Sips of selfhood: sustainable fashion edition

Five ideas for "sustainability sips" to help you reclaim your why for this work, from action and connection, to reflection and immersion.

A sip of sustainability selfhood on a farm

My dear friend Emma Barnett in her recent book Maternity Service: A Love Letter to Mothers from the Front Line of Maternity Leave, wrote about the idea of "sips of selfhood". First coined by writer Natasha Randall, this is the idea of finding fleeting, nourishing moments to briefly reconnect with own own identity and autonomy amid the demands of motherhood.

Given that I have talked here before about giving ourselves time, space and a break when we need it, this really resonates with me. I've needed sips of selfhood as a mother, in the ill health I endured earlier this year, and just generally to maintain my own mental health. We all do, I think.

"Snatching moments to oneself and knowing what to do in them for actual pleasure - not what you think might be pleasurable - is a proper skill," Emma writes.

Now, everyone's preference as to what counts as a sip of selfhood will of course vary vastly. Maybe for you it's going on a walk, maybe it's reading a book or going to an art gallery. Maybe it's sitting alone in a café with just your own thoughts and no one to disturb you.

When I was thinking about this recently for my own life however, I realised I needed a version of it for the work that I do too, and not just for the demands of mothering. A version that recognises that it's all too easy to be caught up in both the day-to-day and the demands of the actual job - the desk-bound job, the deep-in-a-document-or-a-spreadsheet job, the never-ending-email-inbox job, the piles-and-piles-of-other-things-that-you-want-to-get-to-that-you-just-don't-manage-to job, and so.much.more. All of which makes it way too easy to forget about why it is we even do the job, let alone who we are within it.

I feel this relates particularly well to the work of sustainability - a sip of selfhood intended as a reminder as to our reason for being here when it all feels so incredibly heavy. To re-find and reclaim the love we have for sustainability, or the why it is that we care so much to try and make a difference in sustainability. Because, at the end of the day, that's the reason we all do it.

So what could our own sips be to remind us, or refresh us, every now and again, or at least when we need it most?

Here are some suggestions I’ve been thinking about for myself: