Transforming Climate Anxiety Into Creative Action
May 13, 2025
Held v. Montana youth plaintiff Olivia, expressing her creativity in nature.
This Mental Health Awareness Month, we’re honored to share a powerful Q&A with Olivia Vesovich, a youth plaintiff in the historic youth-led climate lawsuit, Held v. Montana and a Gen Z advisor with the Climate Mental Health Network. Olivia courageously testified in court about the emotional toll of the climate crisis—sharing not only the devastating impacts on her health and mental health, but also how art, advocacy, and community have become vital tools in her healing. In this piece, she reflects on what it meant to speak truth to power, how creative expression helps her navigate climate anxiety, and why tending to our emotional well-being is essential to building a just, livable future. Olivia’s story is a testament to the strength it takes to feel deeply and the hope that grows when we face the climate crisis together.
1. You bravely testified during the Held v. Montana trial about the mental health impacts you’ve experienced due to climate change. Can you share what it was like to speak your truth in court, and how that experience and being a youth plaintiff has shaped your advocacy?
Testifying during the Held v. Montana trial was the most powerful and transformative experience of my life. It was the first time I truly felt heard by the systems of power that have ignored young people for so long. I decided to become a plaintiff because I wanted decision-makers, those in the highest positions of authority, to hear directly from youth like me who are living through the climate crisis.
I believed, and still believe, that the courts are a critical place for social justice movements to push for change, and that climate change is a civil rights issue. Our right to a livable future is a constitutional right.
Being on the witness stand was both terrifying and deeply empowering. Leading up to my testimony, I was filled with anxiety, my hands were shaking, my heart racing, and my legs felt numb. I knew I was about to share some of the most vulnerable parts of myself. Thankfully, we had a mental health professional, Jules, with us during the trial. She helped me calm down with breathing exercises and grounded me in the moment. That kind of support was crucial because I was about to be emotional and talk about my mental health on the stand. I was about to show up as my most authentic self and have someone typing every word I said into the court transcript. It was a moment that demanded my courage like I had never used before. Going to trial was something we fought for years to do and I knew how important this was, not only to me, but to everyone else whose biggest climate impact is their emotions.
When it was my turn to testify, two of my fellow plaintiffs, Grace and Teleah, walked with me to the stand, carrying one of my sculptures. I knew just how supported I was by my fellow plaintiffs. I looked directly at the lawyers representing the State of Montana and told them how their actions were harming me and future generations. I even cried on the stand when I was asked about whether I wanted to have children someday. That question touched a very raw place in me. I’ve always imagined being a mother, but the ethics of bringing children into a rapidly deteriorating world have haunted me.
Knowing the state has the power and responsibility to uphold its Constitution and to prevent this suffering and instead is contributing to it makes the emotional weight unbearable at times.
Sharing my art in court made the experience even more meaningful. One of my pieces, Gaia, Mother Nature, is a painting that symbolizes both grief and resilience. Gaia cries through her waterfalls, representing my tears and the heartbreak of watching our world burn. But there are flowers in the piece too, perennials that go dormant but return, reminding us that even in despair, hope can regrow. The second piece, a sculpture called Humanity’s Disconnection from the Waters, explores how we as humans see ourselves as a spectate entity from the natural world and we have seen ourselves as removed from the natural world. This piece explores the tangled web of garbage and microplastics that have become infused in our waterways. Our world is so interconnected, and all of our impacts affect others.
Olivia testifying in court during the Held v. Montana trial, sharing her artwork Gaia, Mother Nature (June 2023). Photo by Renata Harrison/WELC.
Bringing climate emotions into the courtroom made it undeniable that the climate crisis is not only a political and environmental issue, but a deeply personal and psychological one and naming that truth is the first step toward healing and justice.
2. As both a youth plaintiff and a Gen Z advisor for the Climate Mental Health Network, you bring a powerful dual perspective. How do you see the intersection between mental health and climate justice, especially for young people?
Mental health and climate justice are inseparable, especially for my generation. Climate change is not just an environmental crisis; it's a psychological one. We are growing up with the knowledge that our futures are being threatened, and yet we’re expected to continue on as if everything is normal. The emotional dissonance is overwhelming. I think of climate anxiety as a natural response to an unnatural reality.
For young people, this trauma begins early. Many of us learned about melting ice caps and mass extinction before we learned how to drive or vote. When I was 11, I learned that the glaciers at Glacier National Park would melt away before my generation’s grandchildren could see them. I couldn’t understand how to even try to understand a world without glaciers. We’re coming of age in a world that’s in crisis, and often, we’re doing it without the tools or language to process what we’re feeling. That’s why the work we’re doing at the Climate Mental Health Network is so vital. We’re creating frameworks for care, tools for resilience, and spaces where youth can grieve, hope, and take action together. This is something that can exist in every community, the tools exist, so get out there, have a meeting with other people that care about climate emotions, because there are so many of us.
Being a plaintiff showed me how critical it is to center mental health in this movement. We can’t build a sustainable future if we’re emotionally depleted. Climate advocacy requires stamina, and that means we need to talk openly about burnout, anxiety, fear, and grief. We need to normalize those feelings, not pathologize them. The systems of power want us to give up, they want us to become apathetic, so being in touch with your emotions and knowing exactly what you’re feeling and why, is revolutionary.
3. Earlier this year, you helped launch a digital zine with the Climate Mental Health Network, filled with personal stories, art, poetry, and tools designed to support climate-concerned youth. Why do you think creative expression is such an important tool for youth navigating climate anxiety and eco-grief?
Creative expression gave me my voice. Before I had words for what I was feeling, I had images, colors, textures. When I was 16, I broke down when I realized just how severe climate change was going to be. I was in a room full of adults who didn’t know how to help me. They pitied me and tried to comfort me but I felt so alone. I felt alone because I had never heard anyone talk about their climate emotions. I didn't even have the language to describe what I was feeling. We have to have the words in our vocabulary to allow us to share and understand our feelings. Art becomes a vessel for creation when words cannot encapsulate what we are feeling. Every time I start an art piece, I feel like it changes meaning and adds meaning as I create. Art is a time to listen and go with the flow of the piece and you will discover so much more about yourself in the act of creating.
Finding the Climate Mental Health Network felt like finally being seen. The climate emotions wheel they created gave me language I didn’t even know I needed. It breaks emotions down into categories and specific feelings. Just having that tool helped me begin to name and understand my grief.
That’s why I believe so deeply in the power of storytelling and art. When we give young people space to create — whether it’s a poem, a zine, or a painting — we give them a way to process trauma and reclaim power.
Our zine is filled with raw emotion: joy, anger, sadness, hope. We wanted to offer not just a mirror to reflect climate emotions, but also a toolkit for survival. It breaks down big categories like grief or anxiety into more specific, nuanced feelings. Suddenly, I wasn’t just “sad,” I was overwhelmed, betrayed, and lonely. And I had a way to say that to be understood. Language and art are both about making meaning, and that’s essential when you’re navigating something as complex as the climate crisis.
We made this zine as a way to help other youth navigate their emotions and to know that they are not alone. A zine, short for magazine, is a DIY publication that can encompass many different forms of creations. After every submission there is a guided journal prompt that invites the reader to be an active participant in.
Creative expression is one of the most beautiful parts about being human. While we are upset about human-caused destruction of our planet, we must find moments of how beautiful humanity can be. Creating art does exactly that, the opposite of depression is expression, so create and it becomes the soul’s medicine.
Zines are such an underrated form of communication, and this toolkit allows you to take your time in engaging with it. You can pick it up as you need and come to it just as you are.
Anyone can make a zone with literally 1 piece of paper, some creativity, and folding it into a pamphlet! But I encourage you to talk to your friends, classmates—anyone in your community, and start working on one together. Zines can be anything you can imagine. And if you make a climate mental health zine, DM the CMHN’s Instagram. We would love to see what you create!
And our zine is interactive! After each submission, we have journal prompts to invite you to be an active participant in the zine and allow it to feel more personal to you.
4. Can you talk about how your own artistic practice helps you process climate-related emotions and build resilience? Are there certain themes that you find yourself returning to in your art?
Art is a place of solace and catharsis. Art is able to communicate what we cannot put in words. It's a space where I can pour my emotions, especially the ones that feel too big or contradictory to make sense of. I make art to survive. I recommend reading Audre Lorde’s poem “A Litany for Survival” and her essay “Poetry is Not a Luxury.” They are two pieces that are deeply formative to my understanding of the impotence of art as a tool of resistance.
There are themes I keep coming back to: water, oil, grief, plastic, the violence of extraction, and the beauty of the natural world. Sometimes the pieces are playful, like my sculpture Screaming, Crying, Throwing Up, made with recycled materials and old paint; my running joke was “because that’s how climate change makes me want to feel.” I wanted to make something absurd and cathartic, to laugh through the despair. I glued down purple party streamers from a birthday party that looked like plastic vomit — it was messy and weird and joyful in a strange way. I burned the canvas and tried to communicate my emotions in a humorous way that still demonstrated the gravity of it.
Olivia stands beside her original artwork, “Screaming, Crying, Throwing Up” and “Can We Cauterize this Wound?” on display in a gallery.
Other pieces are much heavier. I recently painted to explore the relationship between the fossil fuel industry and the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Two-Spirit, and Peoples (MMIW2S). My piece about Spider Grandmother, a Hopi and Diné creator figure, mourns the loss of her grandchildren to fossil fuel extraction and its impacts on water and the community. Indigenous women and communities are on the frontlines of this violence, their land and water constantly under threat.
These stories are central to understanding the intersections of climate change, gender-based violence, and Indigenous rights.
The fossil fuel industry is a hydra, sever one head, and another grows back. We have to cauterize the wound. We have to go deeper. We have to imagine a world where it becomes ridiculous that it took us so long to transition from fossil fuels, where future generations cannot even comprehend that humans used anything but renewables.
5. Mental Health Awareness Month is a time to uplift voices and stories often left out of the conversation. What message do you want young people who are struggling with climate anxiety to hear right now?
You are not alone. You are not overreacting. You are not being dramatic. You are responding to a real crisis in a completely valid way. Your feelings matter and they are telling you something important. You are allowed to grieve. You are allowed to rest. You are allowed to feel everything you’re feeling. You are awake. You are paying attention. That is something to be proud of.
I want every young person struggling with climate emotions to know that they are part of a growing community of people who understand them. And within that community, there is room for grief, but also room for joy and creativity and connection. There are ways to move through these feelings. There are tools. There are stories. There is art. You are not a burden, you are a beacon because you dare to care and dare to feel. That is beautiful, it is properly bittersweet.
6. What gives you hope in the face of such an overwhelming crisis? And how do you take care of your mental health while being on the frontlines of this fight?
I’ve been thinking a lot about hope lately. Hope is not something we passively hold; it’s something we fight to create. My hope has claws. I cling to it, not just for the future, but for the present. We often think of hope as something distant, something reserved for what’s ahead. But for me, hope is something I return to each day. It’s perennial, like certain flowers that go dormant in the winter but bloom again with care and time.
Hope exists alongside despair. Despair is the complete absence of hope, and I’ve felt that before. There are moments when hope doesn’t feel possible. But I’ve learned that it can return, if we take steps to nurture it, to remind ourselves why we’re still in this fight.
Olivia in a wildflower field, radiating vibrant energy and self-expression at the intersection of art, activism, and nature.
For me, that means going on hikes with my dogs through every season, noticing the changes, falling in love with the world’s beauty again and again. It means spending time with friends, enjoying small, joyful moments. Activism has become a kind of medicine for my climate emotions — taking action is what gives me strength. But some days, I just need to be. I need to rest, to work on other projects, to let myself exist in the beauty of the world without doing anything to save it. Our greatest lesson in life is learning what balance means to us and creating that balance.
Being gentle with yourself, even when you feel like there’s always something more urgent, is essential. That’s how we stay in this fight. And just as important is building community: knowing that if you need to step back, there are others who will carry the torch while you rest. That’s what resilience looks like. That’s what hope looks like.