Dear Fellow Earthlings… Happy July 2024

Dear Fellow Earthlings,

This month I’m learning from the work of psychotherapist, Rosemary Randall who writes about climate change and resources the work of William Worden’s tasks of grief. As a climate-aware therapist she works with clients struggling to process feelings of loss, blame, guilt, hopelessness, betrayal, anxiety, depression related to the wide-ranging effects of climate change. She explains that William Worden’s understanding of the tasks of grief can help in articulating our personal sense of loss and struggle related to the effects of climate change that can include loss of safety, health, place, purpose, livelihood, community, species, the habitable world itself.

Before I share these four tasks with you, three things to remember. First, these tasks do not suggest a sequence of completion. For example, you may be confronted by the task of processing painful emotions frequently, as you are trying to reinvest in the new reality. Recognizing each confrontation to be a task of grief can be empowering despite the distress.

Second, each one of these tasks require social support. Feeling seen can create a safe place to validate the fullness our experience. A ground of compassion for others and ourselves is a prerequisite when holding feelings of loss, guilt, blame, anger or despair. If there is no harm to self or others, remember that there is no “wrong” way to grieve. Holding a non-judgmental attitude helps counter a tendency to avoid the discomfort of dark feelings.

Lastly, there are no shared rituals and structures around grief related to climate change. As such, it is up to us to find ways that are supportive for ourselves, adding a creative component to each of these tasks. As you read about each task, think about what that experience of acceptance, processing, adjusting and connecting looks like for you. These are task ideas waiting to become healing experiences through you.

Now, for the four tasks of grief:

1.       The Task of Accepting (instead of disavowal): This is one of the most difficult tasks of noticing the new difficult reality of loss. It is easy for us to avoid, dismiss, minimize climate change as a new reality that involves displacement, uncertainty, and the threat of extinction. Accepting this reality can easily lead to debilitating anxiety and hopelessness. Finding others who are experiencing similar feelings of overwhelm and dis-ease about their personal experiences of climate change, helps us say what feels unsayable. There are stages and layers of the psychological defense of disavowal that range from outright denial to soft denial. My personal version of soft denial often involves my long distance air travel among other life-style conditions that contradict green values. Acknowledging the contradiction is necessary for me to find ways to offset or limit those contradictions. First, I must see and accept them despite feelings of shame and guilt.

2.       The Task of Processing Painful Emotions (instead of numbing): This task involves active engagement. The work of processing painful emotions looks like a willingness to engage the seemingly futile. It is admitting that reality is different, and yet, I will continue to find ways live the best I can within this new reality. This step insists that hopelessness, or learned helplessness is not an option. It will be a messy and confusing process of learning and redefining contours of the contradiction pre and post loss reality.

3.       The Task to Adjust to a New Reality (instead of withdrawal): It would be easier to hide and wish that climate change was not a reality, return to a state of willful disavowal. It is no longer an option when the effects of climate change are erupting everywhere. The task to adjust demands creativity that relentlessly and resourcefully seeks out alternatives. If there is no clean water how do I modify my cooking, washing, bathing, my community, my voice, to rise to the challenge? Through this task we take responsibility for our now, as flawed as it maybe. What can I do now with this loss?

4.       The Task to Reinvest in the New Reality (instead of isolation): This task coaxes us out of our own cycle of self-pity. We are not alone suffering the effects of climate change. Who else is also subject to the same and similar losses? How do I reinvest in this new reality soaked in lost life-support? This task urges us to connect with each other and the new reality instead of helplessness for fear of a lost way of life. I think of post-pandemic conversations about going back to “normal.” As if there was a such a choice after the global loss of suffering, isolation and death.

In “Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety,” author Britt Wray, talks about the role of grief as a mobilizing power. She qualifies grief related to the climate crisis as “disenfranchised” grief, a term often used to expose situations where grief is socially dismissed or minimized. Wray suggests that by finding a place where feelings of loss can be shared helps alleviate feelings of helplessness. The goal of these emotional methodologies of reengagement that range from mindfulness to community engagement help us “reinvent the energy we’d lost from experiencing anxiety and grief into life- affirming actions that are deeply meaningful.” Finding ways to account for our loss as a correlative of love and commitment, can prompt us forward, together. The four tasks of grief are foundational labors of love. Griefwork is always about pushing the value of love beyond and around black holes of loss. None of us can make that push alone. The tasks of grief are here, take a deep breathe, we are ready.

Thank you for reading and being here.

Wishing you self-aware ease,

Lisa

Director of Inspiration – Ecomilli, Inc.