Robin K. Macdonald is a communal grief care facilitator, Yasodhara Yoga teacher, restorative justice worker, writer and facilitator of the Work that Reconnects. She lives on the traditional and unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg, north of the Kichesippi River
in Quebec, Canada. Robin is a lifelong learner committed to moving towards right relationship with herself, those around her, past generations and future beings.
Why I am called to facilitate the Work
I’m the co-founder of a small social enterprise that initially offered grief support training based on communal grief processes. After the co-founder who I had been working with for ten years stepped back, I put the business on hold for eighteen months. Then, I had to make a decision about whether or how to proceed. I did a land-based visioning process which clarified a new vision – to adapt the work to focus exclusively on Ecological Grief. I had already been studying Joanna Macy’s work and as soon as I received this direction, I knew that I wanted to base the Ecological Grief events I would be offering on the Work that Reconnects. Also, I had long felt conflicted based on a concept that I had to choose between caring for people in my work and caring for the greater body of Earth. Joanna’s writing liberated me from this delusion and showed me a way to integrate both.
How I see the Work serving the Great Turning
It gives people:
• Education about emotional intelligence and practice and experience in composting emotions. This allows feedback loops to open and energy to be available for healing actions, whether for self-care or for the greater body of earth.
• practice, awareness and experience at empathic regulation so that we can listen and see and feel those who need us to be in solidarity with them. If people can’t empathically regulate, they look away. When people look away, other beings get left behind.
• The events provide an opportunity to set a clear intention in relation to the choices that we as humans get to make. Participants realize they can make a difference by offering their particular gifts to contribute to a life-sustaining and just society. This increases confidence in the human imagination as a basis for hope. We all have moral imaginations. This is an opportunity to cultivate and use them to protect life on earth.
• Awareness of the stories people are receiving and telling themselves, their power of choice in relation to which narrative/s they invest in and expanding the story possibilities to include the Great Turning
• My experience of this work is that it builds motivation, solidarity and vision, renewing the courage to act with care and integrity.
• These events happen in a group or community. People are invited to come out of isolation from the big emotions that we carry around by bringing them into the group. There, they are no longer just ours to hold privately anymore. Through this process, people feel more connected to each other and the world around us. This facilitates a shift from seeing ourselves as individuals to seeing ourselves as part of a community that includes all beings.
• Inspiration and empowerment emerges from the sense of community that comes from addressing common threats.
Audiences I work with
Spiritual and faith communities, Indigenous communities, university groups and front-line workers (including anyone who continues to directly provide services during the pandemic whether to a client, a parent, a child or is serving as a social justice or environmental activist).
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