The possibility of transformation

"We need to flood the entire system with life-affirming principles and practices, to clear the channels between us of the toxicity of supremacy, to heal from the harms of a legacy of devaluing some lives and needs in order to indulge others."

—Adrienne Maree Brown, We Will Not Cancel Us

The acrid taste of the avoidable

Something that should not have happened is defined as something that could - and should - have been avoided. A void is what is left behind. Upon receiving the highly unexpected and tragic news of the death of my 29-year young colleague Anna in a house fire (1), my mind went blank. I refused to accept the dreadful reality, her absence, could not understand how the world could possibly just go on. In the days that followed, I caught myself staring into the void left by her. Confronted with the seeming insurmountable abyss created by the unbelievable catastrophe, I felt raw, exhausted, scarred and drained of life energy. There was like an invisible wall, a veil separating me from all those busy, happy people around me. When able to sleep, I woke up hoping it was just a nightmare. According to Cambridge Dictionary, an "acrid smell or taste is strong and bitter and causes a burning feeling in the throat". It is not that I had not known death before coming to Brussels - or the cruelty of it, particularly when avoidable - but perhaps because of being in this vibrant city that is so full of and bursting with life, I perceived the news as even more devastating and surreal (2).

The question that arises is how to resume life - rather than deciding not to. Because everyone who steps out of life is a light less, a person less fighting for a better, more just world beyond the neoliberal, capitalist, supremacist, racist and exploitative system of domination that is anti-life, afraid of life and aliveness - its unruliness, movement, spontaneity, diversity, nonconformity, bounty and beauty - and therefore obsessed with control. Separation is violence. Cut off from life, one's feelings shut down, the pain walled off, everything becomes colourless and tasteless. But escaping the pain is not possible; the acrid will resurface when least expected. Hatred of life and love - avoiding the overwhelming feeling of powerlessness in the face of tragic death, loss, violation, crime, and injustice and the naturally arising anger at those responsible - paves the way for addictions, the search for the "kick", the ever more extreme, as well as for violence. But hurting others in order to feel alive can only ever serve as a mediocre compensation for a real life. On societal level, our ongoing addiction to fossil fuels, inequitable overconsumption and GDP growth despite clear warning signs of the looming catastrophe increasingly renders entire regions of the world uninhabitable.

Besides active criminals, there are passive ones: if the avoidable is a result of neglect, the failure to render assistance, to do what is necessary, common sense (like the provision of basic safety measures such as a functioning smoke alarm by the landlord as part of tenants’ right to a safe and habitable living space). Violence is always avoidable and doesn’t ever make sense. The question of what is violence can only ever really and legitimately be answered by the victim(s). BIPOC clearly call out "white silence" - when white people witness racism, a direct form of violence, and do not interfere, choose to remain bystanders and hence passive criminals - as violence.

Ecocide and genocide, extinction and extermination are indivisible crimes against Earth and humanity. Don’t ever accept what is immoral and unjust - even if it is not a legal crime (e.g., the sacrifice of nature, the theft of land and resources for the profit of a few). The worst abuses happen at industrial scale, where dehumanisation prevails. There is no excuse for any kind of abuse - from obvious, direct forms of violence that are still common and continue to be widely tolerated and justified by those committing them (and, in systems of domination, frequently also the victims), such as war or domestic abuse that so many still have to endure on a daily basis, to animal abuse in factory farms and slaughterhouses. It's OK to be angry about capitalism, our political and economic system that relies on - and produces - innocent victims, because it is deeply unjust when those responsible know about the harm they are causing, choose to look the other way, to close their eyes, and get away with it. The distortion of evidence, the spread of disinformation and greenwashing by the fossil fuel companies that are in large parts responsible for the climate crisis, for instance, continue to undermine climate action - and we now have to bear the horrendous costs of collective inaction and the human crisis that monetary terms by large fail short to capture. And politics continues to trump law, as seen with the EEP expectedly voting down the EU's Nature Restoration Law in plenary on 12 July.

The healing power of compassion

The answer to the above question is to find my own way to deal with it, while also processing the loss together, growing stronger and closer as a community. It is to do the hard work - mourning and grieving, taking care of oneself and one another, slowing down. Grief is thankful re-membering. By remembering her both individually and collectively, we keep her memory alive and a part of her continues to live on in each of us. While it was hard to see all the colleagues, her family and friends at the mass held on the same weekend that it happened because it made it more real and reality inescapable, it also filled me with the reassurance that she was - and continues to be - loved. Remember to love. Let love be your medicine - all forms of love: friendship, self-love, solidarity, universal love, mutual aid, care, compassion, support, non-judgemental acceptance, listening, social cohesion. Love gives life meaning. It can invite you back into life when having split from the present. Health derives from connection, whereas trauma is about broken connection - to our vitality, to reality. While the body, once dead, cannot be resurrected, the soul is never broken beyond repair. Recognition - emotional awareness of real-life pain - paves the way for reconnection. Confessing to the woundedness underneath the seeming indifference, being with the suffering rather than pushing it back, running away, rushing on, is the only way to heal, to become whole again. Every emotion invites me to approach peace, including the natural anger felt in the face of injustice, one of the A's put forward by Gabor and Daniel Maté in "The Myth of Normal" to counterbalance the toxic culture that is breeding disease and normalising trauma. The other A's required for broad transformational change include authenticity, agency, acceptance that in this moment things cannot be changed, as well as activism and advocacy.

Everything I do matters, has an impact on someone, somewhere, at some point in time. What is moral is also authentic. Our true nature is rooted in relationship, with health being the outcome of all our relationships. The Indigenous knowledge and organic principle of One health recognises the inter-connection of soil, plant, animal and human health in a holistic concept. Reverence for all beings is the foundation of a revolution of love. An organic culture is about choosing connection, choosing life, honouring relationships as pathway to healing. It is the antidote to the widespread culture of lovelessness and domination with a strict work ethic and performance pressure that induces chronic stress which in turn causes inflammation and disease. Resilience, on the other hand, comes from care - another organic principle - being there for and comforting each other, showing up rather than isolating oneself (while still listening to and taking time for oneself). Care, in turn, is part of love and community, which empower and sustain us. Let’s let universal love be our compass.

Courage to change

While survivor’s guilt - asking oneself "Why her and not me?" - can naturally arise (and paralyse) after such a traumatic event, there is no culpability where there is no choice. It is, however, my choice to let myself, my heart break open by the grief rather than breaking down under the weight of it, becoming even more human - and humane - in the process of self-transformation. The place of suffering is also a place of possibility. Trauma requires going back to where it hurts in order to find the courage to go to somewhere new. After having been at a loss for words in the first instance and weeks, I decided to recover my voice through writing, to let life get back to me in order to get back into life, in a mutual encounter, thereby recovering agency.

If she could say one last thing to me, perhaps it would be: "Let yourself live. Be who you are meant to be. Live life to the fullest."

When I was still buried too deeply in the pain and sorrow, I did not realise this, but the loss also opened a door for me, brought me closer to other people at a time when I was living more inside my head and in the past than taking part in life, trying to protect myself by closing in on myself. It also harshly confronted me with the fragility of life, which calls for humility and accentuates the need to take care of one another and the living world, the biodiversity and ecosystems that our life-support systems, on which we depend. Paying attention to the tiny little wallflower, the dandelion breaking through the concrete, the cornflower in the cornfield, the poppy in the wheat monoculture, the birdsong despite the traffic noise constitutes a transformation in the way we see the world. Wonder and awe for the seeming invisible and incredible, the magic and miracle that is life can lead us towards a more dignified and respectful, truthful and trusting, humane and life-affirming culture that, in turn, can be our lifeline.

The transformative power of love

Love doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be angry. You definitely should be when the situation calls for it. Rage, anger and sadness are not the opposite of a revolutionary love, they are crucial parts of it. Let love fuel your anger, your rage, your sadness. Let this revolutionary love keep you going.

—Mitzi Jonelle Tan

We can choose to honour her memory by living, loving and celebrating life, embodying generosity, joy, warmth, kindness, care, humanity, honesty, freedom, and peace - human and social values - and trying to find something positive, something beautiful in everything and everyone. What we choose to see can come into being, can become reality. That is the potential and promise of transformation; that is what true love is about: seeing one another for who they could be and for who we could become; seeing behind the façade, through the appearance right to the other's core identity, their essence, their potential - what is already there but was hidden and buried - so that it can surface. So that we can grow and glow. There will always be love after death. Love will live on, and our beloved will live on in us. By learning to love, we learn to accept change, writes bell hooks. Without change we cannot grow. Nor can we live fully. Because again: life essentially is about change.

The good news is that people can change. Culture can change if enough people change. The organic movement applies this knowledge by committing to continuous development towards best practice and its full potential, while remaining open to the new. In the same way that new life develops from the dark, dead organic matter called humus - a rich, fertile and essential component of healthy soil that is the foundation for diverse forms of life and growth - let’s build up social humus (3), the foundation of a response-able culture committed to avoid the avoidable, to share the burden of it when it does happen, and to learn from the past. Advocates are tellers of truth to power. Let’s all advocate for the possibility of transformation, defending the tiniest possibility of coming back to life - and of something good coming out of it.

Grazie Anna - for your love of and zest for life, your enthusiasm and energy, your joie de vivre and Italian gusto. You changed lives, left a lasting imprint on all those who knew you. You gave me the courage and strength to be more myself, to shed the mask, to show and share my vulnerability. I am grateful for having had the opportunity to meet you and work with you. Per sempre nei nostri cuori ♡

(1) At the time of writing, the exact circumstances of her death are still unclear.

(2) I finalised this text shortly after having been to her home country and, more precisely, the even more lively city of Rome, and TBH am still - and might always be - struggling to make sense of what is so utterly senseless. It is heartbreaking to know that her right to a future, to live a full life, to love and grow and be part of this liveliness has been taken away, and this deprivation of possibility making it the hardest to accept, yet resistance is fertile and, like resilience, is a sign of life that perseveres and can be found everywhere - even in the aftermath of natural disasters, public health crises like Covid-19 (with Italy as one of the most impacted countries), and human-made horrors like war and authoritarian regimes (see, e.g., "The Mushroom at the End of the World"). Because something good can come out of it - if we are willing to change and be changed, letting the loss transform us through its lessons about life.

(3) Expression used by Sascha Damaschun at a past BIOFACH Congress session, so the credits go to him :-)