Opening Hearts, Healing the Earth
- 5 days ago
- 6 min read
Katharine Wilkinson’s Call for Courage, Care, and Connection
Emotions are the driving force behind climate action, according to author, teacher, and climate activist Dr. Katharine K. Wilkinson. Indeed, words like “heartbreak,” “courage,” “healing,” and “belonging” appear throughout her work like signposts marking the heart’s journey—sometimes her own—from climate despair to commitment to self, nature, and community.
Wilkinson, who lives in Atlanta, Georgia, outlines her unique way of seeing the world—and our place in it—in her book Climate Wayfinding, a guide to moving from “climate ache to action.”
She has also coedited, with Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, the best-selling All We Can Save, an anthology of articles featuring 60 women climate leaders, and was involved in the Drawdown project, which provides solutions to global warming.
In addition, Wilkinson cofounded and leads the All We Can Save Project, consisting of programs to support climate engagement; she does this amid other activities, such as podcast cohosting, speaking, and group facilitating.
Wilkinson recently toured the US to promote Climate Wayfinding, published in early May 2026, holding interactive events at venues such as the Climate Museum in New York City, the US’s first institution dedicated to climate change. Her collaboration with the museum reflects a common purpose—engaging people to transform culture to promote climate action.
A Dawning Realization
In her new book, Climate Wayfinding, Wilkinson recalls the defining moment that led to her climate engagement. During one of many school visits to the forests of North Carolina, her class was led to “a totally denuded ridgeside.”
“The clear-cut was a barren gash in the Southern Appalachian ecosystem I had come to love. I felt my heart fissure as I looked out on what was traditionally—rightfully—Cherokee land, once canopied by towering chestnut trees before the days of colonization and forced removals, then ubiquitous logging and deadly chestnut blight. So many layers of tragedy,” she writes.
“The brutality of the extractive economy gripped me. I ached with realization about the gap, the gulf, between how we can do things … and how we do do things—taking it all, land be damned. I shuddered with shame from not having been more awake before, thinking clear-cuts were a wrenching, awful problem in faraway places like the Amazon, but not here.”
“I was heartbroken, angry, activated, and I yearned for a sense of belonging on, and with, this planet we call home.”
“This was the most pivotal instance in a series of experiences that had helped me understand the harms of industrial forestry and agriculture, fossil fuels, and climate change. … I also came to see my own entanglement in those systems. … I was heartbroken, angry, activated, and I yearned for a sense of belonging on, and with, this planet we call home,” she writes.
Building Emotional Engagement
This journey led her to create books and initiatives to help people find their own path—and discover their passion for the natural world.
In a Q&A interview leading up to this year’s publication of Climate Wayfinding, Wilkinson explains how people need deeper support to help them with their own climate journey. This realization helped spark the Climate Wayfinding materials, which are designed to guide people “through reflection and discovery, and toward the next steps beyond the final chapter,” she says in the interview.
Feelings are an important part of driving action, she maintains.
In Climate Wayfinding, Wilkinson recognizes that “there is a swelling of grief, anxiety, fear, anger, numbness, shame, exhaustion” about the state of the environment—all of which can lead to “burnout.”
What makes a difference is working as individuals and groups to create a space to deal with difficult emotions. This, in turn, can “let the heart metabolize what is hard and to renew the wonder, reverence, and love that often live at the root of our participation.”
Dealing with ‘Climate Overwhelm’
In the interview, Wilkinson explains how she personally deals with climate anxiety: “For me, climate overwhelm often feels like really deep grief. Recently, it was a 300-year-old oak tree in Savannah. … In defiance of community protests and local protections for the tree, Georgia Power rolled through and cut it down for a power line. “In the grand scheme, it’s small. … But there was something about that tree that reminded me of how business as usual runs roughshod over the magnificence of life. I found myself in tears. Over the years, I’ve learned that my heart can break—or it can break open. If I allow it, that grief becomes generative. It can call me in, if I give myself the space and support to truly feel it.“
Winning Hearts Is Key to Healing the Earth
If anything is to change, more people must get involved in the challenge to overcome the climate crisis.
“Change will require a much larger upwelling of people [who are] not just concerned, but lending their talents, voices, hearts, and hands to shaping the future. But the scale of the crisis can feel overwhelming. It can feel like too much for the human heart,” she says in the Q&A session.
“We need spaces, practices, and community—to recognize that grief and anxiety are not weaknesses. They are powerful sources of motivation, if we don’t face them alone.”
“Most people who are worried aren’t talking about it. There’s profound silence and isolation. That’s why we need spaces, practices, and community—to recognize that grief and anxiety are not weaknesses. They are powerful sources of motivation, if we don’t face them alone,” she explains.
Storytelling Matters
As humans, we are connected to the earth and to each other, Wilkinson writes in her book. “On so many levels, we need one another to take part in planetary healing, from cheering each other up to cheering each other on,” she says.
People, she adds, can offer one another support through compassion, encouragement, and solidarity, as well as provide new perspectives and “infectious joy.”
In Climate Wayfinding, Wilkinson talks about how human beings are storytellers and that the “collective climate story is a tale being told in real time, in our time.”
She asks: “Do we see ourselves in it? Do we trust that we belong in the narrative—not as bystanders, victims, or villains, but as actors in the most fundamental sense? Do we dare to take up the pen or paint a fresh scene or sing new verses?”
“Ultimately, we are the shapers of this story, right from within its pages,” she concludes.
Encouraging Community Participation
A series of exercises in Climate Wayfinding encourages readers to reflect on their own values and how they express them.
They are then prompted to reach out to someone in their “kindred community” to explore climate projects. They are asked to create a list of projects or campaigns that are aligned with their values and sign up for an upcoming opportunity. They could offer to support a group or provide promotional help.
Individuals are also invited to take action in the community. This could include organizing a compost pickup in their neighborhood, planning a campaign for their employer to move to fossil-fuel–free retirement savings plans, door-knocking to get out the climate vote during elections, and volunteering to help elders prepare for emergencies.
Solutions are Possible
Wilkinson is cautiously optimistic about the future. “Many solutions are already saving money, creating jobs, and cutting emissions. We also now have something that once seemed unthinkable: a climate majority,” she says in the Q&A session.
“So, the questions become: If the solutions exist, why aren’t they scaling fast enough? And if most people recognize climate change as a problem, why are so many still on the sidelines? … Individual actions matter. But collective change is more powerful. We make all the rest of the solutions possible.”
*Yasmin Prabhudas is a freelance journalist working mainly for nonprofit organizations, labor unions, the education sector, and government agencies.
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