That’s how I’d referred to myself, ever since the fall of 2023 when Jason Hickel’s Less Is More so moved me that I began organizing fellow degrowthers in Taipei to explore how we might bring about degrowth.
A tall order; but that’s the enthusiasm of a beginner. Degrowth was precisely the transformation that the world needed, and after years of quiet I was finally ready to throw my energy into that transformation.
The economic is personal
At the time, I was just emerging from my own transformative slowing down — a personal degrowth, if you will. After weathering a couple health crises, I knew I desperately needed to slow down.
So for the first time in my life, in the summer of 2021, I stopped everything — that jampacked hypersocial busy-ness that had been my normal — and spent my days as my heart desired, reading, journaling, watching the birds and turtles in the park, guarding snails crossing the street. I dove deep within, examined my motivations for my impulses and decisions, reflected on strong emotions, traced them back to childhood wounds and healed them, time and again. I Marie Kondo-ed not just my things, but also relationships, patterns, habits — my energy.
So when degrowth came across my path, I recognized it like a kindred spirit. Yes! I too had needed to stop the Doing Doing Doing track that this capitalist world is on — the hamster-wheel metastasizing into oblivion, the thinking-too-much machinations of the head, the frenzied non-stop ‘efficiency’ arising from anxiety and fear; instead, I’d needed to learn Being, as this world does — to return to life and the present moment; to get back into the heart, the body, that connection with the living world all around; to recognize that what we want in life flows forth from an energy of calm, awareness, and strength, rooted in love.
The moment I met degrowth, I saw that it wasn’t just me — it was this system that had all in its grip, like The Matrix, precipitating crises not just environmental, but social, political, and personal, like mine. Many many stories like mine… yet not as many wake up to the fact that the economic is personal, too.
So I was propelled to spread the word — it’s not you, it’s the system! Just wake up! I’ve long had an evangelistic streak in me, since back when I used to be a devout Christian in college… and degrowth expressed an all-significant truth that I felt could save lives on personal and systemic levels.
The Doing track
Newly awakened, I poured myself into these self-organized degrowth meetings that, over many months, sprouted a book club and a university course on degrowth — the first in Taiwan (just concluded our second year). For that little while, the world seemed abloom with degrowth ideas and possibilities…
What I did not notice until early spring of 2025, a year and a half into my fervor, was that I had put myself on the Doing Doing Doing track that leads to burnout. I wasn’t there yet, but the signs were there:
I’d fashioned myself into Degrowth Girl — degrowth had become part of my identity; my ego would say yes to anything degrowth-related without asking my heart and body; I was being driven by anxiety and fear to prepare for collapse; I was trying to persuade a lot and edging ever closer to becoming a righteous degrowth scold; and I was feeling unsupported by the degrowth community I had helped start.
I was trying so hard to drive things forward.
I was Doing, not Being.
I was replicating the ways of the system in trying to advance degrowth.
The irony.
“When times are urgent, let us slow down.” — Bayo Akomolafe’s ancestors
Around the same time, I was starting to see the larger context more clearly too: the harrowing enormity and intransigence of the system (see A People’s History of the United States); that collapse of this system is already underway (see Breaking Together); and that more people are awake to the system than might know the term ‘degrowth,’ as evidenced by the fact that millions of young people follow influencers like Hasan Piker who espouse similar views as a degrowther would but just doesn’t use the term ‘degrowth.’
It was also dawning on me that degrowth is difficult to organize around precisely because of how all-encompassing a societal transformation it entails, with a multiverse and plurality of potential solutions. I’d been feeling unsupported by my degrowth community because I was gung-ho heading in one direction, but we all were doing degrowth in our own ways — and it didn’t have to be the same way!
So with all this perspective, I could see that I needed to step back, contemplate, see from a higher vantage point. I needed to slow down, yet again.
I began to wonder, what would ‘degrowth activism’ look like without Doing, rather with Being, the same transformative energy as my personal degrowth?
Walking the walk
So that spring of 2025, I lay down all the bubbling project ideas and concentrated on the university course and the book club. I returned to my childhood love of singing and dancing.
Then, in the summer, I walked the Camino de Santiago in Spain. It was transformative. Being in nature for hours everyday, with fellow humans for whom one’s resume does not matter one iota, with just a small 17L pack on my back, sleeping in bunk beds, with a single destination for 33 days… It was the first time in my life I had lived so simply for a stretch of time — and it was pure joy.
Thinking and talking about degrowth for so long, this was the first time I had lived degrowth. Now I knew I could, and I knew living degrowth would be a more powerful activism than anything I could say.
Yet if there was one thing I could say that would be more powerful than persuasion, it would be to simply tell my story. In 2024 I’d participated in a Massive Transformative Purpose (MTP) workshop with fellow degrowthers — what came out of it was that I wanted to write, speak, share my journey, connecting my personal degrowth with systemic degrowth, showing that the economic is personal. That was my MTP.
I’d felt blocked for a long time; but writing about the Camino has opened up my energy to begin writing about my personal degrowth journey.
The Being way
What I am realizing is, Being connects us with our hearts, with love, and opens up our energy to flow — and thus we’re connected to inspiration, to clarity. As Natalie Holmes at the Post Growth Institute (PGI) says,
“There is a mental softening that happens alongside acceptance, and that ironically helps things flow.”
It’s true — if you look at the world’s longest lasting ecovillages, they often didn’t start with one person’s will; rather, their beginnings were often organic, like in the case of the Findhorn ecovillage in Scotland. After losing their jobs at a hotel, the would-be ecovillage founders moved to a rundown caravan park, intending a short stay. They practiced meditation and received spiritual guidance which they applied to the poor soil, yielding giant cabbages and other surprisingly abundant vegetables — even the BBC came to report on them! After that, more and more people just decided to live with them. Never at any point did they decide to start an ecovillage — people were simply attracted to them and their energy.
Energy
It really is about energy. Energy is powerful. “We convince by our presence,” said Walt Whitman. “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” said Maya Angelou. When I had been depressed for a period, I noticed how my energy impacted everyone around me. Nowadays, whenever I am preparing for an important meeting or a talk, I always remember to prepare my energy along with the words I’m going to say — energy is key.
And so, if we are espousing degrowth, it’s more powerful if we do so with the energy of degrowth — then we are practicing what we preach, we are living as we believe. We are true. We can begin living degrowth simply by Being rather than Doing. We will persuade more naturally by how we live, the energy we exude.
Timing
It’s also about timing. Same for me with degrowth — only after I’d undergone a personal degrowth journey was I able to click with degrowth. And I remember a distinct time window during that fall of 2023 when my energy opened up, right after finishing my permaculture design certificate (PDC), when degrowth was able to enter into my consciousness. Just before that window, a degrowth video was shared in one of my group chats, yet I completely ignored it. These days I remind myself of the importance of timing whenever I’m tempted to persuade someone about degrowth. No need to push — it will click when the timing is right.
Same with living degrowth more fully — I’ve been yearning to live degrowth ever since learning permaculture and being inspired at a Kincentric Leadership retreat in Auroville, India. I’ve been a city girl all my life, but throughout 2024 I began exploring a more rural, ecovillage, permaculture way of life without actually moving. The Camino was another taste of it. But I know I will need the right community, the right opportunity, the right opening up of energy, to live this way full-time. I am beginning to see clues in that direction. When the timing is right, it will happen; no need to push. In the meantime, I can prepare.
Rebirth
A shaman I met once told us, we are now experiencing simultaneous cycles of death and rebirth. Alongside the shocks, slides, and shifts of the system in slow collapse and the death and suffering of so many living beings under this system, there is also rebirth — the Great Turning that Joanna Macy refers to, with Transition Towns and community land trusts and inspirational movements like the Zapatistas.
For those of us seeking post-capitalist futures: rather than burning ourselves out Doing — the energy of the capitalist system we are trying to topple — why not try Being, the energy of degrowth?
“Do nothing and not nothing will be done.” — Lao Tzu
Slow down, come back to the present, listen to our hearts and bodies, connect with ourselves and our fellow beings, raise our consciousness, see from a higher vantage point, stay open to the right timing, act when the timing is right, let things flow, trust, love…
Be the change. Be part of the rebirth. Be.
‘Degrowth activist’ now seems like an oxymoron. Me, I’m just gonna be. Join me?
Inspired by this article? Here are some ideas for what to do next:
- Embark on a personal degrowth journey: Slow down. Stop the busy-ness. Marie Kondo not just your things, but also your relationships, patterns, habits — your energy. Listen to what your heart and body desires. When strong emotions come up, trace back to childhood wounds and heal them — read Self-Therapy for how to heal. When faced with decisions that may fill your life up with more activity, examine your motivations — is it fear/anxiety, or love? When life gets muddy, come back to the present moment, come back to yourself. See from a higher vantage point. Trust your life.
- If you’re curious about degrowth, check out Less Is More by Jason Hickel, and the PGI’s ‘Degrowth’ reading list on Bookshop.
- If you’re interested in building the skills and perspective needed for a post-capitalist future, consider learning about permaculture, i.e. via Earth Restorer’s Guide to Permaculture.
- Feel free to get in touch or follow my journey on my website and Substack.
- Find out more about the Post Growth Institute, and sign up to the monthly Full Circle newsletter for more content like this.
