Climate Grief, Spiritual Protection
In southern Bangladesh, the monsoon floods arrived earlier and more intensely than usual. Neela rolled up her trousers and stood knee-deep in muddy water, watching villagers reinforce their last line of defense with sandbags. The air was thick with the scent of dampness, mud, and despair.
"My rice fields are all gone," said old farmer Hussein, pointing to the vast expanse of water with a blank look in his eyes. "This is the land passed down from my grandfather. It has never been completely submerged."
Nila didn't rush to comfort him. Instead, she asked softly, "Can you tell me what this land looked like before the flood?"
Hussein's eyes suddenly lit up. "There used to be a row of banana trees over there, where my grandchildren used to play... Over there are jasmine fields, where my wife loved the fragrance when she was alive..."
When people lose the land on which they depend for survival, they lose not only material things but also their connection with the past.
This isn’t Nila’s first encounter with “climate grief.” Over the past six months, from small towns devastated by wildfires in Australia to sinking island nations in the Pacific, she has witnessed a new type of global trauma—a grief for the planet.
Back in the makeshift medical tent, local psychologist Rahman showed her a shocking statistic: in this area of 50,000 people, the use of antidepressants has increased by 300% in the past three years, and more than half of the cases are directly related to climate disasters.
“We call it ‘eco-anxiety,’ ” Rahman said, “but that’s too light a word. It’s not anxiety; it’s a deep, unresolved sadness.”
That night, Nila held an emergency video conference with headquarters. On the screen, Cheng Han, Luca, and Kadiel all had extremely serious expressions.
"The problem is more serious than we imagined," Nila shared the on-site footage. "Traditional trauma intervention methods are of limited effectiveness here. This is because the source of the trauma isn't in the past tense, but in the present tense, with no end in sight."
Luca cited global data: "The latest report from the World Health Organization shows that nearly one billion people around the world are directly affected by the psychological effects of climate change. This is no longer a marginal issue, but a global mental health crisis."
When the scale of grief transcends the individual, healing needs to be reimagined.
The foundation’s traditional methods proved insufficient here. One-on-one counseling couldn’t address the collective trauma of an entire community, and asking those who had lost their homes to “think positively” felt like a travesty.
A turning point came with an unexpected discovery. In the area hardest hit by the floods, residents of one village showed remarkable resilience. Nila went to investigate and discovered that the villagers had spontaneously formed a "Climate Action Team."
"We were indeed afraid," said the team leader, a retired teacher. "But as we worked together to clean up the river and plant mangroves, our fear turned into strength. We can't stop the flood, but we can make the next one come more gently."
This discovery was a revelation for Nila. She immediately adjusted her intervention strategy, viewing the villagers not as passive victims but as potential agents of change. The foundation launched the "Ecological Resilience" program:
From grief to action: Organizing residents to participate in ecological restoration projects, turning feelings of powerlessness into concrete action.
Rewriting the Narrative: Helping Communities Record Survival, Not Just Losses, in the Face of Climate Change
Building connections: Creating a global network of “climate resilience communities” to make isolated people visible to each other’s struggles
However, the plan was not implemented smoothly. At the first community meeting, a young man stood up excitedly and said, "What's the point of planting trees? The floods will come anyway! What we need is migrants, people who want to escape from here!"
An awkward silence fell over the meeting. Many people lowered their heads, knowing that the young man was telling the truth.
Hope cannot be built on denying reality, but on finding reasons to move forward while acknowledging the cruelty.
Nila did not argue, but instead called in Jafar, a village elder in his nineties who had experienced countless floods.
"When I was your age," Jafar's voice was old but firm, "I also thought about leaving. But my father told me: This land has nurtured us, and now it is sick. We cannot abandon it like we abandon our sick parents."
He pointed to the flood outside the window and said: "The water will recede and the land will be exposed again. What we should think about is not how to escape, but how to coexist with the changing world."
This sentence changed the atmosphere of the meeting. The next day, to Nila's surprise, the young man who had questioned her was the first to arrive at the tree planting site.
"I've figured it out," he said as he dug. "Even if I eventually leave, I want to leave a better place for the next generation."
Meanwhile, Cheng Han's team provided technical support by developing an "ecological mood tracking" system to help people visualize how their emotions are related to climate change events.
"Look at this data," Cheng Han showed in a presentation. "Whenever the air quality index deteriorates, the user's anxiety index rises simultaneously. Understanding this correlation itself has therapeutic benefits."
Even more surprising innovations are coming from the grassroots. In Australia, wildfire survivors have developed "healing gardening," cultivating fire-resistant plants to alleviate trauma; in the Netherlands, farmers have created "climate diaries" to record changes in the land and their own emotional journeys; and in Kenya, pastoralists have combined ancient drought-resistant wisdom with modern psychology to develop unique resilience training.
When professional knowledge is humbled, folk wisdom will rise up.
Three months later, Nila returned to her village in Bangladesh. The changes were subtle but real: newly planted mangroves had taken root along the shore, the villagers had established an early warning system, and the children were learning about flood preparedness in school.
Hussein showed her the fields destroyed by the floods, and to Nila's surprise, he showed none of his earlier despair.
"We decided to switch to growing deepwater rice," Hussein said, pointing to the villagers working. "This type of rice can grow in deep water. Losses are inevitable, but we can learn new ways to survive."
In the center of the village, villagers erected a stone tablet engraved with the names of all their loved ones who died in climate disasters, as well as their efforts to adapt to the changes.
“We no longer pretend that things will go back to the way they were,” Hussein said, “but we choose to move on despite the pain.”
On the return flight, Nila wrote in her project report:
“The cure for eco-anxiety lies not in eliminating fear but in transforming it into a force for protection. When we act on behalf of our wounded planet, we are also healing our own broken hearts.”
She looked out the window at the sea of clouds and recalled what old Jafar had said at his farewell:
“Humans once thought they were the masters of the Earth, but now we realize we are just its children. A child will cry when he sees his mother sick, but he will also wipe away his tears and do his best to take care of her.”
Nila knows that this dual healing of the soul and the planet has only just begun. But she sees the truest hope in every ordinary person who chooses action over despair—not the naive belief that everything will get better, but the choice to do things that, despite knowing the difficulties ahead, make the world a little better.
And in this choice, humans may eventually find a way to coexist peacefully with this changing planet.
“When the whole planet is crying, individual tears need to find a way to flow into the river.”
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