Grief I Can’t Contain
I came home from my run last week to find a crew massacring the greenspace just beyond my back yard. I wish there was another word, less harsh and criminal sounding, but alas this is the only one that fits for this level of destruction. Chainsaws buzzed the whole morning, a tractor rolled in, and men in big boots clomped around what once was a tiny neighborhood sanctuary. There was no respect or admiration, no invitation, just an aggressive, violent flattening of a once flourishing ecosystem.
Every night I fall asleep to frogs singing out a lullaby from the marshy pond.
Every morning I wake to a million birds declaring their joy from the leafy branches.
In the afternoon, deer nestle down for a nap in the shade.
Now, I sense the loss, the stillness, the death.
A secret haven for the untamed part of my city, and my soul swept away in a pile of sawdust.
If I sound dramatic, good. I want it to be. I think we can all afford to be a bit more dramatic these days when it comes to our planet.
A week has passed now; my eyes haven’t dried up. My heart feels tender and full of rage every time I look out my windows or wander through my garden. I’m writing this fresh, the wound still bleeding. And I don’t ever want to stop feeling this way—so in tune with the earth. I want to hold her, nurture her, protect her. I thought I was doing the necessary work already, but witnessing this brutal clearing, along with my children beside me, has opened me up to a different level of grief.
Grief I can’t contain. It wants to take up space. And I want to let it in.
I wrote to the Public Works Department, not once, but three times asking, begging, for an explanation beyond the robotic one I kept receiving. Something along the lines of this being protocol for a stormwater area. I couldn’t stomach it. I sent pictures and video and never felt heard, not once. I was just an emotional, sensitive, sad woman.
As of early April, we are in the middle of another officially declared drought in Washington State. The fourth consecutive one. My climate anxiety is high, and it’s not even summer yet. I haven’t been able to sleep because my house is so hot, even with my bedroom door open through the night. I know this is nothing compared to what others are experiencing, but still…
The kids have thrown off blankets mid-spring. I want to be happy about pink blossoms and tiny green shoots, but my body intuits the climate is changing. I’m done damning my tears.
It was difficult to be at home this week. My biggest windows look out over the fresh decimation. I fell flat with the trees. The noise of their cracking and crying made me hold my breath, hand to my chest. And all this in the midst of starting a garden. Sowing wildflower seeds and snap peas, making space for native plants, calling in the butterflies and bees, wanting, willing, this earth to flourish despite my heavy footprints and human-centric ideas of care.
My little backyard holds the scars, the permanent proof that unbearable grief and bountiful gardens might be the only concoction strong enough to heal our earth.
Books You Must Read:
Little Apocalypses: Essays on Motherhood, Climate Change, and Hope at the End of the World by my friend Kaity Teer
Climate Wayfinding: Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home by Katharine K. Wilkinson
Heartwood: The Wisdom and Healing Kinship of Trees by Lindsay Branham
