Now we get to what may be the toughest part of reckoning with our planet’s situation: dealing with numbness, grief, and despair. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the many crises around us, and natural to want to numb ourselves to the pain. 

Joanna and Jess speak with great vulnerability and candor about what it takes to navigate our darkest feelings—and the strength and beauty that can be found when we honor our pain. 

Trigger Warning: In this episode, we discuss suicide.

In this episode:

We recommend starting a podcast club with friends or family to do these practices together. Links and assets to help prompt reflection and build community can be found with every episode on WeAreTheGreatTurning.com.

This bonus episode will support you to take the main insights from Episode 4: There is No Future if We Go Numb deeper into your life. 

This bonus is a recording of Joanna leading a meditation called Breathing Through, recorded at a retreat in 2006. In it, she’ll guide you to create space to acknowledge and honor the pain for the world that you carry without numbing or getting overwhelmed. All you’ll need for this bonus exercise is a place where you can close your eyes and relax.  

We recommend starting a podcast club with friends or family to do these practices together. Links and assets to help prompt reflection and build community can be found with every episode on WeAreTheGreatTurning.com.

We recorded this conversation just after news broke of the Biden administration’s approval of the controversial Willow Project, opening up millions of wilderness acres in Alaska to new fossil fuel drilling. Jess captured in real time how Joanna processes the fresh outrage and sorrow of this insult to the planet from the very culpable powers that be. It’s a master class in being present with these feelings—feelings that can give rise to determination, courage, and recommitment to our shared purpose.

In this episode:

We recommend starting a podcast club with friends or family to do these practices together. Links and assets to help prompt reflection and build community can be found with every episode on WeAreTheGreatTurning.com. 

This bonus episode will support you to take the main insights from Episode 3, “We Begin with Gratitude,” deeper into your life. 

In Episode 3, we talked about how in the Work That Reconnects we always start with gratitude, because it gives us the strength to speak the truth and act in service of life.

Lovingkindness meditation is a simple and powerful way to feel and express our gratitude and love for our world. 

All you need to do this bonus exercise is a quiet place where you can meditate. We hope you’ll do this exercise with someone else, so that you can talk together about your experience after you finish.

We recommend starting a podcast club with friends or family to do these practices together. Links and assets to help prompt reflection and build community can be found with every episode on WeAreTheGreatTurning.com.

When things are at their darkest, what is it that “allows you to see promise and allows you to see beauty?” Joanna begins her exploration of some of the most difficult emotions and circumstances we face in a surprising place: with gratitude. This episode introduces the concept of the spiral, the basic structure of the Work That Reconnects. 

In this episode:

We recommend starting a podcast club with friends or family to do these practices together. Links and assets to help prompt reflection and build community can be found with every episode on WeAreTheGreatTurning.com. 

This bonus episode will support you to take the main insights from Episode 2, “The Three Stories of Our Time,” deeper into your life. 

In Episode 2, we talked about the three stories of our time: Business as Usual, the Great Unraveling, and the Great Turning. All three stories are true, and we can choose to give ourselves to the Great Turning—to building a more just and life-sustaining society. 

We need inspiring visions for the kind of world we want to live in that can motivate us, move us to action, and so that we know what it looks like to succeed. So, in this bonus episode, we’re going to envision, in detail, what the world might be like if the Great Turning really were the predominant story of our time.

All you need is a quiet place where you can sit and close your eyes. We hope you’ll do this exercise with someone else, so that you can talk together about your experience after you finish. It might also help to have something to write with and on. 

We recommend starting a podcast club with friends or family to do these practices together. Links and assets to help prompt reflection and build community can be found with every episode on WeAreTheGreatTurning.com. 

What’s really going on in the world right now? “Business as Usual”—a comforting narrative in which industrial growth and progress overcomes all? “The Great Unraveling” —a planet careening toward inevitable destruction? Joanna‘s work introduces a third story, “The Great Turning”—a paradigm shift on an epic scale, the creation of a just and life-sustaining society. The stakes are high, the outcome uncertain. This conversation invites you to devote yourself to the Great Turning even as you grasp the truth in all three stories. 

In this episode:

We recommend starting a podcast club with friends or family to do these practices together. Links and assets to help prompt reflection and build community can be found with every episode on WeAreTheGreatTurning.com. 

This bonus episode will support you to take the main insights from Episode 1, “Love and Loss,” deeper into your life. Jess will guide you through a simple yet profound exercise called Open Sentences where you’ll be prompted to speak from your heart. It will take about 25 minutes. 

All you’ll need is a friend and a place that is quiet enough for you to speak freely and listen carefully to one another. If that’s not possible and you want to try this alone, you can answer out loud or write the questions in a journal. 

The prompts for this exercise are:

We recommend starting a podcast club with friends or family to do these practices together. Links and assets to help prompt reflection and build community can be found with every episode on WeAreTheGreatTurning.com.

As Joanna Macy approaches the end of a long life dedicated to healing our imperiled planet, she begins the conversation with Jessica Serrante, her student and dear friend, “standing afresh with what it’s like to live on Earth at this moment.” As we look into the face of the climate crisis, injustice, and war, difficult feelings arise; all are welcomed.

You are invited to join them at Joanna’s kitchen table, and invited into a deeper sense of your belonging and love for our world.

In this episode:

We recommend starting a podcast club with friends or family to do these practices together. Links and assets to help prompt reflection and build community can be found with every episode on WeAreTheGreatTurning.com.

We welcome you to the kitchen table of the legendary eco-spiritual teacher Joanna Macy, where we’ll dive into what it takes to live with our hearts and integrity intact in this time of global crisis. You’ll be guided into these conversations by Jess Serrante, a longtime activist and student of Joanna’s. Together, we’ll discover abiding wisdom that can help us stay joyful and energized as we work toward a more just and life-sustaining world.

Join us on April 22 for the first of 10 episodes of this powerful and transformative new podcast.