If Ecological Grief and I had a Coffee Date...

Ecological Grief Part 1.

Dear Curious Minds,

This series is perhaps going to be the most difficult and personal one I will write for a while. It is the first of four-part series on ecological grief. It is an attempt at detangling my year long research, soul searching, and conversations. I hope to be able to have ecological grief coffee dates with some of you virtually or in real life. Thanks for being here.

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I first noticed Ecological Grief long before I ever sat down with her for coffee. She was everywhere, even though hardly anyone ever seemed to name her directly.

Every environment and social science industry event, every webinar, every conference I attended…there she was. Not in the flashy, attention-grabbing way that certain industry buzzwords come and go. She was never centre stage but in the quiet corners of conversations, lingering in the background of every panel discussions, lurking behind every new stat. It didn’t matter if we were talking about biodiversity loss, carbon emissions, or ethics of supply chains. She was always there.

Yet, despite her omnipresence, no one seemed to really acknowledge her. There was no corporate budget set aside for her to share her expertise. She wasn’t invited to lead workshops for employees, certainly not part of any induction programme or daily stand-ups. She didn’t show up in KPIs for management or in shareholder reports. She wasn’t part of the polished sustainability reports or the hopeful visions of “net zero by 2050.”

But, she was everywhere.

Every scientist, every sustainability professional knew her face. Sure, some of them didn’t know her name. Or they’d mentioned her in passing, with a vague, uncomfortable nod to the emotional weight of our work. But no one gave her the full attention she deserved. After all, acknowledging her meant opening a door most people weren’t ready to walk through. It meant sitting with the heaviness of our collective losses and uncertainties in a way that wasn’t neatly actionable or measurable. There were no metrics to tie to grief. It feels….unproductive, as if we aren’t part of the very ecosystem we are meant to be looking after too.

That’s why I asked her out for coffee. A small act of rebellion.

I needed to confront her, to figure out how she’d become such a pervasive yet invisible force in every conversation I was having about sustainability and society. I needed to understand how she could be so omnipresent yet so marginalised, pushed to the edges of conversations where the focus was on solutions, progress, the next shiny thing and growth.

It’s not that I didn’t want solutions. I did, of course. But I was tired of pretending that the only way forward was through endless toxic optimism. Such a thinly veiled ‘Everything will be ok, AI and carbon capture will save us’ kind of BS. I know grief belongs in the same room as innovation.

I had questions about the emotional toll this work takes, how she seemed to haunt every corner of our field, and why no one had made room for her in our professional frameworks. There were no KPIs that captured the weight of what we were losing, no serious agendas looking at how we were dealing with the slow collapse of ecosystems we were working so hard to save.

And so I asked her to meet me face to face, to talk it all through, to finally put a name to what I had been feeling for so long but hadn’t been able to articulate. Ecological Grief had been there all along, but no one had ever given her the space she deserved in our world of sustainability. We invited experts, consultants, scientists, pseudo-experts who are just after photo-ops and lobbyists of all stripes too, but never her.

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As we sat across from each other in a light-filled café, I noticed the little details about her.

Her cardigan has that well-loved look, slightly frayed at the cuffs. Her laptop is covered in stickers from climate and peace rallies, some peeling with age. Her eyes are kind but unmistakably tired. But she’s still here, still showing up. Just like the rest of us.

“Rough year?” she asks, though it’s not really a question. I know she already knows about my brother, my cat, and the countless, smaller, more cumulative losses that come with being in this field. Some losses are in the news, others just sit heavy on my chest at night.

I nod, not sure where to start. “It’s strange, isn’t it?” I say finally. “Losing things you love…losing people, watching the world fall over….it all blurs together.”

She leans in with a soft smile. "That's because it is connected. Loss isn’t something you get to categorise neatly into personal and ecological. Every town annihilated, every species lost, every reckless policy. How could you not feel it?" Her voice is gentle and like that of a close friend, but it also has an urgency that’s impossible to ignore.

And I think that’s the first thing people need to understand about Ecological Grief. She is not just a sadness for the environment. This is about an existential, all-encompassing sense of loss. It's not about “being a tree hugger” or just caring more than the average person. It’s about recognising the intricate web of connections between us, our loved ones, our communities, and the ecosystems that sustain us. When those connections fray, it’s a visceral pain for our identity.

She glances at my half-empty cup and adds, “If I was coffee, I'd be that forgotten cold brew. Once full of potential, now just a little bitter.” I can't help but chuckle. I didn’t expect her to crack a joke, let alone one that hits so close to the truth.

“You know, people always think I’m going to show up all gloomy and depressed,” seemingly pleased she made me laugh. “But honestly, if I didn’t laugh about it, I’d never stop crying. The sheer absurdity of it all. You’ve got to see the humour, or you’ll f*cking lose it.”

I nod, thinking about how often I’ve tried to do the same, to laugh in the face of endless ridiculously bad news. “I guess I didn’t expect you to be funny,” I admit.