Radical Joy for Hard Times book

Finding Meaning and Making Beauty in Earth’s Broken Places
by Trebbe Johnson

Ever had that sick feeling when you see a clear-cut forest or mountain top destroyed for mining? Do you grieve for the woods or the fields you played in as a child? Often, we respond simply by abandoning these places, as if they no longer count. Or else we work so feverishly to restore them to a state somewhere between what we remember and what we long for, that we fail to pay attention to how they look—and how they affect us.

In her new book, seven years in the making, Trebbe Johnson presents a passionate, pioneering new approach. Choosing to respond to the loss of loved places in a way that opens us up to our sorrow and then expresses our gratitude with stories, mindful gazing, and spontaneous creativity offers a meaningful, vital, and even joyful path through the hard times we face on Earth.

“Trebbe Johnson’s idea is a revolutionary one, and imperative in this possibly late phase of our relationship with the only planet we have: to look directly at loss. Only by summoning it, feeling it, entering a new communion with it, is there any hope for healing. This manifesto is a song—not a dirge, but a symphony with all the complexity and emotion our home, the ever-creative earth, calls forth.”
—Melissa Holbrook Pierson, author of The Place You Love Is Gone

“It’s a great vision that Trebbe Johnson is sending out into the world, and it is very much her own. The great central truth of what she is doing is the very hard lesson for all of us in our lives, and yet it is our blessing.”
—W.S. Merwin, Former Poet Laureate of the United States