I wish you all the best and always make sure that you can be proud of yourself and don’t need status-symbols for feeling nice.

I promise that I will change my behavior to benefit our trees.

We can learn a lot about how to treat others from stories that have been passed from generation to generation.

Maybe you heard about bats? Bats, the carriers of this disease that spread among us like wild fire. I love bats. When I was your age today, sitting in the evening on the back terrace of your grandparent’s home in Ibiza, hundreds of bats would play, dance and sing among the trees.

We only have 11 years left until the damage done by climate change is irreversible.

I promise that I will plant more trees in places where there are none.

And it’s not that I don’t care. I care deeply. For you three, and the families I hope you will have one day; for the many beautiful places I have had the privilege to know, places which take my breath away, that fill my heart with a bursting joy and connectedness to something so much greater than I, places I know may be quite different when you are my age

I’m not allowed to talk about climate change around family; as my mom warned me, “climate change is not something that people think about in Mississippi.” But I’m worried for my family’s future.