The Air Quality is a Mess and I am Too

We are going on day six of poor air quality in my city, thanks to smoke from the Canadian wildfires, and chat? I'm struggling. Not just with anxiety about climate change, even though that’s a very real thing, but also with a real sense of disruption to my routines. Between this and the whole can-we-even-eat-lettuce-safely-right-now thing? I long for precedented times. 

To be clear: This is a larger issue, and it's absolutely not about me feeling a little stir crazy and a hefty dose of FOMO to be stuck inside during those fleeting summer months. 

But this isn't a column about the environment, it's about women's health and wellness...and when there's smoke in the air, we have a real choice to make: Do we abandon our wellness practices or do we take the risk and step outside into smoggy air to keep up with them?

I've recently landed on a wellness routine that is really working for me: A short walk first thing in the morning, before it gets hot out, and then a longer, more leisurely walk at night, which brings me to (an admittedly arbitrary) goal of 10,000 steps most days. Honestly? I've been feeling great...that is, until the air quality issue came and had me reconfiguring this ritual. It’s wild, especially at this point in life, to feel how dramatically even these minor disruptions can affect your overall well-being. It’s just a sign of how connected it all is. 

Again, this isn't about me. This is a much larger issue. The point here is this: These larger issues, issues tied to our environment and our food supply and all the things that feel somewhat distant, do affect us. They affect how we live our lives.