In partnership with Concern, Friends of the Earth Ireland, the Global Diversity Foundation and Irish Aid, Feasta organised a workshop on Saturday the 30th of March, titled ‘Facing Eco-Anxiety and Building Resilience with Active Hope’, that explored how we can face eco-anxiety and build resilience with active hope.
Active Hope workshops invite a deeper awareness of our embodied and interconnected natures, and, thus, some activities involve gentle movement (such as walking). They also invite an exploration of challenging emotions, such as grief, anger, numbness, and despair, within the boundaries of a safe-enough container.
Drawing on Joanna Macy’s ‘Work that Reconnects’, Active Hope explores deepening our sense of gratitude, honouring our feelings of pain for the world and people’s suffering, seeing with new eyes or different perspectives and going forth with renewed energy and sense of purpose. Active Hope is about discovering how each of us can contribute to the healing of our world and finding the tools to help us in meeting these challenges.
Many of us are moved to act when we recognise injustice and experience grief in response to what is unfolding in our world. But how do we sustain our activism and remain hopeful as we bear witness to ecological collapse and social injustice across the world, when bad news becomes overwhelming and we struggle to balance our call to activism with other life demands?
This workshop was facilitated by Oana Sânziana Marian and Claudia Tormey.
It was co-organised by members of Feasta’s Resilience and Wellbeing Working Group.
Dandelion artwork created by Dori Midnight
