When Things Fall Apart, You Don't Have To
Calm is contagious. And courage is contagious. The tools in this book can help you to find calm, purpose, and even joy in hard times. Climate chaos is accelerating, democracy is in peril, species and ecosystems are disappearing, and economic inequality is soaring. These are interconnected parts of a complex and devastating predicament. But you need not respond with denial or despair. You can be the eye of the storm, calm and centered, living your values despite an uncertain future, and helping others to do the same.
Eye of the Storm offers resources and stories from people around the globe that will build your practical and emotional skills to face whatever comes. Engaging and insightful essays, interviews, and reflections invite you to reorient your ideas of what matters, give you perspectives to face fear and loss with courage, and inspire you to live creatively and compassionately in hard times.
"Wise, compassionate, and immensely practical. I know of no better guidebook for living fully and meaningfully in the midst of unfolding biospheric and civilizational decline."
-Michael Dowd, author and speaker, [...]
"A tour de force, illustrating with elegance and lucidity how we can do the crucial emotional work that equips us to meet and lovingly embrace the challenges of these extreme times."
-Virginia Mallin, psychotherapist (WPF, UKCP, FCP); member, Climate Psychology Alliance.
Chapter one: Facing the storm - What we face, and the emotional impact of realizing what we face, in prose, poem, and story.
Chapter two: Stories shape us - Stories that don't work, and stories that may work, to frame our situation.
Chapter three: Stories for courage in dark times - Three stories to describe our predicament. They do not have happy endings. They have courageous endings.
Chapter four: Practical emotional support - Your toolbox for dealing with difficult emotions.
Chapter five: Befriending grief - Learning the skill of grieving to honor love and loss of all kinds.
Chapter six: Belonging and reverence - Finding meaning and wonder in relationships and in daily living.
Chapter seven: Resigning from the rat race - Slowing down and opting out of industrial consumer busyness and status.
Chapter eight: Connection and compassion - Tools for practicing compassion when it matters most.
Chapter nine: Letting go - Ways people are letting go of industrial consumer society and having fun doing it.
Chapter ten: No more flying solo - Ways people are building relationships for mutual support.
Chapter eleven: Young people and those who care about them - How we might be of service to those who inherit this mess.
Chapter twelve: Planting seeds - Gardening as activism and relationship.
Chapter thirteen: In the meantime - Ways people are living their values now.
Chapter fourteen: Endings are beginnings.