I write stories for a living. 

Usually, these stories involve talking to a person or peoples who are experiencing a form of oppression. 

Sometimes, that oppression looks like a polluter attempting to decide the destinies of Black folks whose ancestors shed blood, sweat, and tears for their right to self-determination. Other times, that oppression comes dressed in robes reeking of transphobia and hate. Often, the oppression that I’m exposing is also coupled with resistance and activism. 

The stories I tell are about struggle, but they’re also about love and commitment and devotion — to this planet, to our collective futures, to a world worth saving.

I’m a climate and environmental journalist, and my job isn’t easy. 

The public depends on people like me to accurately update them on what’s going on around the globe. We read studies and attend public hearings. We ask hard questions of people in power. We try to reach those who need more power. We travel to places where the devastation is raw. We ask survivors, “Are you OK?” 

We write, we edit, and we do it all again day after day — never asking ourselves the same question.

I’ve been covering these topics for 10 years, but the work has only grown more difficult. 

Am I OK? Probably not. 

Hurricane Helene just unleashed madness onto the southeastern U.S. last week. 

The death toll is at least 190 people across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and Virginia. Such impact, however, is immeasurable. Numbers can’t effectively communicate the loss of a life. Dollar amounts don’t determine what it’ll take to rebuild. And journalists are often the vessels by which this information comes out. 

Right now, there are journalists on the ground in each one of those states doing the important work of capturing the moment. Some of those journalists may be coping with their own impacts from Hurricane Helene, but if there’s one thing we journalists will do, it’s put the work before ourselves. 

The story won’t wait for us. And no respectable journalist wants to miss a story.

In the aftermath of Helene and the nonstop crisis that is climate change, we journalists are suffering. 

“You're a climate journalist. You talk to people, read information, look at data and science and do your job. But sometimes, the heart just hurts when you look at what climate change does,” wrote NPR Climate Editor Neela Banerjee on X, formerly known as Twitter, when sharing an image of floodwaters leaving only the roof exposed of a Tennessee hospital. 

Her tweet went viral. That’s because she’s not alone; many of our hearts are hurting. 

However, many of us feel alone, and that’s part of the problem. We’re grieving in isolation when we need to grieve in community. 

When folks in the media cover these stories, they can go on to develop PTSD and depression. A 2019 paper published in the journal Journalism Studies found that 20 percent of the 30 local journalists they interviewed who had covered Hurricane Harvey in 2017 dealt with storm-related PTSD and 40 percent had depression. 

Journalists are, after all, people. 

I know firsthand that when I return home after visiting a disaster-stricken place, I’m left with several feelings: guilt, rage, disappointment, disillusionment, and heartbreak. So, so much heartbreak. 

I felt that way when I spent some days in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria decimated the archipelago in 2017. I felt that way after meeting scientists in Hawai’i back in 2018 who were trying to develop super-corals so that corals don’t all go extinct. I felt that way in 2021 when I visited the Indigenous Miskito communities in Nicaragua who were migrating from their ancient homelands in the aftermath of Hurricanes Eta and Iota. And I felt that awful feeling again when I visited Malawi a year ago to witness how Cyclone Freddy decimated mountainside communities.

What can we do to combat this? 

Well, we start with building community. 

During Climate Week this year, I went to an event hosted by climate organizer Tamara Toles O’Laughlin. She’s had many different roles throughout her decades-long career, but she’s currently focused on preventing burnout among movement organizers — primarily Black women. 

It’s a monumental task — and a necessary one. The event was intimate. It was at the end of the long week, and we all sat together to share the feelings we were carrying. 

After I introduced myself, Emira Woods of Green Leadership Trust gave me a hug. That was all it took for my eyes to well with emotion. Sometimes, people (yes, even journalists) need to be seen. Sometimes, we just need to be held, if even for a moment. 

Spaces like O’Laughlin’s are one in a million, but they help spur the creation of even more spaces like it. 

They help remind us that we’re not alone.

I’m working closely with the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America, the Solutions Journalism Network, the Metcalf Institute, and the Uproot Project to develop mental health resources for climate and environmental journalists. 

We’re calling this effort the CARES Media Initiative. CARES stands for connecting audiences, reporters, emotions, and sources — because each and every one of them plays a role. And they should work together more harmoniously in newsrooms.

There are reporters like me who carry the responsibility to tell these stories compassionately and accurately. Then, there’s the audience, which consumes the news while living through climate calamity, too. Research is already showing us that the collapse of ecosystems and social disruptions that are climate change are already affecting the public’s mental health.

Stories can compound that pain if journalists aren’t careful. We risk turning off readers to climate change stories entirely. We risk pushing them to feel the weight of an unpredictable planet without giving them a channel to process those emotions or the language to understand how they can translate that inner turmoil into action. 

Lastly, there are our sources, the individuals who trust us to tell their stories and who are counting on us to do it right. Many are on the frontlines of this existential crisis. If they don’t trust the media to share their stories, what climate change stories are we left with, then? 

Amid all this, there’s a flurry of emotions. These feelings can’t all be positive, but they do all require space to process and understand. 

There’s a lot that we hope to accomplish, but the initiative’s primary task right now is to ask questions and build data to understand how exactly climate and environmental journalists are doing. We’re working closely with the University of Tulsa and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma to conduct a rigorous survey that unpacks this reality with quantitative and qualitative data. 

From there, we can help determine what journalists need (if, indeed, they’re doing as poorly as the data that exists suggests they may be). Perhaps that looks like developing a therapy fund to ensure that all journalists in the field, regardless of income or class or race, have access to the care they need. Or maybe we find partners who are willing to help us send a select group of eligible journalists on a wellness retreat so that they can finally take some time off. 

I also imagine a future where we build workshops and guides that can be integrated into journalism schools and educational centers so that student journalists and young people begin to integrate care and mental health into their routines sooner rather than later. 

No one talked to me about trauma when I was studying to write about the climate apocalypse. I had no idea what I was in for.

Journalists are trained in the art of connection. 

But how do we connect with ourselves? With our trauma and our survivors’ guilt? How do we take care of ourselves so that we can keep doing this work without losing sight of what really matters: telling stories without furthering the harm? How do we build capacity for the industry to support journalists of color, in particular?

If you don’t already, consider subscribing to your local paper. Write to your favorite writers and tell them how much you appreciate their words. Subscribe to their personal newsletters. Pay for your news! Donate to organizations like the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America, which tackles the ways global heating is affecting mental health, or the Uproot Project, a network for environmental journalists of color I helped found.  

We can’t afford to lose our Black and Brown peers. The climate crisis needs their perspectives. The communities on the frontlines need their allyship. 

We’re no good, however, when we’re sick. 

It’s OK not to be OK, but it’s even better when we know what we can do to feel better.