Carrie wearing Mango, vintage shop Berlin 10€
Carrie Frais is the founder of MumAbroad and among her latest projects has been to help establish the IDG Catalonia Impact Network. IDG stands for Inner Development Goals, a movement centred on fostering personal and collective growth to address global challenges. Its philosophy emphasises the development of inner capacities—such as self-awareness, empathy, and collaboration—that are essential for driving meaningful, systemic change in societies and organisations. There are five core dimensions of growth: Being, Thinking, Relating, Collaborating, and Acting, each of which includes specific skills aimed at helping individuals and groups navigate complexity, align values with actions and create a sustainable future.
My ‘bucket list’ has changed significantly over the last 10 years or so. If you had asked me then I probably would have wanted a bigger house, a smarter car, more fancy clothes. Maybe. Currently, top of my bucket list is to walk the Camino de Santiago. There is something authentic, exciting and raw about stripping your life down to the clothes on your back and just a few items in a backpack. I simply just do not want to acquire any more STUFF.
STUFF!! The world is so full of it, isn’t it? We are drowning in toys, gadgets, phones, computers, cars, trinkets and plastic – 350 million metric tons of plastic is produced every year and unless something is done about it, that figure is set to triple in 15 years. Most of that plastic is for single use and then it is piled up in landfills and we cross our fingers hoping it will magicially disappear. It won’t of course. All man made material now outweighs the earth’s natural biomass (and that’s been the case for nearly 5 years now and growing). Where will this all leave us in 50 years? The mind boggles.
And what about all our clothes? There are now enough clothes on the planet to dress the next SIX generations. SIX! And then 85% of all textiles go to those goddam landfills each year. And we cross our fingers again hoping it will magically disappear. It won`t. Let’s stop buying so many new clothes when there are so many beautiful vintage and pre-loved clothes to buy. At my coworking space in Barcelona there are rails full of ‘gently’ worn clothes and it gives me so much joy to watch people pick up something they love at a fraction of the original cost and know that it will be cherished again. I sometimes think about the time I cleared out my mother’s wardrobe after she had died and noticing that she only had a few items of clothing left. They were all pretty worn out with the story of her life written all over them – the holes in the gardening trousers, the faded jumpers, the well walked shoes…
And then there is all that food. The amount and the choice available has become unsettling. When I was last in the States, I remember asking for egg on toast and it took a waitress about 10 minutes to explain how many ways they could cook this egg – scrambled, , poached, soft boiled, hard boiled, pickled, baked, sunny side up, omelette. over easy, over medium, over hard – OVERWHELMED! I stuck with a coffee. No milk, no sugar.
And who hasn’t been exasperated in a supermarket aisle with so many brands vying for your attention? Does pasta really taste any different if it is shaped like a bunny or a bow? It is difficult to be discerning when the choice is so vast. It is also uncomfortable to think that around a third of all the food produced every year is wasted whilst around 10% of the world’s population continues to go hungry.
One of my stand out childhood memories growing up in England is of a sunny, chilly autumn day . The lawn was covered with brown, crunchy oak and sycamore leaves which my brother and I were probably bribed into raking up. We carried the messy piles of leaves and created a larger pile and mixed in sticks and pine cones. We put some big stones around the big leafy pile and made a fire. I still remember the warmth of those burning leaves on my already ruddy cheeks. My dad brought potatoes from his much loved vegetable patch and gently pushed them into the heart of the glowing fire. We stayed there transfixed by the flames – almost in a trance – as the leaves and cones crackled and the potatoes slowly cooked. After an hour or so, those potatoes were coaxed out of the fire, their skins as black as night. With a generous knob of butter my brother and I devoured the potatoes with our bare hands – our chins and necks dripping with melted butter mixed with charred potatoey remains, relishing the joy of food made with love and time. The simplicity of waiting and wanting.
And it’s not just material things we are drowning in. We are also being suffocated by technology – the daily bombardment from all directions of information, much of which of course is simply not true. We’re so full of information but we have no time to digest it, to reflect, to process or to gain perspective on what it all means. That’s why I need to go on the Camino. But this is a blog for another day.
So, this Christmas, shall we all try to buy a little less stuff and if we do, let’s at least try to buy local. Let’s strip back and shake off what society tells us is going to make us and our children happy and instead remember life’s simple festive pleasures – decorating the Christmas tree, baking cookies with the kids, giving and receiving Christmas cards, marvelling at the Christmas lights, enjoying holiday movies, sharing warm hugs and of course, acts of kindness.
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