Let's EXPERIENCE: A Workshop to Process Climate Grief

Our leaders aren’t leading, our institutions are failing us, and every day, the planet lurches toward uninhabitable living conditions. So many are already feeling the impacts on the frontlines from increased storms, raging wildfires, unprecedented flooding, and changing seasons. We’ve also been launched into the sixth mass extinction as key ecosystems and species are swallowed up by the dominant culture. Loss is in the air we breathe.

There is so much to grieve. When we are overwhelmed by these shared losses and don’t take time to process them, they threaten our ability to feel present, connected, and joyful. It prevents us from making the necessary changes to protect what is still here. Grieving connects us to our love and helps fuel our work to transform these destructive aspects of our culture. At Good Grief Network and Reimagine, we know there is wisdom and a soul maturity that happens when we are able to name loss and describe how it has transformed us. As soul activist and therapist Francis Weller says, "Any who undertake real mourning return with gravitas, wisdom gathered in the darkness."

In this workshop, Good Grief Network Founding Director LaUra Schmidt will help us touch our feelings of grief and balance them with love and joy. We will practice grounding exercises, honor our losses, connect with each other, share some poetry, and move our bodies to metabolize grief and distress associated with the climate crisis and ecocide.

LaUra Schmidt

LaUra (she/her) is the founder of the Good Grief Network and the brain behind the “10-Steps to Resilience & Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate” program and the FLOW Facilitation Training modality. She is a truth seeker, community builder, cultural critic, trainer, program designer, and facilitator. She is a lifelong student, curator, and practitioner of personal and collective resilience strategies. LaUra graduated with a BS in Environmental Studies, Biology, and Religious Studies. Her MS is in Environmental Humanities. She recently earned an “Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy” Certificate through The Embody Lab and a “Climate Psychology” certificate through California Institute of Integral Studies.

In August 2023, LaUra’s book on Good Grief Network’s unique 10-Step program called How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet will be released through Shambhala Publications.

About Reimagine and the Climate Grief & Growth Series

Reimagine's mission is to help all people face adversity, loss, and mortality, and channel the hard parts of life into meaningful action and growth. www.letsreimagine.org

This event is part of Reimagine’s three-part series “Climate Grief & Growth” in March 2023. Planet earth is in hospice and its inhabitants need grief support. Climate change is relentlessly producing more disaster, death, grief, and anxiety. We are actively destroying the environment, both with intent and negligence. Governments and corporations have ignored warnings from scientists, spiritual leaders, and activists. But despite it all, there’s comfort in our collective struggle. In this series, we will learn ways to grow in the face of climate grief by learning, practicing mindfulness, and taking action. Topics for discussion and practice will include regulating feelings of despair and finding purpose in acts of service and civic engagement.

About Good Grief Network

Good Grief Network is a nonprofit organization that started in 2016. We bring people together to process collective grief, eco-distress, and overwhelming feelings concerning the collective planetary crises. By building individual and community resilience, we empower people to rediscover their agency and engage in meaningful actions.

Using a variety of modalities such as embodiment, group sharing, deep listening, and co-visioning, Good Grief Network creates brave, emergent spaces where people process their heavy emotions, learn new skills, reconnect on all levels, and actively build communities that are invested in intentional relationships, healing, and growth.