Christina Rivera expresses anger, grief, and love for the state of Earth's ecosystems in 'MY OCEANS'.

One big potential of the divine masculine is being able to hold space for female creativity.

Imagining a care-based society is necessary before making it a reality.

When I launched Mothering Nature, I was motivated by killer whales, Orcinus orca. I was also driven by all I'd learned as a biologist, science writer, and mother in patriarchal systems, despite humans living most of our history in a matriarchy.

Orca are matriarchal. They are one of the few mammals besides humans to evolve non-reproductive grandmothers; they, too, undergo menopause, and orca grandmothers are life-or-death essential members of their families.

Christina Rivera's profound essay, "The 17th Day," limns the luminosity and motherlove shared by people and orca. When I saw her new book, MY OCEANS, I knew it might be a wisdom hymn for living today.

Rachel Clark: Could you briefly describe what drove you to write MY OCEANS?

Christina Rivera: In my book, there’s a true story of a time I happened upon a beached porpoise on the Pacific coastline of Costa Rica. I put my hands on the creature, looked it in the eye, and felt it die under my palms. Writing that sentence even now makes my eyes sting. Instead of looking away from that moment, I stared into it. Wrote through it. Used it as a portal to all my repressed feelings. Of great eco-grief. Of greater interbeing. The first draft that unrolled from my pen was a poem. (Mind you, I am not a poet.) Seven years later, the final draft that emerged was this wave-like series of lyric essays that all fit underneath the title, MY OCEANS.

RC: For me, reading MY OCEANS was a........

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