Facing the emergency
In the first of her climate change columns Mary Dees helps us to take stock, let go of denial, grieve and take action in THE TRANSACTIONAL ANALYST SPRING 2023
This will be a column about the climate and biodiversity emergency and I hope you will not turn away. It is full of pain and despair but also plenty of vitality, hope and a call to action.
We are living through volatile, uncertain and complex times and no challenge is greater than that of the climate and biodiversity emergency. This column aims to be a beacon or guiding light through some of the dark times that lie ahead. These are the themes of the column across the year:
Autumn – Facing climate and biodiversity emergency – taking stock, letting go of denial, learning to grieve by embracing homonomy.
Winter – Working with the climate and biodiversity emergency in the psychotherapy relationship – including despair and hopelessness, from the ground up (Marshall 2023).
Spring – Green shoots of physis and hope.
Summer – Call to action using the People OK Planet OK model (Dees 2021) this will include a case study of my work with NHS leaders.
AUTUMN: Facing the climate and biodiversity emergency – can you bear to read?
SOME CALL IT anticipatory grief or grief by 1000 cuts: the grief I feel about the climate and biodiversity emergency is very similar to the grief I feel about my mum’s slow descent into Alzheimer’s. It’s slow, difficult to grasp, often agonising and seems never-ending.
When I first heard about global warming (climate change as we now call it) in 1983, I was 14 and a new Ecology Party (Green Party) member. When I frst saw the signs of my mum’s dementia, she had asked for a pair of headphones for her birthday and then on opening them, declared, ‘Why would you buy me these?’. Both events disturbed me, but I didn’t feel any sadness – not yet. In 1993, I was 24 and an environmental scientist working in Siberia. I remember looking over the shoulder of a Siberian scientist who said, ‘Look, this data is showing us the permafrost is melting at a rate never measured before – this,’ he announced very dramatically, ‘is global warming’. This stopped me in my tracks – not a hypothetical or future scenario but something happening right in front of me. And when my mother said over the phone, ‘I’ll see you later. I’m walking into town’ given she was 88 and town was 8 miles away, it was solid proof not only of her dementia but how dangerous it was. Every year of the last 40 years, there has been a new cut, fresh, painful news about climate change; every week of the past 6 years, there has been a new cut, a sign of my mum disappearing into dementia.
We carry this type of grief around with us, hardly noticing it. It’s like walking slowly into quicksand, it suddenly pulls us down into an existential reality: the house martins that don’t turn up one summer, the day my mum forgot my name.
I carry on; I do my bit – caring for the environment, caring for my mum. But in the skin, muscles, nerves and bones, the 1000 small cuts (one on top of another) are building scar tissue of the grief not yet faced. Then one day I woke up and realised my mum was gone. Almost everything she was, had gone. In her place an old woman who has no memory, who cannot talk, whose body is clinging on – by one broken fngernail.
I realise that the hypothetical climate change of the 1980s is not only happening NOW but at an incredibly fast rate, much faster than predicted. We are seeing parts of the earth burn, food and die. Many of our kin (human and non-human), are struggling to survive. And human leaders are failing to step up and pull together. These things are devastating, heartbreaking, and overwhelmingly sad. It’s time for me to face this grief, because what is the alternative? Denial, ossification, disconnection, dissociation? Well, I guess they’ve all had their place in protecting me over the years, but that time is over.
I think the greatest act of love we can give to our planet – our kin, the rivers, trees, non humans and our mother earth – is to face the stark realities of the climate and biodiversity emergency. We need to grieve fully and open-heartedly. ‘Our choice is to be in love or in fear. But to choose to be in love means to have a mountain inside of you, means to have the heart of the world inside you, means you will feel another’s suffering inside your own body and you will weep. You will have no protection from the World’s pain because it will be your own.’ China Galland (2012)
Part of that grief is the deep somatic understanding that humans are a humble component of a greater interdependent natural system. This is the core assumption of Eco-TA; Marshall (2021), regarding homonomy, talks of the importance of interconnectedness and the wider embrace, humans realising (or maybe remembering) that they are part of, and embedded in the wider web of life. Angyl’s (1941) ideas define homonomy as the tendency to ft oneself into something that is larger than the self.
Marshall and Barrow (2020) call the homonomy paradigm - ecosystemic. This is a counterbalance to the assumptive position of human exceptionalism – egosystemic. In the egosystemic mind frame, the climate and biodiversity emergency is often minimised, ignored or denied. We forget our humble place within this fnite world. We should recognise that we are not separate and accept we are in fact holobionts (Gordon et al, 2013), the concept that there are no individual species, just collective ecosystems. Biologists are now studying holobionts after a century or more of dividing us into separate species. The idea that there are no individual species, just collective ecosystems is a truth, as old as organic life (4 billion years). As Goethe (1869) said ‘No thing is single if it lives, but multiple its being’. If we can accept and understand this truth, then facing the climate and biodiversity emergency becomes an essential part of our collective responsibility.
‘If we can accept and understand [that there are no individual species just collective ecosystems as a] truth, then facing the climate and biodiversity emergency becomes an essential part of our collective responsibility.’
Grief is an appropriate and fundamental response to both the climate emergency and my mum’s descent towards death. In this, I know and accept that my mother is slowly leaving this world. I allow myself to face that loss and I allow myself to grieve in all its dark and painful ways. And through that, to choose love and gratitude for my human mother and our mother earth. As Francis Weller says: ‘Grief is our response that confirms our intimate bond with all creation.’ Professor Jem Bendell (Bendell, 2021) talks about the need for deep adaptation to the climate and biodiversity emergency, including taking the issue into our heart and being open to the feelings that are provoked.
As Joanna Groves (personal communication 2023) says: ‘Grief cannot be solved, it’s an invitation to connect deeply within.’ When we join together communally and give space for grief rituals, our sorrows are witnessed and held. Through grief rituals, change starts to happen.
‘The only way out is through and the only way through is together’ Francis Weller (2015).
Joanna Groves and I are offering grief rituals to TA community and beyond – places where we can come together and hold each other with compassion.
Experiences of grief and loss can be isolating. At times when you most need connection, you may find yourself alone. Grief is best supported in community, with others, even though this may be unfamiliar territory for some.
If you are interested in joining a small group of like-minded people who are interested in exploring and deepening their relationship with the many kinds of loss and grief, see link below. https://joannagroves.co.uk/grief-and-gratitide-tending/
References
Angyl. A. (1941). Foundations for science of personality. Commonwealth Fund.
Barrow, G. Marshall, H.(2019). https://Eco-TA.dev Bendell, J., & Read, R. (Eds.). (2021). Deep adaptation: navigating the realities of climate chaos. John Wiley & Sons.
Dees, M. (2021). ‘Humility including People Ok Planet Ok model’. Workshop at Cumbria TA conference 2021.
Galland, C. (2012). https://crashinglybeautiful.tumblr.com/ page/116
Goethe, J. (1869). Aphorisms. https://mathcs.clarku.edu/huxley/ UnColl/Nature/Goet.html
Gordon, J., Knowlton, N., Relman, D. A., Rohwer, F., & Youle, M. (2013). ‘Superorganisms and holobionts’. Microbe, 8(4), 152- 153.
Marshall, H. (2021). ‘Ecological Transactional Analysis: Allowing the leopards into the temple’. Keynote Address at UKATA National Conference 2021. The Transactional Analyst. Spring 2021.
Marshall, H. (2023). ‘Response’ p91-99. In Tudor, K., Key, D. (2023). Ecotherapy: A Field Guide. Confer Weller, F. (2015). The wild edge of sorrow: Rituals of renewal and the sacred work of grief. North Atlantic Books.