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Today is Earth Day. And instead of feeling gratitude and “oneness” with the planet, I’m feeling heartbreak. Heartbreak for an eroding and expiring earth, but also for an unhealthy and infected humanity.
And they’re not unrelated. Coronavirus is our present and our future because of climate change. And the strategy for how we show up in the face of COVID-19 is not unlike how we show up for the climate crisis.
We must stay engaged and respond with the urgency of the crisis itself. But we must also grieve. Grieving is essential to processing the loss and uncertainty we are facing. And it is not passive. We feel our grief in order to be engaged to stay engaged. It reminds us of what is at stake if we don’t act. While we may be apart in this crisis, we are together on this earth.
Nature teaches us that repair is possible. But only if we make space for the grief and action it requires.
Happy Earth Day.
Kerri (she/her)
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Stop saying ‘we’re all in this together.’ You have money. It’s not the same. Lower-income Americans easily can fall through the cracks — even without a pandemic. [click to tweet]
Conservative leaders around the country are rallying to open the doors and get back to business. But what happens if the US opens too fast? (The actual data). [click to tweet]
Women are doing a disproportionately great job at handling the pandemic, reinforcing why gender equality is critical to global public health and international security. The question is: why aren’t there more of them? [click to tweet]
‘Open the Economy’ is the new ‘White Lives Matter’. This recent example isn’t particularly different from #AllLivesMatter advocates’ who refused to acknowledge the racial data behind police killings. [click to tweet]
Are your Zoom meetings in middle class standard time (MST)? How to stop hustling your virtual meetings and move towards abundance. [click to tweet]
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Earth Day serves as a reminder of the link between black environmental and health disparities and COVID-19. Donate to the climate justice alliance.
We can’t celebrate 4/20 without acknowledging that Black people are 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for possession of weed than white people. Support mutual aid for people impacted by incarceration.
Trump vowed to continue his racist campaign against immigrants who continue to fulfill essential roles during COVID-19 with no support from the CARES Act. Donate directly to undocumented immigrants facing financial hardship due to COVID-19.
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My instagram feed is lit up with motivational speeches, sales pitches and wellness protocols for how to thrive in the time of coronavirus. Everyone is scrambling for relevance and productivity, some even exploiting the tragedy for popularity and profits (I see you wellness). But none of that is going to get us where we need to go. Because we are not going back. You’ve probably realized by now that we are in the midst of a sustained crisis and it is here to stay for the foreseeable future. The aspiration that we will soon return to some “normal state” and become our uber-productive selves again is not just unlikely, it is inadequate for this moment. It is entirely possible for us to be changed and transformed in a disaster, but it will require an entirely new set of tools - like patience, radical acceptance and resilience. On the other side of this shift, your wonderful, creative, resilient brain will be waiting for you.
Here are some resources for evolving beyond this pandemic:
Read “Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein and “A Paradise Built In Hell” by Rebecca Solnit
Listen to “Good Ancestor Podcast” with Layla Saad and “The Confessional” with Nadia Bolz-Weber and “Together Apart” with Priya Parker
Watch “Fantastic Fungi” and “Biggest Little Farm”
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It’s OK to be wherever you are. Grief is not linear. Michelle Cassandra Johnson is making space for us to grieve and heal with “Grieving in Community”. Check out her FREE summit all this week!
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