A Planet’s Pain: On Healing Climate Grief Through Ritual and Reverence

I was six years old and living in Ohio when I took my first Bharath Natyam lesson. I’d never seen anyone perform this Indian dance, so I had no frame of reference, no idea of what to expect. With wonder, I watched my teacher demonstrate the first steps—movements incomprehensible to me, but undeniably beautiful.

She struck each foot on the ground once, bent gracefully to the floor, brought her hands to her eyes, then pulled her palms to her heart.

For thousands of years, classical dance trainees have learned this introductory sequence of movements, but perhaps not its meaning. Only years later did I hear an explanation, though its larger implications escaped me at the time.

It’s an apology: Forgive me, Mother Earth. I am about to step upon you. 

I think of that sequence of movements often these days, as I tally Earth’s losses—another glacier, another hectare of rainforest, another rhino-whale-leopard, another unrepeatable piece of life.

As I grew up, I came to understand that the culture to which I belonged possessed a certain ethos, a way of existing in and relating to the planet that intimately acknowledged our impact upon it. Infused within that ethos was an understanding that humanity cannot be understood separately from its home, cannot act without acting upon that home.

A literalist might take issue with this apology—after all, where else can a human being step but on the planet? I suggest that what is being expressed by that ritual is more than apology—it is reverence.

If Earth is home, we must treat her with honor. If Earth provides the means for us to eat, drink, breathe, and live; if she is the source of our bodies and the place to which our bodies return, then we must pay attention to the way we walk upon—and steward and nurture and repair—her.

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As intriguing as I found this philosophical connection between movements and ethos, it remained theoretical until my children arrived. Perhaps not surprisingly, their presence made the ecological losses I’d been tallying throughout my adult life become immediate and vivid and visceral.

My boys loved to be outside, and they dragged me, an erstwhile homebody, out into the world. They made me breathe through my aversion to dirt and bugs and critters, made me put my hands and feet upon the planet. Their love of the outdoors urged me to do more than merely consider the beauty and majesty of Mother Earth, but rather, to place my body in her embrace.

When they held sticks in their little hands and shouted we are trees, we are trees, they indeed seemed like small basal shoots sprouting from the forest ecosystem, part and parcel of the land on which they jumped and frolicked. It was difficult not to connect harm done to the environment to harm being done to them, difficult not to trace the toxins pouring into the world to the water they would drink and the food they would eat.

I felt an urgency to show them the glaciers, rainforests, monarch butterflies—all the parts of their disappearing inheritance. But as we traveled and searched and witnessed, I couldn’t banish an ever-present ache.

As I watched them conduct a snowball fight with bits of that glacier in hand, amidst mountains and streams and multi-colored wildflowers, I could only question, will we ever see this again? I thought of the motions of apology I’d learned long ago, but what apology could compensate for so much ill treatment, so much loss?

I didn’t know what or how to name my profound regret regarding the dissipation and erosion and destruction of the world’s landscapes and biodiversity, regarding all of the lives being extinguished. I didn’t know what to call this complicated pain, infused with my anger at the entirely preventable losses, my outrage that those in power won’t do the needful, and my terror at the brewing climate disasters my children will endure.

I’ve since learned that a term exists for this complex amalgam of emotions, for this multi-layered range of feelings from sadness to fear, anger to helplessness, that so many people are experiencing during this era of the Anthropocene. Scientific and environmental communities call it ecological grief.

It is certainly not a new phenomenon. Conservationists have always responded to the rampant and reckless extraction of Earth’s resources and to the treatment of the planet as “supply cabinet and sewer,” in the words of environmentalists. I

n 1920, Charles Deam, the first state forester of Indiana, said “What of the next centennial inventory? During the century of our existence we have spent the rich endowments nature gave us. The next generations will not have our resources. Are we planning to bequeath something to the people of the next century?”

Perhaps these cries were ignored because nature’s taps never seemed to run dry. Until now, of course. As our impact becomes too pervasive, our extractions, too extensive, climate change-related suffering and displacement and damage have escalated precipitously. At a minimum we must name the psychological and emotional toll upon all of us.

Nevertheless, that naming does not help me to process the enormity of what’s occurring.

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Four years ago, my mother suddenly got sick. One day, she was healthy and vigorous, and the next, she wasn’t. Nine months later she died. Now, that loss is gradually, gradually softening, the ocean waves of grief reducing in frequency, if not intensity. I know my grief is taking its natural, human course.

But the loss of Mother Earth is not a single event like the death of a loved one—it is a continual and unrelenting and torrential stream of deaths, in pieces, in acres, in species. Its scope is gargantuan and ungraspable, and as such, the appropriate level of grief does not seem human in scale.

How do I grieve an entire planet? How do I grieve trillions of deaths and the eradication of entire species? I can’t capture what is happening in my puny mind; I can’t grieve it all within my small heart. Can you?

I think of Richard Powers’s heartbreaking novel Bewilderment, of the child character desperate to catalog the animals being lost, flailing in his father’s arms, thrashing against the inevitable.

I get it.

Even during her last days, I’d lie on my mother’s lap, for just a few moments, immobilized by sadness. We did not ignore the truth of what was happening, or deny the destination to which we were headed, but still, the little ritual provided a way to somehow withstand the chaos and to mourn. When I sat up again, I could acknowledge reality, dig in again, and do the needful.

I’ve wondered whether this is the way to manage my ecological grief as well—a way to help me mourn for a planet and its species, including humanity—by crawling into my Mother’s arms, the arms of Mother Earth. Through the pathway of ritual, could I find a structure to support me as I felt grief’s ocean waves, waves that would only become faster and more intense over the months and years?

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I’ve incorporated an ancient ritual into my morning, one I learned from family members long ago, during a visit to India. Before my feet touch the floor in the morning, I take a minute to close my eyes and speak a Sanskrit mantra: “samudravasane devi parvatastanamaṇḍale / viṣṇupatni namastubhyaṃ pādasparśaṃ kṣamasva me.” Translated, it, too, holds an apology: “O, Mother Earth, / Draped by oceans, adorned with mountains and jungles…. / Forgive me for stepping upon you with my feet.”

I’ll admit that I used to regard ritual with a touch of skepticism, wondering how people could follow so many ancient customs without fully understanding their content, and assuming those customs contained no energy, meaning, or efficacy. Over time, I became reconciled to the reasons people followed them, realizing that rituals can serve to preserve a cultural mechanism and ensure that ancient wisdom persists.

I certainly didn’t expect to embrace ritual, but I’m finally understanding that it provides a tool for me to live with consciousness, to mark the passing of my life and time deliberately. The single moment I take to sit up and speak that mantra actually holds many moments:

A moment to delay the dazed spill into my morning routine and unrelenting task list.

A moment to arrive in my body, to feel myself occupy the vehicle that carries me into the world with little complaint.

A moment to acknowledge what is important over what is urgent.

And of course, a moment of reverence to set my relationship with the planet, to remind myself that home extends beyond the four walls that shelter me, that the natural world is to be honored, respected, protected.

Incorporating this ritual into my life has led me to adopt numerous others—tiny markers that are not necessarily present in my ancestral background, but are certainly an extension of its ethos. I start my walks and hikes with a few lines of poetry about the natural world, or at least with a moment of gratitude for its gifts. Wherever I travel in the world, I make sure I place a hand on a tree for a few minutes and take in my natural surroundings.

When I start my writing sessions, I look out the window, at whatever the season is offering, which allows the natural world to weave into my scenes and sentences. In fact, the protagonist of my debut novel, 108: An Eco-Thriller, speaks the same morning mantra as I do—and that mantra unlocks a secret, both archaeological and mystical.

A relatively new ritual I’ve adopted, which also emerges from ancient knowledge, is standing barefoot on the grass for several minutes when I’m feeling stressed or distressed, particularly about environmental destruction. This grounding is an age-old practice, based on the theory that direct contact allows us to absorb Earth’s electrical charge. This absorption apparently provides certain health benefits, including warding off oxidative stress.

More than those benefits, though, I value the moments to pause and speak to Mother Earth:

I’m sorry for stepping upon you unconsciously.
I thank you for your infinite gifts.
I grieve all that is being lost, lost, lost every moment.
I will do everything in my power to protect you.

 The ocean waves still crash over me, but here in these actions, in these rituals, are walls that I can hold, that allow me to remain standing despite sorrow and heartbreak.

And sometimes, from the rustle of wind, from the warmth of sun, from the movement of leaves comes Her answer. Yes, there is so much loss. And yet there is still beauty to witness; there are words to be spoken; there are people to be reminded. Do the work.

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108: An Eco-Thriller by Dheepa R. Maturi is available via GFB.