Connecting your head and your heart

 I've been re-reading Grenz' Medicine Wheel for the Planet over the summer and embracing her way of writing herself into her work, of connecting her head and her heart.

This reflection is an inkshed about how I might connect my head and my heart.

I've been told I show up with authenticity, I speak truth to power. 

I don't know how to unmask in academia and applied biology. Will people still take me seriously if I acknowledge the bliss I feel lying in the moss or watching the wind flirt the aspen leaves for hours?

Does ecology need to be objective? My science-based advice must be unfettered, unbiased, and 'objective'. But the rest of it?

I'm no phenomenologist that can bracket out her biases. I wear them firmly on my sleeve and live them out loud. I sometimes attempt a feminist hermeneutic of transformation. Theory, applied.

My plant neighbours are sentient.

That caribou's life is worth as much as yours because you're part of the same ecosystem, the same web of life.

Living distant from my truth has caused fatigue, burnout, and overwhelm.

Even when my need to live simply causes cognitive dissonance in a world that values consumerism, it feels better to be authentic.

So.

Connecting head and heart in my professional practice... how do I do this when any advice I give, professionally, must be objective, science-based, and impartial? I suppose by reminding myself that everything else, from motivations to implementation, can be chock-full of my holistic truth. I'll hold on to what motivates me as I am held by the moss and the living Earth. A person can be more than one thing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Inclusive transdisciplinarity needs you

"Accordingly, we argue that co-production that aims to overcome contemporary conditions shaped by the colonial past and persistent power inequalities requires that those involved undertake inner work toward making room for a relational stance , away from approaches incentivizing data or knowledge extraction and toward embracing onto-epistemological diversity." (Manuel-Navarrete et al. 2025, emphasis added) https://ecologyandsociety.org/vol30/iss3/art22/ I feel deeply, and this passion propels me onward in colonial, often male-dominated systems. I want you to know I wept reading this article. Emotion *absolutely* has a place in science. Because it is part of the human experience, and humans are doing the science within the web of life. And maybe tears are empirical data indicating Something Important. The joy and grief spilling out your eyes like a sign post pointing to change. Inclusive transdisciplinarity may be the answer to something you didn't know you were looking ...
Read more

Ecological grief

Ecological grief, or eco-grief, is what eventually prompted me to go back to school with a science focus. I was volunteering with the Stanely Park Ecology Society and the Wildlife Rescue Association but still felt called to do more. I still feel that call as I work with my inner child to understand my core truths. "Among the first to describe the emotional pain of experienced ecological loss was ecologist and conservationist Aldo Leopold (1953), who noted that 'one of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds'. Similar sentiments have been expressed more recently by eminent ecologists, social scientists and climate researchers, who invoke concepts of grief and mourning to describe their personal distress (or distress in their colleagues) stemming from the disappearance, decline or death of loved species and ecosystems. Grief is also increasingly utilized to describe the human experience in the Anthropocene — an era in which peop...
Read more

Third Gate of Grief

 A new friend asked me if I've heard of the gates of grief. While I'm familiar with the general precepts of Keller's work , I hadn't stopped to consider how they apply to eco-grief. The third gate, Sorrows of the World, is intrinsically linked to my entanglement with the rest of the biosphere. Among other things, I take an earth systems science approach to my work with the biosphere and my work is deeply tied to my spirituality. I hold this gate of grief open to honour my connections to the rest of Gaea. I know Lovelock pivoted away from his Gaia hypothesis later in life, but it still resonates with me. We are the planet's sentience / self-awareness / surveillance system. Homeostasis is imperative and humans have minimized our homeostats. That's a conversation for another day. Grief shows us what matters, and this grief is my lifelong companion. Grief shared is medicine . So. Grief rituals can help us mark important events and processes, help drive meaning into...
Read more