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Green Door, Yellow Door, Red Door memory disclosure

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Green Door, Yellow Door, Red Door memory disclosure

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-Shaking vigorously
-Square breathing (4 in, hold breath, 4 out, hold breath, repeat 6x)
-Hold pressure point firmly on wrists
-Vocalizing, lion's breath breathing

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https://brickelandassociates.com/how-to-deal-with-overwhelm-in-a-pandemic-hint-check-your-window-of-tolerance/#:~:text=The%20window%20of%20tolerance%20is,together%20at%20the%20same%20time

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Many people are feeling pushed past their limits these days. Does it feel like you have a short fuse, get upset easily, or worry a lot - more than you used to? You may see others getting frustrated, cry, or blow up over small things. Do you want to hide from the world? Is it all too much? Feeling okay through stressful situations is possible when you can widen your window of tolerance of emotions.

Your ability to balance or regulate emotional highs and lows is your window of tolerance. You can widen it - which is especially needed in times like these - to manage better with everyday life.

When it comes to a window of emotional tolerance, bigger is better. Widening our windows isn't easy. But it is necessary. Sometimes life pushes us to expand our windows-whether we want to or not.

The COVID-19 pandemic is driving up stress for everyone. It can escalate the worry and anxiety we all have to manage. It is also depressing for some, decreasing their energy or motivation.

When you know about your window of tolerance, you can work to stretch it to cope with changing emotions, stop feeling overwhelmed, and handle whatever life throws at you.

What It Feels Like Being Outside the Window of Tolerance

You'll know what it's like to be outside the window of emotional tolerance when your emotions become unmanageable. In therapy we say you're either above your window or below it.

When your emotional energy is above your window of tolerance you may feel:

Overwhelmed

Upset by small things

Angry

Like your head is spinning; your mind runs in circles; you have racing thoughts

Can't stop being busy; can't sleep; can't slow down

Restless, anxious, panic

Hard on yourself; self-critical

Therapists call this

You know your emotional energy is below your window of tolerance when you feel:

Numb or dead inside

Like not caring

Unmotivated

Unsure how you feel

Like running away or hiding

Unable to say no

Unable to stand up for yourself or keep your boundaries

Down on yourself, ashamed

Little self-compassion

Therapists call this

When you feel like you can handle what's happening or how you are feeling, you are emotionally safe, you know you're living within a healthy window of tolerance.

What Is the Window of Tolerance?

The window of tolerance is a concept used by many experts in mental health, including Dan Siegel and Janina Fisher. It helps describe the ability to tolerate emotions. Within your window of tolerance you are able to:

Think and feel at the same time

Have all parts of your brain working together at the same time

Hold more than one feeling at a time (a huge accomplishment in trauma therapy)

Expanding your window of tolerance allows you to sit with - and live with - emotions that were too much before.

As your self-care skills grow, you can hold both your feelings and your thoughts together. You know you'll make it through and you'll feel safe inside.

Your emotions are how you feel. There are no wrong emotions - even when they're outside your window of tolerance.

When your feelings expand beyond your window of tolerance or your window is narrow or small, your thoughts and feelings easily feel overwhelming. They are all you notice or feel. You can't see around them or past them.

You may experience anxiety, racing thoughts, frustrations and may feel unsafe. This is hyperarousal. It's actually a coping skill people use to try to feel less badly or less scared. Taking action feels like a way to protect yourself from danger or have some sense of control. Trying to stay super-busy is a way people use hyperarousal, so they don't have to feel or experience the discomfort of overwhelming feelings. They are too busy! You may think if you stay as busy as possible, and do all you can, you will be able to keep yourself safe or avoid feelings you don't like or don't know what to do with.

Some people experience hypoarousal. They feel numb, passive, disconnected and often ashamed. They may shut down, or zone out in front of the TV, to keep away the discomfort of unmanageable feelings. They may have overwhelming sadness, shame, feelings of rejection, or otherwise feel unsafe. If you are not present, you don't have to feel.

Why Some People Have More Tolerance than Others

Trauma impacts the window of tolerance.

Some people learned early on that even if things got hard, they would be okay. These are often people who grew up with secure attachment. At least one caregiver helped them understand their feelings and needs, no matter what those were. There was a language for feelings. They lived with a person or people around them who made them feel safe. Because they had a secure foundation, they learned how to tolerate many kinds of thoughts and emotions. These experiences can help a person have a fairly large or wide window of tolerance.

Other people struggle with unknown feelings or unpredictability. When no one teaches you how to tolerate feelings, nurture feelings or that emotions are not bad, everything feels overwhelming. Some people grow up feeling alone, with no one to help make sense of their world.

Some people grow up being told their feelings are wrong or don't make sense. Some children experience painful rejection - physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, or all of these - when showing caregivers their emotional needs. This teaches them it's wrong or even can cause pain to have needs and express them. Some children come to believe they bring the pain of abuse and neglect upon themselves because they felt sad and cried, asked for attention or felt lonely.

Such childhood experiences can make tolerating or even understanding feelings difficult. This is especially true for complex developmental trauma survivors. These examples are how many people experience trauma or insecure, avoidant or disorganized attachment. These experiences likely lead to a narrower window of tolerance. If you feel unable to deal with emotions, you may try not to feel them.

Some use hyperarousal, and some use hypoarousal to manage their nervous system. Some even use both, toggling between the two. They may as they age use something external to try to feel less badly inside, like drugs, alcohol, food, sex, self-harm, exercise or dissociation. If someone experienced childhood trauma, or trauma over time, their window of tolerance is likely to be narrower than someone who had help learning how to manage their inner world.
The window of tolerance (image courtesy of Janina Fisher, Ph.D.).
A pandemic is a traumatic experience. It can narrow all of our windows.

We all have to tolerate things we don't like during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are facing conditions that are uncomfortable and out of our control. We have to tolerate the anxiety around not knowing what's going on or what will happen next, and concerns about our daily health and safety. Physical separation may even trigger issues of loneliness, rejection or abandonment from the past, whether we realize it or not.

No matter how big our windows of tolerance were before COVID, this pandemic is challenging them. This experience has narrowed some of our windows. (Every child now has at least one more adverse childhood experience - one more ACE score!)

This health crisis might trigger feelings in flashbacks from past traumas. Some of us think- I can't handle this anymore! We may at times want to resort to coping mechanisms that don't serve us well, just so we don't have to feel the pain, discomfort or confusion.

However, this difficult situation is also an opportunity to choose to expand our windows of tolerance.

How Do We Expand our Windows of Tolerance?

Noticing what you feel, with kindness and compassion, is a good first step. It sounds simple, but it isn't easy. Widening the window of tolerance starts with slowing down enough to find words for what you feel.

Dr. Dan Siegel calls this process, " Name it to tame it. "

Once you notice you are having a strong emotional reaction, the next step is to describe, or name it - whether to yourself or out loud. For example, say mentally "I am feeling angry" or "I have a tight ball of nerves in my gut." Choosing words to describe subtle emotions jump-starts your executive brain and calms down your emotional limbic brain.

Putting sensations into words like this is why we use a bottom-up approach to therapy

These steps can help you use "name it to tame it" to expand your window of tolerance:

1. First notice and name your sensations and feelings. When you can put words to how you are feeling, it helps you feel calmer.

2. Start by just sitting with your feelings for a few seconds at a time. Small increments are great. Don't feel like you have to endure them for too long. Sit and notice what's happening. Notice how your inner world feels. Breathe, and even if you're not calm yet, notice that the feelings aren't actually killing you. You can sit with them. You can tolerate them.

3. See if you can find something to be grateful for in the situation. Maybe you can acknowledge and thank the protective part of you - the part you had to develop in childhood to keep you safe. You may recognize hyperarousal as what you did to be safe from an abusive parent. Back then, being that alert may have kept you alive. Notice - do you need that feeling now?

4. See if you can acknowledge your strengths and what you've survived.

5. Give yourself some grace. This situation is hard! Building or deepening a practice of self-compassion and self-care will help you expand your window immensely.

6. Choose to reach out to the helpers in your life. Find someone safe to talk with about your feelings. Being connected increases your window of tolerance. You may feel like you don't want to be a burden, but healing thrives in relationships! Part of expanding your window is learning to reach out and ask for help. Think of reaching out when you might otherwise choose to turn inward or turn towards an unhealthy coping mechanism.

7. Know you are not alone. Healthy relationships help us heal.

Remember, we can feel both discomfort and acceptance at the same time!

A large window of tolerance won't make difficulties disappear. You may have some anxiety or sadness-even when you are in the window. That is a normal part of life. With a larger window, you know you will get through it. You are more than your hardships.

Even if you are struggling to tolerate your feelings or find ways to regulate your emotions, you can still be kind and gentle to yourself. You can still take good care of yourself. You can be grateful for the wisdom in your feelings. You can hold the anxiety and hold the compassion at the same time. You can be anxious and reach out. You can feel like running away and sit with your feelings.

When you are able to feel the discomfort and choose compassion, you are expanding your window of tolerance.

How to Help Someone Else Expand Their Window

When someone expresses their anxiety, fear, or discomfort to you, don't try to fix them. Acknowledge, hold and witness their feelings so they don't have to experience them alone. Instead of jumping to fix the situation, words like these can help:

That sounds really hard. I'm here for you.

You are not alone!

Is there anything I can do to make this better for you?

You are doing what you can to cope with something so unpredictable and scary!

Notice when you feel your window being stretched. Notice all that you can hold within you - your compassion and your ways of nurturing yourself. You are, therefore, as safe as you can be.

Expanding our windows of tolerance isn't easy. But it's doable. And it's worth it!

Do You Need Support in Expanding Your Window of Tolerance?

A trauma-informed therapist can help. If you're a potential new client, please contact me. At this time, we are providing only virtual teletherapy, implemented for the COVID-19 health crisis.
Resources
Image credits: Window of Tolerance illustration, by Janina Fisher, Ph.D. is used with permission.

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How to Deal with Overwhelm In a Pandemic (Hint: Check Your Window of Tolerance) - Brickel and Associates LLC

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Many people are feeling pushed past their limits these days. Does it feel like you have a short fuse, get upset easily, or worry a lot - more than you used to? You may see others getting frustrated, cry, or blow up over small things. Do you want to hide from the world?

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https://www.mic.com/impact/black-creators-outdoors-blackpackers-melanin-base-camp

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There is a tendency by the outdoors lovers and "adventurer" types to imagine nature as a boundless and borderless space that anyone can wander into. There are no bouncers at a park entrance, after all. But, if they turn their eyes from the majestic sights and natural beauty that surrounds them to the people that accompany them in these spaces, they might start to notice something: The outdoors is shockingly white.

It's something that Danielle Williams, the founder of Melanin Base Camp, didn't recognize until she found herself returning to the outdoors as an adult seeking community. "When you're younger, you don't notice as much. You're just running around with all the other little kids," Williams tells Mic. "It wasn't until I was older and trying to reconnect with the outdoors as an adult that I first noticed I might be the only person who looks like me."

Williams, a 10-year Army veteran, was no stranger to the outdoors. But the idea of exploring nature recreationally was very different from hiking every day as part of her job. When she decided she wanted to try skydiving, she started to notice the lack of diversity that surrounded her in that space - and the way that absence enforced a sense of exclusion.

"The more experience I got, the more frustrating it became, because everyone kept mistaking me for a student," she says. "No one believed that I was actually a skydiver. I would go to new location and have to repeat training that no one else had to repeat." Williams could show up with all of the equipment in hand, prepared in the way only someone experienced in the sport would be, yet she'd still get treated like she wasn't a "real" skydiver. "Nobody took me seriously, and it was in part because of my gender, but more so because of the color of my skin."

This is not an isolated experience. In the United States, the outdoors have overwhelmingly been experienced and enjoyed by white people. According to data collected by the National Parks Service, nearly 80% of Americans who visit national parks are white. Just 7% of visitors are Black, despite Black people making up 15% of the U.S. population.

Of course, it hasn't always been this way - this is just a fun reminder of what colonization's done to sacred spaces. "Most groups of color - people who are Black, people of Latinx origin, especially those who are Native - have always been a part of outdoors," explains Patricia Ann Cameron, the founder of the Colorado-based Blackpackers, an organization dedicated to addressing the gap in representation in the outdoors.

A Blackpackers group at a climbing gym.

Courtesy of Patricia Ann Cameron

Cameron says she didn't know what she was missing out on until she was taken to Camp Shady Brook, a YMCA camp just outside of Colorado Springs, Colorado. After seeing what the camp had to offer, Cameron decided that she wanted her son to have the same experience and relationship with the outdoors that other Coloradans did. So, she tells Mic, she started teaching herself how to do all the outdoorsy stuff that, for others, simply comes with being a kid with access to nature.

"I started Googling how to backpack and how to camp," Cameron says. She taught her self to fish, and she started acquiring gear, too - working overtime to make more money and purchasing used equipment to get herself started. Like many people who find joy in the outdoors, she wanted to share it with others. But the same barriers she ran into were affecting others in her community. "I wanted to have more friends come with me, but they all said the same thing: They didn't have the gear to go out."

National parks, wildlife reserves, and other places might be free to visit, but they are also revenue generators. There are entire industries built around these spaces and exploring them, and it can cost a pretty penny to acquire things like backpacks and hiking boots and water filtration systems. And the outdoors industry largely ignores people of color in its marketing.

"You can be able to afford a sport, you can have access to gear. But if it's not a welcoming space ... you're not going to go back there."

"Why are outdoor communities and outdoor retailers and media not talking about hunting or fishing or other activities that people of color are more likely to be represented in? What about foraging or harvesting plants for medicinal or religious purposes?" Williams says. "A lot of this just isn't really covered under the traditional spectrum of outdoor activities."

There are hidden costs, too, like transportation. "When people say the outdoors are free, I always ask them what they mean by that," Cameron says. "Because you look at southeast Colorado Springs, and we don't have the same trail systems or transportation systems" compared other parts of the city. People lucky enough to live closer to parks might not consider how much it can cost to get there - and people of color are three times more likely than their white counterparts to live in places where there is no immediate access to nature.

Even when money isn't an issue, the communities themselves can create barriers that nature otherwise wouldn't have. "When I talk to white people, they tend to automatically think the barriers are all financial, which is just not the case. You can be able to afford a sport, you can have access to gear. But if it's not a welcoming space, if you don't feel included, you're not going to go back there," Williams says.

As an example, Williams says there is a lot of "hidden knowledge" when it comes to the outdoors. "If you've never made a reservation for a campsite, you might not know how to do it. If you've never hiked in certain area, you might not know that you need a permit," she says. "It's just not helpful to assume that that information is available to everyone." There's also the reality that if something were to go wrong, Black and brown Americans can't rely on receiving the same protection from authority that white Americans do - which might make the idea of, say, camping in a remote spot, a bit more daunting.

Cameron is making it a mission to demystify these things for her community. Through Blackpackers, she offers gear rentals and events to teach people how to use equipment and experience new activities. "I think everybody wants to be outdoors," she tells Mic.

"A lot of the times our participation or leadership or involvement are not being acknowledged because we don't fit the traditional narrative of the white outdoorsman."

Williams, meanwhile, has refocused her efforts in the outdoors from increasing participation to increasing visibility. "People of color are already out here. We are already active in the outdoors, and a lot of the times our participation or leadership or involvement are not being acknowledged because we don't fit the traditional narrative of the white outdoorsman," she says.

One of the ways that Williams has pushed to reshape who we see enjoying the outdoors is through social media. In 2018, she launched Diversify Outdoors, an organization that seeks to promote diversity in outdoor recreation. Since launching the coalition of influencers and advocacy groups, she says the hashtag #DiversifyOutdoors has been used more than 120,000 times on Instagram alone.

This, too, pushes back against a narrative that has gained steam among the mainstream (and mostly white) outdoors community: that social media is ruining things, because it brings in more people who aren't as experienced and thus may not be aware of some of the implicit social contracts that exist.

"There's a very vocal minority on the internet that is just very angry," Williams says. "They are moralizing this false binary of people who were 'here before.' And when they say 'here before,' they're not talking about Native Americans - they're talking about themselves. They're talking about people who grew up privileged to have access to safe green spaces in their community."

But for people who are new to the game, social media is an especially useful tool for connecting and learning, because it's everywhere. "It's been great for sharing information, for sharing technical knowledge, for finding mentors, for finding friends, and for just feeling empowered," Williams says.

So much of the outdoors remains inaccessible to people of color, and particularly Black Americans due to historical injustices and systemic racism. Housing discrimination has pushed Black communities farther from nature and green spaces. A lack of generational wealth as well as job discrimination leads to income disparities that leave families of color with less disposable income and time to take vacations and explore the outdoors.

The lack of access to those spaces has been created artificially. By taking up these traditions, sharing knowledge, and increasing both access and visibility in these spaces, creators like Williams and Cameron are helping to remove those barriers - and once again opening these spaces to the people who helped create them in the first place.

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How Black creators are tearing down barriers to the outdoors

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There is a tendency by the outdoors lovers and "adventurer" types to imagine nature as a boundless and borderless space that anyone can wander into. There are no bouncers at a park entrance, after all.

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Research shows that people of color are far less likely to engage in nature-based outdoor recreation activities, with historic discrimination being a large underlying factor.

At NC State's College of Natural Resources, researchers firmly believe that the outdoors can become more inclusive once the narrative changes, from emphasizing achievements of people of color in outdoor recreation to having more diverse leadership in outdoor recreation agencies, organizations and advisory boards.

The history of public park systems and current-day prejudices against people of color are two areas that reinforce each other and prevent higher participation from people of color, according to KangJae "Jerry" Lee. Lee, an assistant professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, has authored numerous studies about racial discrimination in park participation, outdoor leisure and sports.

Participation and attendance at state and national parks, as well as forest areas, tend to be disproportionate between white people and people of color. The reasons behind this go beyond the fact that people of color are three times more likely than white people to live in places that have no immediate access to nature.

"There are a couple of different theoretical explanations that have been provided by different researchers," Lee said. "Socioeconomic status, cultural differences, racial discrimination and the history of institutional racism. In my personal opinion, the most reasonable explanation is the last one, the historical racial discrimination: we are the products of our past."

Beginning with slavery, a long history of racial oppression, including job discrimination, redlining (refusal from the Federal Housing Administration to insure mortgages in and near Black neighborhoods) and lack of sufficient access to housing, has caused a disparity in income between persons of color and white people. People of color tend to have higher unemployment rates and lower income levels, leading to less disposable income to take trips for outdoor recreation. If you are low income, you don't necessarily have vacation time to take trips to state and national parks.

However, people of color in the middle class who have disposable income and discretionary time may not even choose a nature-based vacation. "One idea is that if people of color have the same income levels, they will participate in outdoor recreation or visit parks as much as their white counterparts," Lee said. "But this is an anglo-confirmative bias, meaning that it normalizes white Americans' leisure behavior as a benchmark. Moreover, existing empirical studies do not support the idea."

A history rooted in discrimination

The lack of diversity and inclusion in outdoor spaces can be traced back to the very beginning of parks, especially to the individuals who created the park system and for what reasons, according to Myron Floyd, dean of the College of Natural Resources and lead author of several studies exploring race and ethnicity in parks and outdoor recreation.

Throughout history, parks in the United States have been conceptualized, created and managed by white men who held racist beliefs. People of color were rarely considered to be major stakeholders in outdoor recreation or park-related activities. People of color have experienced segregation from a multitude of outdoor recreation agencies, including the Civilian Conservation Corps and National Park System.

"The underlying rationale for creating parks was this idea of U.S. nationalism, to promote the American identity, and the American identity was primarily white, male and young," Floyd said. "It was really trying to distinguish the American identity from the European identity: being a separate, more mature nation in the mid-19th century."

John Muir, who is credited with the creation of the National Park System and the conservation movement, was recently called out for his long history of racism by the Sierra Club. For Muir, who co-founded the organization in 1892, Indigenous people "seemed to have no right place in the landscape" despite the fact that they had lived there for thousands of years. He also believed that Indigenous peoples' villages and their ways of life should be destroyed in order to have "unblighted, unredeemed wilderness."

Other important figures in the conservation movement, like Gifford Pinchot, the first head of the U.S. Forest Service, held racist beliefs and believed that parks were created for Americans of only Northern European descent. "These are ideas that are antithetical to democracy, egalitarian principles and basic human rights," Floyd said.

Unease in the outdoors

For white Americans, the ability to visit a park or plan a hiking trip with little to no concern is a privilege that is rarely considered. However, for people of color, they have to plan trips and gather friends or family to go with them or make sure they go hiking in groups.

"They think twice about going outside and going to remote places where they are not familiar with their surroundings," Floyd said. "Black people and other people of color have to think really hard about being in outdoor spaces and being seen as out of place because the white majority can perceive people of color to be out of place in outdoor spaces."

Two recent incidents that demonstrate this cause for concern include the killing of jogger Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and the racial targeting of Christian Cooper in Central Park, both of which occured this year. These incidents involving two Black men provide clear examples of the not-so-subtle discrimination that continues to pervade minorities in outdoor spaces across the U.S.

In May, Arbery ventured outside for an afternoon jog in the coastal neighborhood of Satilla Shores when he was confronted by a white man, Gregory McMichael, and his son, Travis McMichael. Gregory reported that he believed Arbery, unarmed, resembled a man suspected of several nearby break-ins. Gregory grabbed a handgun - and a shotgun - and chased Arbery in his pickup truck to cut him off. After pulling up to Arbery, Travis got out of the car with the shotgun. When Travis and Arbery began fighting over the shotgun, Travis killed Arbery.

During the same month, nearly 900 miles away in New York City, Cooper, an avid birdwatcher, was spending his morning searching for Blackburnian warblers in Central Park. His birdwatching was disturbed by another resident, Amy Cooper, who had been loudly calling for her dog. He approached her to politely ask if she could put a leash on her dog, per the park rules, and she refused. After he started recording the exchange, Cooper called 911 to report that "an African-American man is threatening me and my dog."

Contributions to the great outdoors

A lack of diversity in the outdoors doesn't equal a lack of interest among people of color. The Cooper incident led to the creation of Black Birders Week, for example. This weeklong social media event celebrated Black outdoor enthusiasts, naturalists and conservationists. It also served to break down stereotypes of Black people in the outdoors and STEM.

"We have data that shows that people of color care more about the environment than white Americans do," Floyd said. "During economic downturns, people of color would draw their support from environmental concern because they had more concern for food, shelter and other basic needs."

A number of organizations are at the forefront of promoting diversity and inclusion in outdoor spaces, including Outdoor Afro, Black Outside, Latino Outdoors and GirlTrek. With about 90 leaders in 30 states, Outdoor Afro is a nonprofit network of people of color who are passionate about leading the way for inclusion in outdoor recreation, nature and conservation. According to Floyd, a lot of this grassroots activity is not being captured in research surrounding diversity in the outdoors.

Throughout history, Black people have made distinctive contributions in the outdoors. For example, some of the most skilled hunters and fishers in the post-Civil War South were Black people. At Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, Black people were instrumental in making discoveries and promoting the world's largest known cave as a tourist destination. In addition, Indigenous peoples played a key role in preserving the land where many parks sit today.

"If we look at our history more carefully, despite our many challenges, pressures and difficulties imposed by white people, people of color did find a way to enjoy outdoor recreation, which is remarkable," said Lee. "We need to shift our dialog from 'Blacks don't do it, Blacks don't do it, Blacks don't do it' to 'No, no, no. Blacks did it, and despite all odds, they found a way to enjoy outdoor recreation and they made significant contributions to national parks and the great outdoors in the United States.'"

Paving the way for outdoor diversity

A major factor in combating the lack of diversity and inclusion in the outdoors is changing the narrative driving the problem, according to Floyd.

"We need to change the narrative - that people of color do go to parks," he said. "Yes, the levels are low but people are out there participating in outdoor recreation and the agencies have so much room and opportunity to make outdoor recreation more diverse and inclusive."

Parks also need to reinforce values of diversity and inclusion, especially in their marketing strategies. According to Lee, previous studies have documented that images of individuals and families enjoying outdoor recreation at parks tend to be dominated by white people.

Telling the stories of how people of color helped make the outdoors great is an essential marketing strategy for park agencies, organizations and private companies. A number of outdoor recreation companies, including REI, Dick's Sporting Goods and Cabela's, are recognizing the lack of diversity in their marketing. One recent example of more diverse marketing is a Subaru commercial that shows a Black family driving to Arches National Park in Utah. Still, public parks and recreation agencies have been slower in their diversity and inclusion marketing.

Another important step that parks can take to improve diversity is to ensure the safety of guests and to create welcoming environments, with policies in place to ensure a greater sense of security. That includes a separate phone number for non-life-threatening situations.

Floyd said a more diverse staff and leadership, in addition to advisory boards, can also hopefully lead to more diversity in outdoor recreation programming and resource allocation.

"The public is diversifying and it's up to the agencies to determine how to serve them and meet their recreational needs," he said. "We have to focus attention on the organizations and agencies that provide outdoor recreation and manage land and water."

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Nature Gap: Why Outdoor Spaces Lack Diversity and Inclusion

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People of color are far less likely to engage in outdoor recreation, largely due to historic discrimination.

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More:

My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem

The Deepest Well by Nadine Burke Harris

The Trauma of Racism (Psychology Today)