Grieving the End of Our World
Three years ago today, on November 8, 2018, climate change became real to me. It was the day of the Camp Fire in Butte County, California. This fire was the deadliest and most destructive in California’s history, and it took place where I grew up and where I eventually brought my young family back to live. I loved the area, with its farmland, rolling hills, rivers and creeks, and then up into the canyons, mountains, pine trees and snow.
I watched the epic destruction of the fire on the news and in social media from my home in Western Australia. After initial feelings of shock and worry, waves of grief rolled in. The town of Paradise where my father lived was decimated and 85 people died. The historic covered bridge, where we took visitors or met for bike rides, had burnt to the ground, along with nearly 19,000 other structures. Around 52,000 displaced and homeless refugees fled from the burning hills into neighboring towns causing chaos. Up to 12,000 pets and domestic animals were burnt and killed, along with uncounted numbers of wildlife.
When did climate change become real to you? Was it in 1989 when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was first established under the United Nations? Or 1997 when the first global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions called the Kyoto Protocol was adopted? Was it in 2006 when Al Gore warned that unchecked carbon emissions were warming the earth in the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” or when he won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work? Or, like me, was it only when your own losses made climate change palpably real? When did a dying planet change from a distant threat to a present reality for you?
Since the Camp Fire, I have felt a cascade of losses in the same way. Leaving Australia soon after the Black Summer of 2019-2020 when an estimated 3 billion native animals perished in record-breaking bushfires. Arriving in the Pacific Northwest and becoming trapped indoors by hazardous air quality for weeks at a time because of dense black fogs of choking smoke caused by a record fire season. Experiencing the record-breaking heat wave in the Pacific Northwest this past summer that killed almost 200 people, as well as our hydrangea and ferns and scorched the trees, and again watching an epic fire come to Butte County during a mind-bending catastrophe called the Dixie Fire.
It has become increasingly difficult for me to find peace. I can become infuriated at the news, or at my husband for wanting a green lawn. I feel distraught seeing birds fly through choking smoke or spying a fish dead in our dwindling river. I have become obsessed with evidence and stories about the ongoing climate catastrophe. To help me cope, I’ve read about “eco-anxiety” and “climate depression.” These terms seem hollow because anxiety and depression seem wholly appropriate under the circumstances, and while there is a consensus that they are a huge problem, little relief is offered.
Finally, on a pilgrimage to the Northern California coast this last summer to go hiking in the magnificent Redwoods, I had an epiphany. Looking at those trees that I loved so much, I felt deeply that if they were gone, I’d struggle to go on living. I recognized this feeling as “anticipatory grief,” and I suddenly realized that I was in mourning. The earth, and all that is in it, is suffering and dying. I feel grief for what I have lost, what I am losing, and for the losses yet to come for myself and for all that I care about – my children and grandchildren, humanity, the beautiful natural world, and for the suffering that will come along with it.
Now this is the funny part: I am a grief counsellor, academic and researcher who has specialized in working with people facing terminal illness and their families for the last dozen years. I feel a bit foolish that I didn’t recognize my own feelings of grief. That said, I also didn’t encounter the concepts of “climate grief” or “ecological grief” in my daily life.
This insight helped turn me around and has offered some solace. I understood grief, how to work with it, express it and process it. I understood “stages” of grief, types of grief, complications of grief, and different theoretical frameworks and perspectives on grief. I understood facing death, existential crises, and death anxiety. I understood the importance of hope, and of meaning and purpose when facing death. Moreover, I had examples from people I had worked with who were facing harrowing paths to certain death, that it was possible to survive and even thrive while grieving.
I’m writing this blog to deeply explore the concept of “climate grief.” One simple thing I know about grief is that letting it out and sharing with others helps. I’d love to hear your thoughts and learn from you as well.