Climate Grief: Activities Guide

Climate Grief: Activities Guide is a practical companion resource to All About Climate Grief: What to Know and What to Do About It by Panu Pihkala, with Anya Kamenetz and Sarah Newman. It provides a collection of structured activities to help individuals and groups recognise, explore and respond constructively to grief associated with climate change, ecological degradation and anticipated environmental loss.

The guide is intended for individuals interested in understanding their own climate emotions, as well as educators, facilitators, community groups, environmental organisations and others supporting conversations about climate change and emotional wellbeing. Activities may be undertaken individually, with a trusted partner or in facilitated group settings.

Through reflection, discussion, creative expression, grounding and symbolic practices, participants are encouraged to explore the different forms that climate and ecological grief may take and how grief can interact with emotions including anxiety, loneliness, empathy, anger, gratitude, hope and empowerment.

Activities include:

• reflecting on personal experiences of climate grief and coping;
• creating a visual “grief map” of emotional experiences over time;
• using the Climate Emotions Wheel to explore connections between grief and other emotions;
• recognising and validating disenfranchised grief that may have been dismissed or overlooked;
• exploring anticipatory grief while avoiding catastrophising and maintaining appreciation of the present;
• using symbols and rituals to acknowledge environmental change, loss and transition; and
• considering how grief may deepen values, gratitude, connection, meaning and motivation to care for the Earth and its inhabitants.

The guide encourages participants to acknowledge difficult emotions rather than suppressing them or moving prematurely towards optimism. It presents climate grief not only as a response to loss, but also as a potential source of empathy, connection, personal meaning and constructive environmental engagement.

This resource is educational and reflective and is not a replacement for professional mental health support where this is needed.