The practice of ‘grief tending’, of deliberately taking time to feel and respond to our grief, is gaining increased interest as a means of coping with the challenging emotional impacts of climate change.
As mainstream culture understands better how our emotions impact everything from physical health, to relationships, to productivity and impact, so too is the recognition that we need more tools for navigating the complex world of our emotional experiences.
And as people who often hold a significant amount of the heaviness of climate work within our organisations, having space to process this feels essential.
In these two workshops we will explore questions such as;
- In what ways can grief tending help groups work better together, even under intense pressure?
- In what ways can grief tending unlock human potential such as creativity, risk taking and greater strategic thinking?
- In what ways might grief tending therefore be used as a vital tool for helping communities adapt to the increasing pressures and trauma impacts of climate change?
Our first session together will explore our own attitudes and experiences toward the idea of grief tending as a tool for adaptation. We’ll also dip our toes into a little grief tending practice if that should feel right for us as a group.
In our second session we’ll put some of the theory into practice, experiencing grief tending together in real time whilst also stepping back to reflect on how this might inform our adaptation work, both individually and collectively.
You are welcome to come to both sessions, or to just one or the other. The two sessions will build on each other but can also stand alone.
After burning out running a fast-growing climate NGO, Jo Musker-Sherwood (she/ her) was fortunate to receive funding to use her recovery as living research into how climate distress affects environmental work and what might be done about it. She now mentors, writes, consults and teaches on sustainable working practices.
If you would like to join this event or future Adaptation CoP events, contact Peter at gfn@exeter.ac.uk.
