Thanks for addressing – as usual with you! – this hugely important topic Sarah. What a beautiful conversation. And Francis has pearl after pearl of wisdom for us – what gifts! For anyone who might like a bit of support around this issue, with several Amherst Writers & Artists colleagues, every other Monday I co-facilitate a group called “The Art of Loss: Writing Through Grief.” I love the line, “Some pain can’t be healed, but it can be held.” In these groups, as co-facilitators, we simply hold the space for our participants (and ourselves) to re-engage with some of the ritual – some of the “group” processes around grief. Feelings of loss can apply to... glaciers, jobs, democracy, living spaces... and people we love. And grief runs through all of it. If you'd like to write with fellow human beings who by embracing so much of our loss, find ourselves able to laugh again, come join us – because that’s the totality of life: love, loss, and laughter. These workshops are low cost, and are part of AWA’s commitment to the support of individuals and communities, through writing. Info available here:
You're welcome Sarah. Online at present, but I've begun IRL again recently for different workshops, and hope to do some IRL as well later this year for Art of Loss.
Loved this Sarah. Francis has been a dear comrade on this road for many and his perspective on the long dark I find deeply wise and true. Somewhere else he writes about his role in the long dark (he, me and many of us won’t see through it to the other side) which is to plant seeds of possibility and remembrance so those that come in future generations might find at least one of them useful. I’m trying to orient myself around this - so less about any achievement for myself and more about what what small offering or action might be of use way way way down the road.
A timely Wild as I wade through the grief of losing my lovely Dad. I think for me it's the reaching out into the space where he once was and finding the infinite emptiness in his shape. He is still in my heart and soul, but the physical space is currently quietly whistling with the melancholy of his permanent and raw absence. I cry most days still, I'm crying now as i type this and that feels nice.
I totally loved when Francis talked about remembering his connections to all of Earth's creatures. Sometimes when I look up at the full moon I see her face looking down on us and she looks as sad as I feel - kind of like a 'what have you done to yourselves down there?' but at the same time with a twist of an maternally indulgent 'well you'll have to relearn it all and come back to yourselves' (mostly for all of us who grew up with the 'endless growth, colonial lie' I suspect).
As a person who is classified as 'highly sensitive' (I expect many of your readers are which is why they are here) I sometimes viscerally feel things like an animal hit by a car or the tree cut down that I walk past every day to work and cry about even years later. It can be a lot but it's nice to know it's okay to keep just moving that on through my body and witnessing the moments that others choose to either ignore or initiate. Bearing witness becomes so much more important.
Group singing is one way of honouring nature and connection - my seasonal singing crew get together weekly and often one of us is dealing with loss of some form and we just give them a sound bath and bask in the healing of harmonies. None of us individually are superstar singers but as a group it's so incredibly healing and powerful you float off at the end.
Thank you Nicola. I feel the sadness in your words here. I feel the moon and the trees and mountains watching us and, yes, saying something like,'what have you done to yourselves down there?'. x
I loved this conversation Sarah. Francis has such deep, wisdom which he expresses with such clarity - always planting himself firmly in a profound love for the earth and our animal kin, for humanity, for life. He shares his experience and ideas in such a thoughtful, articulate way always referencing those beautiful indigenous life lifting ways. The practice of carrying grief and gratitude in our hands , and through ritual releasing our sorrows that we hold in our hearts and our gut seems to be a realistic way to move patiently within and through this darkness that has been created by humans as we have endeavored to create an individualist paradigm, throwing off the thousands of years of communal bonds. But acknowledging our grief, our sorrows and knowing we are not alone in this can also be the very thing that brings us back to what makes us human and humane. I feel a great weight has shifted as I ponder all my connections and kin - stone, river, ocean, gum tree, butterfly, koala and kookaburra and so many more including some fellow humans who have jumped off the neo liberal rat wheels to take the slow lane. We all feel deep sorrow as we experience the cries of the earth once the industrial level noise of modern life is quieted. Thank you, thank you, thankyou for your brilliant choice and questions for Francis. I will return to this Wild Chat often.
Thank you Sarah for this beautiful conversation and my first global grief was watching the towers fall in 2001. We were all so lost in images playing out on live TV and constant repeat for years. I felt the collective grief for all the ‘missing people’ and felt profoundly we have changed as a western culture.
In nature, my children and I lived through our grief after Cyclone Larry in 2006. We were called to walked through the local rain forest afterwards, and all the trees were stripped naked of leaves. The forest floor was waist high in leaf litter and the sun burned through the canopy, where we use to enjoy shade. That moment too was hard to reconcile, to bare witness to brutal forces that destroyed- everything, how do we grieve nature’s strength?
My life time has experienced the worst of men and nature separated at times. This next earthy phase will be the worst of men and nature combined. I’m trying to prepare my body and mind to process the emotional and mental anguish, knowing the waves will come faster and faster, like the winds of the cyclone.
Thank you for reminding us we aren’t to resist or control our emotions/ grief. We need to allow the grief, don’t be numb and move with it. I’m looking forward to where this darkness will take us. The light isn’t the goal, we need to sit in this sacred time and grow in it.
Thank you 🙏 I will need to sit with this a little longer.
Thank you Sarah. I could listen to you and Francis all day. Such a needed conversation 💜🙏🏻
A collective of us inspired by his work and the Wild Edge Of Sorrow are holding a ‘Grief Rave’ in Melbourne, Australia in July. A way to meet our grief through music, movement and witnessing. For those interested, details are here: https://events.humanitix.com/winter-grief-rave-melbourne
Everything human needs to be collective. All our settler-colonial/imperial/outlaw ideology is antithetical to happiness and wellbeing on Planet Earth. This is in alignment with most spiritual traditions. Connecting with each other and connecting with the land is the main treatment of the psychosomatic symptoms of alienation. Alienation is literally a medically-recognized cause of disease.
This one spoke directly to my current overwhelm Francis, in ways that are still washing over me. I recently found myself in ED for a night on intravenous antibiotics for pneumonia. The liminal space I occupied that night confronted me with the stark awareness that I needed to shut down the noise, to come to ground and find stillness.
I had realised that I was becoming more and more at risk but had been unable to find peace even though I had laid more and more boundaries in the ways so many of your guests suggest Sarah. I realised that I was totally overwhelmed by the state of the world. More specifically, I had lived in Chile for four years, Venezuela for eighteen months and had visited Cuba, I knew viscerally the arrogance of the US and the damage they had wrought in those places. I realised that my recent deep dive into their and their cronies behaviour in West Asia, had led me to feel a force of anger and shame at the propagandist lies we had believed as I continued to witness the destruction that was being wrought right now. That night in hospital I realised that all of this had brought my usually robust good health to this crisis.
Resting in my nest at home in silence or in the gentle sway of Persian and Iranian jazz, I found that grief in the loss of important loved ones emerged. I found myself conjuring my father, who died suddenly at fifty two, my oldest and dear friend who died at forty, and all the other precious ones. In a kind of soirée of reverie, I remembered the magic we had shared and took the opportunity to say the things I never had the chance to say. So many tears, so much joy. I imagined us together dancing our wackiest moves, (as they all would have enjoyed to do), to the slinky jazz. It is the most wonderfully liberating experience and feels so healing.
I began to write messages from the heart to my closest living family and friends, reminiscing about the magic of shared experiences and thanking them for all unique ways that they contributed to making me who I am. At the same time I feel so much more present and able to engage with nature and meaningful objects around me, and so much more alive to the aching fragility of it all.
Sarah, I have also always found funerals to be such heart spaces too, collectively grieving with love and joy at the sheer magnificence of life. I realise that my healing process is slow, but wonderfully slow, and that the stillness and presence is allowing me to reconnect with my village in deeper and more heartfelt ways.
There is so much more to say but maybe that is for another time.
Thank you Francis, I am fascinated by the prospects for greater collective grieving.
Monique, love the still energy in your words. They've been a reminder to me here today...feeling frazzled and caught up. It's cold and windy and I've not slept and I'm letting the noise get to me.
Oh Sarah, you are giving so much to us all at the moment with your extraordinary output of brilliant content. Try to take more time for you to recharge. If I were you right now, I would try to get warm as best you can. Find somewhere still and breathe slowly and steadily. If you can manage a quiet, gentle, vibrant hum on the out breath it will help to calm you down. Big hugs, I’m breathing calm, steady energy your way, I hope it helps.
I just saved this to watch later, pero I can’t wait. I’m a grief worker leading a space for Black folks and other people of color in their 20s-40s living with loss and I ALWAYS reference The Wild Edge of Sorrow as my grief bible. Francis is the goat! Looking forward to this!
Thanks so much for doing this interview Sarah. So precious to witness Francis speaking. I read and loved his subsequent book "In the absence of the ordinary." and would really recommend it.
These concepts of grief as a form of protest against the conditioning of suppressing our feelings; of being a resource for "loving this world into life again"; are all converging with the studying I am doing at the moment:
- Non-Violent (or Compassionate) Communication with https://www.connecting2life.net which is giving me precious space to connect with feelings and needs, and share that with others
- On Purpose course with Lydia Violet at https://schoolforthegreatturning.com which is giving me more perspectives for how to feel and live in this time.
Also I just watched a tremendously enlightening talk by Adrian Lambert on Neurodivergence and Collapse Awareness
which triggered feelings of grief and relief in me, particularly when he talked about our experience of "living within systems that no longer make sense" and "the gap between what is visible to you and discussable with others becomes part of daily life"
I feel so grateful for what you've created Sarah that enables us to bridge that gap between what is visible to us and what is discussable with others. And that I do indeed have access to online and in real life communities to do this.
And I'm wondering, even if some of my local communities don't enable me to bridge that gap, I can take from them the opportunity to talk about and emotionally share other things that we care about and have that sense of belonging that you and Francis talk about.
Elisabeth, more and more I've come to think (particularly after being on tour) that so many of us in this community are on a certain end of the "spectrum". And that our sharing and communicating is starting to get a bit of traction. The gap is narrowing. x
Just returned from Narara eco village, immersed in John Seeds Deep Ecology rituals. I cried, sobbed, listened & gently danced on tip toes through the cosmic walk. Connecting and connected, it’s always hard returning to reality but thanks Sarah and Francis for the gentle, honest and real conversation xxxooo I shall share with Rising Tide comrades, Permie friends, family and friends. I love rituals & all beings. From my heart thank you
Lovely to meet you in Newcastle at your book launch. I eat the stars is being devoured by friends & family. The conversation & all your hard work is reaching the peoples. Thank you
My theory is that in the west we developed technologies to escape the pain of the body in the first 2000 years of our civilisation. Hence the rise of monks and priests denying the body and escaping into the void
Once we escaped the pain of the body , we diseased the mind
And now need to return to the body and the earth. To come back in , more integrated
People in the climate movement in the green's political movement and other such organisations have been going through the grief process for decades. grieving, for the loss that is to come, we're already many of us past that, and they're now focused very focused on what comes next. Glad you could join the party.
Thanks Dex, you might not realise that I've been a climate activist supporting green politics for 20 years. My understanding of this subject comes from this.
Thanks for addressing – as usual with you! – this hugely important topic Sarah. What a beautiful conversation. And Francis has pearl after pearl of wisdom for us – what gifts! For anyone who might like a bit of support around this issue, with several Amherst Writers & Artists colleagues, every other Monday I co-facilitate a group called “The Art of Loss: Writing Through Grief.” I love the line, “Some pain can’t be healed, but it can be held.” In these groups, as co-facilitators, we simply hold the space for our participants (and ourselves) to re-engage with some of the ritual – some of the “group” processes around grief. Feelings of loss can apply to... glaciers, jobs, democracy, living spaces... and people we love. And grief runs through all of it. If you'd like to write with fellow human beings who by embracing so much of our loss, find ourselves able to laugh again, come join us – because that’s the totality of life: love, loss, and laughter. These workshops are low cost, and are part of AWA’s commitment to the support of individuals and communities, through writing. Info available here:
https://amherstwriters.org/2025/08/20/the-art-of-loss/#!event-list
Thanks for flagging Matthew - online groups or IRL?
You're welcome Sarah. Online at present, but I've begun IRL again recently for different workshops, and hope to do some IRL as well later this year for Art of Loss.
Loved this Sarah. Francis has been a dear comrade on this road for many and his perspective on the long dark I find deeply wise and true. Somewhere else he writes about his role in the long dark (he, me and many of us won’t see through it to the other side) which is to plant seeds of possibility and remembrance so those that come in future generations might find at least one of them useful. I’m trying to orient myself around this - so less about any achievement for myself and more about what what small offering or action might be of use way way way down the road.
much like that quote about planting the tree you'll never get to sit under
This conversation has deeply resonated. Thank you 🙏🏻
I'm glad
Sitting on a bus to Melbourne where I will hear you talk IRL.
So grateful for you, Francis and this series of Wild.
So much to digest and sit with.
Again Thank you.🙏
Jocelyn, glad your bus made it and truly joyful to be able to touch your hand last night. xx
So lovely to meet you at last.
I’m sorry if I overstepped the mark and made it too personal.
You must be so tired and you are doing so well keeping all the bells in the air.
I am in awe of you!❤️
This sounds like a wonderful opportunity Matthew. Where are you based?
Thanks Kate. I’m based in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.https://amsterdamwriters.com/writers_stretch_and_tone/
A timely Wild as I wade through the grief of losing my lovely Dad. I think for me it's the reaching out into the space where he once was and finding the infinite emptiness in his shape. He is still in my heart and soul, but the physical space is currently quietly whistling with the melancholy of his permanent and raw absence. I cry most days still, I'm crying now as i type this and that feels nice.
I totally loved when Francis talked about remembering his connections to all of Earth's creatures. Sometimes when I look up at the full moon I see her face looking down on us and she looks as sad as I feel - kind of like a 'what have you done to yourselves down there?' but at the same time with a twist of an maternally indulgent 'well you'll have to relearn it all and come back to yourselves' (mostly for all of us who grew up with the 'endless growth, colonial lie' I suspect).
As a person who is classified as 'highly sensitive' (I expect many of your readers are which is why they are here) I sometimes viscerally feel things like an animal hit by a car or the tree cut down that I walk past every day to work and cry about even years later. It can be a lot but it's nice to know it's okay to keep just moving that on through my body and witnessing the moments that others choose to either ignore or initiate. Bearing witness becomes so much more important.
Group singing is one way of honouring nature and connection - my seasonal singing crew get together weekly and often one of us is dealing with loss of some form and we just give them a sound bath and bask in the healing of harmonies. None of us individually are superstar singers but as a group it's so incredibly healing and powerful you float off at the end.
Thank you Nicola. I feel the sadness in your words here. I feel the moon and the trees and mountains watching us and, yes, saying something like,'what have you done to yourselves down there?'. x
I loved this conversation Sarah. Francis has such deep, wisdom which he expresses with such clarity - always planting himself firmly in a profound love for the earth and our animal kin, for humanity, for life. He shares his experience and ideas in such a thoughtful, articulate way always referencing those beautiful indigenous life lifting ways. The practice of carrying grief and gratitude in our hands , and through ritual releasing our sorrows that we hold in our hearts and our gut seems to be a realistic way to move patiently within and through this darkness that has been created by humans as we have endeavored to create an individualist paradigm, throwing off the thousands of years of communal bonds. But acknowledging our grief, our sorrows and knowing we are not alone in this can also be the very thing that brings us back to what makes us human and humane. I feel a great weight has shifted as I ponder all my connections and kin - stone, river, ocean, gum tree, butterfly, koala and kookaburra and so many more including some fellow humans who have jumped off the neo liberal rat wheels to take the slow lane. We all feel deep sorrow as we experience the cries of the earth once the industrial level noise of modern life is quieted. Thank you, thank you, thankyou for your brilliant choice and questions for Francis. I will return to this Wild Chat often.
I'm just sorry the recording wasn't great.
Thank you Sarah for this beautiful conversation and my first global grief was watching the towers fall in 2001. We were all so lost in images playing out on live TV and constant repeat for years. I felt the collective grief for all the ‘missing people’ and felt profoundly we have changed as a western culture.
In nature, my children and I lived through our grief after Cyclone Larry in 2006. We were called to walked through the local rain forest afterwards, and all the trees were stripped naked of leaves. The forest floor was waist high in leaf litter and the sun burned through the canopy, where we use to enjoy shade. That moment too was hard to reconcile, to bare witness to brutal forces that destroyed- everything, how do we grieve nature’s strength?
My life time has experienced the worst of men and nature separated at times. This next earthy phase will be the worst of men and nature combined. I’m trying to prepare my body and mind to process the emotional and mental anguish, knowing the waves will come faster and faster, like the winds of the cyclone.
Thank you for reminding us we aren’t to resist or control our emotions/ grief. We need to allow the grief, don’t be numb and move with it. I’m looking forward to where this darkness will take us. The light isn’t the goal, we need to sit in this sacred time and grow in it.
Thank you 🙏 I will need to sit with this a little longer.
Sincerely
Rochelle
Donna Haraway's line comes to my mind just now - stay with the trouble. x
Thank you Sarah. I could listen to you and Francis all day. Such a needed conversation 💜🙏🏻
A collective of us inspired by his work and the Wild Edge Of Sorrow are holding a ‘Grief Rave’ in Melbourne, Australia in July. A way to meet our grief through music, movement and witnessing. For those interested, details are here: https://events.humanitix.com/winter-grief-rave-melbourne
Oh wow, that's awesome. I'm sharing with a few of my Melb friends xx
My grandmother used to say: Shared joy is double joy, shared grief is half grief.
Do the maths.
Everything human needs to be collective. All our settler-colonial/imperial/outlaw ideology is antithetical to happiness and wellbeing on Planet Earth. This is in alignment with most spiritual traditions. Connecting with each other and connecting with the land is the main treatment of the psychosomatic symptoms of alienation. Alienation is literally a medically-recognized cause of disease.
The Greeks called it acedia...a loneliness from connection to meaning
This was such a great convo 🤗
Wow Sarah, you are on fire with these Wild’s.
This one spoke directly to my current overwhelm Francis, in ways that are still washing over me. I recently found myself in ED for a night on intravenous antibiotics for pneumonia. The liminal space I occupied that night confronted me with the stark awareness that I needed to shut down the noise, to come to ground and find stillness.
I had realised that I was becoming more and more at risk but had been unable to find peace even though I had laid more and more boundaries in the ways so many of your guests suggest Sarah. I realised that I was totally overwhelmed by the state of the world. More specifically, I had lived in Chile for four years, Venezuela for eighteen months and had visited Cuba, I knew viscerally the arrogance of the US and the damage they had wrought in those places. I realised that my recent deep dive into their and their cronies behaviour in West Asia, had led me to feel a force of anger and shame at the propagandist lies we had believed as I continued to witness the destruction that was being wrought right now. That night in hospital I realised that all of this had brought my usually robust good health to this crisis.
Resting in my nest at home in silence or in the gentle sway of Persian and Iranian jazz, I found that grief in the loss of important loved ones emerged. I found myself conjuring my father, who died suddenly at fifty two, my oldest and dear friend who died at forty, and all the other precious ones. In a kind of soirée of reverie, I remembered the magic we had shared and took the opportunity to say the things I never had the chance to say. So many tears, so much joy. I imagined us together dancing our wackiest moves, (as they all would have enjoyed to do), to the slinky jazz. It is the most wonderfully liberating experience and feels so healing.
I began to write messages from the heart to my closest living family and friends, reminiscing about the magic of shared experiences and thanking them for all unique ways that they contributed to making me who I am. At the same time I feel so much more present and able to engage with nature and meaningful objects around me, and so much more alive to the aching fragility of it all.
Sarah, I have also always found funerals to be such heart spaces too, collectively grieving with love and joy at the sheer magnificence of life. I realise that my healing process is slow, but wonderfully slow, and that the stillness and presence is allowing me to reconnect with my village in deeper and more heartfelt ways.
There is so much more to say but maybe that is for another time.
Thank you Francis, I am fascinated by the prospects for greater collective grieving.
Monique, love the still energy in your words. They've been a reminder to me here today...feeling frazzled and caught up. It's cold and windy and I've not slept and I'm letting the noise get to me.
Oh Sarah, you are giving so much to us all at the moment with your extraordinary output of brilliant content. Try to take more time for you to recharge. If I were you right now, I would try to get warm as best you can. Find somewhere still and breathe slowly and steadily. If you can manage a quiet, gentle, vibrant hum on the out breath it will help to calm you down. Big hugs, I’m breathing calm, steady energy your way, I hope it helps.
I also meant to ask - but failed to - have you recovered from your health scare?? PS I'm about to head to infrared pilates class
I am well on the way to recovery and feeling a world of wisdom is flowing from this experience. Wow, infared class, love to know what it’s like
To Remain Human
Brian Lewis, Cosmic Poet, UK
The nervous system
was never designed
to carry the grief
of an entire planet
Yet here we are
A child starving
crosses our screen
between weather reports
and advertisements
Forests burn beside stock prices
Wars arrive
in the same hand
that holds photographs
of our grandchildren
And somewhere inside us
something ancient
keeps trying
to respond
This is the exhaustion
few know how to name
Not simply stress
Not simply fear
But the unbearable collision
between the human heart
and the scale
of modern awareness
We were meant
to know the sorrow
of the village
Now we are asked
to metabolize
the suffering
of civilizations
And many are drowning
Some in rage
Some in distraction
Some in endless performance
Some in irony so thick
it becomes a shield
against feeling anything real
Others quietly disappear
inside themselves
their spirits dimming
beneath the constant demand
to remain informed
productive
available
certain
The world keeps shouting
Choose a side
Move faster
Consume more
Outrage harder
Win
But the soul
does not speak
in that language
The soul speaks
through silence
through grief
through awe
through the sudden trembling
that arrives
when one human being
finally feels
the reality
of another
This is why
so many people
stand at the edge
of breakdown
Not because they are weak
But because they are porous
Because somewhere beneath
the armor
their humanity
is still functioning
And perhaps
that is what must now
be protected
Not merely ecosystems
Not merely institutions
But the fragile interior capacities
that allow human beings
to remain human
inside an age
that profits from fragmentation
To remain tender
without collapsing
To remain informed
without becoming consumed
To remain compassionate
without surrendering discernment
To stand before suffering
without turning away
and yet also
without allowing suffering
to transform the heart
into stone
This is harder
than revolution
Harder than ideology
Harder than certainty
Because it asks something
few civilizations
have ever learned to cultivate
strength
without cruelty
Perhaps this is why
small acts matter so much now
A hand on a shoulder
A teacher
who notices the silent child
A man planting trees
whose shade
he will never live to sit beneath
A woman refusing
to let cynicism
be mistaken for wisdom
These are not small things
They are the architecture
of psychological survival
The architecture
of repair
And maybe the future
will not ultimately be decided
by those
who accumulated the most power
but by those
who learned
how to carry immense complexity
without surrendering
their capacity
for love
Because civilizations do not die
only from invasion
or collapse
They also die
when people can no longer feel
one another
When exhaustion
becomes identity
When distraction
becomes culture
When tenderness
becomes embarrassment
When the human nervous system
finally says
enough
But I do not believe
that ending
is inevitable
I think there are still people
quietly rebuilding
the interior world
Still people
teaching children wonder
Still people
protecting beauty
Still people
who understand
that compassion
is not sentiment
It is infrastructure
And perhaps
the task before us now
is not merely
to save the world
but to become
the kind of people
capable
of inhabiting it together
thanks for sharing
I just saved this to watch later, pero I can’t wait. I’m a grief worker leading a space for Black folks and other people of color in their 20s-40s living with loss and I ALWAYS reference The Wild Edge of Sorrow as my grief bible. Francis is the goat! Looking forward to this!
Bravo for your work!
thank you Sarah and thank you for yours!
Thanks so much for doing this interview Sarah. So precious to witness Francis speaking. I read and loved his subsequent book "In the absence of the ordinary." and would really recommend it.
These concepts of grief as a form of protest against the conditioning of suppressing our feelings; of being a resource for "loving this world into life again"; are all converging with the studying I am doing at the moment:
- Non-Violent (or Compassionate) Communication with https://www.connecting2life.net which is giving me precious space to connect with feelings and needs, and share that with others
- On Purpose course with Lydia Violet at https://schoolforthegreatturning.com which is giving me more perspectives for how to feel and live in this time.
Also I just watched a tremendously enlightening talk by Adrian Lambert on Neurodivergence and Collapse Awareness
https://substack.com/@adrianlambert/note/c-267014469?r=1tsewh&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
which triggered feelings of grief and relief in me, particularly when he talked about our experience of "living within systems that no longer make sense" and "the gap between what is visible to you and discussable with others becomes part of daily life"
I feel so grateful for what you've created Sarah that enables us to bridge that gap between what is visible to us and what is discussable with others. And that I do indeed have access to online and in real life communities to do this.
And I'm wondering, even if some of my local communities don't enable me to bridge that gap, I can take from them the opportunity to talk about and emotionally share other things that we care about and have that sense of belonging that you and Francis talk about.
Elisabeth, more and more I've come to think (particularly after being on tour) that so many of us in this community are on a certain end of the "spectrum". And that our sharing and communicating is starting to get a bit of traction. The gap is narrowing. x
Just returned from Narara eco village, immersed in John Seeds Deep Ecology rituals. I cried, sobbed, listened & gently danced on tip toes through the cosmic walk. Connecting and connected, it’s always hard returning to reality but thanks Sarah and Francis for the gentle, honest and real conversation xxxooo I shall share with Rising Tide comrades, Permie friends, family and friends. I love rituals & all beings. From my heart thank you
Ah, well you'll like my guest interview next week, then!!
On my podcast
Lovely to meet you in Newcastle at your book launch. I eat the stars is being devoured by friends & family. The conversation & all your hard work is reaching the peoples. Thank you
My theory is that in the west we developed technologies to escape the pain of the body in the first 2000 years of our civilisation. Hence the rise of monks and priests denying the body and escaping into the void
Once we escaped the pain of the body , we diseased the mind
And now need to return to the body and the earth. To come back in , more integrated
People in the climate movement in the green's political movement and other such organisations have been going through the grief process for decades. grieving, for the loss that is to come, we're already many of us past that, and they're now focused very focused on what comes next. Glad you could join the party.
Thanks Dex, you might not realise that I've been a climate activist supporting green politics for 20 years. My understanding of this subject comes from this.
The grief is real. It's source "future climate catastrophe" has been playing out for a long time.
I seek to frame this as ongoing.
The reality of the failures will hit hard but they're long expected.
Does that change the quality of the engrossing response?
I think that is an assumption I am making, from the place of that ongoing (anticipatory) grief.
What does it mean for me/us all of that's a false (hope? belief? wish? )
?
totally get it. it's why I wrote my latest book...
and thank you for taking the time to respond and causing me to reflect. I appreciate your patience with this flawed (and yes, grieving)human.
You're right I was not aware of your long involvement. I've been at this a long time also and I guess I'm probably running out of steam a bit.
so many of us have. x