This Sweet Earth: Walking with Our Children in the Age of Climate Collapse

This Sweet Earth: Walking with Our Children in the Age of Climate Collapse

Lydia Wylie-Kellermann

Details & Online Registration

Program information

Cost: Sliding Scale $500, $375, $250


The effects of climate change are all around us. We feel it in little ways as we harvest from our gardens a little earlier each year. And in big ways as we watch fires blaze through entire towns and our streets fill with rain. Climate anxiety touches nearly everything we do, but perhaps nothing so tenderly as our parenting. What does it mean to bring children into such an uncertain future? What do we do with the fear, grief, and anger we feel? 

Join us for a weekend retreat to put our bodies on this sacred land allowing the stones and the wind to carry our grief. There will be time for story sharing, wandering the woods, rituals around our grief and anger, silence and rest, and summoning that wild possibility of hope.

While the future remains unknown, there can still be awe and wonder, love and struggle, gratitude and overwhelming joy. We can choose to fight like hell for climate justice and marvel at the praying mantis amidst the weeds. May we all feel the invitation to live humanly and invite our kids into deeper knowing of what it means to be alive on this planet.

This retreat is open to all knowing that family is defined in ever-expanding and beautiful ways. If you love children and are worrying about their future in this time of climate change, you are most welcome!

This retreat will draw from Lydia’s book “This Sweet Earth: Walking with Our Children in the Age of Climate Collapse” (July 2024, Broadleaf Books).

Lydia Wylie-Kellermann is a writer, editor, activist, and mother. She is the director of Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center and editor of Geez magazine, which explores the intersection of activism, art, and spirit. She is the editor of The Sandbox Revolution: Raising Kids for a Just World. She lives with her partner and two boys at Kirkridge on Lenape land now known as Bangor, Pennsylvania.