Plus some conversations, and a question and practice for when you realize your failure to take a wider view is hurting you or someone else.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Sunday, 5/26, 4-5:30pm: Join me and Ana Duque at The Heal Room in East Providence to do a sequence of exercises from my book together. We’ll practice getting grounded, directing our climate rage, and assessing how our skills, capacity, and even enjoyment apply to the climate and environmental needs of our communities. REGISTER HERE!
Thursday, 5/30, 7pm: I’m reading from and talking about Lessons… at Scrawl Books in Reston, VA (DC dwellers can get there on the Metro). If you’re connected with any climate or environmental justice efforts in the DC area, you’re invited to speak toward the end of this event about what you do and how people can get involved.
Saturday, 6/1, 6pm: Tarshire Battle of Roots2Empower and I are reading together at Symposium Books in Providence. All proceeds from Tarshire’s book will go to her new project supporting small farming businesses in Liberia. If you have time in the earlier part of the day, please also join me at the AMOR Grill-Off, the year’s most delicious fundraising event: reserve your ticket here.
Sunday, 6/2, 4-5pm: Lessons… is the June selection for the Heartleaf Books nonfiction book club! Providence-adjacent folks can join me and some of your neighbors to start reading this book as it was meant to be read: together in discussion and care with others. (You don’t need to read the book before joining this event!)
6/14, 12pm: The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and I are hosting a free virtual climate listening workshop. If you’ve ever wondered if you could “do the booth,” this will help you figure out a version that works for you; it’ll also allow you to practice some of the grounding and listening methods I use, which can be useful in both formal and informal climate conversations.
SOME THINGS THAT HAPPENED:
I talked with Mary-Kim Arnold and Kate Hanley (Episode 1, 2, 3) about “being a writer” and how that interacts with actually writing the book that I did in fact write, as well as the way that I attempt to operate in the world.
I also talked with Ana Duque in preparation for our 5/26 workshop at the Heal Room (link is to an IG reel).
I was briefly but intentionally rude to someone I don’t know this week (I apologized, but they weren’t having it). I was rude in part because I had bought into a weird little bubble of social economy created by my role, their role, and our shared circumstances—all temporary and artificial. I should have felt it coming on and taken steps. The connection with climate change and climate anxiety here is twofold:
It’s useful to practice being intentional about your behavior when under strain, since more strain is coming.
It’s useful to practice looking at a wider horizon, since tightening and locking down our perspective also tightens and locks down our sense of possibility.
Here are the steps I should have taken, and that you can plan to take too.
QUESTION: When’s the next time you expect to be in a temporary and artificial situation that also involves a power imbalance that you did not choose? (For a lot of people, this is going to be your next day at work, but it could also be a doctor’s visit or a trip to the bank—or an organizing meeting.)
PRACTICE: Plan that at a certain time during that situation—and you can set a phone alarm for it if you want—you will remind yourself of the world beyond the situation. This may require pausing an interaction by saying something like, “I need a minute,” and could involve going to a window if there is one, splashing water on your face and thinking about the ocean, looking at a picture of a plant or animal or person—you know best what might work for you, but you’re looking for something that will remind yourself that the situation, however high its stakes, is not the whole world.
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I wrote a book, LESSONS FROM THE CLIMATE ANXIETY COUNSELING BOOTH: HOW TO LIVE WITH CARE AND PURPOSE IN AN ENDANGERED WORLD (Hachette Go, 2024). This newsletter holds the ways that what's in it has branched out: new reflections, events and workshops, unresolved questions, further reading, ways to connect and act. I'm glad to be here on earth with you.