A few words about the honor of the experience in Nice, France:
Spending time around incredible artists, rock stars, and diplomats during the last week, I felt acutely aware of my improbable arc as a girl from south Mississippi, where hunger gnawed as fiercely as the humidity, to famous whistleblower, and now to global advocate for the seas.
In the pine and cypress-shadowed wetlands of my youth, housing was never a guarantee for my large family, and a college education the sole goal for escaping our childhood.
Yet, all the while, I dreamed in hues of turquoise, matching the coastal waters just down the road from us, with visions of a future too vast for my broken and impoverished small-town.
I fell in love with the ocean at first sight, and that affair has driven the direction of my life ever since.
Standing among artists with their exquisite renderings of the ocean crisis, rock stars lending their anthems to the cause, and diplomats wielding policy like a sextant, I also felt the surreal …
