The Earth has called home another of her most devoted daughters. Joanna Macy, creator of the Work That Reconnects and beloved teacher of ecological awakening, grief tending and being deeply human, died peacefully this week at 96, surrounded by love in her own home.
Like a tree that continues giving even as it prepares to return to soil, Joanna’s final weeks embodied her life’s teaching. After breaking her hip and developing pneumonia, she chose to let go gently at home rather than fight her body’s natural release.
Yet also, when a young friend suggested she might feel relieved to be leaving the Earth during these troubled times, she replied with characteristic vitality and fire: “To the contrary – I wish I could stay to help!”
Joanna gifted us profound rituals for holding collective grief, most notably the Truth Mandala, which we work with in our retreats and gatherings at Dark Woods of Grief.
Image by Brooke Porter
This profound grief ritual came to her during a workshop with over 200 people she held in Germany during the time when the Berlin wall was brought down. The wall falling marked the beginning of deep healing for Germany.
Many families had been separated for over 30 years, such that some didn’t recognize each other when the wall came down. There was a tremendous amount of grief held as palpable tension in the room. Joanna felt that something must be done to allow the floodgates of grief to open for these people.
As she sensed into what to do, the Truth Mandala was born.
Joanna understood what many grief tenders know in their bones: unexpressed grief becomes despair, depression & illness, but grief shared in healing ritual becomes medicine for each other and the world.
While this non-denominational ritual was originally designed for people to share their grief for the world, it works incredibly well for all types of grief.
Having a safe space to somatically express our grief and be witnessed and held with compassion by others is absolutely life changing. It is a deeply healing thing that, in my opinion, every human with an intact heart needs right now.
“Grief is like oxygen,” Joanna would say, recognizing that our capacity to feel grief is inseparable from our capacity to love.
Her words continue to breathe life into our work: “You are not a separate being. You belong to the living body of Earth. You are the Earth, looking up at the stars. You are the Earth, becoming conscious of itself.”
Joanna was hope in action – finding silver linings in every failure, planting love wherever she walked. For those of us who carry forward her lineage of sacred grief work, she leaves us wide shoulders to stand on and a living invitation to keep our hearts courageously open with every breath.
“The most radical thing any of us can do at this time is to be fully present with what is happening in the world.” – Joanna Macy
I invite you to take 20 minutes and watch this talk she offered 10 years ago at the Bioneers conference. If you give a shit about pretty much anything it will make you cry-laugh-cry in the most beautiful, tender and inspirational way.
While she gave this talk ten years ago, like any good wisdom, it applies to the ecological polycrisis we are in, collectively, today.
It applies to life after losing the person or people you love most deeply.
It applies to bearing witness and signing petitions and banging pots and carrying signs in the streets protesting in Israel and worldwide for the one million children being intentionally starved to death and bombed in Gaza.
It applies to everything we are losing and everything we’ve lost ever.
So I invite you to laugh and cry with me, and join me in letting your heart break open just a bit wider today. 💔 We can do it, together, with LOVE.
Rest in peace, dear Elder. Your work will continue through many hands and hearts, and I’m deeply grateful to be one of them.
Ps – Last week we honoured the life and work of Andrea Gibson – if you missed that message, it’s definitely worth a click to check out one of the most profound poems they wrote before they died.
I’m imagining Andrea and Joanna hanging out on the “other side” now, reading each other poetry, laughing, crying and scheming together to assist those of us who are still here.
They each left a legacy that will continue to open hearts and change worlds for hundreds of years. I am deeply grateful to have been touched by both of these phenomenal humans.