The Earth is in trouble. As Greta says, our house is on fire. Everyday we hear (or see) new evidence of the climate emergency. Fires, drought, worsening storms, rising temperatures and seas, growing warnings of food insecurity, refugee crises and climate injustice. How does a human cope with this existential threat?
A group of five of us, supported by the Creation Care Alliance of Western North Carolina, created Eco Grief Circles because we saw the need for a place which would empower and support people to process their feelings about the Climate Crisis. We came together, two therapists, two clergy, and a chaplain specializing in grief, in order to create community and support for people who are struggling with climate grief, as we had been. That group was; Maureen Linneman, Scott Hardin-Nieri, Carrie Johnson, Laura Collins, and me, Connie Burns.
There are environmental and justice activists, people of faith and community leaders who have been working, sometimes for decades, without a supportive community that allows for the facing and honoring of individual and collective grief. They have been committed in their work, out of love for the earth, and have often had no spaces in which to allow their tears and anger to flow out. Some of them have burned out. It’s hard to face the pain of what’s happening, the environmental disasters we witness day after day, without a place to grieve and be held in those feelings.
Human suffering extends beyond the environmental. While our ecological systems suffer, there is also the pain and despair that result from the profound social injustices of racism, sexism and poverty, the erosion of democracy and the recent Covid-19 pandemic. These interconnect in disastrous ways with the climate crisis. Underresourced communities and communities of color are disproportionately affected by pollution and environmental crises. There are so many facets to this global emergency, it can be overwhelming just trying to decide where to put our energy.
We also know that there are plenty of people who care deeply, and might be able to begin taking on more active roles if they were able process their feelings so that they could keep their hearts and hands open and moving. When our grief has no place to be expressed, we become frozen. In that place of shut down it is hard for our thinking brain (neo-cortex) to work well. We struggle to see which way to turn, what our best course of action might be.