Climate Grief

This week, I attended a Climate Circle for the first time. Every 2nd Wednesdday of the month Hamilton 350 hosts one, and this past week it was held in the comfy room at the YWCA that SACHA has for meetings like this. A Climate Circle is a safe space for people struggling with the enormity of the #ClimateEmergency and there are even spaces online - see wehealforall.com/climate-circles for example.

It wasn't clear what to expect. It turned out to be a warm, welcoming experience whereby everyone was invited to share first about their day in dyads (you share without interruption for a couple of minutes while the other listens and then the other person shares while you listen), and then we took turns sharing for up to 5 minutes each. It is a very startling and healing experience to be listened to without judgment or commenting, if you are not used to it, and I could see that some were new to it. I always enjoy this dynamic but as I have been experiencing it every Sunday for an hour at a time for the past two years at Hamilton Meditation , it has become a more normal and comfortable space for me.

A little to my surprise, I spent the whole time I shared crying.

There is a lot to cry about. Over a billion animals have died in Australian wildfires in a shocking short time. Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs must now plead with RCMP and politicians for fair treatment of their people who are resisting destruction of unceded land for the purposes of building a natural gas pipeline by Coastal GasLink. Though we are not sure exactly, we think 10,000 species go extinct each year.

If you're a climate activist with an organization like Extinction Rebellion Hamilton though, at the same time that you experience moments of sheer panic because of the #ClimateEmergency , every day you have hope as well, because you have people to plan concrete actions with who are as passionate about the climate as you are, and you feel like you can do your best in a difficult situation where we routinely ask if it is wrong to be hopeful about climate change.

So this is where I am this week. Feeling hopeful and passionate about what we are working on together, but also deeply sad. Both at the same time.

Holding space for each other whether we are up or down. Whether friends are arrested, freed, or receive rulings that all charges have been dropped. On good, bad, and indifferent days, walking each other home.

It has got me thinking about tears. More about that in another blog, but today I read this article about The Crying Book, and found it intriguing: the-crying-book-reveals-how-tears-can-help-us-and-how-they-cant.