LaUra Schmidt visits Crazy Town to discuss her work with the Good Grief Network and her book, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet. Along the way, she shares wisdom and insights on courage, taking meaningful action, terror management theory, and practices for processing the strong emotions that accompany facing climate change and other aspects of the polycrisis.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
LaUra Schmidt visits Crazy Town to discuss her work with the Good Grief Network and her book, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet. Along the way, she shares wisdom and insights on courage, taking meaningful action, terror management theory, and practices for processing the strong emotions that accompany facing climate change and other aspects of the polycrisis.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
Asher Miller
Hi, I'm Asher Miller.
Jason Bradford
I'm Jason Bradford.
Rob Dietz
And I'm Rob Dietz. Welcome to Crazy Town, where Mad Max looks like a documentary.
Rob Dietz
Hi, this is Rob. We've got a special episode of Crazy Town with my guests to LaUra Schmidt. LaUra is the founder of The Good grief network and the brain behind their 10 Step Program to achieve resilience and empowerment in a chaotic climate. Her background is in environmental humanities, biology, and religious studies. And she recently earned certificates in integrative somatic trauma therapy and climate psychology, all things that we need these days. This past year, she coauthored a book along with Aimee Lewis Reau and Chelsea Rivera called How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, our Communities, and Our Planet. I have read the book, and I'm a fan. And I'm also a recent participant in the 10 step program. So I already owe you a debt of gratitude. LaUra, welcome to Crazy Town.
LaUra Schmidt
Thank you, Rob, it's an honor to be here.
Rob Dietz
Very glad to have you. Look, I was wondering if we could start with you just summarizing what the Good Grief Network is all about.
LaUra Schmidt
Yeah, we have a nonprofit organization. And the mission is to bring people together to face the hard realities of our time, and subsequently face the emotions that come with that, and then organize to find what meaningful action is for us. And we believe that we ought not prescribe meaningful action. And that's kind of the purpose of the discoveries. Our flagship program is the 10 step program you just mentioned. But the idea here is that we meet over and over again and do this inner self work and relearn how to connect and question our questions, as Bayo Akomolafe invites us to, and then by the time we get to step 10, we're ready to discover how to reinvest our energy in a way that's meaningful and connected and of service to the larger community.
Rob Dietz
Well, full discovery here. Like I said, I've participated in a 10 step program pretty recently -- it was a really rewarding experience. And in large part why I wanted to have you here in Crazy Town is to share what it's all about, because I know you can do it so much better than I can. But I have been mentioning it from time to time in some of our episodes. And, you know, it's such a cool idea. I've been wondering, how did you start it up? You know, what gave you the idea to form this Good Grief Network? And I know there's some something about trauma and trauma recovery from having read your book, so I was hoping maybe you could share something along those lines, too.
LaUra Schmidt
The answer to this, like many answers, is multifaceted -- many pathways, lots of failure along the way. But the main idea is having been a student of biology and environmental studies and being presented with issue after issue, reading report after report, and realizing that no amount of my external activism was changing the needle. No amount of me showing up to protests or signing petitions, no amount of me taking another class and another class and another class and learning more. I didn't have the foundation to protect my heart and keep the momentum going. And then as you named, I come from a background of a lot of trauma. So really being under-resourced to be a change maker. In these times, I realized that if I if I want to stay in the game, if I want to make a change, and if I don't want to live in everlasting burnout, I needed a set of tools to help me survive and to help me continue to engage in the work because as changemakers you're always going against the status quo, which is oftentimes an uncomfortable place to be. You're always in conflict, you're always kind of fighting, and as a change maker, you believe your perspective is right, or you want to see your dreams realized in the world. And that takes effort and energy.
So I used my graduate degree at the University of Utah environmental humanities program to explore what they now call eco anxiety. I prefer eco distress, or climate distress, because it's bigger than just anxiety. It encapsulates our rage and our feelings of betrayal and fear and grief, of course. But I combed the literature, combed the best practices at the time, interviewed a lot of changemakers about what they do to sustain themselves and put a roadmap together, and then paused that roadmap, because I graduated and got a job and was doing other things until I realized that I was kind of recreating the same problem that I had already formed somewhat of a solution for in my graduate work. So that's where Aimee Lewis Reau steps in -- best friend of many years and now partner and wife, and she has a background in social justice and activism. And so we wanted to marry the two, give a format to this kind of pathway, this roadmap I had created, and then started very small in our local community, which at the time was Salt Lake City, Utah, and just kept meeting with people and running through the steps and honing the steps and working on the wording. And eventually, it's now an international program where we train people all over the world to sit together. But the main points are that we need to have spaces to come together, to connect, to have space where we can talk about what being awake and aware in a world full of tumult does to our nervous systems, does to our ability to connect, and then what this does to our trauma and how we can move toward healing while the disruptions continue. You know, we're not waiting for healing or connection after the disruptions. We're in it now. We'll be in it for the foreseeable future. So how do we regain and maintain our humanhood throughout these times?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, so many things are popping in my head from what you just said. The idea, I guess, to me -- using a simple and maybe overused metaphor -- is the whole oxygen mask thing on an airplane. Put yours on before assisting others. I feel like you're doing such a service with the Good Grief Network trying to help people realize how to put their oxygen mask on, like you said, so they can stay in the game. And it's really akin to what we're doing here in Crazy Town. And at the post carbon Institute. Our whole goal isn't just to pepper people with facts and figures and make them more and more distressed. It's to help encourage people to take leadership roles and take action in their own households and in their own communities. And I really appreciate the work that you and the Good Grief Network are doing to enable people to do that. It's really fantastic.
LaUra Schmidt
Thank you. I think it's also important to note that, as individual players, systems are made up of individuals, and the way that we act and react and interact in the world around us really matters, those ripples go further than us. And so if we don't know how to be with our own despair, if we don't know how to process our grief, and if we don't know how to be aware of what our nervous system is doing, then we're just repopulating so many of the issues that we have problems with in the first place, so it has to start at the individual, it has to start with our practices, and then ripple out towards our relationships with our families and our friends, and then communities and, you know, larger and larger from there.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. A little bit of an aside here: I was reading through your book, and you referred to Joanna Macy in there as an unofficial muse of the good grief network, which I was really delighted to see because that's true of Crazy Town as well. Here at the Post Carbon Institute, we've taken up Joanna's framing of this time in our history as the Great Unraveling. And I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about what you've learned from Joanna Macy, and how you've woven that into the work that you're doing.
LaUra Schmidt
I've learned so much from Joanna Macy, and I think I still continue to learn. She's just a wonderful elder. And we're lucky to have her in these times. I am in awe of her ability to stay in the game, to keep using this metaphor about the game. But she's been in the game a long time. And she's not lost heart. And not only that, but she's continued to build a path for people like me and so many others who are trying to stay awake and aware in these times. So at the sort of simple, but not simple level, at the basic level, Joanna has provided a way forward that has to deal with our hearts being open. She's set the tone for that and has for years. She's a great model. She's a great role model. But in addition to that, I think she has brought back the idea that connection is key. And connection helps us see our way through these times. She runs, or she's the originator of the Work that Reconnects, and they're doing great work over in that network. And the idea parallels Good Grief Network in that connection is really the answer. And these times and all of these forces which we'll talk about in a bit, but all of these forces are trying to disconnect us. They're trying to make us feel isolated, whether that's the ways we talk to ourselves and our own personal journeys or our communities or, you know, even like the job market -- we're taught that we have to compete, and there's only one job, and only one person gets it. And what Joanna has done is show us that there are other ways to be, and that we can remember them, and of course there are cultures that exist now and cultures that have been extinguished that knew this pathway. And so what I'm seeing is, Joanna is one of the change makers to help us remember that we actually do know the way. We just need a little bit of practice and reminders.
Rob Dietz
Let's dive in on that a little bit, the theme of connection and reconnection. I mean, if our listeners go over to your website, they're going to instantly see that the function of the Good Grief Network is to help people connect and reconnect with themselves, with other people, and with the more-than-human world, right? And what you're saying is Joanna Macy, and others out there, are reminding us that this is the key -- that we've got to explore this connection, we've got to feel that connection, the connectivity with others and with nature. But one of those things I find -- it's always easier said than done, of course, and for those of us who have grown up in this disconnecting culture, we need some pathways to figure out how to do it. And that's something that I think you're really strong on in the Good Grief Network. You've got a slew of exercises and practices. Some of them are in the book, and they're explored in the 10 step programs. And these exercises are there to help us participants, us readers, get on this path of connection. And I'm wondering if there's a favorite, or maybe just one that comes to mind that maybe you could share with our listeners and lead us through.
LaUra Schmidt
I have several go-to practices and discuss at length, the importance of why we have practices, but I have a highly anxious mind. I'm always projecting into the future, I'm susceptible to ruminating. And so my go-to practices, the first one is to pause, to actively just try to pause throughout my day, and notice if I'm allowing my monkey brain to continue to go. The second one is a lot about noticing. And I talk about this a lot, because I think it's kind of an undervalued practice. Sometimes what I try to do, especially if I'm stuck in this cycle of rumination or worry or fear, is notice something about the room. Or if I'm outside, something about the space that I'm in that I have not seen yet, like, What am I missing? What else is here? And maybe it's beautiful, maybe it's a crack in the wall, maybe it's something else. But there's always something to notice maybe a texture, a color, a pattern that can bring us back into the moment. And so those are two of my strategies that really keep me here and appreciating what's present, and not often what the world is going to look like next year, in five years, or 20 years. And then another practice that helps me, particularly if I cannot sleep -- it's called 4-7-8 breathing, and it's developed by Dr. Andrew Weil. You inhale for four, you hold for seven, and you exhale for a count of eight. And this pattern repeats over and over again. And there's nothing quite like it that I've experienced. There are other iterations, there's box breathing and some other ways, but a really conscious attention to our breathing, again, helps us come back to the present moment. And it turns out that the present moment is actually where life is happening. And it's not in a year from now or five years from now.
Rob Dietz
Those are really cool to think about. I mean, in some ways, simple, but in other ways, utterly subversive and against what you would be taught in school, what you would be taught that, you know, they're not productive, right? That to actively pause means you're interrupting, potentially, your productivity. I don't know, maybe if I'm spinning out on my anxiety, I'm not going to be all that productive anyway. But there's probably a lot of embedded wisdom there. So yeah, I appreciate you sharing that.
LaUra Schmidt
And I appreciate you bringing up the idea of productivity, because I think what we're trying to do in Good Grief Network and what How to Live in a Chaotic Climate is trying to do is kind of push against what is productive. What does that mean? And what's the value in productivity? Like, are we producing just to produce? Or are we producing for meaning and connection? Because I think we've lost our way a little bit with that.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, yeah, I would say, hearty agreement, and even we've lost our way, and unbelievably. It's funny, one of my co-hosts, Jason, talks a lot about the tertiary economy, and it's this set of jobs that is all on top of what really needs to be done. And you know, and there's books like Bullshit Jobs, and all these analyses showing most people are doing work that they really don't care about. It's just to pay the bills, which is important, obviously, if you're trying to get food or take care of loved ones or whatnot. There can be some connecting pieces to that, but yeah, why not strive for meaning and connection in what we're doing and be productive at that?
LaUra Schmidt
Well, and then we're stuck in the system of having to pay these things, and you need food and you need to pay rent or your mortgage, you need to pay for your car, or a little bit stuck in this cycle of capitalism. And I felt that acutely, and we talk a little bit about it in the book, but when you're just living for the paycheck, it's unfulfilling. And so how do we bring back a standard of living for everyone for all beings, and the ability to actually incorporate the meaning and the joy that we're here to experience? Like right now? It's kind of like one or the other. How do we do both? And how do we have meaningful jobs? How do we live a life full of intentional purpose?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, it's really funny, you're just reminding me of whenever I talk to students. I've been asked to attend a college freshman level course and describe my career in sustainability. And I have these graphics that show my pay going down over time, but my level of meaning going up. But I'm not trying to complain about that -- I certainly feel privileged and have enough money to live life, and it's fine. But I would never trade it. I mean, at the end of your life, you don't say, I wish I would have taken a less meaningful job and made a hell of a lot more money. It's gonna be the other way. I wish I'd used my time for what I thought was the most important thing and in the thing that I could contribute the most to. And that's against our culture and our system of capitalism, right?
LaUra Schmidt
Absolutely. Absolutely. And you had asked earlier, a little bit about the formation of Good Grief Network, but I think I came to that realization, quite young. I had a lot of tumult, but I also lost a lot of people that I love. And my solution, my survival strategy at the time was to completely numb out and I was like that for several years. And when you're young, several years feels like a whole lifetime. And I had a couple of really good friends that were like, You have choices about how you live, you don't have to just maintain this numbed-out strategy, you can get help, and you can engage. And I realized that, that if we're alive in this time, it's our obligation to be fully alive. And I had to learn it in a really hard way. And, you know, we all learn lessons in our own individual way. But my priority on this planet is not to accumulate stuff, though, I really like books. I will accumulate many, many books, but the point of life is to live, the point of life is to love. It's to risk, it's to enjoy beauty, it's to be present. And a lot of those things are kind of secondary. Not kind of -- a lot of these things are secondary in the dominant culture that tells us to prioritize buying stuff, and get a bigger house and get a bigger car. And we're realizing that that's a really empty way to live.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, no, I love that notion -- you just gave a recipe for the good life, you know? It's to love and take risks and those sorts of things. And the amazing thing about all that is it's free. You can observe beauty for free anywhere you are at any time, even if you're in a place that most might consider ugly, you can find the beauty in it for free. So, yeah, I can get pretty excited about the possibilities for change that are in front of us. Hey, before we go any further, I think we got to dive into the 10 steps so that listeners can get a sense of what a 10 step program is about. We don't have the time to cover all the steps or to do a program. I mean, that takes 10 weeks, right?
LaUra Schmidt
It does.
Rob Dietz
The sessions are two hours each. I've been through it. It's a time commitment, and it requires prep, but totally worth it. But I'm just going to tell our listeners what the 10 steps are, and then maybe you and I can riff on a couple of them or tell a story about one or two of them. So the 10 steps are -- the first one is accept the severity of our predicament. Number two is be with uncertainty. Three, honor my mortality and the mortality of all. Four is do inner work. Five, develop awareness of biases and perception. Six is practice gratitude, seek beauty, and create connections. That's a deeply positive step. Number seven is take breaks and rest. Another deeply positive step. Eight is grieve the harm I have caused. Nine is show up. And 10 is reinvest in meaningful efforts.
I want to just give a shout out to step three because it might be thought of as one of the weirder ones -- it's honor my mortality and the mortality of all. And I'm shouting it out because it's completely tied in with a prior episode of Crazy Town. It was our 34th episode, which was on terror management theory and on the denial of death. And I was new to that topic, but it was amazing to me how much not working through your fear of death can kind of pin you into some really bad behavior. There's been a lot of really cool psychological study in that realm. And like I said, it was all new to me. And it was fascinating. And when I took the 10 step program, I immediately recognized the value of this step. And it was funny because our Crazy Town episode was one of the resources that was suggested for the group to listen to. So that was kind of a cool, a little full-circle moment.
LaUra Schmidt
Aimee and I are big fans of terror management theory. And we learned about it through a death and dying class that we took as undergrads and then learned about it. And it just resonated. It's based off of Ernest Becker's idea that sometimes we actually create more harm in our attempt to escape harm or wounding or our own death. And the fear of our mortality can actually internally collapse us if we don't make it conscious. And I remember listening to your episode on Crazy Town, it was couple of years ago, and when I heard it, it was kind of the transition time between winter and spring. And I just remember putting soil in a bunch of new pots and planting seeds and getting so excited that you folks were covering it, because I feel like it explains so much, or it has the potential to explain so much of what we're facing right now. While we are constantly reminded of our death everywhere we look, we also live in a death-denying culture. And then what happens if we don't have a safe space to explore death? We know that death is actually part of the life cycle. It's a normal, natural, healthy thing that we're all going to experience all life experiences. And yet we try to push it away or tuck it back in our unconscious mind.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, that's amazing. I love the image of you working on growing some seedlings while listening to the podcast, but I don't have anywhere near the eloquent words that you have to talk about it. I'm just thinking of working through this shit around death. We just don't do it. We're culturally completely afraid of it. And the crazy thing in the psychology is that if you bottle up that fear, it's like it makes you a harsher, meaner person, essentially. And, and that's not what we need. Obviously, we need kindness and connection, you know?
LaUra Schmidt
Well, an important element that we should name here is not only does it make you kind of like this harsher person, or more reactive, but we tend to target others in that meanness, in that coldness, like we double down on our in group, and then create more animosity towards what we perceive as the other. And we see that playing out so much right now in our political systems in the war in the Middle East, the mass murders in the Middle East, like who is in our in group and who's in the out group? And then what's our behavior towards them?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, yeah, we've got an episode later in our sixth season, that's going to be on othering. And I m looking forward and not looking forward to it at the same time. It's one of the toughest topics. Speaking of tough topics, step one in the 10 step program is accept the severity of the predicament. And it was funny -- when I was reading the book, you have a quote in there from Aimee, a very simple quote that says, This step is the hardest. period. And I've been saying this exact same thing. When I've talked to Asher and Jason about the 10 step program and talked to others, I've said, the first step is the hardest. I came to that conclusion completely independently of Aimee. And I'm wondering, you know, I guess I could share why I thought it was so tough, but I would like to hear your thoughts on what makes the entryway into the 10 step program so damn difficult.
LaUra Schmidt
Well, and it's the first one. You know, we readily acknowledge that we're starting at a pretty critical and tough place. I think it's the toughest one, one, because all of these steps the whole program, it's a pathway, it's a roadmap, but it's also process work, which means it's never done. So you don't accept the severity of the program and wash your hands and you're done. And you don't ever have to look at it again. In fact, I think for those of us who live relatively privileged lives, the layers of privilege can blind us from the reality. And what I've noticed in my own life is that as we start stripping away either the privileges or analyzing them, you see how multi-layered the predicament is. Some people call it a polycrisis, megacrisis -- there's a lot of names for it. We like predicament. But the idea here is that when you start seeing how interrelated these multifaceted crises are, the terrible injustices we're seeing all around the world, ecocide, climate, imperialism, colonization -- all of these things are related. And it takes like, you know, you remove one lens, and then you get down to a step deeper, you remove another lens, you get a step deeper, and it's sort of a bottomless pit of realizing that the world you have grown up in, the world you have put all of your faith and your energy into building is built on a foundation of lies. And that for me, is the constant upset, like if these things aren't real, if these things are causing harm, if they're all interrelated, then what's real? What are we building? What world do we want to see? And where's the potential? I think, for me, you know, I'm not going to speak for Aimee, but I think for me, that's why it's the hardest -- it never ends, you're always unearthing something. I'd love to hear from you why it's tough.
Rob Dietz
Well, I think for me, it is about attitude. Accepting the severity of the predicament, in a sense, means that I can no longer distract myself from that predicament, which it's a really hard thing to stare at, to grapple with, to try to fight against. Whereas if I think yeah, okay, there's a predicament, but if I'm really kinda like, minimizing it down to some problems out there, that could be fixed, you know, then I can spend my afternoon watching Fargo on Hulu or Netflix, or I can go on my nice hike, or sit down with a guitar and play a song and not be thinking about that stuff. So, you know, in some sense, accepting the severity of the predicament, draws more and more of my focus time to the predicament. And I kind of avoid that to some degree for mental health purposes. I already have a career that's all about it. I think about it a lot when I'm away from the desk. I read and listen to podcasts about it and so it becomes a question of, when you're looking at something that has such negative connotations, how much do you look at it? So I think that's where it's such a tough step for me. And what you said really resonated about the idea of, it's not like you go through a 10 step program, or you listen to season of a p,odcast, or even go talk to one of the great sustainability heroes like Joanna Macy, it's not like you just then wash your hands and dry them off and then it's all done and fixed. I mean, it's a lifetime of learning and struggle. And so I don't want to pitch anything that we do, or even the awesome work that you're doing as, Hey, folks, here's the solution to the problem, because we know, it's more than a problem. And it's going to take at least as long to find our way out of the predicament as it did that we stumbled into it.
LaUra Schmidt
What you're saying makes me think a couple of things. The first thing is the importance of what some people call pendulation. And that's kind of you go in and you face it, and you do your work. But then you can back out and resource yourself and come back. Our nervous systems are not built to constantly look at this level of dysfunction, this level of suffering, this level of injustice. And so by our very nature, we have to go in, pause, come back out. Therapists teach a strategy about going in and doing your work and looking at the problem and facing it, I think or looking into the sun as some might call it. And then you actually have to take a break and you have to come back to resource yourself and you have to rediscover meaning and joy and connection and kind of unplug for a little bit. And then you go back into it. It's not like we're always going to be staring into the sun, we're not always going to be doing our change making work. In fact, part of the change making work is to rest and to recover and to resource ourselves. And the resting, as you named, is one of the steps. We have to take time to rest in order to make any sort of difference in this world.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, I really appreciated that step in the program. It felt like sometimes those of us involved in nonprofit work and change making kinds of things -- it's almost like we have to be granted permission to take a break and step back, although I've always been one to go out and play, so I've had that in my in my corner. And one of the things that I say most often in terms of something people can do in their lives that's helpful is just go out and be in nature, you know? Reconnect in nature, observe, play in nature, and exactly like you say, unplug -- literally pull the plug and go outside.
LaUra Schmidt
It also needs to be said that the way that our dominant culture is set up is it does not afford rest to us. I mean, you kind of alluded to this, but those most marginalized, those who are working multiple jobs, those who are having trouble paying their bills, rest does not come easy. And so this is actually a really hard step as well. Because as Tricia Hersey is teaching us, rest is a human right, and we need to reclaim it. We need to figure out ways that we can start resting more, even if it feels impossible to do so, even if it feels like the world is working against us. And there's no time to rest, and we can't pay our bills, we have to get innovative and start reclaiming rest in the ways that we can.
Rob Dietz
It s funny, you know, you can always poke holes in the dominant culture. In your book, you call the dominant culture or the dominant paradigm, anti-relationship and anti-life. And obviously, it's anti-rest. And that's part of it being anti-life, you know? What's good for you is to be well rested, so that you can then go about your work and go about making the connections that you need to make.
LaUra Schmidt
Yeah, we're seeing definitely as producers, to go back to the earlier part of the conversation that we were talking about, the dominant culture only sees us as a value for the outputs we can create. It has no sense of relationality, it has no sense of meaning or joy or those kinds of things. And so it's our moral imperative to start reclaiming those and reclaiming our humanity and reclaiming our relationality. Because that's actually the real fundamental parts of life. The profit aspect is actually just a fabrication. And it's a social construction for how we ought to relate to one another. And we've just blown that out of proportion. So move back into life, move back into relationality, rest, joy, all the things that make life worth living. We're not robots, we're not machines yet, anyway.
Rob Dietz
Well, I have to be completely honest with you, in my first exposure to the Good Grief Network, just hearing the name, I was probably coming from a pretty skeptical place, because part of me understands the idea of, Hey, let's hold space for processing and for really diving into feeling these feelings that come with the recognition that we're in a climate disaster, that we're in a biodiversity apocalypse kind of thing. And part of my thinking in this is probably straight out of the dominant culture. It is, Hey, suck it up. You know, tough it out. It's sort of a running joke in the family. I say stuff like that to my daughter pretty regularly. I like reading and listening to survival stories of people who had to tape the soles of their feet back on in order to walk out of some Antarctic nightmare. But it's really a time where we need to get past that. Not that you can't be tough, but I mean, tough it out doesn't seem to be working so well, when it comes to climate.
LaUra Schmidt
Yeah, we are in a struggle, I think for our very souls right now. And so the tough-it-out technique is a good one. I've used it for most of my life, but it is not a sustainable one. And the tough-it-out technique does not allow us to connect, which is what we're going to need in the future as the systems around us continue to degrade and break down. We certainly can't just tough it out if we don't have access to food, if our house just burned down, if a flood just came, the tough-it-out technique Again, I'm gonna say I used it. It's a strategy I've used for a lot of years coming out of trauma, but it doesn't allow us to be fully alive, and we have to shut off portions of ourselves in order to exist and if we want a chance at really being fully alive. I think what Good Grief is trying to do and what How to Live is trying to do is an invitation to being fully alive, despite the circumstances that are facing us. So yeah, we toughed it out to get through some things, but then we have to come back into connection. We have to come back into trusting, and that's going to be super compromised by the addition of trauma, by the addition of struggling. So therein lies the paradox, like the way through is together, and yet it's going to constantly be compromised, because these survival techniques are going to be engaging, and so when are the survival techniques appropriate? When are we using them because we're scared? And we're projecting a future world that is based in scarcity and competition and Mad Max, The Road, those types of things. So what are the futures where we can come back and take a break, when we realize that we have been hurt, and we have been injured? Who's holding us through that process? And I think the grief intimidates a lot of people, because we haven't been taught healthy ways to relate to it. So we're trying to reframe it. Grief does have lessons. There's a maturity that comes when we've had to engage with grief. And we've had to dance with grief. And one of those lessons is our complete and absolute powerlessness.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, that's kind of a fascinating point in thinking about the humility that comes with powerlessness. And boy could our politicians use a little bit of that right now! And the idea of a tough-it- out technique is often the whole rugged individualism. But the Good Grief Network and your work is, in many ways, about forming close personal bonds, relationships, whether it's with other participants in a group or someone else in your life. I was wondering if you could talk about the role of these kinds of bonds, these close personal relationships in confronting the Great Unraveling and to, as you've said, staying in the game, being an effective advocate and activist for an environmentally sound and a socially just future.
LaUra Schmidt
So many of us have forgotten how to trust each other. And oftentimes, in Good Grief Network, we call our spaces kind of practice grounds, like we come in here, and we've learned how to relate. And we learn how to reconnect, because we don't have that elsewhere in our lives. Maybe we don't have supportive friends or family members. Maybe we don't have people that we can come to and show up authentically and vulnerably with. And so Good Grief Network isn't -- I think we said this earlier -- it's not a solution. It's part of the process. It's teaching us that this way of relating can exist, and we can bring it back home to our families and to our community members, to practice being in relationship with, to practice being in conflict with, and moving through, and not throwing people out, not cancelling them. How do we learn to be ourselves and to be seen, which oftentimes terrifies us, because we also don't know how to be vulnerable? And to be vulnerable means risk, and we're pretty risk averse. But yeah, the idea is -- I think I said this earlier, too -- but to survive, we need each other. And if we need each other, we have to be able to build trust. And to build trust, we have to practice building trust, and there aren't very many opportunities in our day to day to start practicing trust building.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, I do sense there is a huge need for that out there, especially among those of us who see the world in a way that is distressing to us, that we're recognizing that the path of high energy modernity or late stage capitalism, or whatever you want to call it -- it's a pathway to ruin. And you know, we're fearful about what that means for not just the future of our families and all of humanity, but also just life in the biosphere. And so it's a really important step. And we've heard from even listeners of Crazy Town have come in and they've said things like, I can't talk about this with anybody around me -- they just think I'm nuts and that I'm a Chicken Little. And so it's really refreshing to, at least virtually, be in the room with you guys riffing on these topics. And the beauty of Good Grief Network is, you're more in the room. You are actually sharing with other participants and hearing their stories and their ways of dealing with what's in front of us. And that's a place that can, I think, develop some powerful seeds that can grow and help us deal as we move through the Great Unraveling.
LaUra Schmidt
And one of the most beautiful things that I've witnessed, having been in the spaces as well is when my story, that I've not been able to articulate, I've not been able to share yet, is actually said by somebody else in the room. And you automatically are like, I feel seen just by hearing that other person say something that I I've been struggling with.
Rob Dietz
Our psychology never ceases to fascinate me in the mirroring that we can do. Yeah, that can really push us to a new level of understanding. One of the things that you bring up quite a few times in the book is the notion of a heart-centered revolution. I'm wondering if you can describe that a little more and especially if someone's inclined to join or help kickstart a heart-centered revolution, how might they get involved?
LaUra Schmidt
So much of the dominant culture prioritizes logic in the thinking mind. And that's a really limited perspective. And we call it heart-centered, one, because the heart is the place of connection. And the heart happens to be in the center of our three brains. We have our thinking brain that is up in our head, although maybe somatic practitioners would disagree with that, and our intelligence is through our whole body. But then we also have the heart, which is in the middle, and then we have our gut, our belly, that has a lot of its own neurons and its own information system. The heart is in the middle of that, and the heart is responsible for love connection. Our hearts will sync up if we're close enough, like there's an intelligence to leading with the heart. And then in addition to that, if people want to be a part of the heart-centered revolution, I think that we start with pausing more, we start with intentionality, we start with slowing down. The fast-paced world that we've constructed for ourselves, has our nervous systems in overdrive, almost always. And so there's an intentionality that needs to happen with being able to access this heart wisdom. The heart wisdom doesn't just present itself. We have to look for it and reconnect back into it. But this also means that we have to lead with authenticity and some vulnerability, which again, especially if we've been wounded before (and who hasn't been wounded in one way or another?), it requires risk, it requires trust. And so those things also have to be developed. But one of the most important aspects of the heart-centered revolution is acting in service of the larger community. It's not just about you, because you understand you re a relational being, you're part of one of a very big web of beings and things and elements, and you're just a small little piece of it. So anything that you do that benefits the collective, benefits the world, in essence. And so this is kind of a the stepping stones to the heart-centered revolution.
Rob Dietz
I appreciate that perspective and bringing it to community. And, you know, you had talked a little bit earlier about power and humility. And that's another way, right, is getting out of our own heads a sense of self-importance, and realizing I am just a part of a much bigger game here. And what can I do to serve? That s a really good reminder, speaking of pausing, and then taking time, I want to bring us to the conclusion of this interview and thank you for your time. But I want to see if you've got any last parting gifts of wisdom, or I don't want to put that much pressure on you. But any thought that you would want to share that's been on your mind or that that you feel others might want to hear?
LaUra Schmidt
Yeah, Rob, I have two things for you. May I?
Rob Dietz
Yes, of course by all means.
LaUra Schmidt
The first thing is that I think a lot about the word courage and the practice of courage, and how we've never been here before as our little baby species. And so we don't actually know where we're going, and courage demands of us that we take things one step at a time, with our hearts open, and that we eagerly and voluntarily ask questions about where we are and what we're doing. And courage also allows us to align with our values. We can use our values as a compass when things look really dark around us or when we don't know where we're going. And then, of course, this whole episode, this whole discussion has been really about trying to increase our relationality, increase our connections, and I think that that helps. As we've practiced courage, we've used words like vulnerability, authenticity, risk, and all these things, but to connect is a deeply vulnerable experience. And so how do we start doing that and practicing? The word practice seems synonymous with courage for me.
Rob Dietz
Thank you for sharing. That's a lot to think about and figure out, and I think that's a definition of courage that kind of runs counter again to the dominant culture. But that's the other main thread of this conversation is we need, we need a new dominant culture, right?
LaUra Schmidt
Yes, well, and I d push back and say we need dominant cultures. You know, there's not just one pathway forward. And I think in our quest to standardize everything and make everything one way, we've left out a lot of voices. We've left out a lot of perspectives. And so the time is to start really realizing that our way is not the only way. My way is not the only way. There's lots of ways to do it. My wife and I are constantly talking about that. She's like, I have a different way of doing things. You have a different way of doing things.
Rob Dietz
It comes down to trust. I trust that your way can work as well. I really appreciate that. So your book is How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet. I highly recommend that you go pick that up. And check out the Good Grief Network. And if you have an inkling, join one of the 10 step programs, and learn more about what we've been discussing. And with that, LaUra, give us the conclusion with the poem.
LaUra Schmidt
Thank you, Rob, and thank you for all the good work you guys are doing at the Post Carbon Institute. The poem that I've selected is called On Another Panel about Climate, They Asked Me to Sell the Future and All I've Got Is a Love Poem by Ayisha Siddiqa. She says:
What if the future is soft and revolution is so kind that there is no end to us in sight. Whole cities breathe and bad luck is bested by a promise to the leads. To withstand your own end is difficult. The future frolics about promised to no one as is her right. Rage against injustice makes the voice grow harsher. Yet, if the future leads without us, the silence that will follow will be an unspeakable nothing. What if we convince her to stay? How rare and beautiful it is that we exist. What if we stopped existence one more time? When I wake up, get out of bed, my seven-year-old cousin with her ruptured belly tags along. Then follows my grandmother, aunts, my other cousins, and the violent shape of their drinking water. The Earth remembers everything. Our bodies are the color of Earth and we are nobodies, then born from so many apocalypses. What's one more? Love is still the only revenge. It grows each time the Earth is set on fire. But for what it's worth, I'd do this again, gamble on humanity 100 times over, commit to life unto life as the trees fall and take us with them. I'd follow love into extinction.
Melody Allison
That's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app or just tell them face to face. Maybe you can start some much-needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.