Five Principles of Empowerment
- Feelings of pain for our world are natural and healthy: they are a measure of our humanity.
- Pain is morbid only if denied: …despair, like any emotion, is dynamic — once experienced, it flows through us. It is only our refusal to acknowledge and feel it that keeps it in place.
- Information alone is not enough: to deal with the distress we feel for our world, we need more than additional data about its plight.
- Unblocking repressed feelings releases energy and clears the mind: when repressed material is brought to the surface and released, energy is released as well; life comes into clearer focus.
- Unblocking our pain for the world reconnects us with the larger web of life: by recognizing our capacity to suffer with our world, we dawn to wider dimensions of being. In those dimensions there is still pain, but also a lot more. There is wonder, even joy, as we come home to our mutual belonging — and there is a new kind of power.
– Joanna Macy, “Working Through Environmental Despair”
Reconnect with us. The next Thrive: Eco Grief and Anxiety Circle is Monday, August 15th from 6-7:30pm PST. Find the link in our bio. 
Questions? Contact Brittany at brittanynecmail@gmail.com
Photo by @animate.earth
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