Hey Everyone,
I’m turning 60! No presents required. Simply presence to peace.
And that's me in the photo at 7 years old, fishing on the Salmon River in Idaho.
I’ve always been deeply connected to the abundance and interdependence of life—how we nourish one another, how much becomes possible when there is enough to go around, and how good it feels to bring something home and share it.
After 60 trips around the sun, one thing I’ve definitely learned is that we can’t create the world we want all alone.
My journey began long before Baba Tree International—with children, education, storytelling, restorative justice, and a deep curiosity about what becomes possible when we create spaces where people can be fully human with one another.
Over the years, that journey has taken many forms.
Play in the Wild! explored how nature, imagination, and play help children, teens, families, and educators discover their capacities for nonviolence.
Crossroads brought people together across cultural and political differences to stay curious beyond the stories and divisions that separate us.
Ongo grew from years of living and teaching Nonviolent Communication and mindfulness—and my ongoing desire to make these practices something we live in our families, relationships, workplaces, and communities, not simply something we learn in a workshop.
More recently, Uplifting Women’s Voices, Rusinga School, and our work creating the International Justice and Peace Conference have carried these threads into grassroots communities in five continents—connecting communication, children’s agency, trauma awareness, restorative practice, collective care, leadership, and conflict transformation with people doing this work amid very real challenges.
Different projects. Different countries. Different communities.
Baba Tree International has become a home for these many branches of my life’s work and for questions I’m still exploring:
How do we listen when it is difficult to listen?
How do we interrupt cycles of violence while making room for voices too often pushed to the edges?
How do we build communities capable not only of surviving conflict, but transforming through it?
Often, the communities where this work matters most aren't the ones with large budgets. BTI helps us say YES when someone asks, “Could you bring this here?”
And at 60, I’m thinking a lot about what can continue to grow through inspired people:
More facilitators and storytellers. More children discovering that their voices matter. More women sustaining one another. More communities developing their own capacity to navigate conflict. More people learning to listen across differences without abandoning themselves.
That’s what I want my 60th birthday to help grow.
So, 53 years after that little girl went fishing, I'm casting a line out, wide, to my community:
60 days to raise $6,000 for Baba Tree International.
Together, we can help fund community trainings and scholarships, grassroots partnerships, accessible learning resources, and local facilitators—and help BTI keep saying YES when communities invite us in.
And because I’m turning 60, I’m thinking there are lots of ways to play:
$6 — plant a seed
$16 — help something begin
$60 — celebrate one of my trips around the sun (maybe
you met me during that one!)
$160 — grow a branch
$600 — create some serious shade
Or give whatever feels joyful and possible for you.
100 people giving $60 gets us to $6,000.
And if giving money isn’t possible, you can still be part of my birthday wish. Share this invitation, invite a friend, or simply help the work travel a little farther.
Maybe that 7-year-old self had it right: cast something out, see what comes back, and make sure there is enough to share.
Help me grow the Baba Tree.
$6,000. 60 days. One very grateful almost-60-year-old.
With gratitude,
Catherine
