It has been a truly staggering, mind-bending week in British politics.

Reports of Conservative MPs being physically pulled in through the voting lobbies, forcing them to approve fracking. The resignation of Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister (famously outlasted by a lettuce). The possible return of Boris Johnson, who himself resigned after a string of scandals just 45 days ago.

This week I want to spend a little time reflecting on that.

Because everything in me wants to distance myself from it all. I want to laugh disdainfully at grown adults humiliating themselves before the world. I want to express my disgust at their blatant power grabbing. I want to throw my arms in the air, shouting ‘how the hell did this happen?’

Sometimes I want to pretend it doesn’t matter at all, because the world of politics is so out of touch, even though I know it does, deeply.

But none of these emotional reactions really get to the heart of what’s going on. Because in my shock and disgust and incomprehension, I fail to see the inevitably of what is going on. And by that I mean, the patterns and connections, which ultimately robs me of the capacity to have a sense of where this might be headed and what might be done about it.

The current meltdown of British politics is not a fluke. Is not the result of some extremely bad luck in our run of MPs. And, unfortunately, I really do not believe that we have hit rock bottom yet.

It is not a coincidence that one of the oldest political systems in the world, and one that has most imposed itself on the rest of the world as the once largest empire in history, is now melting down.

And our capacity to draw from and understand how this larger arc of history is at play is vital because in understanding how we got here, we stand a greater chance of discerning how we might meaningfully move forward from here.

……..

I just attended an intensive training week learning about grief rituals and ceremonies from around the world.

In my culture, as a white, Western woman, grief is only really publicly acknowledged as something that happens when someone dies. We have a funeral, we tie up any lose ends of the ones we have lost, and we attend to legal matters.

That’s about it.

As a child and teenager, I experienced a multitude of bereavements. Some with just months in between, others that were long, drawn out, and deeply painful affairs, and some that had lasting, devastating impacts on my relationship to the rest of my family.

But the loss I experienced was not just the loss of the ones I loved. It was also the loss of the happiness of those around me, the loss of one of my favourite places in the world when it was sold for inheritance, the loss of my innocence and sense of security, the loss of feeling that my friends and I had our most important life experiences in common. And so much more besides.

Because there is so much more to grief than the loss of a loved one.

We might experience grief at the loss of health for example, the loss of a job, pet or a home, when a child leaves home, a neighbour moves away or a friend marries. Even when we marry or we finally get our dream job; there is always loss alongside any changes in our lives, even a wonderful one.

In this culture I live in, there are so few opportunities to acknowledge the complexity and longevity and relentlessness of how grief to comes us.

There are so many different facets to grief. Francis Weller, in his beautiful book The Wild Edge of Sorrow speaks of at least five gates to grief;

Everything we love, we will lose
The places that have not known love
The sorrow of the world
What we expected and did not receive
Ancestral grief

If you follow my work, chances are you are familiar with ecological grief, for example. The loss of species, of habitats, of flourishing nature spaces. We might think of those as that third gate to grief, the sorrow of the world.

If we are blessed to have a real sense of connection to and love of nature, then chances are we also now live with a real sense of its wounding. That is the current cost of loving this beautiful planet that is now so struggling to breathe, to regenerate, to uphold human and other-than-human life as a result of human activity.

This is just one of the many reasons why grieving is so important; we cannot love fully without opening ourselves up to the certainty of grief. As Francis Weller says, everything we love we will lose. And so, in turn, to close ourselves to grief, is to also close ourselves to love.

That’s why I spent this week learning about grief rituals from around the world.

Because it seems that my culture is so woefully underequipped in metabolising its grief, in tending to it, and allowing it to reconnect us with love and meaning rather than leaving us permanently reeling, numbed or depressed.

Me and my family were so much in need of more when bereavement came to us on such an enormous scale. We still pay the price for that and I know that we are by no means alone.

……..

And what, you might ask, does all of this have to do with the possible return of Boris Johnson as prime minister?

Well, in my humble opinion, everything.

But to understand that, we need to go back to Brexit. The moment in which the invisible unraveling of British politics that had been happening for some time, became visible. I’m not talking about the decision to stay or leave the EU, I’m talking about how those discussions about Britain’s place in the world unfolded.

The fracturing effect of the questions that the possibility of Brexit brought up, such as what does it mean to be Britain in the world? What does it mean to have power and influence? And is it even important any more?

The once largest empire in the world is struggling to find its place. It isn’t sure anymore who its allies and enemies are. What it’s entitled to or should expect from its treatment from the rest of the world. Britain, as a collective, is now obviously struggling to know what it even means to be British anymore.

This is part of the shadow that our colonial history still casts over us, now forming as an identity crisis. Yet without the social infrastructure to air those questions in a healthy way (I think we can all agree the political debate around Brexit was some of the worst we’ve seen), turmoil is surely almost inevitable?

As global crises mount such as climate change and increased global political tensions, these only add to the rich soup of thorny, painful, and deeply personal and collective unanswered questions.

Which is another motivator for my interest in collective grieving.

To learn, for example, how we might hold, as a collective, what is wounded, uncertain, or scary, without it fracturing us. How we might come together to debate what matters to us most without it dividing us further. How we might practice care of self that does not come at the cost of care for the collective, and visa versa.

Because when we can feel our feelings, when we can acknowledge them and how they are impacting the way we are turning up in the world, we stand a chance. I experienced some of that during this week training, and it gives me deep hope for the world.

I am so incredibly grateful to those from cultures around the world who have been willing to share these teachings despite all that has already been taken by Western culture. I am especially grateful to Malidoma and Subonfu Somé whose teachings informed a great part of the training I received.

And so, at this particularly uncomfortable moment in history, I invite those of us with the privilege to do so, to choose to sit with this discomfort rather than turn away. To allow ourselves to feel the unravelling that is happening in the world, as it happens within ourselves also. To know that the chaos ‘out there’ is somehow also a reflection of the chaos that is in ‘in here’ and that in tending to one we tend to the other.

Let us get back in touch with the ways and means of tending to that unravelling within ourselves as a vital part of tending to the unravelling that is happening around us.

Whatever helps you feel your pain, discomfort and grief without it overcoming you, whatever helps you tend to it, heal it, hold it, that is exactly what the world needs right now. In here, out there, everywhere.

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Join me in the Rest of Activism where together we meaning make amidst all the madness by tending to ourselves and each other in community. The Rest of Activism is a grant subsidised, self-care programme for climate activists and professionals, that supports you to orientate towards personal and planetary healing.

You may also want to take a look at Good Grief Network’s 10 Step Programme for metabolising the painful feelings and realities of our time.
To find out more about the grief tending training I did, visit Grief Tending in Community. Many thanks to Sophy and Jeremy for everything you taught me.

Liz Truss, Lettuce & a Desperate Need to Face Communal Grief.

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A Trip to Vegas.

On…Surviving Survival Mode