Welcome to the Collective

Written By Anya .

I wanted to use this space to introduce myself further and my ideas for the EcoMind Collective. My name is Anya, and I am an environmental humanities student in university. I have been in the climate activism space for most of my life, and throughout that time, I have often experienced intense anxiety about the state of the planet. I’ve watched firsthand as the environment has changed in my home state of Washington. From increasingly hot summers to lessening salmon numbers at our local spawning site, signs of the environment’s changing conditions are everywhere.

It sometimes feels so demoralizing to continue fighting to protect our planet when so many factors seem intent on destroying it. It feels like there are so many forces trying to take away my power, and I struggle to fight against feelings of hopelessness about the state of the world. However, I know that feelings of anxiety in response to the climate crisis make us less likely to take collective action toward change (Stanley, 2021). I often feel frozen by my climate anxiety, feeling like any action I take will ultimately not make a difference, and stuck in a spiral of worries. This spiral prevents me from feeling capable and motivated to do the important work of advocating for environmental protection or even just making my own lifestyle more eco-friendly.

However, with the state of the world right now and the inaction of government bodies, it seems like climate change will only continue to worsen. So my question is, how do I continue to navigate eco-anxiety under these circumstances? How do I continue to keep hope alive when everything feels so heavy? I want to explore these questions through this space and share my journey as I try to find a way to navigate through ecoanxiety.

This summer, I will be looking into the relationship between eco-anxiety and mindfulness. Can mindfulness be used as a tool to help navigate through eco-anxiety and even spark climate action by moving from climate anxiety to hope? I will be exploring this question over the summer as I travel to different mindfulness retreats and eco villages. I will be learning about how mindfulness practices can shift our relationship to the earth and how living mindfully can help me to be a better climate advocate. I will be asking the people I encounter about how their own relationship with the earth has changed through mindful living and how hopeful they feel about the future of the planet.

I want to document my experiences here for my own digital record and as a way of sharing my journey with other people who are struggling with the same feelings. I also want to open up this space to share the stories of other people on their own journey of navigating ecoanxiety. If you want to share what you’ve learned or just where you are, I would love to hear your story. Your story doesn’t have to be an article! Art pieces, music (share those curated playlists!), videos, poems, resources, or anything else you want to share is welcome!

I want this to be a place to create community over our shared experience because coming together and leaning on each other is more important now than ever.

I hope you join me on this journey.

-Anya











Source:

Stanley, S. K., Hogg, T. L., Leviston, Z., & Walker, I. (2021). From anger to action: Differential impacts of eco-anxiety, eco-depression, and eco-anger on climate action and wellbeing. The Journal of Climate Change and Health, 1, 100003. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joclim.2021.100003





















Anya .