what's on your mind
climate grief and the quiet part outloud
In a somewhat classic routine for us, I got on my virtual session with my therapist and reported, “I wasn’t feeling so great a few days ago, but today I’m actually feeling much better.” I often have the compulsion to start with this: ‘I had a problem, but I’m all fixed now’ routine. In this case, what had happened in between feeling bad and feeling better? I had done something groundbreaking. I talked openly and honestly with a friend.
What we had discussed could be broadly described as our ‘climate grief.’ I find the term both overly dramatic and too cheap and contained. The label makes it seem so easy to sideline into a box to deal with in an appropriate setting— like a counseling session or grief share. And it also doesn’t seem to capture the low-level background noise, constantly present aspect of it; it’s not usually a total debilitation and dysfunction. But then again, isn’t that exactly how grief actually works, and then gets treated in our culture?
In our conversation (and my subsequent conversation with my therapist) I finally admitted that I was struggling to find joy, belonging and relief when being in nature because well— it’s all going to be destroyed. As someone who relies on spending time in nature as a way to ground myself, process my thoughts, find inspiration and ‘refill my cup’ or ‘recharge my batteries’ this has been uniquely challenging.
This is something I’ve been struggling with all year (and probably last year as well). The increasingly extreme and frequent weather/climate catastrophes that are starting to happen as predicted by decades of science, and the relentless onslaught of anti-environmental and anti-sustainability governmental policy and business practices and continual overdevelopment in my local area plus the explosion of rabid data center projects (add to that the animal I witnessed killed on the highway on my way to work where I was expected to just get on with the day) has made this an extremely challenging time to not be reminded of a very bleak, heartless, genocidal future every time I am trying to appreciate nature. When I look at a beautiful landscape, spot an animal or find a new seasonal flower has started to bloom— it’s hard not to think of their inevitable fate, my own powerlessness to do anything about it, and also what so often seems like our collective powerlessness to do anything about it until it is way, way, way too late.
“The future frolics about, promised to no one, as is her right.
But if she leave without us, the silence that will follow
will be an unspeakable nothing.”
— from On Another Panel About Climate, They Ask Me to Sell the Futures and All I’ve Got Is a Love Poem by Ayisha Siddiqa
But I have not talked about this with anyone (including really admitting it to myself) because (1) who wants to be a downer when there is already so much to be down about (2) the canned response you get from activists, well-meaning family, and fellow concerned citizens is ‘you can’t be think like that’ and ‘you have to have hope.’1 (3) negativity isn’t mobilizing— your activist friends will also tell you this and (4) everyone else will treat you like a crazy women and/or a naive, overly-sentimental child. The environment is a niche cause after all; it doesn’t impact real life in the same way that the economy or infrastructure or healthcare or the latest reality tv gossip does, right?
Yet the sheer relief I felt after finally talking very openly about this! Nothing had actually changed about the situation, but I no longer felt this acidic feeling inside, quietly eating away at my equilibrium and overwhelming my vision. Thank goodness for friends who listen and make this kind of space! Thank goodness for others who can say ‘Yes, I feel this too’ as my friend did.
While I have more to say about climate grief— the point I’m stuck on right now is just how much none of us seem able to say honestly what is on our minds. Especially not directly to each other (maybe some of us do it in the comments sections sometimes). And yet, when you do it— the suffering is instantly reduced! And yet, when you do it— you so often discover that you’ve all been living in a shared prison of false consensus. And yet, when you do it— you give others permission to also confess what’s on their minds and find relief.
I’ve been thinking especially about this in relation to latest bunch of posts from Rebecca at The DreamWeaver Dispatch. I’ve been reading and all but screaming AMEN throughout. I feel like week after week she has been articulating the exact, complicated messes that have been tangling up my mind; finally someone else is saying the quiet part outloud (it’s not just me like it usually is!). And frankly, she’s been one of the lifelines helping me believe that I’m not actually going insane.
“If normal is killing us, and yet we shoot down other people for not being normal “like us,” where does that leave us?” - From Normal Is Killing Us
I frequently wonder what the point of writing, making art, and being creative is in this modern, off-the-rails, self-destructive world. Perhaps, at its bare (non-commercial) minimum it’s just this— to reassure each other that we are not going insane. That everything feels all wrong, because it is all going wrong. That we are depressed because depressing things are depressing us— not because we individually just need to fix ourselves. And in this modern, off-the-rails, self-destructive world I think this is something we will need to hear over and over and over and over again. Or at least I do?
So, what’s on your mind?
Resources
I recently read this Guardian article about our societal inability to acknowledge our climate grief and mourn ecological degradation.
Another lifeline when stuck in depression and cynicism about the present world is the We Are Not Doomed posts from the Clotheshorse Podcast. I find myself returning this to counteract my own doom spirals. Maybe I should re-listen to Episode 223: Winning the Battle Against Doomerism even if just to hear again about biospheres and other futuristic living experiments.
I started reading What If We Get It Right in hopes of accessing a different mindset about climate crisis. I am deliberately reading it very slowly (and skipping Section One for now).
My therapist actually did say this at a point and my response was ‘Yeah, I don’t understand how I’m supposed to action that.’ If there is any place to articulate that you cannot work with a platitude is is in therapy!