She Can't Take A Breath

Making Meaning Of Natural Disasters

I've been working as a clinical spiritual care provider for hospice for the past 16 years. I've sat with over 1,000 people through their death and transition.

When the medical team is trying to save a patient, they call the doctor. When there's nothing else they can do for a patient, they call me.

Have you ever watched someone die from a respiratory illness like COPD, emphysema, or cystic fibrosis?

I have.

These folks describe a sensation of feeling like they can't breathe -- even though they are, in fact, breathing. It's a feeling that gets worse as they approach the end of their life.

There are interventions like oxygen, morphine, and even meditation that can help soothe the sensation. But most people describe it as never going away fully.

None of us wants to live or die feeling like we're suffocating.

That's partly why we were all so outraged when George Floyd was murdered by a police officer placing a knee on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, even though he pleaded for his life multiple times saying, I cant breathe.

I want to tell you another story about death and about breath. It may be one you've never been told in quite these terms.

On Friday, September 27, 2024, I flew home to the gulf coast of Florida after a weeklong summit in Sedona. It was the day after hurricane Helene had decimated the city where I've been living the past 3 years. My home was spared. I was one of the lucky ones. But my best friend's home was a total loss.

The next morning, as I was helping her go through the debris to salvage pieces of her life, I got a call from my brother in my hometown of Asheville, NC. He said he was calling to let me know he was ok. I replied, Did you mean to say you're calling to see if I'm ok? He said, No, the hurricane...it broke the river...the river has wiped out everything.

No words can describe the heartbreak I felt as I watched the pictures and videos sent to me by friends and loved ones of their homes and livelihoods destroyed. No words can tell of the heaviness I felt as I drove around and watched for miles as people stacked all their furniture and belongings in their front yard for trash pick up.

Then, 12 days later, the unthinkable happened. We were hit again by yet another major hurricane. This time, it blew over trees in my yard, it blew down my fence, and I was without electricity for 5 days. Still, I was one of the lucky ones. Some lost everything. Some lost their homes. Some lost their lives.

You might be wondering what the hell a respiratory illness or George Floyd has to do with hurricanes?

This is a story about breathing you may have never heard before.

In the wake of so much pain, so much loss, and so much suffering, it's completely understandable that people are feeling freightened of Nature, feeling angry at Nature, and feeling more separated than ever FROM Nature.

That's why I felt compelled to tell this story. Not only do I trust nature implicitly, but also I've spent the past 16 years mastering the craft of meaning making -- especially meaning making in moments of pain, loss, and suffering.

Most scientists agree the increase in intensity as well as frequency of major hurricanes these days is a direct result of global warming.

I can actually feel your eyes rolling when I say the words global warming.

That's not a judgment. I did the same thing most of my life.

Whenever I heard that phrase, I would think, I drive a hybrid; I have solar panels on my roof; I take out my recycling on tuesdays...what more do you want from me?

It was only last year that I learned global warming is actually a story about mother nature's respiratory illness and her difficulty breathing.

It turns out, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere isn't actually the horrible villain its been portrayed to be.

Carbon dioxide is actually one of mother nature's favorite building materials for creating and sustaining life on our planet.

The problem isn't really the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere -- that's only a symptom -- the underlying root cause is mother nature's inability to inhale any of the carbon molecules from the atmosphere into the earth.

She can't take a breath.

Her lung capacity is diminshed. Her lungs are functioning at about 3%.

What are the lungs of mother nature you ask?

The answer is: Soil.

Earth's topsoil is her lungs.

But approximately 97% of earth's topsoil has been removed, exploited and killed.

There are several factors that have contributed to this destruction, but, by far, the greatest killer has been the billions of gallons of glyphosate sprayed on the topsoil every year for the past 40 years.

Glyphosate is a synthetic chemical one molecule off from Agent Orange. We've been spraying the soil our food grows in with this chemical for 4 decades.

It has completely taken the life of soil. It has quite literally taken the life right out of mother nature's lungs.

This is a story about breathing that can help us understand what's really happening.

The hurricanes, the storms, the floods -- they aren't mother nature trying to punish us, for being bad.

They're her cries for help.

Each storm is another plea, I can’t breathe.

So everyone's asking, What do we do about it?

In my opinion, there's really only one solution — everyone needs to have a new, direct experience of nature that makes her feel real, alive, and conscious to you. And then develop a relationship with this real, alive consciousness.

It's extremely difficult for humans to objectify things we experience as real, alive, and conscious.

But we've become so disconnected from nature that we don't even have ears that can hear her cries anymore. We don't have eyes that can see what she's going through.

My life's work is to guide people in restoring this sight and hearing that's been lost.

Beginning on the Winter Solstice, I’ll be guiding an online group container, where you'll have the opportunity to gain confidence and a comfort level with your own ability to attune to nature. By the end of this 6-week course, you'll be talking to animals, communing with trees, and making love to the moon!

Remembering how to engage in a relationship with nature and rediscovering the power within you for enchantment and present-centeredness with nature — these are the real solutions to the environmental problems we face — these are the only way to ensure her cries never go unheard on our watch again.