Francis Weller (psychotherapist, bestselling author + “soul activist”) believes we have entered a “Long Dark”, a multi-decade (century?) period of collapse and psychological pain that will demand we learn to grieve deeply, messily, fully.

In this episode, I ask Francis whether grief is the missing piece of the impasse we’re at. If we finally drop into our grief, will we wake up, will we finally let ourselves move into a new way of being that ditches the destructive soul-sucking paradigms, and prioritises our aliveness? Because that’s what I think we all know we’re aching for.

Francis has worked for more than four decades, bringing together psychology, anthropology, mythology, alchemy, indigenous cultures and poetic traditions to educate communities on how to metabolise loss and grief. He’s also written a bunch of books, including The Wild Edge of Sorrow, which Anderson Cooper repeatedly raves about.

As he is famous for saying, “The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them.”

SHOW NOTES

• You might also enjoy one of my all-time favourite episodes, this one with James Hollis: The Jungian take on 2021
• I really loved this chat with death walker Stephen Jenkinson, too. It covers similar, still and deep themes.
• You can find links to grief circles run by therapists who were trained under Francis here.

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