In her book The Sixth Extinction, An Unnatural History, author Elizabeth Kolbert compares the time we are now living in to the Earth’s other mass extinction events. She summarizes the peer reviewed science and estimates that flora and fauna loss by the end of the 21st century will be between 20% to 50% of all living species on earth.
Notice, what happens in your body as you take in this information? What happens with your breath, your mind, your heart? We live and breathe this destruction every day, but we often avoid delving too deeply into the topic of loss because we’re focused on the day-to-day tasks in front of us, or we don’t have the mental/emotional bandwidth, or perhaps we’re afraid the weight of this loss will be too much to bear.
Grief can take many forms. We grieve for loved ones we lose — parents, partners, friends, animal companions. We might grieve for the end of a life phase, the end of a relationship, or the loss of an ability. We may grieve for a forest that’s been clearcut, for a language that’s going extinct, for victims of violence or the ocean life poisoned in an oil spill. Terms like “ecological grief” and “climate grief” point to a collective grief for everything we’re losing right now, and everything we stand to lose. We all carry a piece of this larger, shared grief for the state of the world.
In The Smell of Rain on Dust, author Martin Prechtel writes about the importance of honoring the dead and the practice of grieving as being essential to the integrity of the soul. If we love, we must also grieve — they are two sides of the same coin. To be connected with the world around us means also connecting with the pain of the world. Feeling and processing our grief for the world is a way of honoring the beings, places, cultures and ecosystems that are being lost. It’s also deeply healing, and foundational to our ability to remain engaged in the present moment. In this way, grief is revolutionary.
I’m interested in how we humans can develop our capacity to grieve, not only for people close to us but for other beings we’re connected to through the web of life — ecosystems we may or may not know personally, watersheds threatened by fracking, low-elevation coastal communities. Much is being lost, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Yet if we allow our inner responses to the state of the world to surface, if we sit with the experience and let it move through us and change us, we inevitably come out on the other side as more connected, compassionate people.
Whether consciously or not, we all feel some grief for the state of the world, for oppression, exploitation, climate change and the unraveling of our ecological fabric. When we speak this grief out loud and share our process with others, we give our grief a place to move. This works wonders for our mental, emotional and physical health. And collectively, it can help us mount an appropriate response to the crises we face.
Toward this end, I facilitate group process work that honors the grief we feel for the Earth and our fellow beings. This work is grounded in gratitude and connection. Would you like to join me? You can read more about my work here and sign up for my (very low-traffic) mailing list to be updated about future workshops and events.
My next public workshop will be Saturday, March 16th at the Eliot Center, part of the First Unitarian Church in downtown Portland. Read more details and reserve your spot here.
Thanks for reading <3