"It's a sign of deep love and connection": Honouring ecological grief to support wellbeing and mobilize climate action

As the ongoing burning of fossil fuels continues to drive ecological destabilization, grief for ecological loss and its wide-ranging impacts on personal and collective life is widespread. Researchers agree that feeling impacted by the tremendous losses produced by climate change and its associated injustices is a reasonable and adaptive response. Bereavement studies have long understood grief as an expression of love and attachment for that which is lost. Similarly, climate grief may connect powerful personal feelings with collective experiences of loss and vulnerability caused by climate change, revealing personal values and shared interests that may inspire climate action. However, the absence of collective practices for honoring ecological grief leads to its “disenfranchisement” by depriving grievers of social scripts, rituals, and community support, and undermining well-being. Despite the prevalence of ecological grief and its generative potential, research investigating the relationship between climate grief, well-being, and engagement with the climate crisis—as well as the impact of interventions that collectively honour and enfranchise climate grief—is limited. To address this gap, this thesis research had four objectives: 1) Characterize the lived-experience of ecological and climate grief; 2) Explore how ecological and climate grief connected to personal values; 3) Examine how ecological and climate grief shaped engagement with the climate crisis; and 4) Investigate the impact of collective practices for honouring and processing climate grief on wellbeing and capacity for climate action. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with adults (n = 15) who had attended Refugia Retreats programs in Alberta, Canada where they had engaged in facilitated group practices for sharing and processing climate grief. Interviews were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results demonstrate that participants’ experiences of ecological grief were indeed fertile sites for ecological, social, and political consciousness raising. Interviewees’ grief revealed interconnections between ecological, personal, and collective vulnerabilities caused by the climate crisis, leading to empathetic concern and solidarity with both human and more-than-human communities. Framing difficult emotions about climate change as grief supported interviewees in destigmatizing their feelings by foregrounding the larger socio-ecological conditions to which their feelings responded while also connecting them to the love and values that underpin difficult emotions. Witnessing both their own and other’s grief transformed some of their heaviest emotional burdens and opened up access to positive experiences such as love, joy, and agency. Because climate change often shaped other forms of loss and difficulty, collective practices for processing climate grief also helped interviewees cope with personal loss. Collectively honouring climate grief enhanced interviewees capacity for positive emotions associated with wellbeing and climate action while also allowing them to practice forms of collectivity that support collective action. This research demonstrated how climate grief connected people with not only the personal, ecological, and collective toll of the climate crisis, but also to their deepest values and longings. Collective practices for honouring climate grief enabled participants to holistically process difficult emotions in ways that contributed to both individual emotional resilience, and capacity for collaborative and sustained action. This thesis contributes to our understanding of the generative potential of ecological grief as a leverage emotion that significantly shapes wellbeing and capacity for meaningful and transformative climate action.

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