Driven by her love of nature and its ability to connect and heal people, registered nurse Lani is a member of ACF’s Northern Beaches community group in Sydney.
I was always a dirt girl growing up, playing in the mud. I wasn’t from a family that went out bush or spent much time in nature but it’s always been there for me. I’m a gardener too, I like to grow my own food and I have noticed the seasons changing dramatically. I’m 36 and the changes I have seen in my lifetime, they’re not right.
As a nurse I have been trained to assess a situation. When someone is not well, we assess and we treat and we do the best we can to find solutions. And when I think about nature, we’re not doing that.
I was really activated by having kids. They’re now four and almost three and that’s 100% why I do everything now, it’s for them. It’s about having a future for my children where we can coexist with nature.
My connection to nature is an emotional one. Living on the Northern Beaches we’re blessed with bush and beaches. I lost my mum in 2018, two months before I had my first child. I went out into nature to heal and those feelings of comfort and feeling safe that I had with my mum, I got those back when I went out into nature.
When we’re stressed, running around a million miles an hour, thinking about kids and work and bills, we’re running on our sympathetic nervous system and on adrenaline, that’s really unhealthy. When you go out into nature and you really connect, that activates your parasympathetic nervous system and that’s what cools us down, calms us.
During the Black Summer bushfires I couldn’t take my eldest daughter outside because of the smoke. That was followed by floods. Add to that the never-ending stream of plastic washing up on our beaches. That, and all the bad news from around the world, culminated into one lightbulb moment before the 2022 federal election, when I thought, that’s it, I have to do something. It was Scott Morrison; I have to thank him for that (laughs).
Since then I’ve thrown myself into community organising at ACF head first. I never would have touched politics before but now I go and talk to politicians at the drop of a hat. I go to Parliament House for events. I’m at protests, helping run stalls. We’re creating volunteer opportunities for people to connect back to the important stuff. For me it’s about that connection to community, connecting to nature and drawing more people into that.
I really like the ACF community – that’s what got me. ACF is well-known, active and trusted, and I like its strategy and its leadership. I have had so many opportunities through ACF – community organising training, and opportunities to go and meet with MPs; you’re learning these skills as you go and there’s always someone to ask for help. They’re always empowering you.
Lots of people think there is someone else looking after the climate and biodiversity crises already – and there is, but there are still not enough of us. It doesn’t matter what type of skills you have, if we all work together, it’s surprising what we can achieve.
My message to others is that activism is not scary. You don’t need to be an expert in policy or an expert ecologist, you can be an average, everyday person, just like myself, who just cares a whole lot and you can make a hell of a lot of change. All you need to do is care.
