Dear Earth Carer, my body is an electrical storm, and other side effects of my early conservation career.

Dear Earth Carer,

I have a confession, and I hope you can forgive me. As much as I have tried to write to you this year, all I can show for it is five unfinished letters to you sitting in my drafts. For some reason, my words aren’t wording right, and so if you will bear with me, I think this letter needs to be about why I am having trouble writing you letters, and then maybe, we can get back on track.

The thing is, I have spent an embarrassing amount of time recently trying to convince my body that it is safe. When bodies don’t think they are safe, it is challenging for them to be all eloquent and reflective, and so as soon as I stop feeling safe, my letters to you feel like cries for help rather than poignant musings about how we can care for ourselves and each other.

Instead of feeling safe, my body often feels like an electrical storm. A frenzy of static, the ants going crazy with the atmospheric tension, the skies are grey, and I can feel it coming. In navigating my electrical storms, I am realising that this is how my PTSD still shows up. In times when my mind wants to make logical and rational decisions in a situation that it understands, my body goes into storm mode. It remembers those same situations as previously being irrational and illogical, and it immediately tells the ants to prepare for war. Lying in my husband’s arms during a recent storm, I told him that my brain knows I am okay, but my body doesn’t, and I asked him to help my body get through this moment safely. He told me that the good news is that my body will remember this storm as one where it had love and support, which will make the next storm easier. Maybe he is like the climate action team for my body, doing what he can to reduce worsening weather. That storm passed the fastest that any storm had before, with a huge relief coming with the break of tension and a good downpour. Like any good storm, a rainbow appeared after the clearing of the darkness.

I previously believed that experiencing the peak of the storm was the only way to get through it, but it turns out that I can calm the ants by reminding them that they are okay, that they are safe, and that the storm isn’t actually coming this time. Recently, a storm brewed with static and frantic energy, and I was flighty and my body filled with grey skies and tension. Instead of experiencing the thunder, lightning and downpour, I engaged myself in an activity that unknowingly reminded me of the support I have around me and that I am safe and loved. Upon my body remembering that it was safe, the storm receded on its own. My silly little (6-foot) body forgets that it has come a long way from the unsafety of my past, so reminding it that it is okay, with proof, is enough to convince the clouds to start to move along. I have been noting three gratitudes a day since 2022, and I have recently realised that this may have played a fairly significant role in controlling my internal weather and remembering the supports and joys that have kept the sunshine around for the past couple of years.

I started this year by reading a book about the surgical nurses of the Vietnam War, and unbeknownst to me at the time of picking up the book, the nurses’ experiences would spark vivid memories of my time as an early career conservationist living in basic camps in African and Asian tropical forests. The whole way through the book, I felt a striking understanding of the nurses’ experiences during the war and in their return home to civilisation. I would like to stress that I have never participated in a war, and so these feelings of nostalgia and understanding made me reflect on what my time as a conservationist in these conditions had done to my mind and body. I wanted to understand why it was and how it was that I could relate so much to a blatantly horrific experience, despite not having contact with any weaponry, exploded limbs, or overhead choppers. Is it possible that the living conditions of war, without the actual war itself was enough to impact a person’s permanent psyche? Delving deep into these reflections started preparing my ants and increasing the atmospheric tension in my limbs.

Though the unfinished letters to you detailed the parts of my life that echoed the nurses’ experiences, I don’t think that I need to prove the validity of my feelings to you, dear Earth Carer. These letters are supposed to be about caring for ourselves, not reliving the parts of our stories that leave us feeling uncared for, so I will tell you this instead. I am fortunate enough to be at the most supported time of my life. Though there are more uncertainties than I’d like this year, I am not living in a basic camp with a bunch of strangers trying to prove myself in extreme environmental conditions. I live in a loving household with my husband, with running water and electricity. I have built and curated professional and personal support systems and communities that care about me and my work. I have carved out my own little space for myself in my career, finding worth in those I am able to help rather than those I am able to prove myself to. So despite these storms and my body’s memories of unsafety, I am going to try my best to keep reminding my body that it is safe and that we are fortunate to be in this place and life that we are in right now.

One thing the nurses did teach me is that the experiences that shape our early careers stick with us. If we learnt how to do a job in turbulent, unsafe environments, it makes sense that our bodies associate any future jobs with these factors as the baseline norm. Just like childhood traumas shape the thoughts and behaviours of adults, my early career has shaped some of the thoughts and behaviours that I have in the safest, most supportive jobs of my life. I have been told by a leader that I sense check decisions more than I need to, as I need proof that I am making the right decision to keep myself safe. Despite having supported agency to make these decisions, my body still needs proof that I will be okay if I call the shots.

After learning from the nurses, I am now understanding that it is okay to give myself grace in taking the time to intentionally adjust my normal ways of being and doing instead of expecting my body to get with the program as time passes. Time may heal all wounds, but that may only be the case if we are applying first aid during that time, not staring at a clock waiting for our severed limb to get better.

So this is all to say, it’s 2026, 10 years after my last stint living in a forest, 10 years since I had my tendon snap in an illegal snake trap, and 10 years since I first wondered if something was wrong with me and if I needed help. Despite the time that passes, I still ice my swollen ankle every night, and like that ice, I will still need to calm the storms as they arise. Time can heal my wounds if I keep applying the ice and weathering the storms.

At the start of this letter, I told you that I have spent an embarrassing amount of time reminding my body that it is safe. I think I have been feeling as if an entire decade is an embarrassing length of time to be impacted by my former lived experiences, and that I should be over all of this nonsense by now. To end this letter, I am choosing to embrace the importance of continuing to care for myself for so long. I have spent a decade nursing physical and mental injuries and have been intentionally and actively rehabbing them with care and love. Instead of focusing on the fact that I am still being impacted, I am going to celebrate the work I am doing to rewire my brain neurons and strengthen my limbs. I don’t ever shame myself for having a swollen ankle that I need to tend to each night, or when I have to ask friends for ice, or make exercise adjustments for my injury. In this respect, this letter to you is a part of me owning the need to “ice my mind” and be okay with that as an important and necessary self-care task. I hate that even I need a physical injury to rationalise a need for upkeeping mental health strains, but that is just a symptom of the human condition, I think.

There’s a lot going on in the world right now- Ignoring politics and wars, there are fires, cyclones, floods, and real-life storms impacting people’s lives and homes, not to mention the addition of a huge mental load to the already gigantic loads of many. Eco-grief is just waiting to pop its head out from around the corner for those not directly grappling with their survival, and at a bare minimum, a new year can bring fears of career uncertainty for many Earth Carers out there. In these times, and beyond, please keep an eye on your ants, notice the tension that forms in your body, and the static that lies beneath your skin. When you need to, remind yourself that you are safe. I wish I knew this earlier, but I am realising that many of us need that reminder from time to time as an important tool in our self-care belt.

And look at that, I have made it to the end. I will consider this to be my first achievement of the year. Merry January, everyone. I care deeply about you.

Jessie