Sarah is a former astrophysicist, meteorologist, and winning ultra-runner, who now lives, works, and writes from a beautiful off-grid narrowboat based on the inland waterways of England and Wales.
She’s a coach to mission driven introverted women, helping them to live and lead from a place of powerful, embodied presence, so they can create the life and legacy they deeply long for. You can contact her via her website:
Have you ever let go of a dream? I know I have, whether that’s my childhood dream of being a vet, or my teenage dream of being involved in a manned Mars mission.
A more interesting question to ponder is - What dream has stayed with you through thick and thin, even if you have yet to devote time and energy to creating it?
The woman I interviewed for this week’s story has devoted over 40 years of her life to her dream. As a child she was acutely aware of injustice, and she found a way to make her own difference (one of which was how to help save whales with a bicycle!).
Her career was dedicated to this dream. Even now as she contemplates her “third act” she knows she will be continuing the work, albeit in a different form.
Her devotion is rooted in relationship. Relationship with the Earth. Relationship with communities. Relationship with future generations who will inherit the consequences of today’s choices.
Our future is created by what we choose today. I hope we learn to make wiser and kinder choices very, very soon. As she says, “We are in a race against time”
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This week I’m offering these questions to you for reflection or journalling:
💡 What injustice in the world consistently captures my attention, and what might that reveal about my deeper purpose?
💡 What communities, relationships, or shared commitments help sustain me when the challenges I care about feel overwhelming?
Make yourself a brew, sit down for a few minutes, and enjoy reading the story of this woman’s dream. The following words are all her own, from an interview held in February 2026.
With love, Sarah xox
I’ve dedicated my entire life to my dream of diminishing injustice both for people and the Earth - because without our beautiful Earth thriving as well as it can, all of us are endangered.
I want to read you something I wrote on a recent leadership training. We were asked to think of what sustains us and why we do the work that we do. This is what I wrote in response:
“We need to speak out against the injustice brought upon the Earth which sustains all of us, and the people whose everyday lives are oppressed by this injustice. This is a huge task, but I firmly believe that small changes made by many people produce big results.
We need to be courageous, and speak with clarity and direction about this injustice. We need to provide a path that is positive, that directs people towards a sense of accomplishment and fulfilment. A path that does not dwell on what people can’t do, but shows them what they can do and how this amounts to a life, a community, and a place on Earth where injustice, degradation and oppression diminish. A place where healing becomes the force that sustains our lives, our economy, our Earth and our love.”
My work has always been about trying to mitigate harm to the Earth and to the indigenous people who rely on functioning ecosystems; the people who have been the guardians and the stewards of these ecosystems.
We have to stop the harmful things that are happening to the Earth, but we also have to talk about solutions and what people can do.
We are living in a race against time.
We have to keep fossil fuels in the ground, phase them out, and start to work towards a regenerative economy within the planetary limits that we actually have, and to really repair the Earth.
So much of that work is based on what love is about. It should be about caring and sustaining and reaching out to those in need. Discovering how we can work within the ecological limits of what we have, but still meet people’s needs.
Both my parents were Holocaust survivors, so even as a young child I knew about the horrific acts that have been perpetrated against people. And then as a child I saw acts against animals and plants. It really hurt me and I asked myself, “What can I do?”
I wanted to help repair the Earth.
What struck me most as a young child was that people are strange. I saw plants and animals as innocent and being hurt and destroyed by our actions. That deeply hurt me. It’s like these are innocent bystanders in our crazy, screwed-up world of humans, and I started by going in the direction of protecting the Earth.
But as you start to do the work, you realise how inextricably linked and intertwined human rights are to Earth rights. There’s no separating them, really. I didn’t know that as a young child, and I didn’t know it when I started out as an activist when I was in middle school.
I was 15 years old and I didn’t have a lot of people around me doing anything remotely similar. It was a time where activism was really at a low point. The Vietnam War was pretty much coming to an end and that’s where people’s focus was.
I started by reading books like Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. I learned about toxins, pesticides and poisons in our Earth. I also started reading about Native Americans and what had happened to them. Native Americans have lived for the most part with the philosophy of preserving the Earth for future generations.
I began my activist journey by looking for people who were actively doing something about these issues.
At the time, whales were still being slaughtered, and I read about people who were trying to protect them. There were some protections for whales, but not by all countries. So I started as an activist by becoming involved in helping to protect whales, and discovering what I could do as an individual.
The organisations that were trying to protect whales were asking people not to buy Japanese or Norwegian goods as these were both countries actively whaling. At the time there were a lot of Japanese goods in the United States, including bicycles which I loved.
I wanted to get a bicycle for my 16th birthday. I remember that I searched and searched for a bicycle that was not Japanese as a way for me to be an activist. I found one too!
I have my own family now, and I think about my children’s future. I think about all children’s future, whether they be humans or animals or plants.
My education was always geared towards fulfilling my dream. My degree is in human ecology. It’s all about how we take a skill or skills that we might already have a proclivity for and apply them to protect the Earth and the humans, especially indigenous people, who rely on the Earth.
I focused on the policies that needed to be changed, especially international policy and many different opportunities came my way over the years. I worked for different environmental organisations, the first of which was Rainforest Action Network. I spent at least 17 years of my life working to protect natural forest ecosystems and indigenous or forest-based communities.
The people who live in those communities have deep knowledge of using natural resources while also regenerating them. These are the people we need to uplift and put into government, as well as ensuring that any benefits go back into their communities so they are not exploited.
There are so many unbelievable, beautiful solutions that people have started to put into place that are restorative. But we are in a race against time.
We can’t do anything without having the foundation of healthy ecosystems, whether it be the ocean, whether it be our soils, whether it be trees or wetlands or mountains or river systems. They all have to be healthy because we all rely on them. We are all part of this Earth.
My career has spanned almost 40 years. As I start to look at my third act, I want to continue to be part of these solutions, and to be much more hands-on.
There are so many ways to be involved physically with regenerating ecosystems, whether it be planting native sea grass to restore the shoreline, or helping restore an oyster bed.
I just don’t see myself stopping doing the work that has been a love and foundation throughout my life.
But I’ll be doing it in a different way, in a more hands-on way. Simply to feel the joy and the love of doing the work and doing it in nature.
I started out pursuing my dream being very mad at people and what we are doing to the Earth, but over the years I’ve come to have an amazing community of people who share the same love of the Earth.
I also have a broader community of people who have dedicated their lives to making the world better.
I get so much energy, joy and hope from this.
None of us can do this work alone.
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Interview February 2026
I hope you enjoy reading this woman’s dream. If her story nourished or inspired you in ANY way, please consider sending something back. For those who already do (you know who you are!) so much love & gratitude.
🌸 Keep me supplied with strong tea as fuel for me to continue the work of the Dreamworks Project which I run in my spare time.
Donate to the Dreamworks Project
🌸 Send it forward with a Restack. If you resonated with this week’s story, chances are someone else needs these words too. Sharing is support.
Thank you, and with love until next week,
Sarah Xx

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