Bøger af Trebbe Johnson

When grief and anxiety beat us down, the struggle to cope can feel like it's crushing us even more. To meet big challenges we need to develop fierce consciousness. In her new book Trebbe Johnson offers 35 practices that are smart, tough, sassy, and surprising. She shows how we can not only survive challenges to our personal lives and our ailing planet, but also engage with them in ways that give new meaning and beauty to daily experience."¿¿¿Fierce consciousness" is a way of perceiving and behaving that is both firmly grounded in the reality of our circumstances and able to meet that reality with wild, bold creativity and curiosity. Each chapter-sassy, direct, and eloquent-focuses on a simple practice and includes stories culled from the author's 30 years of experience leading workshops and wilderness rites of passage programs, as well as inspiring examples from a variety of people who have snatched beauty from suffering, for example: a young woman who quietly helped an ailing homeless man in a subway station at rush hour; South African political prisoners during the time of apartheid, who would sing together from their cells on death row; and a businessman captivated by an unlikely parade of seagulls on a New York City street during the first Covid lockdown. Also threading through the book is Trebbe Johnson's own fierce wrangling with grief after the death of her husband. Fierce Consciousness is divided into five sections- Sink, Punch, Seek, Receive, and Give, charting a journey that begins with refusing to disbelieve in a particular bad reality and moves toward practices of finding and making beauty from within that dark place. Rather than a therapist or pundit who counsels the reader in reasoned tones, she writes as a fellow traveler who's picked up a lot of wisdom on the path. "Stop making sense," "Do it because only you can," "Fight the angel and let her win," "Look for where the smiling stops," "Hold the feathers of grief and joy," "Get dirty," and "Claim your superpower" are the titles of a few of the short chapters. The book offers practices that anyone can do in all kinds of situations not just to survive hard times, but to thrive in the midst of them.

For most people, places that have become damaged through human or natural events are nothing but eyesores, best avoided if no official agency has some kind of plan to clean them up. It's rare to set out with a sense of adventure to visit a clear-cut forest, a mountaintop flattened by coal mining, a gas fracking site, or a polluted river. Trebbe Johnson not only celebrates these "wounded places" but invites us to discover meaning, vitality, and delight in them and, in the process, in ourselves. We do this by visiting these places and making "guerrilla beauty" for them-anonymous, bold, spontaneous tokens of gratitude or consolation. Each of the "101 Ways to Make Guerrilla Beauty" offered here is easy to do, whether you're alone, with a friend, or with a group. They don't require advance planning, expert advice, or special tools. Some of the 101 Ways pertain to specific kinds of damaged places, ranging from a favorite tree that's been cut down in your own back yard to a Superfund site too toxic to enter. Others can be applied to many different kinds of hurt places. Trebbe Johnson's simple practices reflect a profound and innovative approach to surviving the environmental problems every one of us is facing, but to thriving in the midst of them.

In a world devastated by human interaction and natural disaster—from clearcutting and fracking to extreme weather and urban sprawl—creating art, ritual, and even joy in wounded places is essential to our collective healing When a beloved place is decimated by physical damage, many may hit the donate button or call their congressperson. But award-winning author Trebbe Johnson argues that we need new methods for coping with these losses and invites readers to reconsider what constitutes “worthwhile action.” She discusses real wounded places ranging from weapons-testing grounds at Eglin Air Force Base, to Appalachian mountain tops destroyed by mining. These stories, along with tools for community engagement—ceremony, vigil, apology, and the creation of art with on-site materials—show us how we can find beauty in these places and discover new sources of meaning and community.