At the Edge: What Is Mine to Do? And Who Can I Do It With?

By Kimberley Hare

Our planet is in an entangled meta-crisis – including potential ecological and climate breakdown.

Our very way of life could be unravelling, and even collapsing, as a result. There are many books out there which outline all the evidence and science. This is not one of them - instead this book focuses on helping you to stand tall and face reality from a place of resilience, courage and clarity.

Today the dominant question many people are asking is ‘Yes, but what can I do?’. This book will guide you through exploring the SEVEN DOORWAYS people can go through to make a positive difference. It will help you to decide ‘What is mine to do?’, ‘How can I tell a story with my life that I’m proud to tell – no matter what happens?’ and ‘How can I balance the needs of the planet with my needs and those of our society?’

For most people, to find answers to these major questions will require profound psychological, emotional and spiritual inner work – see this book as your guide to accessing your wisdom through these momentous times.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jun 28, 2024
• ISBN: 9781805149002

Kimberley Hare

Kimberley Hare led a successful consulting and leadership development business for 35 years before waking up to the meta-crisis now facing us. At that point, she shut down her business and devoted herself to supporting people emotionally, psychologically and spiritually to navigate the challenges ahead. Kimberley is a writer, an expert on resilience and adaptation, a master transformative coach and retreat facilitator, who does all her work ‘in the gift’.

Book preview

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Kimberley Hare has played a key role in making the Climate Majority Project possible. Central to our Project is enabling the majority to find what is theirs to do, with others. This book is an important key to support them in that task.

Prof. Rupert Read, Co-Director of the Climate Majority Project, and author, Why Climate Breakdown Matters

Kimberley understands the deeply healing power of service, and has created a much needed and beautifully articulated map into finding our own versions of the same. It’s a book about responding to our times with an open heart and sense of purpose, I hope many people read this work and discover what is theirs to do.

Michael Shaw, director, Living in the Time of Dying

Kimberley Hare’s calling is helping others find theirs, and this book is a natural outflowing of her experience over many years.

Shaun Chamberlin, Dark Optimism

Kimberley brings her wealth of experience to help people respond constructively to the harsh realities of climate breakdown and multi system collapse. She demonstrates that it is possible to transform feelings of helplessness into agency, and find connections, community, and courage. This brave and inspiring book is an accessible, insightful, and inspiring tool for our time.

Trudi Warner, Climate Activist, EDGE Alumni

In these unparalleled times, Kimberley Hare’s book pulls no punches and serves as a crucial clarion call for those waking up to the immense challenges we face. Full of heart, wisdom, and inspiring examples, you will be guided to explore your unique path and find what is truly yours to do.

Chantal Burns, Author of Bulletproof: Be fearless and Resilient – No Matter What

Copyright © 2024 Kimberley Hare

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Troubador Publishing Ltd

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Harrison Road, Market Harborough

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Tel: [phone]

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Web: www.troubador.co.uk

ISBN 978 1805149 002

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is for Genas, Elaina May, Rarley and Saria.

Dedicated to Michael Dowd

(19 November 1958–7 October 2023)

I want to pay tribute here to Michael Dowd, who very sadly and unexpectedly passed away about a week after I interviewed him for this book.

I learnt so much from you about love in action, the ecological worldview, history and overshoot. I’d only known you for about four years, but I like to think we shared a special connection. You sought to inspire everyone you met to live fully with gratitude – as if it were your last year, last season, last month, last day.

From me and all those around the world you have touched with your love.

Huge thanks to all the people I spoke with who offered their wisdom and insights: Harry Gibbs, Michael Shaw, Michael Dowd, Emeritus Professor Rupert Read, Shaun Chamberlin, Manda Scott, Kate Swindells, Bel Jacobs, Trudi Warner, Professor Jem Bendell, Jack Cooper, Rachel Donald, Jessica Townsend, Joolz Thompson, Indra Donfrancesco, Lucy Neal, Rob Harrison-Plastow, Tania Leon.

Contents

Introduction

Final Thoughts

Recommended Podcasts and Websites

Introduction

Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.

This book is aimed squarely at the rapidly growing number of people in the UK who are waking up to the meta-crisis, including the climate and ecological catastrophe and the possibility of societal collapse in the near future.

This hasn’t been an easy book to write! It doesn’t have a neat and coherent set of steps to follow. The reality is messy, and there is no map. We’ve never been here before.

I also confess, as the horrific news continues to worsen, there have been days where I’ve thought, what’s even the point of writing this book?

And then I remind myself of what is mine to do, which is to help other people find what is theirs to do and who they could do it with.

This book does not attempt to lay out how dire our predicament now is. There are many other publications that do this really well.¹ ² ³ ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ ⁸

My focus here is to help you, the reader, uncover what is yours to do in response.

We face a meta-crisis: a whole series of interconnected predicaments that mean our current ways of living are unravelling and possibly even collapsing entirely.

Other terms often used are ‘polycrisis’, ‘the great unravelling’, ‘great simplification’, ‘clusterfuck’ or even ‘omni-shambles’!

Business as usual – by which I mean globalised industrial capitalism with its insistence on infinite economic growth – cannot, and will not, continue for much longer.

This meta-crisis includes, but is not limited to, the climate and ecological emergency.

As people wake up to the seriousness of our situation, their dominant question is usually:

"Yes, but what can I do?"

Have you been asking yourself that?

Going way beyond the usual mainstream recommendations about individual behaviour change, signing petitions, or even activism and protest, this book explores ‘seven doorways’ people can open and go through to answer the questions:

•What is mine to do?

•How can I tell a story with my life that I’m proud to tell – no matter what happens?

•What’s the sweet spot between what the world most needs (including more than human life), my skills, passions and strengths, and what brings most joy and meaning? What’s my ikigai?

For most people, this enquiry demands profound psychological, emotional and spiritual inner work.

The book you’re holding encapsulates what I’ve learnt over the past five years through facilitating my ‘Edge’ retreats.

These four-day gatherings are designed to:

a)Help people to stand tall and look our predicament in the face – from a place of resilience, courage and clarity.

b)Find their ‘thread’ – what’s theirs to do.

It’s also informed by many hundreds of one-on-one and small group coaching conversations with people seeking to do just that, as well as work I do in HEART, a community group based in Hertfordshire, England, focused on local community resilience and adaptation.

As my friend Shaun Chamberlin often points out, there is a big difference between doing ‘good work’ and ‘your work’. The first tends to be motivated by ‘shoulds’ and often leads to burnout and frustration.

The latter imbues your human experience with sustained joy, meaning and agency.

The seven doorways, in no particular order, are:

•Find the Quiet Within

•Find Your Joy

•Reconnect with Nature

•Find the Others

•Courage to Face Uncertainty

•Feel Your Feelings (All of Them!)

•Self-Enquiry

I point you towards many other resources from leading thinkers in the field that I have found incredibly helpful. You can follow these breadcrumbs if you choose to through exploring the references section, but that’s all optional.

Mostly, I’m encouraging you to go inside.

The book is also peppered with insights and wisdom offered by sixteen illustrative examples: people (some you’ve probably heard of and some you haven’t) who have found what is theirs to do and are boldly living it – with courage, clarity, joy and resilience.

I deliberately chose a wide variety of illustrative examples: campaigners and activists, writers, storytellers, community builders, those regenerating spaces and places, artists and people providing psychological and emotional support.

You could (sort of) categorise these do-ers into five main categories:

1.Resistance

2.Resilience

3.Regeneration

4.Reimagining

5.Reform

Of course, in reality, people rarely fall neatly into only one of these categories – many straddle several. It’s interesting to me that nobody I chose is squarely in the reform business though!

Voices from the Edge – Who Are They?

I interviewed sixteen people (see opposite) – here’s a short description of them in the order I talked with them. Each of them, in their different ways, personifies the love, courage and capacity to stand tall and face it all from a place of resilience. They are all telling an important story with their lives, despite the challenges they face.

Harry Gibbs

Harry is known on the internet as Justin Panopticon, the person who dedicates his life to bringing us daily news and updates from around the world. I find it so helpful to have all the most recent news in one place. His threads act as a ‘perspective-restorer’ for many hundreds of people (including me) and remind us daily not to sweat the small stuff. You can read these by going to climateandeconomy.com

Sixteen ‘Voices from the Edge’

Michael Shaw

Based in Australia, Michael is the creator of the multi-award-winning documentary Living in the Time of Dying.⁹ Since finishing the moving and unflinchingly honest film, Michael continues to contribute by hosting regular climate collapse and grief meetings on Zoom with folk from all over the world.

Michael Dowd

Michael was the creator of Post-Doom.com. An outstanding communicator and big-picture educator, he created a massive body of work that anybody can access freely. An eco-theologian, he spelt God ‘G – Earth emoji – D’. Michael sadly died in October 2023, a few days after my interview with him.

Professor Emeritus Rupert Read

One of the co-founders of Extinction Rebellion in 2018, Rupert is a prolific writer and was, until recently, a philosophy professor at the University of East Anglia. He has now moved out of academia and devotes himself full-time to the Climate Majority Project.¹⁰

Shaun Chamberlin

One of the pioneers of the Transition Towns movement, Shaun is a writer, an educator and an activist. He is the author of The Transition Timeline, co-author of several other books, including What We Are Fighting For, former chair of the Ecological Land Cooperative and was one of the earliest Extinction Rebellion arrestees. He is also known for his collaboration with the late David Fleming, having brought his award-winning lifework Lean Logic to posthumous publication. These days, Shaun leads a brilliant online programme called ‘Surviving the Future: Conversations for Our Time’ and is also one of six stewards of moneyless pub and bunkhouse The Happy Pig, in Ireland. Find out more at Dark Optimism.¹¹

Manda Scott

Creator of ‘Accidental Gods’¹² Manda is a novelist, shamanic dreaming teacher, blogger and podcast host. She believes a better world is still possible.

Kate Swindells

I met Kate originally through the Deep Adaptation community, and – together with others – we created HEART Community Group. Although she’s now moved on from HEART, Kate is a fantastic example of an ‘ordinary person’ (I mean that as a huge compliment) and mother doing extraordinary things and has been quietly building local community resilience for years.

Bel Jacobs

A former fashion editor, Bel now focuses on three pillars that she believes are intimately intertwined: climate and ecological justice, alternative fashion systems and animal rights. She is also a co-founder of the Islington Climate Centre and regularly works in schools with young people. She is committed to reducing suffering – both human and non-human – wherever she finds it.

Trudi Warner

A retired social worker (and alumnus of the Edge retreat), Trudi has become rather famous through holding up a sign outside the court where climate campaigners were on trial, holding a placard that read: ‘Jurors: you have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience’. Since September 2023,