Coastal Reflections August 2026
Coastal Reflections is a series from Executive Director Della Meadows exploring the ideas, experiences, and everyday choices that shape environmental stewardship.
The Weight of Knowing
There is something no one tells you about becoming a steward of our environment.
The more you learn… the harder it becomes to look away.
You begin noticing everything. The plastic straw handed to you without asking. The litter
caught in the marsh grasses. The chemicals we use. The water we consume. The water
we waste. The choices we make every day—often without thinking.
Ironically, the more aware you become, the more aware you become of your own
imperfections.
Just this week I walked out of Starbucks carrying an iced coffee in a plastic cup with a
plastic straw. Yes, I had every intention of disposing of it properly an hour later. But
there it was—a reminder that even with the best intentions, I still contribute to the very
problem I’m trying to help solve.
Years ago, during training to become a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), we
were asked to study an illustration of a family scene. Our first assignment was to identify
everything that concerned us. That was easy. Then we were asked to look again and
identify what was good. Suddenly, we saw the same picture through different eyes. The
scene hadn’t changed. We had.
That lesson has stayed with me ever since.
The same is true of environmental stewardship.
Once you begin to see the interconnectedness of our natural world, you can’t unsee it.
But awareness can also become overwhelming. We begin searching for perfect
solutions, perfect choices, perfect consistency.
Life rarely offers us that.
Instead, it invites us to make the next better choice.
To carry a reusable bottle more often than we used to.
To decline the plastic straw when we remember.
To ask thoughtful questions.
To stay engaged in conversations about our shared natural resources.
To recognize that progress is often built one imperfect decision at a time.
Sometimes we become so discouraged by what we cannot do that we fail to do what we
can.
But stewardship has never required perfection.
It requires participation.
If we wait until we can be perfect stewards, we may never become stewards at all.
Our bays, our estuaries, our wildlife—and the generations who will inherit them—don’t
need perfection from us.
They need our willingness to keep trying.
One thoughtful choice.
One conversation.
One act of stewardship at a time.
Stewardship is contagious… pass it on.
Della Meadows
Executive Director
Coastal Bend Bays Foundation