and body, I can have something better—the life I have now. If we can let go of a dream that’s died, we can create something new and better.

Healing isn’t linear nor easy, but now on this side of history I can say that it’s absolutely worth every ounce of effort. So no matter what you’re going through now, keep going. There’s something beautiful waiting for you.

3 years cancer-free today

Me happily cancer-free for 3 years

3 years ago today I had the surgery that eradicated cancer from my body – a bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction. I had my annual checkup with my brilliant surgeon, Dr. Freya Schnabel at Perlmutter Cancer Center – part of NYU Langone Health, today and I’m happily NED – no evidence of disease. Forever grateful and enjoying my life and health to the max! Thank you to everyone who’s been in the trenches with me and helped me up and over this mountain. So happy to pay it forward and help others on their journey.

Books are magic

One of my favorite bookstores, Books are Magic, in Brooklyn, NY. Photo by bookstore.

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.” ~Stephen King

My dog, Phin, and I were enjoying the gorgeous Fall weather on our tree-lined block in Brooklyn, the sweet scent of dried leaves in the air. He’s an old man now – 14 last month – and he doesn’t move as well as he used to.

A young girl was walking toward us, her nose deep in a book—A Wrinkle in Time. I picked up Phin from his sunny spot in the middle of the sidewalk so he wouldn’t be in her way. Her mother walked a few paces behind her and saw me move Phin of her daughter’s way. The girl passed us without taking any notice.

“I’m so sorry,” her mother aid to me. “When she’s reading she’s in another world.”

I smiled. “No apologies needed. I’m the same way,” I said.

That’s the magic of fiction. As a reader and author, books have carried me away to fantastical places. The characters have become my friends and traveling companions. Their adventures are as real to me as my own in this physical world. 

When I finally look up from reading or writing, I’ve lost all track of time. After having been on a book’s journey, my own world looks and feels different. I feel different. Books change us, and our perspective.

Books are sense-making devices. When I don’t know how I feel about something, I read and write. In those acts, things become a little bit clearer. 26 letters arranged in countless ways to create portals across time and space, conveying emotions, sharing thoughts and experiences, connecting us to each other, attempting to make meaning of the messiness of life. There is no more magical invention than a book.

Cultivating our roots in difficult times

I ran the few blocks to Prospect Park for my morning run. On the way, I passed one of my neighbors who was sitting in a chair in her front yard. She had her eyes closed, face up to the sun, with her bare feet sinking into the ground.

“Morning, Marta,” I said.

“Hi dear,” she replied. “Just feeling my roots.”

As I ran through the park taking in all the reds, golds, and oranges of the leaves, I thought about Marta’s comment. We all have roots — where we live, where we work, in the communities and with the people whom we spend time with. It made me think about the value of connections, and how those connections form a kind of life journey and path as we carve our way in the world. It reminded me how strong roots take time to cultivate, how that work is mostly hidden from sight, and may appear like we aren’t making any progress.

But the progress of building our roots may be the most important progress we make because everything else we are and do comes from them. It’s our roots that sustain us, as people and professionals. They are what remains when everything else falls away. They help us grow, transform, and heal. They help us weather the tough times and flourish when the light returns. And it does always return, eventually.

The world is a difficult place right now in so many ways. Perhaps as difficult a place as we’ve ever seen. I’m finding hope in fostering my roots, in deepening my relationships, and rededicating myself to my community, in my city, in my work, and in all the places where I find points of connection. I hope that you are able to find this, too.

Photos of Prospect Park, Brooklyn. Taken by Christa Avampato on October 25, 2023.

Tell me something good, in this broken world

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

“Tell me something good.” That’s what one of my neighbors said to me when I saw her outside yesterday when we were walking our dogs. I completely understood why she needed good news right now.

Although this is a very different situation and it’s happening on a geopolitical scale with impacts on many millions of people, I felt the same way my neighbor feels when I went through cancer treatment. A friend of mine sent me an email back then that said he had tried to message me many times but just had no idea what to say. He felt that everything he could say was inadequate considering what I was going through. I said to him exactly what my neighbor said to me. “Tell me something good.” He felt awful talking about anything good because he thought it would make me feel worse about my situation. It did just the opposite for me. His good news lifted me up.

Even in times of mourning and the deepest sorrow, we need light. We need stories. We need moments of joy to give us a boost so that we can keep going. It doesn’t mean that we care any less or that we don’t understand the seriousness of what’s happening. Joy is an act of resistance. Joy is fuel. Joy is how we sustain our courage.

When we don’t know what to say, it’s okay to just be present and listen. So often what people need is not an answer but an ear and a shoulder. And if you have it within you, tell them something good. That may be exactly what they need to hear right now.

Trees show us how to survive in difficult times

Photo of Prospect Park by Christa Avampato

“I just want to live life all the way through. That is all.” ~Nan Shepherd

On my morning run in Prospect Park, I caught my first glimpse of autumn, my favorite season, one of catch and release, color and darkness, change and preservation, our two halves becoming whole. Trees changing and losing their leaves have so much to teach us about how we live and work. Biomimicry in action.

Deciduous trees let go of their leaves to survive the winter and live to see the next spring: it conserves energy and water, and allows wind to blow through the branches, putting less strain on the tree during winter storms.

In this next season of life, what will you do and what will you let go of so you can arrive in the next season rested and ready when the light and warmth return?

I am taking a little time every day to read place-based books about nature and landscape by people like Nan Shepherd and Robert Macfarlane who go out into the natural world and take it all in.

I am letting go of always thinking 10 ten steps ahead. Some amount of planning is necessary, but sometimes I get so caught up in the future that I don’t fully appreciate and learn from the now. So I’m going to make a conscious effort to love and be exactly where I am each day.

What about you? What will you do? What will you let go of?

Is peace ever impossible?

Photo of Brooklyn sunset taken by Christa Avampato

In the last days of his presidency, Bill Clinton called PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. “You are a great man,” said Arafat. “I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you made me one,” Clinton replied. I don’t know if Arafat can bear all of the blame but he was a key player in the region’s failure. Never quite endorsing nor denouncing anyone or anything, he failed his people and neighbors by holding to the messy, non-committal middle.

After Arafat shook hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn, Hamas’s (then called Change and Reform) rage exploded into violence. They narrowly won the 2006 election with 44.45% of the vote. Fatah, the next closest party and founded by Arafat, won 41.43%. The remaining 5 parties collectively won 12.3%. It wasn’t a runaway victory. A majority of Palestinians didn’t want Hamas.

2006 was the last time Palestinians voted. With 50% of Gazans under 18 today, they had no say in 2006. We have no idea how they’d vote now.

We know Hamas wants Israel to invade Gaza. They’d love to publicize the casualties. It’ll be bloody, horrific hand-to-hand, door-to-door combat. Only fans of chaos win that kind of war.

This picture is the view from my Brooklyn apartment. I spend a lot of time at this window, looking out across Ditmas Park, Kensington, Borough Park, Midwood, Greenwood, Windsor Terrace, Bay Ridge, Sunset Park, Fort Hamilton, Dyker Heights, and Bath Beach. They’re some of the most diverse neighborhoods in the world. A mix of every religion, culture, and ethnicity. Many Jews. Many Muslims. All New Yorkers, and so far, peaceful.

I hope it’s not too late for peace. The world could give Palestinians an option other than Hamas with humanitarian aid and safe passage. The Arab world could denounce Hamas, come to the table, and stand for peace for all. If we leave Gazans with no food, water, medical care, or electricity, their desperation will grow exponentially. I’m afraid of where that leads.

Is peace ever impossible? Is a spirit of humanity ever completely snuffed out? Time will tell.