When experiencing eco-anxiety about rapid changes in the natural world, what steps can we take – both large and small – to move forward?
Reimagine’s mission is to help all people face adversity, loss, and mortality, and channel the hard parts of life into meaningful action and growth.
This event is part of Reimagine’s three-part series “Climate Grief & Growth” in March 2023. Planet earth is in hospice and its inhabitants need grief support. Climate change is relentlessly producing more disaster, death, grief, and anxiety. We are actively destroying the environment, both with intent and negligence. Governments and corporations have ignored warnings from scientists, spiritual leaders, and activists. But despite it all, there’s comfort in our collective struggle. In this series, we will learn ways to grow in the face of climate grief by learning, practicing mindfulness, and taking action. Topics for discussion and practice will include regulating feelings of despair and finding purpose in acts of service and civic engagement.
Wednesday, March 8, 2023
10:00am – 11:15am PST
Hosted by Reimagine, Good Grief Network
In this introduction to climate grief, psychologists and activists reveal how our concern for the environment has developed into an urgent mental health crisis.
Grief is most often associated with human loss, but it can also apply to our responses to climate change and the destruction of the natural environment. In this roundtable discussion, leading experts in mental health, climate justice, and environmental humanities provide a range of perspectives on climate grief as well as opportunities for growth as we struggle with ecological crisis. Leslie Davenport, Kyle X. Hill, LaUra Schmidt, and Tori Tsui share personal examples of eco-loss they have experienced, the collective experience of this trauma, and how we can navigate a path forward.
RSVP to this event by clicking here.
Wednesday, March 15
Hosted by Reimagine, Good Grief Network
A dialogue between Buddhist teacher Kaira Jewel Lingo and Good Grief Network’s LaUra Schmidt to inspire action and growth as we confront climate change.
Kaira Jewel Lingo – a Buddhist teacher who has spent decades weaving mindfulness and meditation with social justice – and Good Grief Network’s founder LaUra Schmidt will guide us in taking small, sweet steps towards growth or transformation when confronting climate change and ecocide. After their dialogue, we will invite you into peer-led breakout groups to discuss these themes more deeply.
RSVP to this event by clicking here.
Wednesday, March 22
10:00am – 11:30am PST
Hosted by Reimagine, Good Grief Network
Using poetry and movement, LaUra Schmidt of Good Grief Network will lead exercises to name and honor our losses and process grief and distress associated with the climate crisis and ecocide.
Our leaders aren’t leading, our institutions are failing us, and every day, the planet lurches toward uninhabitable living conditions. So many are already feeling the impacts on the frontlines from increased storms, raging wildfires, unprecedented flooding, and changing seasons. We’ve also been launched into the sixth mass extinction as key ecosystems and species are swallowed up by the dominant culture. Loss is in the air we breathe.
There is so much to grieve. When we are overwhelmed by these shared losses and don’t take time to process them, they threaten our ability to feel present, connected, and joyful. It prevents us from making the necessary changes to protect what is still here. Grieving connects us to our love and helps fuel our work to transform these destructive aspects of our culture. At Good Grief Network and Reimagine, we know there is wisdom and a soul maturity that happens when we are able to name loss and describe how it has transformed us. As soul activist and therapist Francis Weller says, “Any who undertake real mourning return with gravitas, wisdom gathered in the darkness.”
In this workshop, Good Grief Network Founding Director LaUra Schmidt will help us touch our feelings of grief and balance them with love and joy. We will practice grounding exercises, honor our losses, connect with each other, share some poetry, and move our bodies to metabolize grief and distress associated with the climate crisis and ecocide.
RSVP to this event by clicking here.