Trebbe Johnson is the founder and director of the global community Radical Joy for Hard Times, and she’s devoted to finding and making beauty in hurt places. She has camped alone in the Arctic wilderness; studied classical Indian dance; worked as an artist’s model, has been a street sweeper in an English village, and is an award-winning multimedia producer. She’s led wilderness rites of passage and contemplative journeys in clear-cut forests, Ground Zero in New York, in EPA’s toxic Superfund sites, the Sahara Desert, and other places. She participates in Global Earth Exchange—bringing people around the world together to go to places they care about that have been damaged or endangered: share stores, listen to the land, and make a simple gift of beauty for the place out of materials the place itself offers. She is the author of several books including Radical Joy for Hard Times: Finding Meaning and Making Beauty in Earth’s Broken Places. (North Atlantic Books 2018) and Fierce Consciousness: Surviving the Sorrows of Earth and Self (Calliope Books, 2023).

Interview Date: 10/6/2023  Tags: Trebbe Johnson, grief, beauty, facing what is difficult, despair, beauty is a life-saver, funeral directors, Sedonia Cahill, transcending downwards, mindfulness, skilled hunter of consciousness, cunning trackers of beauty, Personal Transformation, Health & Healing, Ecology/Nature/Environment