Abstract
Environmental crises caused by our changing global environment evoke intense and difficult emotions, particularly the paralysis that often results from despair. Understanding how people who are deeply engaged in environmental activism deal with their emotions can help in emotionally equipping people to address the climate crisis. Ecofeminist spirituality directly addresses these issues through an environmental stewardship that offers hope and healing for the world. This study includes 14 interviews with workers at an ecojustice center founded by an order of Catholic sisters in the United States. We used thematic analysis to identify three main themes that collectively describe the participants’ perspectives on (a) experiences of difficult feelings, (b) strategies for coping with those feelings, and (c) perspectives on cultivating hope. Participants shared how they were able to cope with difficult emotions and cultivate hope that the work they are doing matters, which was essential to sustaining their ecojustice work. As social workers respond to the changing environment, understanding how to sustain environmental work at the macro-level is essential to addressing largescale problems while also attending to difficult emotions at the microlevel. Further implications for social work practice include the importance of intergenerational organizing, living in “right relationship,” incorporating spirituality, and reinhabiting the profession.
Keywords
Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. In short, I think that the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us to good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimensions of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from “elsewhere.” It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.
Introduction
In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released yet another report that shows the increasingly dangerous impacts of the climate crisis. We are already seeing the effects of 1 °C of global warming including more extreme weather and rising sea levels, and the IPCC (2018) outlines the need to take drastic and immediate action to limit warming to the goal of 2 °C that the world agreed upon to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. The United States and the world have experienced an increase in natural disasters that are worsened by climate change, with media coverage from the wildfires on the West Coast of the United States looking truly apocalyptic (Hart, 2020). In 2017, just prior to his death, theoretical physicist and futurist, Stephen Hawking, issued a stern warning to humanity on the need to escape Earth and colonize other planets to have any hope of surviving as a species, given current environmental and other risks (Barclay, 2018).
Ecofeminism, a theory and practice that combines ecological and feminist concerns, stands in opposition to the impulse to constantly seek new frontiers (and beings to subjugate) to escape the problems that some humans have created (Mies & Shiva, 2014). Where techno-fantasies, such as colonizing other planets, are futuristic, ecofeminism is “an ancient wisdom” (Mies & Shiva, 2014, p. 13). Where techno-fantasies assume separation, ecofeminism assumes “connectedness and wholeness of theory and practice” (Mies & Shiva, 2014, p. 14). Ecofeminism looks at the interconnections of subjugations: of the planet, of women, and of colonized people everywhere (Ruether, 1992).
Catholic sisters have been at the forefront of environmental movements in the United States (Evancie, 2013), and some have developed a religiously inspired Earth care that locates spiritual practice in the natural world and that calls for eco-justice—that is, justice not just for all humans but also for all beings. Their approach to Earth care is sometimes referred to as “reinhabitation,” meaning that: instead of ‘moving on’ from land where damage or harm has been inflicted on the living systems of the planet, one instead ‘digs in,’ commits to stay in place, and resolves to work to create more sustainable and healing ways to live in that place. The antithesis of reinhabitation is moving on to pioneer and claim new land elsewhere. One who practices reinhabitation commits to stay ‘home’ and heal the damage in her own backyard (Taylor, 2007, p. 329).
Literature Review
Ecofeminist Spirituality and Eco-Justice
Ecofeminism
Klemmer and McNamara (2019) provide a comprehensive overview of the theoretical origins of ecofeminism and its promise for social work in addressing the climate crisis, so we focus specifically on the practice of ecofeminism, particularly related to religious and spiritual practices. Although ecofeminism is a diverse movement, it presupposes that: Social transformation is necessary for ecological survival, that intellectual transformation of dominant modes of thought must accompany social transformation, that nature teaches nondualistic and nonhierarchical systems of relation that are models for social transformation of values, and that human and cultural diversity are values in social transformation (Howell, 1997, p. 231).
Ecofeminist spirituality
There are a variety of spiritual and religious traditions represented within ecofeminist thought (Howell, 1997; Ruether, 1992). Feminist social work practitioners recognize the importance of embracing spirituality in working holistically, uplifting marginalized knowledges, and embracing diversity (Coholic, 2003). Within Christianity, feminist Catholic theologians have been influential in developing an ecofeminist spirituality. Ruether (1992, 1995) has been particularly prolific in developing this theology and has both been shaped by Catholic sisters and has shaped them. Ruether (1995) excavates Western history and thought to develop a feminist theology that provides healing not just for the Earth but also for ourselves. For Catholic ecofeminists, supposedly theologically ordained domination of nature by humans is not only tied to domination of women by men but also to racial, imperial, and colonial domination (Ruether, 1992).
Catholic sisters have long been progressive vanguards of the Church, taking direct action to oppose nuclear weaponry, wars, and to protect the rights of vulnerable people, often in direct opposition to the directives of the patriarchal power structure (Evancie, 2013; Gervais & Turenne Sjolander, 2015; Taylor, 2007). The stereotype of the obedient and demure nun—a term most do not use, preferring sisters or women religious—likely describes some sisters, but others are just as likely to have chosen a religious life to pursue their passions and live a life of relative freedom (Evancie, 2013; Gervais & Turenne Sjolander, 2015). The patriarchal hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church has responded to the social justice activism and feminism of some Catholic sisters in the United States by investigating them and attempting “to compel them to realign their religious practices with those sanctioned by the Church” (Gervais & Turenne Sjolander, 2015, p. 369). However, in response to calls for obedience to patriarchal control, one 84-year-old Canadian sister simply stated, “I do what I want” (Gervais & Turenne Sjolander, 2015, p. 385). Many Catholic sisters have found freedom in being a part of women religious community, with one 74-year-old Canadian sister describing their community as “indomitable, really,” and see their work for justice and for a feminist spirituality as essential for the Church to continue into the future (Gervais & Turenne Sjolander, 2015, p. 393).
Catholic sisters have been particularly influential in developing an ecofeminist spirituality that simultaneously “reinhabits” their religious tradition and invites people outside of that tradition into their practice (Taylor, 2007). In addition to the more explicit environmental justice work that women religious have done for decades, they have also been fundamental in transforming agriculture back into a life-sustaining practice, including the creation of one of the first community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs in the United States (Evancie, 2013). In contrast to the ecofeminist theorizing of intellectual and theological spheres, Catholic sisters are primarily focused on ecofeminist practice, the “doing,” as Taylor (1999, p. 401) articulates: For green nuns, the process of reinhabitation of both religious tradition and physical landscape is not something that is merely philosophized but rather worked out on a daily basis. Through sacred homemaking, contemplative gardening, prayer, art, meditation, worship, and local activism, the aim of these nuns has been to move out of discussion and into practice. In the work of reinhabiting, green nuns affirm Albert Camus’ observation that ‘sense of place is not just something that people know and feel, it is something people do.’
Thus, while ecospirituality comes out of a Christian tradition, it runs counter to dominant Christianity in focusing on the Earth as the site of spirituality rather than human-built sacred places: Ecospirituality is not atheistic in the sense of anti-religious, for it locates religious and spiritual significance in the earth. It has a strongly anti-humanistic bent, not in the sense that it is anti-human, but in its steadfast opposition to the anthropocentrism that sees humans as of ultimate significance and that thinks human life has meaning apart from its context as one expression of the earth’s creative energies (Hettinger, 1995, p. 84).
Eco-justice
Ecological justice includes a focus on environmental disparities affecting humans, but it differs from environmental justice in that it expands the focus beyond humans. Rather, the focus is on “justice for the ecosystem as a whole with the understanding that humans are only one part of this ecosystem. If the ecosystem collapses, humans may not survive” (Rambaree et al., 2019, p. 205). Eco-justice practitioners take an intersectional approach because they see all the various oppressions—of humans, other species, and the earth—as being interconnected and inseparable (Bohannon & O’Brien, 2011).
Emotions and the Climate Crisis
While environmental justice generally focuses on the victims of global inequality, sociologist Kari Norgaard (2011) examines why white, middle-class people in wealthy nations are so willing to live in denial about climate change, including many who are well-informed and well-intentioned on the issue. What she finds is that the emotions that climate change provokes, feelings of despair and powerlessness, shut down engagement with the issue for people who get to choose whether or not to engage (i.e., are not losing their homelands to rising sea levels). This is even though privileged people in wealthy nations have relatively more power to influence the political and economic systems that are causing the problem. Further, these people do not currently face traumatic conditions that lead to despair but rather anticipate these conditions for themselves or their descendants. Norgaard (2011) finds that living in denial is socially organized, which is part of what makes it so difficult for individuals to break through this denial. To do so violates cultural norms.
Brulle and Norgaard (2019) further argue that climate change represents a potential cultural trauma, defined as “a social process that involves the systematic disruption of the cultural basis of a social order” (p. 9) which causes people to question their daily routines, the behaviors of trusted institutions, and even core beliefs. Collectively, fear of such profound disruption creates a social inertia that prevents us from properly addressing climate change (Brulle & Norgaard, 2019). To enact social change, people first need to confront the fear of cultural trauma and move through the social inertia that it causes (Brulle & Norgaard, 2019). However, mental health practices designed to help people cope with such trauma often work against acknowledging the gravity of the situation and moving people toward collective action (Norgaard, 2011). It is in this context that understanding individuals, who are not on the front lines of climate change, but are nonetheless able to break through denial, becomes so important.
Clinical practitioners help people who struggle with anxiety and other mental health issues to manage the difficult emotions that such issues cause. However, focusing solely on managing the emotions that the environmental crisis provokes can be counterproductive to eliciting the broad collective action needed to effectively confront the crisis (Milton, 2008). As Milton (2008) articulates, managing a strong emotion such as fear regarding the environment is a necessary, but by no means sufficient response to the crisis: When the things we fear are genuinely dangerous, and statistically probable, fear management is a potentially disastrous strategy to use on its own—we need, as well, to deal with the external threat, by avoiding it or eliminating it. There is another circumstance in which we might be inclined to opt for fear management rather than addressing the danger: when what we fear is so big or complex that it makes us feel helpless. In this situation, we manage our fear because we cannot envisage managing the threat (p. 75).
Instead, people can work through their fear by finding ways to take action to address the crisis as a way of coping with it and reasserting their own agency (Milton, 2008; Norgaard, 2011; Ryan, 2016). Emotions are often antecedents to behaviors (Schneider et al., 2017), and thus understanding them is an important part of enacting change on a broader level and bringing more people into conscious awareness (Lu & Schuldt, 2015). “Improving the psychological health of individuals and their sense of connectedness to nature” is part of the transition to a “sustainable society” (Orr, 2008, p. 821), including part of moving through social inertia (Woodbury, 2015).
To fully confront climate change and the cultural trauma that stems from it, a grieving process must take place on a cultural level that allows us to mourn what we have already lost and accept not just what has happened, but the uncertainty and anticipation of what losses are to come (Woodbury, 2015). Pike (2016, p. 420) suggests that “grief is a central motivating factor in conversion and commitment to activism. It is both an expression of deeply felt kinship bonds with other species and a significant factor in creating those bonds.” Grieving allows us to move through the difficult emotions that prevent us from taking action and allows us to reconnect with nature, a vital step in coming to acceptance (Woodbury, 2015). Since climate change is a cultural trauma, grieving is unavoidable and doing so collectively and intergenerationally will be more effective than doing so individually (George et al., 2011; Ryan, 2016; Woodbury, 2015). One study showed that collectively processing emotions enabled participants to “overcome feelings of skepticism and fear,” “move through previous socio-political impasses,” and “imagine new adaptation strategies,” which enabled the community to build resilience for future events (Ryan, 2016, p. 11). Processing climate change as a community can create “trust in one’s own capability (agency),” “trust in other societal actors doing their part,” and “a kind of existential trust in humanity” (Ojala, 2016, p. 50) that ultimately helps in overcoming social inertia.
Trying to enact change individually often leads to feelings of despair and grief, but working together collectively can create trust and inspire more nourishing emotions such as hope (Ojala, 2016) and compassion (Lu & Schuldt, 2016). Furthermore, hope is a critical emotion that “keeps open a space for agency” (McKinnon, 2014, p. 45). Macy and Johnstone (2012) argue that while a false sense of security that everything will be okay is dangerous, the intentional practice of hope is essential to taking action: Like tai chi or gardening, [hope] is something we do rather than have. It is a process we can apply to any situation, and it involves three key steps. First, we take a clear view of reality; second, we identify what we hope for in terms of the direction we’d like things to move in or the values we’d like to see expressed; and third, we take steps to move ourselves and our situation in that direction (p. 3).
Rationale for Research
Klemmer and McNamara (2019) called for the Grand Challenge on the changing global environment to include an ecofeminist lens, but argue that thus far, this has primarily focused on ecofeminism as ways of thinking, rather than ways of doing. In this study, we interviewed a group of people who are using a specific ecofeminist lens—a religiously inspired ecofeminist spirituality focused on eco-justice—to take action on behalf of all creation. For people who are not currently on the frontlines of climate change, and thus have a choice about whether or not to engage, a barrier to taking action is the intense, difficult emotions that come when facing up to the seriousness of the crises, particularly a paralysis that often results from despair. Cultivating hope for a better climate future is central to achieving that future. However, to do so, hope must be based in action, rather than simply a strategy to manage difficult emotions. Ecofeminist spirituality directly addresses these issues through a form of environmental stewardship that offers hope and healing for the world. Better understanding how people who are deeply engaged in this form of activism deal with their emotions could be essential in understanding how social workers can help to emotionally equip people to address the climate crisis.
In this study, we use thematic analysis to learn from the experiences of people who are doing eco-justice work from an ecofeminist lens, answering the following research question: What does an ecofeminist spiritual approach lend to fortifying the emotional work needed to confront the climate crisis? We use an inductive and flexible analytic approach to understand participants’ experiences. More broadly, this project is part of a research agenda concerned with finding the cultural and spiritual sustenance that is necessary to effectively confront the climate crisis (Bell et al., 2019; Dennis & Bell, 2020). Given that climate change represents a cultural trauma that causes socially organized denial and inertia (Brulle & Norgaard, 2019; Norgaard, 2011), we want to understand how people can collectively equip themselves and others to break through such powerful social forces. In order to do so effectively, we recognize that people need to go beyond individual sources of strength and resilience to larger collective survival strategies (CSS) that communities have long used to care for and protect each other (Bell et al., 2019). Our previous work has focused specifically on how social workers can support marginalized communities in finding cultural nourishment by harnessing the CSS of their ancestors to survive the climate crisis (Bell et al., 2019). We have also explored how social workers can act in solidarity with the water protection work of Indigenous women in the United States and Canada, who have cultural and spiritual reciprocal responsibilities to the natural world (Dennis & Bell, 2020). In this study, on how an ecofeminist spiritual approach may help emotionally resource people in confronting the climate crisis, we are hoping to better understand how to find such nourishment on a more microlevel and within a tradition that shares a cultural and spiritual base with mainstream social work in the United States, as a field dominated by white Christian women.
Methods
Research Setting and Data Collection
The eco-justice center wherein this research took place is in the rural Midwestern United States. The center was founded in the 1990s by an order of Roman Catholic sisters who wanted to develop a mission focused on Earth stewardship that was aligned with their theology of offering hope and healing for the world. The work of converting their 1000+ acres of land from conventional farm land to restored forest, wetlands, orchards, and an organic, regenerative farm was in many ways returning to their prewar roots as a self-sufficient community that lived sustainably off the land that they stewarded. To further increase the ecological and financial sustainability of their new mission, they brought fiber animals, poultry, and honeybees to the center. These animals are gentle on the land and provide a number of natural services: mowing, producing abundant fertilizer through their manure, pollinating the fruits and vegetables, and providing wool, eggs, and honey as a source of revenue for the mission. The vegetables and fruit grown on the farm are used both in the dining halls of the residences and sold to the local community through a CSA program and farmer’s market. It should be noted that the financial sustainability of missions run by Catholic sisters is a concern as women religious orders in the United States face a severe demographic problem. With the average age of a Catholic sister at 74 (Winerip, 2012), orders face significant health care costs associated with aging without a younger generation providing income sufficient to offset those costs. In addition to regenerative agriculture and land restoration, the center provides eco-justice education and leads environmental advocacy work.
This research took place in 2014, while I (Finn McLafferty Bell) took part in a 3-month residential internship, wherein I was provided lodging with the sisters and one meal per workday as well as a stipend of $100 per month. I spent 576 hours volunteering at the center, and my responsibilities included weeding, planting, harvesting, preparing CSA orders, preserving food, working the stall at the farmers’ market, earth stewardship education, and caring for animals on the farm. In applying for the internship and throughout my time at the center, I continually disclosed my intent to conduct research. The center staff, interns, and volunteers were enthusiastic about supporting my research and sharing their perspectives. The center’s leadership worked with me to develop a research project that was beneficial to the center and advanced the scholarship on emotions and the environmental crisis. As a community-based participatory researcher (CBPR), ensuring that my work is materially and intellectually beneficial to communities on the ground is paramount. While people at the center had suggestions for questions that they thought would be helpful to include in the interviews, they did not restrict any questions that I wanted to ask or in any way limit the range of issues that I explored. We agreed that I would present my initial findings back to the community and that they could use any insights or materials that came from the research in evaluating and improving their educational programming. Although this research does not involve an ethnographic component, being immersed in the work of the center and the lives of the people who do the work provides rich contextual considerations to what was shared during the interviews.
I (Finn McLafferty Bell) conducted semi-structured interviews with 14 people who worked for, interned at, or volunteered with the center. I used purposive sampling to recruit participants through their affiliation with the center, and there were only two people who met the criteria who were unwilling or unavailable for an interview. Informed consent was given by each participant, and ethics approval was obtained by the appropriate university ethics committee. Interviews took place in private rooms at the center or residence during work and nonwork hours in August 2014. The participants were asked questions such as: “What have been pivotal moments for you in waking up to environmental issues? Have those intersected with spiritual or religious beliefs or awakenings? If so, how?” and “What kind of emotions do you experience regarding environmental issues? How do you cope with emotions that are difficult for you?” The shortest interview was 17 minutes, and the longest interview was 46 minutes. Participants consented to digitally record the interviews, and they were transcribed by research assistants. The participants predominantly identified as cisgender women, with only three of the 14 identifying as cisgender men. All but two of the interviewees were white. Three interviewees were Catholic women religious, two were associate members of a women religious order, and the rest were lay people with no affiliation to a religious order. The average age of participants was 44, with the oldest interviewee born in 1931, and the youngest in 1993.
Analysis
We used thematic analysis to identify, analyze, and report themes from the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). We chose this flexible and accessible method to allow the experiences of the participants to be centered and used an inductive approach to identifying themes. After each interview, I (Finn McLafferty Bell) took reflexive notes on the interview, assessing the interview and the information shared by each participant, including their affect at different points of the interview. Throughout the data collection process, I took notes on how the interviews were unfolding, including my own reactions to them, and used these notes to develop our initial descriptive codes, as well as to develop further areas to explore. I presented these initial descriptive codes (such as emotions, coping, and generational differences) and proposed areas to explore back to the community during a staff meeting to ensure their accuracy and salience. After transcribing the data, we (all Authors) read them multiple times and examined the initial codes that had been presented to the community, dropping some codes that the community identified as less salient and that did not show a systematic pattern in the data, including generational differences (Braun & Clarke, 2006). We each coded the data separately, and then compared coding, discussing our perspectives, which we used to further refine our themes. We sorted the coded data into broader themes and defined the themes, including how they fit into a broader understanding of emotions and work to address the environmental crisis. We took a collaborative rather than consensus-based approach to coding, focusing on creating an iterative process of coding rather than numerically measuring inter-rater reliability, and we used the coding from each author in this manuscript. Because the process was iterative and collaborative, we did not have places in which we interpreted the coding of themes in significantly different ways.
Findings
We identified three main themes that collectively describe the participants’ perspectives on their environmental work. These themes include (a) experiences of difficult feelings; (b) strategies for coping, including taking action, finding community, and practicing spirituality; and (c) perspectives on cultivating hope. The themes are described in detail below, along with illustrative quotations edited to remove utterances such as “um” and “you know” for readability and clarity.
Experiences of Difficult Feelings
The participants offered insight into their emotions related to environmental issues. Many experienced a range of difficult feelings, with every participant mentioning struggling with feelings of despair. One participant stated simply in relation to the feelings she experiences, “Probably the gamut. I’m super emotional, so I mean I get frustrated, enraged, sad” (P12, age 37). Similarly, a participant shared, “Anger. Resignation. Despair. (Laughter) yeah…there’s a complete disconnect from…the government and science, and what’s going on and what needs to be done…and I feel powerless” (P01, age 44). Another participant pointed to the effect of social systems as well, stating: There is a sense of being alienated from the sort of systems that created the whole issue of climate change, that it’s such a big issue and…‘What does my tiny little self do?’ so there is some anxiety and despair that can come from that. How do…we make changes in the political systems…I mean let alone the planet, the state of the planet just feels overwhelming (P04, age 34).
A younger participant shared her feelings on the magnitude of environmental issues: I feel anger. I feel frustration. Less recently but definitely despair…Sometimes I feel hopeful and optimistic. Most of the time though, these days…sometimes I feel like I’m overwhelmed or on overload. I can’t handle more information about that right now (P05, age 32). Stress…We got to get to those people. Not all of them are gonna care, but there will be some who care. So, it stresses me out sometimes because it feels like such an overwhelming…task…I have to tell myself…step by step. Baby steps…If you can just do one thing…I just have to come down off my stress cloud (P13, age 43). I think mostly, I just think it’s sad. Just that people aren’t aware of the Earth that they live on…cities literally cover the Earth with their own materials…cement, asphalt, whatever it may be, especially like subways and stuff (P02, age 25). Frustration, anger, sadness, worry, and occasionally when you see things working and things changing and you get that moment of happiness and excitement and hope. I don’t mean to sound so negative, but I would say that that’s usually a ten to one ratio…in honesty it’s some of the more frustration and anger that overwhelms me when I really think about the issue and how much work is still left to be done (P07, age 37).
Strategies for Coping
The participants offered insights into their coping strategies which primarily included taking action, finding community, and practicing spirituality.
Taking action
The participants in the study were actively contributing to the eco-justice work of the center, and many of them mentioned that focusing on this work was a key coping strategy. One woman stated simply, “And my response to that is to work harder, to achieve balance on the other end” (P08, age 54). Similarly, another person offered views on his own contributions: By just believing that I’m doing what I can do and that’s all that I can do. Through example, hard work, that I can make the biggest impact that I can, and, hopefully, that will reflect onto other people and they will start to find value in the same things, same activities, and same sort of lifestyle…I’d say for me it’s just taking action (P03, age 23). I think by being more aware of my own personal actions and being aware of what I personally can do. That’s the best way I can cope with it just because I don’t have control over anyone else, so I just do what I personally can (P02, age 25). …Just thinking about solutions…and you know, being practical after the cynicism wears off. And trying to do something about it. I guess taking action. I mean I could feel something but then…it won’t do much unless I act upon it, unless I do something about it…I just have this sudden feeling that I can’t be hopelessly in despair if I could at least do something about it…I don’t know exactly what it is, because I’m still trying to find what it is I could do in terms of environmental issues…but I sure want to help do something (P14, age 21). And then sometimes I feel like most of the day-to-day is…resignation…I know it’s shitty but I’ve got to get these 600 pounds of potatoes in the ground right now or I know that’s really bad but I have to focus on what I have to do every day to just keep this little patch of land going and keep these 47 projects going (P05, age 32). If I find that something is really reaching me in a hard form or shape, I try to understand it, I try to get to the root of it, to find out what it is, and how it involves life. And if I can understand that, I can relate to it, maybe accept it, so it all boils down to educating yourself to what’s necessary for life to exist (P10, age 83). …Working here…last year, I was a part of a reading group…that felt very positive…it stopped me thinking so negatively and made me feel like a part of the group that thinks of these things and cares…having a garden at home, and animals at home…And working on…trying not to be a conventional farm in my own farm…(P01, age 44).
Finding community
The participants work together at the center to contribute to diverse goals and learning opportunities. One sister offered insights about how she draws spiritual strength from the human and more-than-human community: …More people are waking up and realizing so many forms of life that we sorta didn’t pay that much attention to before, such as creation, water, trees, soil…these things that are becoming more a part of us, and I think with the number of people who are waking to these realities, then we join forces, then there’s nothing like a great life-giving force to spur you on. Plus, the fact that we’re not in it by ourselves, we’re in it with many who feel the same way, so support grouping is a wonderful thing to have because without it, there’s not much to be done. So, the forces are with us and we’re with the forces (P10, age 83). …It’s really hard for me to express in words the way I feel…here and around these people and talking about things, researching things. Being a part of it and in between times scooping poop and giving talks and…you do all of the normal have-to-do stuff and then doing the thinking stuff or the teaching stuff. I love it here. Being around smart people, I learn a lot. Instead of being one of those people who goes to work and watching the news to hear about how awesome the pipeline is because it’s giving so many jobs…They don’t say any of the bad things though. We’re like Robin Hood (P13, age 43). …Seeing the vegetables…we planted blooming, seeing the extra effort being made so that we’re using all organic produce, seeing those documentaries, and I’ve watched a couple other TED talks on people starting their own projects in their own towns. And so, I definitely think it’s there. Especially, what really strikes me, those projects involving low income families because I think that’s where it can start, and I think it’s where it can create the most benefit…that work of growing their own food and working in coherence with their environment because they have to at this point (P03, age 23). Seeing other people being interested in the same things…or seeing actions that have taken place in history and have made a change…It starts locally too within communities, of actually caring about what you do to the Earth and what you do to the ecosystem, that makes a huge change. Localism coupled with environmentalism…It helps me realize that we’re not hopelessly doomed if more than just one person…thinks…not exactly the same way about environmental issues, but…actually cares about what’s going on (P14, age 21). Most of my effort…is spent in very local, very sort of hands-on personal things, because I know those are places I can make change. You know the co-op is a very good example. The co-op is one of the few things that I can see that can make a real sort of systemic change in our city…And the idea that, as an individual and a few other individuals working together, we can do something like that. It reminds me…that all the systems in a lot of ways that have failed or will fail…they might not matter so much as long as things like the smaller local scale projects can come together, so…I spend my effort there (P09, age 39).
Practicing spirituality
Spirituality for the participants in this study ranges from formal Christian practices to mindfulness to Earth-based practices. One woman shared about how Earth-based spirituality helps to ground her, stating, “Oh and celebrating the solstice and the equinoxes…I guess they make me feel more present. And in the moment instead of looking at the big picture…” (P01, age 44). A more mindful and present awareness was also expressed by a sister in the following: I eat brownies. I don’t know, I think that you just do the best that you can. Having the support of other people who are like-minded is important, getting out in the natural world and taking a deep breath. Healing, the universe is self-healing, letting go of all of the emotion and just letting it be, allowing that to be a healing force (P06 age 69). “I seek spirituality in nature, in the world around me, so I think that very lens helps to create a reverence to think that you are part of something and not necessarily dominant over it, I think gives you a wider view of the importance of all things in nature (P08, age 54). The emotion that stirs all other emotions is a real kinship with the elements of earth. Soil, the air, trees, and plants. If you consider them as other forms of life, then you connect with them. And I feel a direct personal kinship, to all of these elements…If you listen really closely, you can understand the language of the soil, of the earth, of the trees. They do speak, and you have to learn the language as well as you have to learn the language of any other country. And once you do, then you really can’t release that relationship between yourself and the Earth (P10, age 83). Keeping in touch with people who are making a positive difference, keeping in touch with beauty, and definitely prayer. There has to be a balance in those things or you can’t keep going…When we began to learn the universe story and a lot more about issues and interdependence, interconnectedness, and how the American way of living was impacting the world…[it] burst the bubble of spirituality and theology…It was like opening up a whole new world. It’s been challenging, but it’s been…so life-giving (P11, age 74). I feel like I have a relationship with God but I can’t just sit there and ask him “Is that what we’re supposed to be doing?” It’s like…are you just kind of sitting back and trying to intervene? I don’t know. It’s really hard. Most everything that I probably do, I’m trying to think of in terms of spirituality. I tend to think, “Would she approve of what I’m doing?”…At this point, nobody’s perfect, but I think that helps shape my actions a lot (P13, age 43). I think ultimately it’s my deep reverence for the natural world that fuels much of what I do. So, I don’t always think of it in terms of God with a capital G or even anything that would be directly linked to a faith practice. But I’m pretty sure those two things are connected on some facet, I’m just not sure to what extent. And I’m not 100% sure that I know what I believe in…but one thing that I feel is that there is some kind of…(pause) order to things that does…feel divine and it does feel like too much to be coincidental…(P05, age 32).
Perspectives on Cultivating Hope
Participants shared how finding meaning in their work provides motivation to continue it. When discussing difficult aspects of environmental issues, participants would often mention the nuanced ways that they experience hope. Despite the magnitude of environmental problems, one sister found inspiration in others: “On the other hand, seeing all of the positive things of what people are doing. Trying to facilitate the good while also having passion for the problems that are plaguing us everywhere” (P06, age 69). Similarly, in reflecting on the center’s work, a participant shared simply, “I get hopeful sometimes” (P12, age 37). A focus on the role of agency in sustaining hope was shared by the following participant: …I don’t know if there’s a hope that everything is going to be okay, but I think what moves me forward is that any small difference that I can do matters. You know it’s…riding my bike, I might be the only one on the road, but I am one. That whole mindset. And I think that there’s hope in that (P04, age 34). …Just because I personally do not feel hope does not mean that there isn’t hope to be had. Honestly, it might just be inaccessible to me, and clearly there are other people in the world who do experience hope and equally clearly, their actions often work…I want to find a way to facilitate for people who genuinely feel hope, and people who genuinely feel that there are ways forward, to find, to get information, to learn, to find ways of coming together, and do those things. And to keep myself out of it enough that I don’t damage those processes. Because I think I would. And then if you genuinely feel hope, and you can genuinely work together…those people probably change the world in a way in which I just can’t. So I want to facilitate that, and stay the hell out of their way (P09, age 39). …I just get shit done and try to focus on what I am able to do…When I am able to stay focused in putting one foot in front of the other and then I can…step back a little bit and realize that, however many, a dozen a year, people come through here as interns…and I work with a good number of them. I feel like what gives me a little bit of hope and keeps me going is the sake that these are people, often young, who are looking to me for guidance on these things…and if I am a jaded, resigned, angry person, then what kind of message am I sending?…I don’t think that’s necessarily very helpful or hopeful for the future, so I think by just staying focused on the work I am doing here—we are all doing here—that it is good work and it feels like a drop in the bucket and it doesn’t feel like enough, but it’s something. That helps me (P05, age 32).
Locating the center’s work in historical context and a broader social movement was also key to cultivating hope. One sister offered, I’d like to see a world that’s better…I think this movement has been around for a long time, hopefully as more people experience disasters, more people will wake up to the reality so…I’m not completely without hope…(P11, age 74). I think it is a little bit of what I had just mentioned about having young people come through here. And not just young people…See that’s super helpful to me too, if we’ve got people who are coming through and doing internships…to learn what they can and to make commitments and whatever extent to make some changes for good in their own lives is hopeful…But I would think, okay, if I’m planting a seed in there and maybe the seed hangs out dormant for however many years, but maybe someone or something will come along and water it at some point. I think that’s the most hopeful thing, is that I’m in a role of—we are all in a role of—trying to educate and that’s good (P05, age 32). It’s little things. It’s like when I see my friends recycling when they didn’t used to…I do have a friend who’s like that, and he inherited a lot of land from his parents that they had tilled for 40-50 years, and he’s letting it go fallow to restore it…Seeing someone who’s so much different than me get it, that’s really exciting because I’d really like to see these issues get dissociated with politics…It matters when I see little kids teaching their parents stuff that they’ve learned at school…those are things that excite me and make me smile (P07, age 37).
Discussion
While every participant reported struggling with despair at times, they also identified key coping mechanisms that helped them continue their environmental work. In their description of their emotional experiences, they make clear that hope is a practice that must be cultivated, rather than a passive feeling to be experienced. Feminist thought has come to understand gender as something we do, rather than something we intrinsically are (West & Zimmerman, 1987). Similarly, our findings on ecofeminist practice show the power of actively “doing hope” in providing the emotional sustenance necessary to address the climate crisis (Macy & Johnstone, 2012).
Implications for Social Work
As social workers strengthen responses to the changing environment, understanding how to sustain environmental work at the macro-level is essential to addressing the large-scale problems at hand, but in order to do so, we must understand how to attend to the difficult emotions that such problems evoke at the micro-level. Findings from this study can help in designing multi-level ecofeminist interventions that encourage people to cultivate the hope that is necessary to address the crisis by taking action, finding community, and practicing diverse spiritualities.
Taking action—Intergenerational organizing
A key strength of the center is how participants work collaboratively across generations, where they share, from their own vantage points, commitment to Earth care. Dennis and Stock (2019) found a generational gap between the Baby Boomer and Millennial generations in Earth care activities. However, in this study, we found that intergenerational solidarity—feeling a responsibility to young people and seeking grounding from elders—helped participants in cultivating hope to keep essential environmental work going. This finding brings forth questions: What do we owe each other across generations? How can a feeling of kinship and responsibility to each other help us to commit to and sustain this work? Social workers can take best practices from the center by organizing across generations. Incorporating older adults into environmental interventions honors their wisdom accumulated across their lifetimes (Boetto & Bowles, 2017) and can provide historical and spiritual grounding to young people. In this study, young people injected urgency, energy, and positivity into interventions as well as bringing what they learned from elders back to their home communities.
Finding community—Living in “right relationship”
Ecological crises can paralyze people with troubling emotions (Norgaard, 2011). Theory and interventions that address the magnitude of grief are needed (Cunsolo & Ellis, 2018) not only to help people cope at the individual level but also to sustain collective action. Norton (2009) argues that social work should broaden the concepts of person-in-environment and well-being to incorporate larger ecosystems into therapeutic interventions, which overlaps well with feminist counselling models’ inclusion of consciousness-raising and transformative action as key components of intervention (Harms & Pierce, 2020). Nonetheless, as people who live and work in rural environments where mental health services are often limited, participants in this study gave insight on how to cope without formal interventions. While participants in this study clearly articulated how ecological destruction negatively impacts their well-being, they also articulated feelings of kinship and responsibilities to other people and the ecosystem as a whole, which motivates their Earth care work. This confirms established findings that a feeling of exhilaration can come with taking responsibility by shedding the status of immobilized bystander and establishing “a new sense of integrity between self and world” (Lifton in Norgaard, 2011). Furthermore, these relationships and responsibilities are mutually nourishing. Participants found community with others at the center, but they also found community in the web of life. Practices such as telling the universe story in which humans only appear toward the end and listening to the soil help to cultivate those relationships with other beings and to build an awareness that we are not alone in this fight.
A core principle of Catholic social teaching, which is the basis for eco-justice as practiced at the center is solidarity, defined as “the pursuit of justice and peace,” but both justice and peace are predicated on living in “right relationship” with others and the Earth (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2010, p. 10). Building off the work of feminist psychologists, Humbach (2001, p. 41) explains that “a relationship is not ‘right’ if participants seek to overbear in power (oppress), to overreach in resources (exploit), or to mislead for selfish advantage (manipulate).” Creating interventions that encourage participants to examine their relationships to human and nonhuman others could be essential in instilling a sense of responsibility for and kinship to others (Macy & Johnston, 2012; Norgaard, 2011). This is not only a vital step in committing to action but offers boundless support to people who otherwise may feel alone in the struggle (Macy & Johnston, 2012).
Practicing spirituality—Incorporating diverse spiritualities into social work practice
The center, which is Catholic, encourages diverse spiritual views among both lay people and sisters. This serves as an example of working across spiritual differences and being united by a commitment to the environment. For participants in this study, spiritual practices were a method of coping with complex emotions. As environmental challenges mount, social workers can help individuals to cope with these feelings by encouraging actions that reassert a sense of agency and incorporate social and spiritual support, as modeled by the participants in this study. Feminist social work approaches “incorporate spirituality as holistic perspectives that value and build alliances with people’s own healing powers” (Coholic, 2003, p. 51). This perspective of feminist spirituality parallels participants’ perspectives on how their own spiritual beliefs and growth, nurtured by their work at the center, help them to confront environmental challenges. This study shows the importance of incorporating spirituality into social work practice while respecting differences.
Reinhabitation—Lessons from the sisters for the profession
Beyond the role that eco-justice work can play in helping social work to develop interventions in response to environmental change, green sisters’ practice of reinhabitation (Taylor, 2007) could instruct social work in how to honestly grapple with our history and chart a liberatory path forward without abandoning our particular values and mission as a field. In the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, Catholic sisters were fundamental to the development of social welfare and social work (Anderson, 2000; Luquet, 2005). As ecosocial work strives to develop a specifically decolonial approach to its practice (Bell et al., 2019; Bhuyan et al., 2019), understanding how a similarly Christian, white woman–dominated field has reclaimed their own traditions in a liberatory way, rather than appropriating from Indigenous communities, could be instructive. Nonetheless, ecofeminist spirituality has long been critiqued for not fully acknowledging the role of Indigenous people as land stewards (Klemmer & McNamara, 2019), and the land being reinhabited by green sisters is Indigenous land. Thus, in order to embrace a truly decolonial approach, ecosocial workers must go further by demystifying the settler colonial origins and ongoing practices of the field and allied institutions and centering anti-colonialism and Indigenous sovereignty in ecosocial work (Bell et al., 2019; Dennis & Bell, 2020).
Limitations
While this study was small in sample size, the participants provide rich insight into how they emotionally sustain work for eco-justice. Due to time constraints, we were unable to interview stakeholders at other ecojustice centers or similar organizations with a different spiritual background, which might provide additional insight into diverse perspectives guiding such Earth care work. Additionally, the dual role of researcher and coworker could have impacted what participants were willing to share. While having community input on research design and analysis is a defining feature of CBPR and compatible with feminist methods, it does present a scientific limitation. A limitation of thematic analysis is that in focusing on identifying patterns across our data, we do not intensively focus on continuity and contradiction in the emotional lives of any one participant as a biographical or narrative-based analysis might (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Finally, while everyone is impacted by climate change, people are impacted incredibly unequally, and the participants in this study, generally, were not geographically or socially a part of the frontline communities that are being hit first and worst by climate change. Therefore, findings from this study are primarily applicable to similar populations, rather than people who are currently being directly harmed by the impacts of climate change.
Conclusion
We examined how people engaged in environmental work use ecofeminist practice to cope with the difficult emotions that the environmental crisis provokes. We found that their strategies of taking action, finding community, and embracing spirituality helped them not only to cope with difficult emotions but also to cultivate hope, which is essential to reasserting the collective agency needed to effectively address the climate crisis. Although the eco-justice center we examined is not social work-led, there are many lessons that social workers can learn as we develop social responses to the changing environment, including the importance of intergenerational organizing, living in “right relationship,” incorporating spirituality, and reinhabiting the profession in a liberatory way.
Further examination of programs such as those at this eco-justice center are necessary, including programs that are demographically, spiritually, and geographically dissimilar to the center under study here to ensure that our findings are applicable to disparate populations, including those already impacted by climate change. Multilevel interventions that resource people at the microlevel to effectively confront the climate crisis at the macro level such as what we propose could be incorporated into existing social work programs, such as feminist group counselling (Harms & Pierce, 2020), and existing programs in other fields, such as schools that focus on intergenerational solidarity (George et al., 2011). Robust evaluation of such interventions is then necessary. Further research on the specific insights that Catholic sisters have for social work is urgently needed, particularly as older sisters, despite feeling indomitable to the patriarchal power structure face their own mortality. Losing the immense wisdom that they have accumulated over their lifetimes is a devastating prospect. On a broader level, social work scholars who specialize in death and grief can help individuals and groups to collectively grieve both what has already been lost and future uncertainties to open up a space for cultivating hope and reasserting agency. As Vaclav Havel (1990) argues, hope is the certainty that something has meaning regardless of the outcome. In that certainty lies our collective power.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to give a heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed to this study and gave feedback on previous iterations of this paper, including Claire Garner, Melanie Kay Chasseur, Rachel Best, Sidney Harris, Jesse Yeh, Valerie Taing, Jean East, David Delay, Karen Favell, Mary Garboden, Patricia McLafferty, Natalie Sampson, Jaclyn Wypler, and most especially to all of the participants, ecojustice centers, and Catholic green sisters.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
