Joanna Macy, "a pioneer in facing the emotional stress caused by climate change, who wrote books and led workshops on what became known as eco-despair or eco-anxiety," died July 19, the New York Times reported. She was 96.
Although Macy was not a psychotherapist, she was trained in religious studies and systems theory, and drew from those fields, as well as her Buddhist practice, "to propose a way past the heartbreak and hopelessness that many people feel," the Times noted, adding that "one of her fundamental insights was that what lies at the root of people's despair over the environment is a reverence for the earth's magnificence and an understanding that human beings are part of the web of life."
"You have to allow yourself to experience the love that is underneath the horror," she told the San Francisco Examiner in 1999.
"Between the beauty of this world and the knowledge of what we are doing to it came a luminous and almost unbearable grief," she wrote in World as Lover, World as Self (1991).
Her other books include A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time (2020); Coming back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work that Reconnects (2014, with Molly Brown); Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're In Without Going Crazy (2012, with Chris Johnstone); Widening Circles (2000), a memoir; and World as Lover, World as Self (1991). She also translated four books of poetry and prose by Rainer Maria Rilke, with Anita Barrows.
In 1977, Macy attended a symposium in Boston, held by the Cousteau Society, on threats to the environment. Soon after, she began leading workshops in what she called "despair work," allowing participants to explore their anxiety about the fate of the earth and, if possible, to find ways to positively channel their emotions, the Times noted.
"Pain for our world, like pain for the loss of a loved one, is a measure of caring," she wrote in Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age (1983).
Over time, Macy and other workshop leaders refined their approach, calling it "the work that reconnects" and offering a workshop that included four stages, which she referred to as a spiral: acknowledging gratitude for the world; expressing pain for the world; "seeing with fresh eyes"; and "going forth" to make a difference.
The Work That Reconnects Network, an organization founded by her followers, continues to hold online and in-person workshops based on her ideas. The Joanna Macy Center for Resilience & Regeneration at Naropa University in Boulder, Colo., where she taught environmental leadership, also spreads her philosophy.
In 2020, David Loy wrote in Tricycle magazine: "Her genius has been the ability to design transformative practices and workshops that enable participants to go beyond an intellectual understanding to an empowering embodiment."