On September 18, the New York Times Daily podcast featured Terry Tempest Williams reading her "Obituary for the Land." In it she implores all of us to realize that our American dream of "freedom" and [...]
No matter what’s knocked us down or how long we’ve been there, we can not only survive but thrive. Flattened by grief—ecological, social, personal—we can still be pierced by beauty, wonder, and delight. These gifts [...]
I am sitting on a fold-up chair at the top of the asphalt driveway which brings us halfway up the mountain to where our house sits. The house was built in 1987, and the driveway [...]
Today I write with the heartbreaking news that my beloved husband, Andy Gardner, is close to death. He was diagnosed with liver cancer a week ago and has been declining steadily ever since. I will [...]
In my book, Radical Joy for Hard Times: Finding Meaning and Making Beauty in Earth's Broken Places, I write about “grabbing” beauty: “The way to survive, I’m convinced, is to keep zealously grabbing and giving as [...]
I heard something a couple of days ago that struck me as a great lesson for how to find and make beauty in hard times. The woman who offered this piece of wisdom is a [...]
Every now and then someone complains that Radical Joy for Hard Times focuses too much on grief. Nature is full of beauty and wonder, they say. Why do we have to talk so much about [...]
Skaket Beach, Orleans Massachusetts. This beach is one of my favorite places on the Cape to watch the sunset. The bay you see in the picture is becoming more and more of a wounded place. [...]
Although I like to think that taking my Climate Change Communication class is a rewarding journey, I know that can also be emotionally taxing. We spend the entire semester talking about climate change, obviously, so [...]
The south-east of Australia lost much of its wild places over the (southern) summer of 2019/20. Uncontainable bush fires ran through from August 2019 to early February 2020. People died, houses were lost and forest [...]