Thriving life is about
more than sustainability.
It is time for us to move beyond the mindscape of doubt and the systems of control, and into the actual possibility of a thriving Earth.
It does not take a scientist to deduct, or a poet to evoke, that our planet and our human lives woven within it, are in grave danger. Our unconscious interactions with, control of, and extraction and desecration of Earth, have crossed a line— and all of our lives are becoming simply an act of survival.
Somewhere along the way, as our minds and our hearts — our intellect and our creativity — have been severed, we lost our capacity to generate responses to “sustainability” problems that actually support life on our planet. The visionaries have lost the tangible leverage points to affect change, and the scientists have lost the possibility of a truly thriving world, and it’s imperative that we find one another again. Our lives depend upon it.
Returning to the landscape of life is asking us to first set aside our well-intended sustainability research, our best laid plans, our libraries of academia, our lofty idealism and —
listen, witness and serve the living principles of our planet.
If you’ve arrived here, you’re beginning to meet the upper limits of your capacity to continue “work as usual” in sustainability and —
you can feel that the systems and structures of the dominant paradigm are failing to make change
you feel like the “heart” of why you entered this work is lost, and your time and energy are spent in calculating metrics, compromising to make profit, chasing concepts and possibilities that never seem to lead anywhere satisfying
you are exhausted of living your own life in your mind, and are ready to bridge your intellect with the visionary capacity of your heart and the power of community
you are burned out on corporate culture or academia and recognize that both, rather than nurturing life, are breaking it down
Or, you’re a deeply passionate healer, artist, community organizer, wisdomkeeper, or philanthropist and—
you long to deepen your capacity to affect actual change in the world by bridging your heart with the science of generative earth principles
you need to ground your spiritual and creative context for collective thriving in down-on-the-ground research, science, and historical paradigms for Earth-tending
you want to move beyond vision and possibility for a thriving Earth, into an actual system, structure, and pathway through which you can serve Earth
you feel exhausted and unfulfilled by the constant visioning of dominant spiritual paradigms and long to take action in the present that affects change in your community
Hello, I’m Carrie!
I spent many years working in technology, leveraging my training in theoretical mathematics and initially living my life with almost a sole focus on the intellect. In parallel I began to heal my body and psyche, and open my heart, through deep breathing in yoga.
As I began to work in sustainability in the corporate realm, and later in academia teaching a Circular Economy course at Harvard, I saw how the mind and the heart are separated, and I became disillusioned with “sustainability” as it is currently practiced.
More recently, I discovered bookbinding as not only an outlet for my creativity, but also a metaphor for what thriving life could be for all of us. Now, I am offering the wisdom I’ve gained from all of my experiences, training, creations, and being, here at More than Sustainability.
Let's Work Together
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Long or short-term 1:1 support as you walk across the threshold from sustainability to thriving life.
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Practical and research-oriented support for grants, papers, and visionary organizations.
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Together, let’s create a custom bookcover for a special project, beloved book or journal.
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As I travel around the world, witnessing Earth’s thriving systems, let me send you a personal note!
The Wisdom of Bookbinding
Making books by hand has become a daily reminder for me of the potential for thriving life that we can participate in creating. With hand bound books, knowledge isn’t just the black and white pages of ink and paper, the human mind’s ideas separated from nature. Instead, tactile materials, color, artistry, and care — even love — are incorporated together into a beautiful physical reflection of the ideas inside the book.
Sustainability is more than just dividing up the world’s resources into carbon budgets. For me, life is made meaningful through intentional creation. In a thriving world, crafting items is transformed from today’s impersonal process primarily executed in a factory. There would be less things, yes, but they will be more beautiful, special, valued, and useful; the sort of items we pass on to future generations, full of so much more than just the collection of atoms that make them up.
