The Overview: Meditations on Nature for a World in Transition has finally arrived (you can order your copy here). Over the last month, I’ve taken you through each of the book’s chapters; so far, we’ve looked at Reverence, Balance, and Evolution. This week brings us to our final section, on a theme that best captures how it feels to be releasing this book into the world: Healing.

No wound can be healed until it is first faced. This section looks at the emotionality of our world of polycrises: how it feels to be alive in the apex of the anthropocene. I believe one of the tallest barriers to people becoming better stewards of the Earth is acknowledging their pain about what’s been done to it—their eco-grief. When confronted with trauma, the brain attempts to dissociate. We distance ourselves from the gravity, the feeling of what’s unfolding, as a means to survive it. 

In the case of the climate crisis, that response is understandable given its weight. As I have learned in my own healing journey, undoing dissociation comes down to a process of continuous embodiment. It’s about disentangling and sewing the layers of separation—for what is a wound if not that?—between ourselves and nature. To become more ourselves, and consequently, more of the world. 

From there, new cells, new skin starts to cover the gaps in our dissonance. We begin to grow, making new choices consciously in how we interact with ourselves, each other, and the planet. To truly understand and feel ourselves as expressions of nature, as living parts of this massive organism we call the Earth, fundamentally changes how you approach life. It moves you to protect all that falls under its domain, even when it feels like an uphill climb.

I believe that this is how we can all be of service to the restoration of our world. We heal ourselves so that we can show up for the healing of our communities and ecosystems. And I don’t mean restoration as in reviving its former state; that’s not what healing is. Any of us who has had our heart broken by loss knows there is no returning to how it was. We lose ourselves and while some parts do return to us, we also become something new. So, too, must our species.

Healing takes trust in a path that appears without end, the messiness required to mend. It asks us to steady our pace and embrace it all: our breakdowns and breakthroughs, our joys and sorrows. We put one foot in front of the other until at last it comes into view: all that we’ve been through just to see this sunrise. That’s what finishing this book felt like for me, and I hope it can be that for you too—an opportunity to pause and reflect, so that you don’t miss a single step.