Sensing into our longings and the “age of loneliness,” ft. Laura Marris
How do we listen to our grief?
Gentle greetings ~
I know this has been a challenging week for many…
No matter what emotions you might be going through, what you would like to release, and what you may be calling in, please know that you are not alone ~ I invite you to take a moment to take some slow, deep breaths, and acknowledge yourself for all that it already took for you to be here — and for all the ways you continue to show up for yourself, your loved ones, and your community.
A quick update: After much deliberation, I have decided to consolidate my two newsletters (Green Dreamer & UPROOTED) into one! I will share more about my thought process behind this in a following piece.
For now, this means I will be welcoming you to continue expanding your heart, mind, and perspectives with me through Green Dreamer Podcast’s twice-monthly interviews with a diverse range of thought and community leaders, and receiving my more-or-less monthly personal reflection essays metabolizing the mess of our socio-ecological-health crises.
These are difficult times, and I hope that you can feel grounded, shifted, and inspired by the companionship of a fellow dreamer who, like you, feels deeply that more life-affirming futures are possible for us ~
tenderly, green dreamer kamea
“I started investigating loneliness as a helpful tool because if you’re lonely for something, you’re longing for it. It’s a way of knowing what you wish was present near you, what you would love to be around.”
This is a quote from Laura Marris, who I interviewed for the latest podcast episode of Green Dreamer. Laura is the author of The Age of Loneliness, and in our timely discussion, we explored our intergenerational and more-than-human longings, listening to loss and absence, and reframing the ways we relate to eco-grief.
I felt particularly drawn to the part of our conversation on intergenerational longing, as I wondered: If we tend to feel a stronger sense of protectiveness over the beings and things who we love and have more intimate relationships with, then what does it mean that younger generations are growing up with more and more loss (e.g., biodiversity, culture, language, place-based relationships, etc.) as their norms?
Laura shares that this is called shifting baseline syndrome — “this idea that every generation has a new normal of what they're used to seeing around them.”
How do we re-member and sense into the absence of things we never knew within the timescale of our own lives, but that we nevertheless must heal, reimagine, and re-enliven?
“After [my father] died, I found [his] folder full of bird lists in the back of a drawer. I lived with it and had it on my wall for a few years before knowing what to do with it.
As I started to look at it, I realized that some of the birds that he was seeing were birds that I don't see anymore in the places where I grew up. And I started to notice that other species have slightly changed their migration patterns due to climate change. So for me, seeing how much that list had changed in the course of my lifetime was a really big wake-up call.
Community science can keep a long archive going. It's almost like an archive of ecological memory… Over time, I think these archives become more and more important as we try to navigate ecological change intergenerationally.”
Just like how our previous interview, “Expanding activism beyond electoral politics” with Nick Estes, emphasized the importance of connecting global issues to localized community-centered work, Laura shares in her final words of guidance: “Learn the hyper-local history of the place where you live — ecologically, socially, and economically. Figure out your relationship to the place from there.”
Even though these topics may feel grim, I really appreciate the lightheartedness and inspiration that Laura brought to our conversation — a necessary balm for these times!
Tap in to our full conversation to further explore the connections between our public health crises, the loneliness epidemic, our eco grief, and more ~
(You can listen to this conversation here or via Spotify or any podcast app, and view our transcript and episode resources here.)
An invitation into reflection:
What is your relationship to loneliness like — at a human and more-than-human scale?
What do you sense your present and ancestral body longing for?
How might you reframe your grief and longings into invitations to act?
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With my deepest gratitudes ~