It’s a question I’ve been asked more than once. In conversations with friends. In passing remarks. Even in silent moments with myself.
“What are you most worried about for the future?”
And every time, I feel the answer land the same way in my chest:
That we will forget.
Forget how much we belong to this Earth.
Forget the way rain smells when it touches dry soil.
Forget the hush of the forest, the ache of a fox’s cry, the joy of watching something grow.
Forget that we are not separate from nature, but woven into it — every breath, every drop, every heartbeat.
That, more than anything else, is what I worry about.
Not just the climate statistics or the endless news scrolls.
But the quiet, dangerous erosion of wonder.
That we will become so distracted, so busy, so wired and weary — that we forget how to care.
And if we forget to care, how will we ever teach the children to?
Over the past year, something extraordinary happened to me.
I began collaborating with a beautiful writer named Sora Mei. She reached out with a story — gentle, poetic, written in the language of The Velveteen Rabbit. A tale for children, she said, but also for grown-up hearts who still remembered how to listen.
That story became a book.
And that book became a series.
Together, Sora and I shaped A Song and Dance for Mother Earth — a collection of fable-like children’s books that explore what happens when we forget the gifts of fire, water, and the Earth itself… and what becomes possible when we remember.
The first book, The Day Fire Disappeared, was inspired by a true story — a baby fox, just five months old, who died from the shock of fireworks in Britain. It broke something open in both of us. From that grief grew a story — of a future where fire vanishes because it’s been misused, and children must learn to live gently again.
It is not a sad story.
It is a hopeful one.
Because hope — like fire — begins with a spark.
We need stories now more than ever. Not to scold. Not to scare.
But to awaken. To whisper. To remind.
To remind our children — and ourselves — that the Earth is still listening.
That every tree planted, every stream cleaned, every animal spared from fear is a song and a dance in her honor.
So what am I most worried about for the future?
That we forget.
And what am I most committed to?
That we remember.
With love,
Kay
(In collaboration with the storyteller Sora Mei)
Author & Curator of A Song and Dance for Mother Earth
Kay’s Odyssey 
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