After a late summer’s day spent in rituals of loving and mourning the earth with a small group on a Southern Gulf Island, I enter back into the frenetic world of traffic and shopping, and find myself thinking the words “no man is an island.” This now cliché line comes from a 400 year old poem by John Donne. Like most clichés, it resonates a truth, which I thought I could see written on the faces of people driving the highway and moving too quickly around the grocery store. I see it in the epidemic of anxiety and depression, and in the despair voiced by the once hopeful activists in my life. Every cell in my body hears the urgent message written in a universal language – the burning ancient red woods forests of California, the phytoxic lakes killing elephants in Botswana, Greenland’s melting ice sheet – but I’m not an island and I can’t face this mess alone.

In the safety of the group gathered in the shade of a plum tree dripping with fruit, the pretence of positivity and the constant flurry of productivity crumbled. I was no longer concerned about popping someone’s happy bubble; these are people who I know are unafraid of the heartbreaking consequence of naming their love for the world. It was clear from the moment we set down our bags and baskets that we were all exhausted from the part we play in maintaining the illusion that everything is okay. So, I sunk into the embrace created through the sharing of our love and anguish for the human and the more-than-human world.

About a decade ago, I found myself trying to push on through the final year of my undergrad degree in Social Work and Environmental Studies, my busy world demanding a machine-like efficiency from me, which I could no longer show up for. I could not see the point in, or find the energy for, building a just and sustainable community or standing up for the rainforests, as I had once done in full belief that we could create a beautiful future in harmony with the planet. I could no longer look into the face of ecological degradation and climate change and say that I could make a difference. I could no longer dream. Despite a lot of knowledge in my head about what was happening to the planet, I had become practiced, and was well-aided by consumer society, at shutting out the deep dark waters of my sorrow and forging on, but I could no longer keep the tidal wave of grief at bay. Despair settled into my bones like a winter without a sparrow’s song, like cement towers built up where the eastern light once reflected off the leaves of an old oak tree.

In a 4th year Integral Systems Theory course I came across an article by Eco-philospher Joanna Macy. It lifted the darkness I was drowning in just long enough for me to scramble up on a ledge, from which point I could follow her down the path that has led me to facilitate the group process work she created, called the Work that Reconnects. Macy has said, “the heart that breaks open can contain the Universe.” Her words, as well as the circles of imaginative sharing and listening that make up this group work, not only made space for my pain for the world, but celebrated it as my capacity to love the earth, and as a sign that I am not separate from it, but a feeling, sensing piece of the larger body of the planet. The more I shared and listened and embodied this love, and the great pain of being alive to witness so much loss, the more I was capable of being with it. I was no longer small and alone. I could “sustain the gaze,” as Macy refers to the practice of not looking away from the horror of what is happening on the planet. The anger, regret, loneliness, shame, apathy and numbness, as well as the joy and love, became the territory of being fully alive. I was no longer simply theorizing about my connection to the great waters from which our ancestors emerged millions of years ago, I had become the Sea.

On the surface of the Sea there are great waves that crash and there are calm ones that gently rock and there is something like stillness at times, too. The experience of honouring our pain for the world in community is moving and important, and it is only one part of doing this collective work, which also involves expressing gratitude and seeing with new eyes the vast dimensions of our existence, and once again going forth into an often stormy world in the many ways we are called to: to serve and to protect and to love what we love. At the end of the poem by Donne, written long before the majority of our earth had been turned into a supply house and a dumping ground for the unfettered consumption of late stage capitalism and before the internet provided our sense of interconnectivity in exchange for our singular attention, he said “never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” In the cozy nest of a makeshift community, whose intent is to reconnect with our love and our pain for the earth, I no longer feel like a solitary island, and I find the strength to listen to the bells that toll for the more-than-human world, and to remember that they toll for me too.

As the daylight hours and summer tan lines began to fade, and the approaching dark clouds heralded days of rain, I called my friend and found her struggling with the stresses and uncertainties of her life and the world, the way many of us do at this time of year. She wanted to reach out to her new boyfriend, to tell him she needed a little extra care and attention, but she didn’t want to seem needy. “I should be able to take care of myself” she said in seeming exasperation, as a perception of weakness threatened her usual fortitude. As any friend of more than two decades might, I responded by saying, “That’s bullshit.” She laughed, as I had hoped, and prompted me to share my thoughts.

What feels like weakness, or is portrayed derogatorily as “neediness,” is a need for safe and loving bonds, expressing itself in a world that too often undermines this aspect of our nature. As Sue Johnson, attachment theorist and founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy, writes “From cradle to grave, human beings are hardwired to seek, not just social contact, but also physical and emotional proximity to special others who are deemed irreplaceable.” Our longing to be seen in the loving eyes of another is not a lack of strength or character. Strength, especially in times of stress and no matter what age you are, comes from the sense of safety found in being held in the metaphorical and literal arms of loving others. The capacity to take care of ourselves, to go out into the world and do our thing, is directly linked to knowing that we can return home, to what is referred to in attachment theory as a “secure base,” when things get scary.

Whether in a busy office or in our own homes, there is little time or place for emotional need when the engines of industrial growth, the most immediate threat to our well-being, must be constantly tended to. Instead of addressing the growing disconnection from each other and the earth, the social norm is to see difficult emotions as a failure to enact quality self-care routines, or when emotional difficulties become chronic, to label them “depression” or “anxiety” and treat them with medications which in many cases benefit the pharmaceutical industry, first and foremost. I am not saying these disorders are not real or dismissing the value of psycho-pharmaceuticals, which can be life-savers. My point is that the majority of big emotions are justified and natural, and at the core of many symptoms of mental distress there is an unmet need to feel like we belong.

However, this idea that we need each other, and that the source of much of our pain is disconnection, may be harder to swallow than an over-the-counter pill. Perhaps the thing that makes this theory of attachment most difficult to accept is that addressing our unique experience of aloneness is not a simple proposition. Despite increasing digital connectivity, finding a village, a lover or even a true friend is not easy, especially now in the midst of a global pandemic that is causing increasing isolation. Going the distance with people and building a bond can be a daunting, exhausting, scary or simply unappealing proposition. I can personally attest to how hard it is to dial anyone’s number when I am having a hard time. Although misguided, I think adopting the view that I am “needy” may serve as a protection, because filling the void on my own is less risky than asking for help. Staying hidden may not be fulfilling, but the lack of guarantees in love and the possibility of being rejected make it a hard sell when I’m already feeling down.

“From cradle to grave, human beings are hardwired to seek, not just social contact, but also physical and emotional proximity to special others who are deemed irreplaceable.”

- Sue Johnson

Across many miles of invisible airwaves unhindered by the rainforest clouds now looming, my friends voice relayed not only her doubts, but also her courage. I may not have been the one she was longing for that day, but years of friendship yielded the fruit of being the one to hold her up in a moment of vulnerability. In being there for her I felt my own strength and a deeper sense of our connection. This story of being hard-wired to survive together is not meant to say there is something wrong with, by choice or circumstance, being alone. It is meant to say that there is nothing wrong with reaching out if you are feeling a longing to be held and loved. I can’t promise that you will always get what you need when you allow yourself to be vulnerable, but I do believe that stepping bravely forward and letting yourself be seen increases the likelihood of being found.

I could have thanked the voice inside my friend railing against neediness, instead of calling it bullshit, but then we wouldn’t have shared that much needed laughter. With what I see now — that the voice may have protected her from all kinds of hurt and kept her going strong when things got tough and she found herself alone — I might have saved my flippant remark and the long-winded explanation and simply said, “You’re not needy, my friend. You’re brave.”