from Natural Life Magazine, May/June 2010
From the Editor's Desk
Little Changes, Personal Steps
By Wendy Priesnitz
“If you don’t like the way the world is, you change it…one step at a time.”
~ Marian Wright Edelman, founder, Children’s Defense Fund
 Inspiring individual, personal action to create change in the world is what Natural Life Magazine has always been about. We believe in action rather than talk, whether it’s about living a simpler, greener lifestyle; growing our own organic food; reducing the ecological footprint of our homes and how we travel; transforming aggression into peaceful ways of interacting; building community; or parenting our children and helping them learn in non-coercive ways.
Small steps in any of those directions won’t change the world on their own, but they make a difference. Each small, individual action leads to other actions – one we didn’t think about earlier, or didn’t think we could take – and to questioning ourselves, our neighbors, and our governments about what bigger actions could be taken. Each small step inspires others to make changes in their lives, and all those small changes add up to something big. The trick is to begin!
Urban homesteader Karen Kliewer demonstrates that in this issue in her article “Living the Good Life in the City.” Her family’s small steps were inspired by iconic back-to-the-landers Helen and Scott Nearing. But they found that, with the goal of living more lightly on the earth in sight and a plan in hand, it’s not necessary to take big steps like quitting your job, moving to the country and building a solar-powered cabin.
As Karen writes, sometimes the changes are incremental and are sitting right under our noses while we’re waiting for the big chance for change to come along. She and her partner discovered that “homesteading” can be done in the city – right on the property they were using as a temporary base while they hunted for their perfect place in the country. And she provides a map for living that sustainable lifestyle one small step at a time.
Among those steps is mastering a whole variety of new skills – things like straw bale construction, vermicomposting, making yogurt, starting sourdough, preserving food, keeping chickens. These skills used to be called “homemaking,” a term that was pejorative for many women (and a few men) not so long ago. But now, as I write in my “Media Beat” column, this term is being rearranged by those who understand the need to look at the world in a different way. So as we take those small steps toward living more lightly on the earth, ideas grounded in self-reliance – such as homeschooling, home business, home-made, and home- grown – have suddenly become progressive keys to social and economic change, rather than oppressive tools of drudgery and insecurity.
And I think that’s a change we all can welcome.
Wendy Priesnitz is the co-founder and editor of Natural Life Magazine. She is also the author of 13 books and a journalist with over 40 years of experience. This editorial was published in 2010.
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