My full name is Lori Kelley Maddox,  and I was born in Charleston West Virginia, and grew up in Charleston West Virginia. I’m the youngest of four siblings and my four siblings are eight, twelve and fourteen years older than I am.  So my mother always told me I was the best mistake she ever made. (I laugh)  (laughing) because I came a lot later.  I have a sister and two brothers.  My oldest brother who I said is fourteen years older than I am has a bipolar disorder.  So my relationship with him is… different than my relationship with my other siblings.  My father died when I was eleven of Lymphoma.  He was forty-eight, and my brother was diagnosed right about the same time.  I would say we’re relatively close as a family.   I mention the thing with my brother because it’s something that we’ve all managed together, and continue to manage.  He was, when my father died, at the moment that my father died actually my brother was in his first ever appointment with a psychiatrist finding out that he had a bipolar disorder.

I t was a very complicated time and it was a lot to digest for an eleven year old I think.

 I say that by way of saying I think I grew up really fast when I was eleven (laughs).

My family was involved in volunteer and community work of a different kind than I have been.  You know environmentalism wasn’t really happening when I was a kid. My father was very involved in Kiwanis, Rotary, church things. My mother was, you know volunteered for the Women’s Auxiliary Club.  I don’t even really know what they did.  But my family was active, very active in the community. We belonged to the Presbyterian Church.  And they were active at the Church; we all sang in the choir we were all involved in Church things.  I do think the Presbyterian Church had a really strong service message and expected that the members of the congregation be involved in volunteer and service work in the community. So when I was a kid I volunteered at a home for teenage homeless kids at the Red Cross, and it was an expectation of my family and of our church that we be active in the community I think.

 It was a peer companionship thing. So when I was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen I would go to this place and, and go to the park with them, go to the cultural center with them, and just hang out with homeless youth. I didn’t really realize until very recently that connection between the Presbyterian service, sense of service in the community and, and how it affected my life, because my family now goes to a Unitarian Universalist Church.  And when we started doing that, um I took a class called parents as Resident Theologians and Spiritual Guides, which was a wonderful class. 

  Let’s see how have my family values affected my social change work?  Well some of that I just answered I guess.  I think also having those big things happen:  my father dying and my brother having that mental health diagnosis made me feel different, and more interested in doing alternative work. You know, I think when those things happen you realize that making money really isn’t what it’s all about (laughs). 

  But things that happened in my family I think made me more aware of what’s meaningful in life, and what’s worth doing and working for.  And my family members have responded in different ways to my work.  I don’t think that my oldest brother really understands what I do.  I’m not sure any of my family really understands what I do (laughs).  But, um, but they value it.  I remember when my mother, when I was younger in my 20s and I was very motivated about environmental work it just, you know, they didn’t really understand it in the late 80s.  It wasn’t very hip to be an environmentalist.  And, and she was most excited about the prospect of my becoming a lawyer, not because it had anything to do with the environment, but because law was something she understood to be a valuable contribution to society.  But over the years um, they’ve always been supportive of it. They just haven’t understood it I would say. And she, when I made the decision to not go to law school to help start this organization that was very hard for her.

L:  When I started with, before ELAW, when I was working as an activist there was no beginning or end to the workday.  Just as many hours as you have to give, you give.  When I had kids, um, the daycare closes at six, and so one of us has to leave our office.  And that was a good thing.  I think it has brought a little bit more balance and perspective into my work.  It also brought more breadth of purpose to my work.  I’m afraid for the world we’re creating now, and I worry about what I’m leaving my kids.  When they ask me as they sometimes do, “why don’t you stay home and home-school us?” I can tell them that because I feel like as your parent I need to do the work I’m doing because not only do they not want me to teach them because I’m not an educator and wouldn’t be good at it, but also because I have to do my work so they have a planet to live on. 

L:  The other thing about family and work and activism, is, I feel like this time in the world, I’m sure that people have felt this over many many generations and other times, but I feel like saving the planet is the work we all need to be doing right now, so it needs to be integrated into all of our lives, regardless of whether it’s what we do for our day job.  We all have to be raising our children to understand where we are and what has to be done, and so… I started out by saying it had shortened my workday, and it has, having kids.  It’s taught me about balance, having kids and trying to work in an activist kind of job.  You have this idea that people who change the world are super heroes, are something other-worldly, and that’s just not real.  The people who change the world are the ones who are doing it, day in and day out, and living their values and walking their talk, and they’re just normal people who are, who have conviction and do what they think is right.  It’s like how you were saying your friends tease you about having a life-plan way in advance.  Every little choice in what we do matters as much as the long-term plan, and so having kids has helped me realize that because they’re so growing and evolving and changing so quickly and it’s made my activism more realistic, more sustainable, more holistic, more, um present in the moment when you just realize that everything you do matters, and it’s as important what I choose to eat for dinner as what I plan to do next week.  Kids help you be present.

 Before, as I said, it was all about work, work, work, work, work.  You almost get, I almost got some self esteem out being, out of working too much.  People in the field, in my field anyway, it starts to get to be a competition, who’s working the hardest.  And having a family and getting older has made me realize that sustainability is everything.  I can work 15 hour days until I drop, but I’m probably going to drop a lot sooner if I do it that way.  And it’s not a very, not a very spiritual path to do it that way.  And, because I, I believe that the process by which we arrive at a place is almost as important as the place at which we arrive, um, I’ve changed over the years into… You know when I was at Hollins and Reagan was president and there was anti-nuclear stuff, everything was an emergency.  Now, of course, we’re in a huge planetary emergency now as well.  But if I spend my life acting like I’m living out an emergency, what have I accomplished really?  I haven’t, I’m not going to fix it overnight, and I also have to take time to recognize the gifts along the way and be in the world.  And, I started working on environmental issues in part because of how being in the woods made me feel.  Simple as that.  It’s healing and good to be in nature.  Sounds trite, but it’s true.  And so, I, you know want other people to be able to feel that.  I want to have it there so we can go there, but if I’m working all the time to respond to an emergency and forgetting to be in the woods and listen to my kids and be in this world then what’s the point?

 And I really, I do think that’s a gift of children because they are all about this present moment, and sometimes in activism you lose this present moment because you are always working for something else, in the future to happen.  And also our world is geared for that.  Not to be present, but to be wanting to buy another thing, to have another thing, instead of recognizing the gifts and so I think family and kids have helped me achieve a little bit more balance.  There’s more to be had for sure.  I’m not in any way as balanced as I wish I was sometimes, but that’s one of the gifts of family in an activist kind of career.  And there are certainly people in my network who are burning themselves out too quickly, but at the same time because so many, almost all my virtual family is outside the US and comes from cultures in which they aren’t all running as quickly as they can to the Wal-mart to buy the junk that they don’t need, um, that’s been a gift of that international family too.  When we see each other it’s about work, but it’s about family and about life and so I’ve learned a lot of that from them too.