Earlier this month, we lost an important member of this community. Louisa Gag, a mobility advocate and perennially joyful person worked to ensure everyone had access to safe, comfortable mobility options. Her legacy reminds us of the power of speaking up and showing up for the people and issues that matter to us. To learn more about Louisa’s life and work, click here.
Shortly after joining Barr’s Climate team last Spring, I attended the fourth Pause for Joy at the Boston Nature Center in Mattapan. As a participant, I saw partners and community members reconnecting with old friends, meeting new colleagues, spending time outdoors, creating something with their hands, and enjoying a rare opportunity to exhale. People stepped away from their roles, titles, and responsibilities to simply be together.
This year, I had the privilege of helping plan the fifth iteration. Being behind the scenes gave me a new appreciation for the intentionality that makes the event special. Every detail was designed around a central question: what would help people feel comfortable enough to truly relax and connect?
Throughout the event I spoke with emerging climate leaders, people finishing graduate programs, navigating career transitions, or trying to find their place within a challenging professional landscape. Again and again, they told me how much they had been looking forward to attending.
As an early career climate professional, I am constantly surrounded by information, invitations, and opportunities to engage. There is always another webinar, another networking event, another article to read, another issue demanding attention. Often, despite my very best intentions, exhaustion wins. An event can sound wonderful on paper and still feel impossible to attend after a long day.
The enthusiasm people expressed for Pause for Joy feels significant in this environment. It suggests that people aren’t seeking another professional obligation, but rather something increasingly hard to find: an accessible, equitable community and an opportunity to unabashedly seek joy.
Today, many climate and transportation advocates find themselves navigating another period of uncertainty. Personal and professional resources are stretched, as we and our neighbors face threats to livelihoods. Many of these conditions mirror the ones we were facing during the first pause for joy event. Organizations are adapting to changing funding landscapes. Long-term goals feel harder to advance amid the challenges demanding our focus right now. Many of us feel the weight of contributing to solutions on a planet facing immense challenges. And for many early- and mid-career professionals, there is a growing awareness that we are inheriting a planet in peril.
Yet, urgency alone is not sustainable. A movement built entirely on sacrifice eventually exhausts the very people it depends on. That is why gatherings like a pause for joy matter.
While the challenges facing our communities and our climate remain significant, so too does our capacity to create these conditions for one another. Creating spaces where people from different organizations, backgrounds, and professional experiences can show up freely as themselves deserves our thought, care, and attention.
As a team working together with more than 150 grantees to protect our climate and improve quality of life, financial investment remains critically important. But we view connection, belonging, rest, and joy as investments, too. To us, creating spaces where people can build authentic relationships is part of strengthening the field itself.
A pause for joy is an invitation to remember that in the most challenging of times, joy is not a distraction from the work. It is a reminder of why the work matters in the first place and what the end goal is. Connecting with people, building relationships, and cultivating values make the work worth doing.
