Tending an Ecology of Resilience

We humans are moving more deeply into the crucible of experience that will test the mettle of our resilience. Whether we call it the Polycrisis, the Great Unraveling, the Great Turning, or just feel the overwhelming stress of living within outmoded, depleting, extractive systems, the pressures we are under have the potential to refine our capacities, to illuminate the paradigm shifts required to live well on a changing planet.

As an integrative family and community medicine physician walking the path of service within the safety net, I have witnessed the way the pressures of socioeconomic disparities, structural disadvantages, experiences of trauma, isolation, and loneliness challenge one’s capacity to thrive with health and resilience. It has also illuminated the way caring, empathetic, and connected relationships and community can have a buffering, healing effect. How living in an ecology of care in our relationships, our homes, our communities can allow us to survive and even thrive under unimaginable circumstances. Our human history is full of shining examples of the resilience and strength found in community, even or perhaps especially in the face of oppressive challenges. In our collective wayfinding toward a resilient, regenerative future, we have much to learn from those who have long been experiencing polycrises, who have long been on the exploited end of the equation.

No matter where we are positioned in society, we will all feel the pressure and pain of being caught up in the old paradigm. My experience as a doctor in the healthcare system illuminated this for me. Like a majority of my healthcare-providing colleagues, I felt the painful, morally injurious constraints of being structurally disallowed to hold the depth of space required for full healing potential of primary care to be realized. How vested interests and incentive structures uphold and reward an untenable (if profitable for some) status quo. The result: worsened health outcomes, enormous CO2 footprint, epidemic burnout. It is not unlike what our living systems are experiencing—being pushed to the edge of ecological limits, teetering on the brink of collapse, in the name of profit. It is poignantly clear that a paradigm shift is needed, for the benefit of all of life on this Earth. Our very survival hangs in the balance.

What might a shifted paradigm look like? We may learn much from the natural world, remembering that we humans are natural beings, too. Ecology, the study of relationships of living beings (including humans) and their environment, reveals that being woven into the web of life is essential for resilience on every level. From micro to macro, epigenetic to whole ecological systems, no matter where you look we see that cultivating relationships—with self, others, and the natural world—is foundational to our health and resilience. Humility, deep listening, observation, and reverence for the wisdom in how nature works serves us well. From this place of alignment, of kinship, of reciprocity, of hands-in-the soil integrity we move toward integration back into the whole, the very definition of health and the ground from which resilience arises.

Intensity of experience can provide the activation energy, or be the catalyst, for the necessary change to happen. Indeed, sometimes it is the only way. I was only able to leave my role as beloved primary care provider in our village when it was clear that staying was endangering my wellbeing. This pressure allowed me to live into a new paradigm, to be a person of medicine in a healing garden. To bring Natura Institute for Ecology and Medicine more fully into being, in the Commonweal Garden. To be the change I was longing for within medicine, standing more fully within the healer archetype in allied relationship with all of life. Cultivating models of healing grounded in ecological truths. Working within circles of healing relationships, attuned to natural cycles, placing healing work in community with all of life. Holding a deep space for healing, starting with myself and allowing it to ripple out, while tending the land, making beauty, and cultivating ecologically coherent niches for people to drop into communion—with sentience, intuition, meaning, and purpose. To feel held, with love, in the heart of all of creation.

My capacity to move from overwhelming challenge toward a vision of possibility, an example of resilience, was possible because I, too, was well-supported and loved. I was mentored by generous elders, and guided by a life-long and deeply rooted practice of connecting with the divine, as I understand her, while in communion with the natural world. I am supported by people who believe in me. I believe in myself and in the possibility that we all have some special role to play in this great mystery. All that is required is to be true to ourselves.

Yes, I know some things about attuning circadian rhythm to cycles of light and dark, cultivating presence, nervous system regulation, dampening inflammation, eating a plant-forward diet, optimizing metabolic energies, and other powerful teachings drawn from my training in medicine. And it is certainly true that we stack the odds of being healthy and resilient in our favor when we tend to our relationship with self. However, pointing to self-care and healthy behaviors as a strategy for adapting to the coming challenges is woefully inadequate and risks blaming the individual for being caught up in consumerist systems and structures that capitalize on our overextended, stressed realities. Like behavior change, paradigm-shifting is only possible within supportive ecologies that allows us to feel love and support, to have all of our basic needs met. Only then can we move beyond stressed survival mode into visionary activation.

We are all in this together. Humans, bees, redwoods, salmon, earthworms and songbirds. Let us hold this truth in our hearts as we envision a resilient future, and the paradigm shifting that may allow us to get there. Let us support each other to let outmoded thought patterns, stories, and conditioning drop away. Let us allow the crucible of experience to refine our energies, the quality of our presence. Simplifying, purifying, holding fast to loving relationships within the web of live. Turning toward and tending that which is beautiful, regenerative, and good.

Allowing ourselves to open to the possibilities on the other side, and in this very moment.

—by Anna O'Malley, MD

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Find out more about Anna O'Malley and Natura Institute for Ecology and Medicine at Commonweal Garden. Photo: Anna O'Malley.