A Year Without Joanna

On grief, wildfire smoke, and choosing to love this world anyway

It’s been a year since my dear friend and beloved mentor Joanna Macy took her final breath at 96 years old. I can’t believe it’s been a year without her.

I miss her sharp wit, her childlike silliness, her deep sage wisdom, how we would always find ways to laugh even as we discussed the most painful realities of our lives and our world. I miss being able to call her when I’m feeling lost (which happens more than I care to admit these days). She had this way of always somehow making the painful things more bearable — not by “fixing” whatever the pain was, but by accompanying you in it. A friend suggested that she had this capacity because “she knew how to stay with these feelings in herself.”

the eyes of compassion. Photo by Brooke Porter.

She died on July 19th, 2025. And a year later, on her Yahrzeit, as a Jewish friend told me it’s called, I’m humbled by my own limited capacity to stay with the ache. Another mutual friend recently said, “I just hate the feeling of her getting farther away.” I feel this deeply. Today, I hate how close her death feels.

In the morning, the grief feels quiet, even peaceful. I pray, meditate, whisper to her, and check in on mutual friends. As the day goes on, though, the grief feels increasingly chaotic. It swirls around in me, getting louder as it snowballs with the many other griefs of my life — my fear and outrage at the state of the world, my longing for love, my confusion about purpose and money and what the future holds. Joanna taught me that all grief is woven together, so I’m not surprised that every other ache of mine is rearing its head now too.

I remember a day in 2021 when I was leveled by heartbreak — the end of a love I thought might be my forever — and I called Joanna from the floor in front of my best friend’s fireplace in Colorado, a place I’d taken up residence to lick my wounds. That day she told me,

“Let your suffering connect you to the suffering of your world. Can you see how your heartbreak connects you to a mother in Yemen who has just lost her child to hunger? Or to a farmer in India who lost their crops to flooding? Or someone who has just received a cancer diagnosis?”

She wasn’t equating these painful experiences — every loss is not exactly the same — but she was saying:

Photo by Brooke Porter

We are all connected in that our hearts break. And our pain becomes sacred when we allow it to deepen our connection with our world.

The thing is, though, this ache pokes at my guts and booms in my head. It’s ugly, gnarly, and in it I feel ugly and gnarly. This is the kind of grief that feels nearly impossible to show to others. But I can hear Joanna reminding me that “truth telling is like making oxygen” — when we speak our truth to another, everyone breathes easier. So I call the person I feel safest in my mess with, and he listens kindly as I pour it out. By speaking the ugly, I have honored it, and I can feel Joanna just a little closer now.

I’m visiting with my family on the Jersey Shore, so I’m far away from the circles of friends gathering to mourn and celebrate her today. My 11-year-old cousin asks me why I’m so sad. I tell her that one of my favorite people in the world died a year ago today, and she jumps off her chair and wraps her little arms around my waist.

Later that night, I sit outside overlooking the Bay with my family, breathing in the wildfire smoke that has blanketed so much of the east coast. I say something about how climate change will only make this more common, and get into a tense conversation with my Great Aunt, who claims to have scientific proof that climate change is not real -just a liberal hoax started by Al Gore in the 90’s. The irony — that as we suck in breath to passionately retort to one another, we breathe in a burning forest of pine and black spruce, over 600 miles away — wears at my capacity to laugh off our disagreement.

If I had to pick one lesson from Joanna that has changed my life the most, it is this:

Every day, choose to be wildly in love with this world, even as it breaks your heart. We live in these miraculous human bodies, in this miracle of a planet Earth, and yes, these times will shatter the heart of anyone who is paying attention — but whether we are hospice workers or midwives, loving this life with all I’ve got is the only way I want to do it.

I miss those hands. Photo by Brooke Porter.

I wonder what Joanna would say if I described this dissonant scene to her. I imagine that at some point, after joining me in my frustration, we would laugh at the predicament and smile at how lucky I am to love and be loved by this family of big-hearted, opinionated Italians.

I stand up from the table as the conversation ends, and reach across to hold my elder’s hands in mine. I am deeply aware of the preciousness of her presence, and I say, “I think the only thing we might agree on in this world is loving each other and this family. I love you.” and I kiss her soft, wrinkled fingers.

My grandmother, who has been sitting next to her sister-in-law, bearing witness to this whole scene, winks at me and mouths, “That’s my girl”. I can feel that Joanna is winking at me too.

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This portrait makes my heart sing!

It’s Joanna in her full poetic aliveness. I imagine her reciting a few lines of Rilke to the Etienne, as her hands danced and he looked through his camera at her. Click here for more Joanna-magic and the full post.

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Celebrating Joanna’s life story:

My friend Leilani Navar, who I met over tea at Joanna’s kitchen table in ‘22, narrated the new audiobook for Joanna’s extraordinary memoir Widening Circles!

I’m honored to be joining Leilani and the Work That Reconnects Network for an event to honor Joanna and celebrate the release of the audiobook. We will talk about what we’ve learned from Joanna’s life story and invite you into a conversation about how her story can help all of us to rise to meet the opportunities and challenges of our times. We’ll open space to reflect together, share what Joanna’s story stirs in you, and bring your own questions for us. Come ready to listen, to talk, and to celebrate a life that continues to reach out in ever widening circles through the world.

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Last July, while Joanna was in her final days, I listened to this song again and again and again. It was like a prayer that I sent the half mile up the road to her as she took her final breaths in the company of her beloved family: You belong somewhere you feel free, my friend.

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Endlessly grateful to be in this Great Turning with you,