How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet

(Paperback)

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A 10-step holistic guide to help you cope with the climate crisis-from the founders of the Good Grief Network. Filled with 30 practices and reflection questions, each step builds off the last to help readers process grief, uncertainty, and painful emotions, while also looking toward where we can make positive changes. The practices include journaling, dancing through grief, rituals for what and those we've lost, loving-kindness meditations, and many more. LaUra Schmidt and Aimee Lewis-Reau started the Good Grief Network, one of the first emotional support groups for eco-anxiety and climate grief. There are now chapters all over the world following these same ten steps, including- accepting the severity of the predicamentdeveloping awareness of our own biases and perceptionstaking breaksreinvesting in meaningful effortspracticing gratitudesitting with uncertainty The authors draw on personal stories and testimonials, as well as the work of long-time activists like Joanna Macy, to find inner peace and outer purpose within the chaos of the current climate.

Reviews

Theres a lot of gentle, fierce, and creative wisdom in these pagesand boy do we need it now!Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out

This is the book my heart has been yearning for. It is a brilliant blend of personal narrative and clear-eyed science. With their emphasis on cultivating community, tending to personal rejuvenation and mental well-being, and offering practical tools for lightening our footstep on our beloved Mother Earth, the authors lift up every value we can all embrace right now to not only pluck us from the brink of the cataclysm but also transform the soul of the world.Mirabai Starr, author of Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of Women Mystics

How To Live in a Chaotic Climate is both a source for hope and a guide for solace in the midst of climate collapse. This book and its pragmatic vision allow us to reconnect in a relational world, helping us feel less isolated, less lonely, less impotent to do something that matters. Climate grief is a diagnosis for our love for the planet. This open-hearted book allows us to embrace Good Grief and embody the necessary actions to cool the rising temperatures in our politics, in our families, and within ourselves.Terry Tempest Williams, author of Erosion: Essays of Undoing

A groundbreaking book that approaches its methods in evidence-based hope with realistic and tangible steps that allow us to build momentum for healing and action in the climate crisis.Isaias Hernandez, environmental educator and creator of QueerBrownVegan

It goes like this: we pass a cup, back and forth, from one to the other. Inside the cup is what we most need to drink to keep going in this long strugglea potent brew of inspiration; wisdom; real, heartfelt humanity; stories; tears; and laughter. We drink, take a long sip, and go on to do what is ours to do. The doing refills the cup with hope. This book is that cup.Susanne Moser, PhD, coeditor of Creating a Climate for Change and founder of the Adaptive Mind Project

Simultaneously intimate and thoroughly researched, this gem of a manual shares the story and the wisdom of Good Grief Network, the first organization to create collective space for processing climate distress and transforming it into generative action. Changing the systems that cause harm to people and the planet will require collective effort, to be sure, and this book outlines the inner practices that such an effort will require of us all.Sarah Jaquette Ray, Professor and Chair of Environmental Studies at Cal Poly Humboldt and author of A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How to Keep Your Cool on a Warming Planet

Fiercely compassionate and wonderfully practical, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate is a necessary guide for finding solidarity in climate despair, tolerating ecological distress, and metabolizing planetary grief into sacred purpose and joy. For anyone seeking relief and flexibility in how they are thinking, feeling, or acting in the climate crisis, give this brave book a go.Britt Wray, PhD, author of Generation Dread and Planetary Health Fellow, Stanford University School of Medicine

How to Live in a Chaotic Climate offers a needed space to contend with the worries, uncertainties, and grief associated with the consequences of global climate change. It is inspirational and courageous in the call to seize the moment by creating communities, investing in each other, and working for meaningful social change.Brett Clark, coauthor of The Robbery of Nature and Professor of Sociology, University of Utah

Author Bio

LAURA SCHMIDT and AIMEE LEWIS-REAU are the founders of The Good Grief Network, one of the first emotional support groups for eco-anxiety and climate grief. GGN has grown quickly in the United States, with additional groups forming in five continents and fourteen countries. GGN has been covered in Time, NPR, USA Today, CNN, NBC News, and The LA Times. Aimee and LaUra are the co-hosts of the podcast WHY! LaUra is trained in nonviolent civil disobedience and is a Climate Reality Leadership Corps member and mentor. Aimee received her MFA in creative nonfiction from Georgia College & State University and is a trained healer and yoga instructor. CHELSIE RIVERA is a California-based author with roots in small-town Kentucky. She received her MFA in fiction writing from Georgia College and State University.