She's Everywhere!
Grief and praise in the wake of Joanna Macy's death
By now you’ve likely heard. On July 19th Joanna Macy, my friend and teacher joined the ancestors.
In the days immediately after her death, we honored her with a two-day at-home wake. It was a ritual rich with the magic of her life’s work. Together we sang songs and shared poems of grief and the power of the Great Turning. We crumbled and hugged, befriended and forgave. We swapped favorite memories. We cried and sprinkled rose petals over her body and howled her name into the sky in celebration. It was hard, but we did it together, and honestly, I didn’t know death could be this beautiful.
For me, the weeks since she died (and the several before) have been a relentless, achy, gorgeous, dance of grief and praise. I feel so alive and in love with life, and at the same time I am so deeply tired.
Joanna taught me that love and heartbreak are “two sides of the same coin”… we can’t have one without the other. Living through her death, this non-duality has never been clearer to me. These so-called polarities… grief and praise, life and death, love and loss, they are not opposites, they are inextricable from one another.
After her friend Thich Nhat Hanh died in 2022, I walked into Joanna’s house to find a copy of his poetry book “Call Me By My True Names” sitting on the coffee table. I picked it up and asked “how has it been for you since he died?”. I remember her blue eyes shining radiant as she clapped her hands together, “Oh! It’s been AMAZING. He’s EVERYWHERE!”
Lately, I find myself looking for my friend everywhere, and I think I may be finally beginning to understand what she meant.
Many times a day something reminds me of Joanna, a cloud or crow, a quote of hers in my feed or my inbox, a “how’s your heart?” text from a friend…
Sometimes these moments are simple. I feel her and smile and whisper “I miss you, and I love you”.
Sometimes grief is right there on the other side of that reminder… the tears are just barely hidden under the surface, and can’t I just finish writing this damn email or having this conversation without having to feel this?! Grief is not known for its convenience.
Sometimes I keep myself too busy to feel much of anything until the numbness itself begins to hurt and I need to gently coax myself back into my body.
Sometimes, when I’m lucky, the grief rises and I remember to surrender. I let the grief the tears come, and say hello to that achy missing-feeling swelling up in my chest. And here’s the part that’s been amazing me:
Very often, when I honor my pain by simple letting it move through me, an electric feeling comes pulsing through, close behind: “WOW. You are ALIVE, honey. You are ALIVE!” .
There she is.
I swear it’s Joanna herself running through my veins, the living presence of both grief and praise. She’s right there with me when I remember to look for her. When I remember to do what she’s always taught me to do: Trust and allow my feelings and tell the truth about them.
This grief and praise dance is wild in the truest sense of the word… it is messy, mysterious, electric, raw. Sometimes I think the bigness of the feeling, the eros of it all, might break me, but goddamn am I grateful to feel this.
It’s been achy, and messy, but: It’s been AMAZING. SHE’S EVERYWHERE!
At Joanna’s wake, I sang this song with my friend and fellow lineage carrier, Lydia Violet, in the backyard. It’s been playing in my head ever since.
"Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.”
— Martin Prechtel
In the last few weeks there have been so many beautiful Tributes to Joanna. Here are a few I’ve loved:
From Rebecca Solnit’s newsletter : “She's a tree that's fallen; she's a tree that trees have grown out of; she's now part of the past, but also she fed and nourished and loved and guided a possible future, a hopeful and demanding future, demanding in that we would have to change ourselves and our society to make it.”
From Tricycle Magazine: “‘In the buddhadharma there’s no word for hope,’ Macy countered. ‘because hope takes us out of the present moment. The present moment, brief as it is, is our gift, our choice point.’”
Joanna in the 80’s, when she was beginning to teach the workshops that became the Work That Reconnects.
Joanna’s memorial will be on October 3rd at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
It’s free and open to the public but you’ll need a ticket. Click here to get an in-person ticket and here to join the livestream.
Upcoming opportunities to connect:
🌀August Community Coaching Circle: All of the writing I share on this substack is free, and once a month I host a community coaching circle as a way of thanking the kind folks who financially support We Are The Great Turning. The next one is on August 26th from 10AM-12 PM PT. Zoom info below the paywall.
🦋 Council of All Beings: I’m offering a an amazing ritual from the Work That Reconnects that helps us tap into the wild wisdom of the more-than-human world. It’s called the Council of All Beings, and it’s happening in Berkeley on August 20th. Register here.
🍎 NYC Climate Week: I’ll be in town for the whole week! If you’re organizing any events and would like to invite me to speak, facilitate, bring the work that reconnects (or simply attend!) please reach out.
🌲 Soulful Climate Leadership Circle is my online coaching program and community for brave, big-hearted climate leaders. Show up for your climate leadership clear-eyed, well-resourced, and supported by people who get it – so you can give all you’ve got to building The Great Turning in these times of Unraveling.
What a gift it is to be in this Great Turning together,
Here is the zoom info for the August Community Coaching Circle here: