My Climate Reality Stories as An Environmentalist and Creative Artist.

In the process of becoming a Climate Reality Project Leader.

Photo by ev

“The reality we now face implores us to act.”

-AL GORE Founder & Chairman, The Climate Reality Project

I am dedicating this article to my mother, Angela de Chevalier Olivo. She has been battling Alzheimer’s and Dementia for the past 7 years and at 55 years old, going through the last stages this year.

Unfortunately, her days on this earth are getting shorter and this story would not be, if I didn’t take the time to acknowledge the person that encouraged, supported, and passed down her love for nature and humanity to me when I was younger. I’m from the Dominican Republic and I was born in Santo Domingo. We came to Montreal, Quebec 16 years ago.

She was always my motivator as a child, whenever she would find me on top of a mango tree, trying to understand how fruits grow from trees. “Angie, did you find what you were looking for or do you want to find out together? Let’s go to the library” :) That’s how she would get me out of trees and the ocean. With books.

She and I used to love to read and then, I learned how to write. She would encourage me to write my dark and scary dreams which would happen more frequently after my parent's divorce. My mother would encourage me to continue embracing art and creativity while also researching and trying to understand the environment. While she was dealing with being a single mother and working at the same time to keep us alive. Until a couple of years later, she met my stepfather and my sisters were born.

Science fascinated me, but so did writing, painting, and photography (this I inherited from my dad who is also a photographer and a lieutenant officer from DR). It took me a lot of fails and tries, but eventually in 2012, on my last day of acting school at New York Film School, I called my mom, with my feet dark from walking through Soho and Manhattan street. “Mom, you were right. I want to go to university to learn science and how to help Earth and humanity. There are a lot of injustices…