In this episode, I speak with Aimee Lewis-Reau and LaUra Schmidt, co-founders of the Good Grief Network, an organization that “cultivates individual resilience to metabolize collective grief.”
In this conversation with Aimee and LaUra, we discuss what it means to build psychosocial resilience in our time of accelerating climate change and ecological stress and despair. Presented in ten steps, the program cultivated by LaUra and Aimee is meant to be presented and worked with in a group setting. LaUra and Aimee expound on each of these steps in this discussion:
1) Accept the problem and its severity.
2) Acknowledge that I am part of the problem as well as the solution.
3) Practice sitting with uncertainty.
4) Confront my own mortality and the mortality of all.
5) Feel my feelings.
6) Do inner work.
7) Take breaks and rest as needed.
8) Develop awareness of brain patterns and perception.
9) Show up.
10) Reinvest into problem-solving efforts.
The dominant culture often discourages us from fully feeling the heavy and difficult emotions that come with recognizing our mortality, in particular when that realization is placed within the context of a rapidly unraveling biosphere -- one in which we fully depend on, not only for our physical wellbeing, but for our spiritual, psychological, and emotional wellbeing as well. Aimee and LaUra have done a tremendous service in providing a means to grapple with these emotions, build psychosocial resilience, and allow us to face our predicament with clarity, focus, power, and love.
Aimee Lewis-Reau was born and raised in southeast Michigan, and is a certified Scholè Yoga Instructor and RYT 200, and received her Bachelor’s degree in English, Poetry, and Religion from Central Michigan University before obtaining her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Georgia College & State University. She DJs under the name eXis10shAL and takes delight in making crowds dance, because Alice Walker said it best: “Hard times require furious dancing.”✧
LaUra Schmidt hails from Michigan and is a graduate of Central Michigan University with a BS in Environmental Studies, Biology, and Religious Studies. She earned her MS in Environmental Humanities from the University of Utah. She’s a Climate Reality Leadership Corps member and finds inspiration in natural landscapes and honest, open-hearted dialogue.✧
✧Source: http://bit.ly/GoodGabout
Episode Notes:
- Learn more about the Good Grief Network: http://www.goodgriefgroup.org
- Learn more about the “10 Steps to Psychosocial Resilience” here: http://bit.ly/2BtJdPW
- Listen and subscribe to Aimee and LaUra’s podcast ‘WHY?!?’ on iTunes: https://apple.co/2DWqU8g
- Support the Good Grief Network on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GoodGriefNetwork
- The songs featured in this episode are “Suspirium” and “Has Ended” by Thom Yorke from the album Suspiria (Music for the Luca Guadagnino Film).
