Climate grief is valid grief

I wrote a whole post about grief last night and on the surface it had nothing to do with climate collapse. But living on Chumash and Micqanaqa’n land in California, climate collapse has been on my mind. And today I am present to the grief that can come with it, and that you might be feeling, so I’m checking in.

These times are asking us to adapt, and that is no small thing. I’ve been thinking a lot about how situations we live through require us to adapt and adjust. This is part of my lived experience and woven into my working framework: adaptive coping mechanisms, survival strategies, compensation patterns and funky workarounds that reach for their own makeshift balance in the body. There can be a brilliance here in our survival.

It might be that this living world needs something similar from us. Our willingness to listen, to get present to what is happening, to hear and hold the grief, carry it as our own and everyone else’s too. It might be that this living world needs us to adapt and find new ways (and old ways) so that we can keep surviving. To act from this place of truth-full witnessing. And we might be, right-in-this-very-moment, living into these adaptations, which can be both crucial and taxing.

I don’t have a tidy ending today. I know there is more to say, and so many intersections of oppression and privilege present in the subject of climate collapse. We can keep discussing and exploring. For now, I want to send so much gentleness and care to anyone navigating fires, smokey air, power outages, evacuation, climate grief, and oppression in all forms. There can be a lot to be present to, impacted by, sitting with, living through and adapting to.

So many of us are in this woven web. May we be both strong and gentle with every thread. May we honor this grief.

On Not Rushing Someone Through Their Grief

There can be so much comfort in another human witnessing our pain and grief. Witnessing where we are without trying to change it. Loving us through it without pushing us through it.
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Sometimes we don’t need the situation to be fixed. We don’t always want advice. It’s often not helpful (and can be hurtful) to be redirected to a silver lining when we are in a storm.
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Though there is a time and place for advice and positivity, not every time and place calls for this.
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So when a witness to the painful moment we are in is what we are needing. When a hand to hold through the storm is what we desire.
When companionable silence and taking our time with our story is our deepest wish.
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I wish these things for you.
I wish these things for me.
I wish these things for all of us.

⋒ For more support in compassionate listening, check out my virtual guide, It’s Not All Good! ⋒