A few months ago a reader asked if I might consider offering advice. The thought of it thoroughly freaked me out, which meant it was the right thing to do. I put out a call on my Instagram, and a handful of quandaries trickled in. I’ve chosen a timely and vital question to start this off, and will answer the others in upcoming newsletters.
Question: I am experiencing a high level of climate/apocalypse anxiety. I’ve always been an anxious and hypersensitive person and I feel physically and emotionally crushed these days. I know something needs to shift in my life, because I can’t go on like this. I’m wondering if you have coping strategies, advice for anxiety management, and reframing tools? E.
I woke up to the smell of smoke and ran to close the windows in my apartment. I thought leaving the West Coast meant that I wouldn’t have to contend with summer wildfires. I thought we were safe here. It was June. I explained to my 4-year-old why we now needed to wear masks outdoors, and walked her to camp. No one else was wearing a mask. Am I overreacting? Recess would be indoors, her caregiver said.
When I got home, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was so stressed I couldn’t eat breakfast. I shouldn’t have had a second cup of coffee. My hands were shaking. Scrolling Instagram for too long, I was desperate to numb out. The irony though, was that given all the climate accounts I follow, it was an endless stream of videos of the blazes. I closed the app, and put on Jeremy Dutcher’s Skicinuwihkuk.
I ended up on the floor of my kitchen, sobbing. How did I ever think it was okay to have a child when our present, her future, are so rife with disaster? How violent it was to choose to bring life here, now. I listened to the song on repeat, moved more, got my notebook and wrote the fear, grief, helplessness. I thought about Anishinaabe artist and activist Sarain Fox in the documentary The Climate Baby Dilemma, speaking to not knowing any Indigenous folks who were afraid to have children given that they’d already survived the apocalypse of colonialism and genocide, the power in her voice saying, “The choice to be a mother, to raise and protect my child is the revolution.”
I had a meeting to prepare for. I took a shower, put on lipstick. On the other side of this (and a session with my therapist, a conversation with my sister), I once again found my feet, my heart, my hope1. I would lose all three, and find them again, many more times this summer.
Dear E., I’m so sorry you’re suffering. Of course you are. Feeling physically and emotionally crushed is the appropriate reaction to fires, pandemics, floods. In When Things Fall Apart Pema Chödrön quotes the sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, “You take it all in. You let the pain of the world touch your heart and you turn it into compassion.” Let’s practice that, together. Compassion for yourself, for the pretenders, deniers, distractors, nihilists, and the many many others who feel as you do.
In Britt Wray’s book Generation Dread she outlines the “conceptual frame” of climate-aware psychotherapist Caroline Hickman to “support people as they seek to make sense of their own experience and feelings.” Hickman outlines the range of feelings associated with eco-distress ranging from mild (“The feelings of upset can be transient and assuaged”) to medium (“Some disruption in cognition/thinking, but not preoccupied by the crisis”) to significant (“Increase in signs of cognitive/thinking changes, such as guilt and shame in relation to children and grandchildren”) to severe (“Anticipation of extinction of human species leading to terror rather than anxiety”). Wray explains that those experiencing the effects of climate collapse first-hand are more susceptible to a “severe degree of ecological grief” and how those numbers are steadily growing. Indigenous, Black, and people of colour are disproportionately more impacted by the effects of climate collapse. The intersection of the ecological crisis and racial injustice fuel the environmental justice movement.
I identify with the description of significant eco-anxiety. Over time I have gathered strategies for managing; learning to dance with the paradox of grief over what we’ve lost, where we are, and deeply believing in a co-created, robust future. It is an honour to share them with you. Take what resonates, leave the rest.
Find a place to share your feelings. Maybe this is with a climate aware psychotherapist, in a climate grief circle, or by joining a climate book club. For years I felt like too much of a wierdo to talk about how worried I was about the climate emergency with friends, or at work. Now, I make an effort to share, even when it feels uncomfortable. I once brought up climate anxiety on a first date and ended up hearing a touching story about their childhood friendship with a newt.
“The entire span of human life exists within each one of us, going all the way back to the hands of the Creator. In our bodies, we carry the blood of our ancestors and the seeds of the future generations. We are the living conduit to all life.”
- Sherri Mitchell
Mindfulness - the practice of staying in the moment - helps us to be able to stay with ourselves when shit goes sideways (otherwise known as self-regulation). Meditation is only one way to practice mindfulness - it can be practiced in relationship, while going about daily activities. With free apps like Insight Timer, and meditation groups available both in person and online, even five minutes of daily practice can impact anxiety, depression, and overwhelm.
If you’re not already doing so, locate where you can engage in action. In A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety Sarah Jacquette Ray writes, “By politicizing your angst, you can focus your energies on collective resilience and adaptation." As Ayana Elizabeth Johnson outlines in the Climate Action Venn Diagram (which I wrote about here), follow what you’re good at, and go where you’re called to participate.
“What is easy is sustainable. Birds coast when they can.” adrienne maree brown
During one of my hardest years (bless 2020) I wrote a list of things that made me feel a tiny bit good and stuck it on the fridge. Go for a walk. Call a friend. Take a bath. Read poems. Bake banana bread. It was my phone screensaver for a long time. Simple, easily doable things. When I was lost in the doldrums of simultaneous griefs, I would reference the list. I’d choose one thing, and do it. Strengthen your fortitude, and resource yourself. Make your list, consult it often.
For three years I have been writing about how complicated it feels to have a child in the climate emergency. I discovered early in my research that in order for me to actually be able to create the project, I had to reject the dominant environmental doomism and seek voices of radical reimagining and hope. Activist Mariame Kaba’s notion that “hope is a discipline” teaches that we must practice seeking hope, strengthen the muscle.
“Hope, like love, means taking risks and being vulnerable to the effects of loss. It means recognizing the uncertainty of the future and making a commitment to try to participate in shaping it. It means facing difficulties and accepting uncertainty. To hope is to recognize that you can protect some of what you love even while grieving what you cannot - and to know that we must act without knowing the outcome of those actions.” - Rebecca Solnit
adrienne maree brown writes about how “developing your capacity for adaptation can mean assessing your default reactions to change, and whether those reactions create space for opportunity, possibility, and continuing to move towards your vision.” As someone psychologically geared towards worry I am not only resistant to change, but write elaborate anticipatory horror stories. I’ve learned however, that once change arrives, be it wrecking ball or mouse-sized, I usually have what it takes to meet it. And if I don’t, I find a way. I consult my list, find some trees, take a shower.
As you can see from the brilliants folks I’ve quoted here, I rely on the wisdom of others to find my way through. These quotes, and others, are my map. They help me to find out how I feel and where I want to go, a topography I envision my daughter walking. I find community in the books on my shelf, passages highlighted and pages stained with raspberry fingerprints.
Finally, my art practice is a most trusted companion in meeting the realities of climate catastrophe - even when that looks like recording a 45 second playground voicenote poem for a rowan tree, one eye on my kid, the other pointed inward towards my heart. Write your wildest dreams, your demons, your wishes, and the future you want. Cast a spell of what could be.
“The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is - it’s to imagine what is possible.” bell hooks
August’s five things
Celebrating: “Ecuador has become one of the first countries in the world to set limits on resource extraction through a democratic vote.” An Indigenous-led campaign led to “a historic referendum to halt the development of all new oilwells in the Yasuní national park in the Amazon, one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet” “which is also home to the Tagaeri and Taromenane people, two of the world’s last “uncontacted” Indigenous communities, living in voluntary isolation.”
Offering: Just in time for the Fall Equinox, I’m hosting another Let’s Write on Sunday, September 24, 1 - 3 p.m. EST. Let's Write is a two-hour online creative writing gym where writers at any level of experience gather to do timed writing on provided prompts. I hope you’ll join!
Learning: My obsession with awe continues and I’m finally reading Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner.
Listening: A Radical Anger with Lama Rod Owens on Finding Our Way with Prentis Hemphill.
Reading: To live in this world by Mary Oliver:
If you enjoy reading five things, it would mean so much to me if you could send it to 2 of your loved ones. I want to keep growing this community, and finding new ways to serve it. If you have a question (creativity, climate, life transitions) please send it here. ❤️
“Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing no matter how it turns out.” — Václav Havel