Mother Nature's Lessons in Healing and Forgiveness: Reciprocating Hope for Our Shared Future
By Jaden Gornall
August 28, 2024
On the evening of December 18, 2023, I slipped down a steep embankment in the heart of the Cascade Mountains. Immobilized by injury, temperatures dipped to -8°C as overnight I lay in deep intimacy with my surroundings, held against the quietude of the mountain’s snow-blanketed bosom. By the time my campmate found me the next morning, hypothermia had taken hold, and my left leg was fully paralyzed. I was transported swiftly to Abbotsford Hospital, where my condition escalated to “life over limb.” My left leg was amputated above the knee the next day.
Camping this past May on Cortes Island in the context of the CoPEH-Canada hybrid course has been my first experience doing so with a prosthetic leg, having received this carbon accoutrement 3 weeks prior. A seasoned camper, practical considerations I had never contemplated, like where to plug in my leg to charge at night, became my reality. Keenly observing how nature responds to injury with grace has inspired my healing, igniting my curiosity around a question: What lessons does nature offer about healing that can we translate into our roles and responsibilities in “healing back” eco-social systems?
Even in the face of humanity’s transgressions against the environment, Mother Nature demonstrates qualities of forgiveness. This series of photos explores variations on this theme, as I observed while visiting the Children’s Forest, a parcel of land that community members are securing as trust in perpetuity for the present and future children of Cortes. Within this old homestead, Nature claims broken items, absorbing and integrating them into its forest scape: Moss grows tenderly around frayed rope. An ancient car becomes a habitat, engulfed into cascades of greenery.
We can observe this resilience similarly in the regrowth of forests after devastating fires. These examples remind us that healing is not about returning to a previous state, but rather about accepting the changes that have occurred, and finding new ways to move forward with resilience. I learned quickly that to resist the loss of my leg was to entrap myself in a cycle of suffering. Befriending and incorporating a carbon fibre and titanium limb as my own has become part of my practice of acceptance, liberating me from rolling a Sisyphean rock up a proverbially endless mountain. The moss, gentle breeze, and ambling ants of the forest were no less welcoming and accepting to the carbon-wielding elements of my body than to my flesh when visiting the Children's Forest, so I ask myself, in what ways can I relate to myself with that same flexibility and grace?
Nature’s ability to accommodate a continual onslaught of human-induced climate change is certainly not limitless, however, and our timely action is urgently required. How can what we learn from nature’s demonstrations of healing teach us to promote future positive actions rather than enabling further desecration, through the co-benefits of practicing forgiveness?
Climate change can lead to “psychoterratic” or earth-related mental health issues, such as eco-anxiety, eco-paralysis, solastalgia, and eco-nostalgia, terminology defined by Glenn A. Albrecht.1 Eco-anxiety refers to worry and stress related to the ecological crisis, which is very common among children and youth. Other phenomena include eco-guilt from violating environmental values, eco-grief over loss of environment and identity, and solastalgia–the sorrow felt when one's beloved homeland deteriorates, or “the homesickness you have when you are still at home.”1 Depression, suicidal ideation, and post-traumatic stress disorder are further manifestations of this mental health decline.2
Perhaps the greatest barrier to propelling action is eco-paralysis, the inability to meaningfully respond to ecological challenges, characterized by apathy, complacency, or disengagement stemming from the overwhelming nature of environmental issues.1 This may arguably lead to defense mechanisms such as climate change denial.3
An intergenerational conflict narrative has emerged against the backdrop of climate change discussions, underscoring mental health concerns. Elders are often blamed for committing cavalier and irreversible transgressions against our Planetary Health, consequences that future generations will have to live with as we emerge into what has been termed as the human-dominated anthropocene. Meanwhile, youth are often angry and hopeless at their unconsenting roles within the planetary predicaments they face.
Although anger can at times motivate pro-environmental action, sadness–perhaps an extension of hopelessness–can inhibit it.4 Prolonged feelings of anger and holding grudges may also exacerbate the health burdens of climate destruction, rather than leading to cooperative solutions. In a study that measured the physiological impacts of ruminating on past transgressions and holding grudges, it was found that participants experienced increases in blood pressure, heart rate, sweating, and negative emotions like anger and anxiety.5 However, when participants conversely practiced empathy and imagined forgiving their offenders, their physical arousal and stress reactions decreased to normal waking levels.5 In other words, forgiveness is ostensibly protective to our individual health, and by extension–to Planetary Health.
In Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World, Albrecht examines the range of positive and negative emotions humans experience towards the environment, arguing for the need to cultivate a hopeful vocabulary of positive eco-emotions to reignite our biophilia and transition from the human-centric Anthropocene to a Symbiocene era founded on symbiotic science's revolution in thinking about humanity's relationship with the planet.6 Albrecht contends that by developing this new emotional lexicon, we can extract ourselves from environmental desolation and reaffirm our ancient love of life for our home planet through a dramatic shift grounded in contemporary symbiotic science's material, ethical, political, and spiritual principles.6
It is critical to remember that intergenerational conflicts surrounding climate change are not simply conceptual, executed amongst faceless “others”. These tensions underlie relationships between children, parents, and grandparents, degrading the cohesion of families and communities, the very fabric of mutual support and well-being, which may fortify us to address climate injustices. Meanwhile, on a relational level, forgiveness has numerous benefits, including helping to re-establish more positive, benevolent, and cooperative goals within relationships.7
The Children’s Forest is a thriving example of the co-benefits of intergenerational and symbiotic action towards climate change. As one community elder and leader highlighted, an unanticipated and enduring effect of the Children’s Forest initiative has been the deepening of intergenerational relationships. Biophilia–love of life, and all that is living–by its very nature extends to our relationships with each other, and to loving one another. Nature shows this to us unconditionally, and may we reciprocate its lessons through our human-human and human-environment relationships.
References
1. Albrecht G. Chronic Environmental Change: Emerging “Psychoterratic” Syndromes. International and Cultural Psychology. 2011;43–56.
2. Clayton S, Manning C, Krygsman K, Speiser M. Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance [Internet]. 2017 Mar. Available from: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2017/03/mental-health-climate.pdf
3. Maroni E. Do Most Americans Believe in Human-Caused Climate Change? It Depends on How You Ask. [Internet]. The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. 2019 [cited 2024 May 17]. Available from: https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/do-most-americans-believe-human-caused-climate-change/
4. Contreras, A., Blanchard, M. A., Mouguiama-Daouda, C., & Heeren, A. When eco-anger (but not eco-anxiety nor eco-sadness) makes you change! A temporal network approach to the emotional experience of climate change. Journal of anxiety disorders. 2024;102,102822.
5. Worthington EL, Witvliet CVO, Pietrini P, Miller AJ. Forgiveness, Health, and Well-Being: A Review of Evidence for Emotional Versus Decisional Forgiveness, Dispositional Forgivingness, and Reduced Unforgiveness. Journal of Behavioral Medicine. 2007 Apr 24;30(4):291–302.
6. Albrecht G. Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World. Ithaca London Cornell University Press; 2019.
7. Fincham FD. Forgiveness: Integral to a science of close relationships? Prosocial motives, emotions, and behavior: The better angels of our nature. 2010;347–65