I’m not good at grief. When something bad happens, I don't grieve so much as get depressed. That’s not the same thing. But neither is sadness, really. I think of grief as a longer-term process, rather than an emotion. I also incline towards analyzing and doing – confronting external obstacles rather than internal states. I’m quick to look for lessons from defeat, rather than mourning the defeat itself. I want to look for the solution – possibly from being American. Or maybe I don’t notice grief because it’s my background state – possibly from being Irish-American. Maybe I don’t feel “climate grief” because I’m always feeling grief.
We’re told that we should acknowledge our grief for “the environment” – for the lost species, lost glaciers, lost battles, lost weather patterns, lost futures. That sounds right to me. But where to begin? Some folks do ritualistic things – a “grief jar,” an altar, keening, etc. Some people have gotten a lot out of Joanna Macy’s “Work that Reconnects” system. But I also think this is a place where writing could prove very important. Is there a way to write about grieving without falling into banalities? Or becoming mired in grief? And what if the thing being grieved seems intangible, amorphous, or far away? Like “the climate” or “nature” or “humanity”? Or just the way the world was when I was a kid? Words about the end of words, the end of worlds. Or maybe something very minimalist. Or fables. Some writers do litanies – lists + anaphora. That seems like something that would work best in the context of ritual. Some write nostalgically about the past. OK. But we need to realize that, when we say “nature,” what we really mean is “the Holocene Epoch.” Nature – including life on earth – in the past has looked very very different from what it is now, which is very different than 100 years ago. The emergence of the Holocene wiped out a lot of species, and so has our species. So, when we say “nature,” we really mean “us.” Whether we know it or not. When I was growing up, doing the Stations of the Cross was a way of imagining the worst. Feeling the physical suffering of Jesus and the emotional suffering of Mary. And what was it Christ said to the women lamenting along the route, as he dragged his cross? “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.”
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |