What a beautifully accurate description of something we are all feeling. I’m sitting with your words this morning, taking a moment to let them wash over me as I prepare to acknowledge my own climate grief ✨
The Lament for the Land - so powerful. Thank you a always for this incredible outpouring of gifts every week.
A friend of mine who lost her father last year said what kept coming up for her was: "Grief is the portal. Fear is the gatekeeper." As in, she knew she needed to go through the grief, that was the most real and healthy way to be, but the fear of feeling that grief, and becoming lost in it, was extremely strong. "What if I never get out?"
Somatic and leadership coach Amanda Blake, in her excellent neurobiology of human change class, Body=Brain, outlines the fact that no matter how huge the potentially crashing wave of emotional experience appears to us, holding back the wave is far more costly than letting it crash and then subside. It always subsides, there is always another wave. But holding back the waves is as futile as that metaphor sounds. The water creeps through the gaps into every other area of our lives, manifesting in stress related illnesses and more.
Robert Bly used to say that the root of depression was un-experienced grief. The grief wants to be felt, but if you ignore it, what happens is it reaches up and pulls you underwater. Better to meet it fully. Or as I have been feeling lately, strongly: "Turn and face the wave."
There is a video on youtube of Joanna Macy describing how she discovered that Grief was the most effective portal for people confronting the reality of climate disruption to move through stages into acceptance, and from there into effective collaborative action - which became her Work that Reconnects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGDMfFw9-wQ&t=3418s
Anticipatory grief is one we run into in climate coaching - alongside the Immunity to Change-type resistance of "I recognize that future is avoidable if we all change our behavior, but I don't want to give up all the luxuries I have now." Like the monkey trap, we can't let go of the shiny or tasty object inside the coconut, so are trapped.
"If we are honest with ourselves, most of us don’t carry the full reality of the world because it is too painful to do so." Like anything, it takes practice. Which is why I value my spiritual tradition of the Zen Peacemaker Order, and the three principles Roshi Bernie Glassman articulated: bearing witness, which must also go with not knowing, and compassionate action arising from both not knowing and bearing witness. Undergirding and scaffolding all of that are the noble truths you already began with, recognizing the reality of suffering, and the truth that while we will all feel pain in our lives, the suffering layer is optional. We do not need to layer additional upset over what is already there. Like you so wonderfully summarized Tich Nhat Hanh's order of Interbeing, being fully present with what is, is enough. We open to the fundamental and radical abundance of each moment, and also begin to discern what is the appropriate right action/compassionate action in the midst of suffering.
Thank you for starting with Kubler-Ross, and also for including that so-important sixth stage of grief. I love this "If your heart is breaking, you’re on my team.” We are all together in the world of wounds, or as the Bodhisattva vow articulates, may we walk together down into the valley of swords, in order to to the work that needs to be done so all may be liberated. "Creations are numberless, we vow to awaken with them."
One very important point to add. Pushing away experiences and emotions that we find unpleasant builds distance between us and what is actually happening moment to moment, inner and outer. What that means is that when pleasant situations and emotions arise, we find somehow we also feel distant from those. So we try to distract ourselves from even that disturbing recognition.
The reward for opening to experiencing difficult emotions like grief, is that we also build the skill of becoming more and more present with EVERYTHING that we experience. Which means once we build that muscle, we find ourselves more fully present with and savoring even the smallest joys -- all as above in the poem, but worth articulating fully.
Thank you Adam for another deeply heartfelt issue with many references and pointers, some I know and some I don't. For me, there is so much to discover (the movie: The Lament for the Land, the book: "All we can save") and re-discover ("The Wild Edge of Sorrow" whose cover photo is so beautiful and TNH's text on Interbeing).
Grief is certainly one of the emotions that make people not wanting to engage with the topic of climate change, together with other negative emotions of guilt, shame, fear and helplessness. (This week, I found the following quote from Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication: "Climate Change has become one of the taboo topics, like sex, politics and religion, that does not get talked about...". It's certainly becoming the elephant in the living room and in the board room.) But unlike guilt, shame, fear or helplessness, grief shows us that the information about the climate crisis that we have received has been integrated: a new possibility for action can now emerge from that perspective of loss. The other negative emotions will show up as defenses and will prevent the integration of the information received therefore hindering or delaying any movement towards active engagement. As Peter Tavernise points out in his comment, that is the beauty of Joanna Macy's work. So as difficult an emotion as grief can be, it's actually good news when you are in that space.
David Whyte says it beautifully in his poem "The Well of Grief":
Just reading this from my Awake In The Wild Teacher, Mark Coleman: "With loving, there’s vulnerability. The reason so many of us are feeling so much grief about the state of the earth is because we love this planet. We love the creatures here, the species here. We love our favorite woodlands and prairies, meadows and creeks. And we feel tremendous loss. It’s part of the reality of this era.
Thank you so much, this is such a thoroughly researched piece full of heart. I am grateful and have sent to my dad who has been in the climate change world his whole career, AND sees it in new eyes with granddaughters. I think you articulate so well that witnessing/ sitting with plus action/ change.
Adam, how generous you are in your intelligent and open-hearted writing. When I was reading and pondering I could hear the music of the song "Great Spirit" by Nahko Bear (Medicine for the People) playing in my mind. I started to see the symmetry between the earth and the people like Carl Jung explaining the collective unconscious, that there are parts of the earth and the people who inhabit the earth that are both genetically inherited. But here we now stand at the precise at the potential destruction of something so sacred that sustains our very being, and we are without words to express our grief. As a thanatologist I have been in many conversations with people who have difficulty expressing their emotions surrounding losses they have, and still do, experience in their life. I conceptualise for myself that we all have many losses, and that they combine to be called grief. I believe grief to be intimate and personal. I like to use the word mourn to mean the public expresssion of a personal grief. We don't talk about grief openly and we only associate mourning with death, and we certainly don't talk about anticipatory grief and our fear of future losses of our climate. Here lurks an invisible, unspoken deeply painful knowledge of what is happening, but our conscious mind finds it nearly impossible to bring it to the open, to articulate, and then to do any action.
As a Logotherapist I can't help but think of this quote by Viktor Frankl, “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”
I believe some of the answers are there waiting for us in the very elements of nature we are hoping to protect. If we could dis-engage from the overwhelming amount of communication we receive and connection to the non-natural devices of the world, and retreat to the oceans, to the forests, to the rivers, to the plants and animals, we can receive the refreshing energy we so long for, and then, in turn, have renewed energy to accomplish our dreams of looking after our environments and ultimately the climate that surrounds our very being. Dont' ask what is the meaning of life, ask what is the meaning of your life.
Wow, Beth, deep thanks to you for these comments. At whatever point might be convenient, I would love to speak with you about all of this. I recite some of Viktor Frankl's wisdom to myself each night before going to bed. As someone who has felt called to work with end-of-life care, I was stunned to see the word Thanatologist and have to look that up. An entire field I was unaware existed but so needed!
What a beautifully accurate description of something we are all feeling. I’m sitting with your words this morning, taking a moment to let them wash over me as I prepare to acknowledge my own climate grief ✨
The Lament for the Land - so powerful. Thank you a always for this incredible outpouring of gifts every week.
A friend of mine who lost her father last year said what kept coming up for her was: "Grief is the portal. Fear is the gatekeeper." As in, she knew she needed to go through the grief, that was the most real and healthy way to be, but the fear of feeling that grief, and becoming lost in it, was extremely strong. "What if I never get out?"
Somatic and leadership coach Amanda Blake, in her excellent neurobiology of human change class, Body=Brain, outlines the fact that no matter how huge the potentially crashing wave of emotional experience appears to us, holding back the wave is far more costly than letting it crash and then subside. It always subsides, there is always another wave. But holding back the waves is as futile as that metaphor sounds. The water creeps through the gaps into every other area of our lives, manifesting in stress related illnesses and more.
Robert Bly used to say that the root of depression was un-experienced grief. The grief wants to be felt, but if you ignore it, what happens is it reaches up and pulls you underwater. Better to meet it fully. Or as I have been feeling lately, strongly: "Turn and face the wave."
There is a video on youtube of Joanna Macy describing how she discovered that Grief was the most effective portal for people confronting the reality of climate disruption to move through stages into acceptance, and from there into effective collaborative action - which became her Work that Reconnects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGDMfFw9-wQ&t=3418s
Anticipatory grief is one we run into in climate coaching - alongside the Immunity to Change-type resistance of "I recognize that future is avoidable if we all change our behavior, but I don't want to give up all the luxuries I have now." Like the monkey trap, we can't let go of the shiny or tasty object inside the coconut, so are trapped.
"If we are honest with ourselves, most of us don’t carry the full reality of the world because it is too painful to do so." Like anything, it takes practice. Which is why I value my spiritual tradition of the Zen Peacemaker Order, and the three principles Roshi Bernie Glassman articulated: bearing witness, which must also go with not knowing, and compassionate action arising from both not knowing and bearing witness. Undergirding and scaffolding all of that are the noble truths you already began with, recognizing the reality of suffering, and the truth that while we will all feel pain in our lives, the suffering layer is optional. We do not need to layer additional upset over what is already there. Like you so wonderfully summarized Tich Nhat Hanh's order of Interbeing, being fully present with what is, is enough. We open to the fundamental and radical abundance of each moment, and also begin to discern what is the appropriate right action/compassionate action in the midst of suffering.
Thank you for starting with Kubler-Ross, and also for including that so-important sixth stage of grief. I love this "If your heart is breaking, you’re on my team.” We are all together in the world of wounds, or as the Bodhisattva vow articulates, may we walk together down into the valley of swords, in order to to the work that needs to be done so all may be liberated. "Creations are numberless, we vow to awaken with them."
For One Who Is Exhausted, a Blessing
When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight.
The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.
Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.
The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.
You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken in the race of days.
At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.
You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.
Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.
Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.
https://onbeing.org/blog/john-odonohue-for-one-who-is-exhausted-a-blessing/?fbclid=IwAR1QkKAE_uWoJ_o013skRx3L5JWyDvbnJ2A2mOi8R0nw53gT7FZ9MSGj9bg
As an aside, thanks again for introducing me to Dr. Renee Lertzman's work - I have been doing a deep dive on her website and also this interview with her (and Eric Utne) just came out this week: http://www.climateone.org/audio/2020-election-anxiety-and-incrementalism
One very important point to add. Pushing away experiences and emotions that we find unpleasant builds distance between us and what is actually happening moment to moment, inner and outer. What that means is that when pleasant situations and emotions arise, we find somehow we also feel distant from those. So we try to distract ourselves from even that disturbing recognition.
The reward for opening to experiencing difficult emotions like grief, is that we also build the skill of becoming more and more present with EVERYTHING that we experience. Which means once we build that muscle, we find ourselves more fully present with and savoring even the smallest joys -- all as above in the poem, but worth articulating fully.
Dr. Renee Lertzman has been on climate one regularly since 2016!
And Peter, thank you for sharing JOD's blessing for One Who Is Exhausted. It's been on my wall since the beginning of COVID and inspires me daily.
Thank you Adam for another deeply heartfelt issue with many references and pointers, some I know and some I don't. For me, there is so much to discover (the movie: The Lament for the Land, the book: "All we can save") and re-discover ("The Wild Edge of Sorrow" whose cover photo is so beautiful and TNH's text on Interbeing).
Grief is certainly one of the emotions that make people not wanting to engage with the topic of climate change, together with other negative emotions of guilt, shame, fear and helplessness. (This week, I found the following quote from Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication: "Climate Change has become one of the taboo topics, like sex, politics and religion, that does not get talked about...". It's certainly becoming the elephant in the living room and in the board room.) But unlike guilt, shame, fear or helplessness, grief shows us that the information about the climate crisis that we have received has been integrated: a new possibility for action can now emerge from that perspective of loss. The other negative emotions will show up as defenses and will prevent the integration of the information received therefore hindering or delaying any movement towards active engagement. As Peter Tavernise points out in his comment, that is the beauty of Joanna Macy's work. So as difficult an emotion as grief can be, it's actually good news when you are in that space.
David Whyte says it beautifully in his poem "The Well of Grief":
Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source
from which we drink
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown by those who wished for
something else
Thank you again.
Just reading this from my Awake In The Wild Teacher, Mark Coleman: "With loving, there’s vulnerability. The reason so many of us are feeling so much grief about the state of the earth is because we love this planet. We love the creatures here, the species here. We love our favorite woodlands and prairies, meadows and creeks. And we feel tremendous loss. It’s part of the reality of this era.
With love comes caring for that which we love, and feeling the hurt that’s being done to that which we love. There’s now a term, “solastalgia,” which means the grief and sadness we feel when we go into a place in nature that we love, and we know it’s being destroyed. This is an increasingly common experience." To listen to his entire talk: https://www.spiritrock.org/mark-coleman?utm_source=Spirit+Rock+Master+List&utm_campaign=b177b10c64-2020-11-10-Upcoming-Offerings&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_15c7af9ed4-b177b10c64-17810969
Thank you, that's beautiful and movingly true.
Thank you so much, this is such a thoroughly researched piece full of heart. I am grateful and have sent to my dad who has been in the climate change world his whole career, AND sees it in new eyes with granddaughters. I think you articulate so well that witnessing/ sitting with plus action/ change.
Adam, how generous you are in your intelligent and open-hearted writing. When I was reading and pondering I could hear the music of the song "Great Spirit" by Nahko Bear (Medicine for the People) playing in my mind. I started to see the symmetry between the earth and the people like Carl Jung explaining the collective unconscious, that there are parts of the earth and the people who inhabit the earth that are both genetically inherited. But here we now stand at the precise at the potential destruction of something so sacred that sustains our very being, and we are without words to express our grief. As a thanatologist I have been in many conversations with people who have difficulty expressing their emotions surrounding losses they have, and still do, experience in their life. I conceptualise for myself that we all have many losses, and that they combine to be called grief. I believe grief to be intimate and personal. I like to use the word mourn to mean the public expresssion of a personal grief. We don't talk about grief openly and we only associate mourning with death, and we certainly don't talk about anticipatory grief and our fear of future losses of our climate. Here lurks an invisible, unspoken deeply painful knowledge of what is happening, but our conscious mind finds it nearly impossible to bring it to the open, to articulate, and then to do any action.
As a Logotherapist I can't help but think of this quote by Viktor Frankl, “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”
I believe some of the answers are there waiting for us in the very elements of nature we are hoping to protect. If we could dis-engage from the overwhelming amount of communication we receive and connection to the non-natural devices of the world, and retreat to the oceans, to the forests, to the rivers, to the plants and animals, we can receive the refreshing energy we so long for, and then, in turn, have renewed energy to accomplish our dreams of looking after our environments and ultimately the climate that surrounds our very being. Dont' ask what is the meaning of life, ask what is the meaning of your life.
Wow, Beth, deep thanks to you for these comments. At whatever point might be convenient, I would love to speak with you about all of this. I recite some of Viktor Frankl's wisdom to myself each night before going to bed. As someone who has felt called to work with end-of-life care, I was stunned to see the word Thanatologist and have to look that up. An entire field I was unaware existed but so needed!
Thank you Peter, I am happy to talk with you.
Thanks Beth. Beautifully written.