Topics: Grief, Resilience and Resistance

Catalog description

How do we use the frameworks of justice to make meaning out of tragedy, anxiety and loss in the wake of surviving a global pandemic but also in the shadow of climate change? How do we cope with the trauma of white supremacy without becoming immobilized by pain, guilt and fragility? Grief and loss surround us. Systems and concepts that we have conceived of as stable for hundreds of years are starting to collapse. There are losses of species and ancestral lands as well as belief systems. We are living with the reality of increasing storms, wildfires and a changing climate. If we don’t have the wisdom to identify, name and grieve our losses, we stand very little chance of struggling for the preservation of what remains. People who are not allowed the space to ponder and mourn what has been lost are more vulnerable to manipulation by authoritative forces and more fearful of anyone who might threaten to exacerbate their losses. However, a time of loss can also give rise to new forms of organizing, new commitments to transformation and new ways to imagine how the world might be. We can tell new stories, form new communities and generate new paradigms out of our old ways of being.