“There is a deep sadness, a quiet undercurrent of grief that does not abate. It is difficult not to feel depressed by this onrushing calamity that will – with high probability – change most of the landscapes you learned to love while wandering as a child, the woodland paths where you walk your dog, and the butterflies, frogs, wild salmon, coral reefs, bats, and bees you might see along the way. … This more-than-personal sadness is what I call the Great Grief, a feeling rising in us as if from the earth itself.” (Stoknes, 2015, p 171).

The common name for the Great Grief is eco-grief, and it is an increasing mental health challenge (Clayton, 2018; Clayton et al., 2017; Consolo et al., 2020; Gustafson et al., 2019; Marks et al., 2021). Grief is evoked by unrecoverable losses, and there are many such environmental losses – extinction of species, destruction or degradation of natural landscapes including forests, oceans, and grasslands, even loss of the predictability of our seasons and weather patterns.

We are members of a social species and we form attachments easily. As Stoknes (2015) put it, “There is a strong, strong capacity in human beings … for love”. (p 187). We form attachments to other people – our family, friends, and even celebrities – but also to lots of others, both living (pets, wild animals, trees, birds) and inanimate (toys, tools, houses, vehicles). We also form strong attachments to places, and this is an important source of the Great Grief. “There may be no bonding as strong as the attachment we form to the land while walking on children’s feet. The landscapes of your childhood are forever contained in the body’s memory.” (p 187). As for the loss of any great attachment, changes to our home landscapes evoke deep grief.

Grief is the natural response to loss and, from a psychological perspective, can be considered a healing process. Our attachments are part of ourselves, and when one is lost, it feels like an amputation, because psychically it is just that. But humans are also a remarkably adaptable species, and we’ve evolved many ways to restore ourselves when our lives are threatened – efficient immune systems that deal with infections and parasites, cell repair processes to mend skin damage, and grief to heal from broken attachments.

Our healing processes are dependable and orderly, but they take us outside the normal rhythm and functions of our life so can be disconcerting and distressing. When our immune system is fighting a virus, we feel ill, fevered, aching, and often need to take to our beds. When scabs form over skin wounds, the function of an injured limb is restricted for a time. Grief is similar, but because there is nothing to see, no fever or scab, we may be even less patient with the healing than we are for other injuries.

In considering the healing functions of grief, it can be useful to consider the stages of healing for a more visible process, such as repairing the skin after a cut. This process is complex but automatic. We don’t have to know the first thing about blood coagulation or cell renewal to heal a cut. The only thing required of us consciously is to not impede the process by activities such as picking off the scab. The process happens in stages – first we bleed to wash away impurities from the breached area and to bring a supply of white and red blood cells to the spot. The platelets then coagulate to form a hard protective covering over the cut. This natural barricade is NOT flexible or permeable like our healthy skin is and, to our eyes, it is often unsightly. But beneath this temporary covering, the work of cell repair goes on until, when the scab falls off, we have once again an unbroken layer of skin, usually with little or no scar tissue to impede its sensory and motor functions. The sensations that accompany skin healing are also orderly – usually a moment of numbness, then throbbing pain for a few minutes or hours while the scab forms, then a slow diminishing of painful sensation until, in the middle of the healing process, we often feel nothing at all except the odd ‘pull’ of the scab on surrounding skin. Before the scab falls off, we often experience a tingling, painful, or itchy sensation.

The process of healing from a broken attachment is equally complex, dependable, and automatic. As with our skin-healing process, grief requires that we do not actively impede its operation. When one of our attachments is lost, we ‘bleed’ by reviewing our thoughts and feelings about that relationship. We feel bereft at its absence from our future life, sorry that we weren’t more grateful and attentive. We remember our times together, good and bad. We then usually ‘scab over’ socially – we withdraw into mourning. We feel lack of energy and interest in others or the world. Sometimes we can barely cope with feeding and caring for ourselves. And we cry. Then, just as a scab falls off when healing is complete, we begin to pull out of this shell when we are ready. We start to take inventory of our lives and notice interests start to reawaken. We may flex our attachment function by contacting old friends, or finding places to make new ones. Slowly, we reconnect with our lives, form new attachments to people, places, and activities, and resume living. This healing process cannot be rushed any more than cut healing can.

The well-known ‘stages of grief’ models describe this process. Some models, like that of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (1969) focus on the feelings and thoughts of grief, like the ‘numbness-pain-pulling’ stages of cut healing. One model that describes the healing itself, analogous to the bleed-scab-repair tasks of skin healing, is Bob and Mary Goulding’s (1979) grief work model. The tasks this model describes are to 1) acknowledge the facts of the loss, 2) express appreciations and resentments, 3) say good-bye, 4) mourn, and 5) say hello to today. Although grief-healing cannot be rushed, attention to some of these tasks can facilitate the process, just as cleaning a wound can hasten the bleeding stage.

1. The facts. The first step is to acknowledge the loss, which in the case of eco-grief means accepting that the land is irrevocably changed, or that a beloved species will not be returning. This stage is often delayed by ignoring the absence, as in Kubler-Ross’s (1969) denial stage. This is relatively easy to do for losses due to climate change, because the loss happens so incrementally that we may not notice it. For example, I hadn’t noticed the catastrophic reduction in flying insects until I read Michael McCarthy’s (2015) description of noticing the absence of ‘bug guts’ on windshields after a drive in the country. Once I realized that was true for me too, I also started to notice the absence of the insect-eating songbirds as well. Sometimes when we do finally notice a loss, we too quickly turn to action, especially if we are already involved in environmental work, which can distract us from addressing grief, but does not alter the reality of loss.

2. Appreciations and Resentments: As Joni Mitchell sang, ‘We don’t know what we’ve got til it’s gone’, and this is often the case with even our most beloved attachments. Once I’d noticed the scarcity of bugs and birds in my country walks, I became aware of how much I loved all that life in the fields, hopping and flying in response to my footsteps, chirping and singing accompanying my journeys. I always had plenty of company, even when I was wandering the country trails alone. Recognizing that, feeling grateful and warmed by the memories, is an aspect of expressing appreciation. We all have unnoticed and unexpressed threads that form the basis of our love for our attachments, and it is important to ‘bleed the wound’ by dwelling on these, at least briefly. And, because nothing is perfect, even the most beloved person or place, there will also likely be things that annoyed us, such as the way grasshoppers startled me, landing almost anywhere on my body and the damage they did to my uncles’ crops. It is more likely that these were noticed at the time, given our ‘negativity bias’, but expressing them is also part of ‘cleaning the wound’. The elegies written by poets and songwriters are a good example of how creative work can serve these functions, but there are lots of other ways to express our appreciations and resentments about lost attachments.

3. Good-bye: Once we have acknowledged the fact of a loss, and reviewed the meaning that attachment had in our lives, we are ready to say good-bye. There are cultural rituals for this stage when we lose an important relationship, such as funerals, vigils, and ceremonies; these can be useful ways to say good-bye to a lost love. I think of such formal rituals as analogous to scabbing over a wound. This is not the end of the healing, but rather the beginning of the repair process.

4. Mourning. This is the healing itself. Like skin renewal, it is often very painful, especially at first. We know from experience that scabs are temporary, but because our experience of grief-healing is both less visible and less familiar, many of us are not at all confident that mourning will end, and so too often attempt to ‘pick off the scab’. We scold ourselves for our feelings and plunge into activities that we’re not yet ready for. The symptoms of depression are often naturally present during mourning: Changes in sleep patterns and appetite, loss of interest, inability to experience pleasure, trouble concentrating and remembering, low energy, and immune system suppression. The work of healing from a loss happens inside us and all of these impairments make it difficult to interact with outside stimuli, which is just what we need to heal from a broken attachment. However, unlike scabs, mourning is not a steady state. Most of us experience it in waves, deep troughs of bereavement and despair, then periods of respite where we don’t feel so bad. Over time these ‘waves’ gradually trend upward toward more energy and lighter feelings, but if we don’t expect these ups and downs in emotion and function, we can feel frightened when we plunge back down from an easier peak. We may think, ‘I thought I was doing better, but I must not be. I’ll likely feel like this for the rest of my life’. Scaring ourselves like this, as well as being unnecessarily distressing, puts us at risk of metaphorically ripping off the scab, trying to force ourselves out of mourning prematurely, which often initiates a vicious cycle of depression and fear. This stage thus requires some self-protection of the process itself, just as we might take care to protect a scab from further harm.

5. Hello to today. When mourning is almost complete, our attention slowly shifts away from ourselves and our past and we start to notice the external world more. If the loss has been profound, we may notice ourselves doing an inventory of our life, assessing what we still care about. For eco-grief sufferers, this may be a time to consider what is not yet lost, what could still be saved of our land and ecosystems. This inventory is tentative at first and gradually gains momentum as the healing progresses; it is like flexing the muscles over a healing cut. We need to re-bond ourselves to the world and others. At this stage, connecting with others and even beginning new projects, is appropriate. However, in our culture we have a tendency to rush too quickly to such activities, sometimes even before the work of mourning is properly started. Interests and activities will arise spontaneously when the time is right, so there is no need to force ourselves into premature action, which is really a sign of distrust that we will heal.

As I’ve described, grief is part of our ‘biological repair kit’ and not something to fear or resist. Healing processes take time, something that we find difficult to give in our ‘just in time’ culture. But the timing is largely governed by our bodies. For example, studies of immune system suppression following a loss (e.g., Ornstein & Sobel, 1987) show that normal immune function is not restored until an average of 4 to 14 months later, depending on the importance of the lost attachment. Grief is a process that deserves the same respect and tolerance as our skin-repairing processes. Neither of these are pleasant, but they are necessary and, in the long-term, a gift to our longevity and life enjoyment.

The losses that plunge us into eco-grief are, as we know, often societally chosen rather than natural. However, as Stoknes (2015) notes, “The forces that bring us there [to the Great Grief] are more than we can personally change, so it would be unreasonable to assume that we could fend off future envelopments. There will be times when we fall into this sadness. What we can control is how we choose to get back up again. And how we find the grace to live with it. … What we can control is to experience our grief, recognize it in ourselves and others, and help each other to heal when it strikes. … Contact with the pain of the world can also open the heart to reach out to all things still living. … Maybe there is community to be found among like-hearted people, among those who also can admit they’ve been inside the Great Grief feeling the earth’s sorrow, each in their own way.”(p 173 & 176).

References

Clayton S. (2018). Mental health risk and resilience among climate scientists. Nature Climate Change 8: 260–261. www.nature.com/natureclimatechange

Consolo, A., Harper, S.L., Minor, K., Hayes, K., Williams, K.G., & Howard, C. (2020). Ecological grief and anxiety: the start of a healthy response to climate change? Lancet, 4(7), E261-E263. Doi: 10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30144-3

Goulding, M.M., & Goulding, R. (1979). Changing Lives Through Redecision Therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel.

Gustafson, Bergquist, Leiserowitz, & Maibach. (2019). A growing majority of Americans think global warming is happening and are worried. Retrieved October 16, 2021, from http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/a-growing-majority-of-americans-think-global-warming-is-happening-and-are-worried

Kubler-Ross, E. (1969). On Death and Dying. New York: Macmillan.

Marks, E., Hickman, C., Pihkala, P., Clayton, S., Lewandowski, E.R., Mayall, E.E., Wray, B., Mellor, C., & van Susteren, L. (2021). Young people’s voices on climate anxiety, government betrayal and moral injury: A global phenomenon. SSRN. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3918955 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3918955

McCarthy, M. (2015). The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and joy.  London, UK: John Murray Publishers.

Ornstein, R., & Sobel, D. (1987). The Healing Brain. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Stoknes, P.E. (2015). What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming: Toward a new psychology of climate action. White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing.