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Apr 1, 2019
"Even in the midst of suffering and grieving, people rally around one another, help where they can, open their arms and their homes to those who have lost even more." --Trebbe Johnson
Who Gets to Cry?
Climate change is destroying many places we love points out Trebbe Johnson, and while some of us turn away from admitting this, others are filled with sorrow. But here's what's most difficult: "Many of us are simply afraid that if we allow ourselves to wade, even for a moment, into the feelings of sadness for the living world that lap at the edge of our consciousness, we will find ourselves pulled so ruthlessly into grief and despair that we will never emerge." So how to grieve wisely and honestly?
BE THE CHANGE
Johnson says that "Many indigenous cultures had rituals for acknowledging and making reparations for the collective shame of being human and having to take the lives of nonhuman beings and plants." Find a way to acknowledge your share of the "shame of being human," and, like the Navajo, apologize to the plants and animals you eat and the world we are all complicit in destroying.
