How to Rescue a Wounded Hummingbird

Noa Luna was born to flamenco music as the moon was full and waning. A fire burned in the fireplace when mother and her partner climbed into the birthing tub to prepare for Noa’s arrival. The infant came into the world grounded, ready to take up space and place. Zachary, Noa Luna’s five-year-old sibling, cut the umbilical cord.

This infant was the youngest member of our year-long biodynamic gardening and farming program at the Pfeiffer Center (now Threefold Community Farm) in Chestnut Ridge, New York. In 2004, I found my way to the year-long biodynamic gardening and farming program at Threefold Community Farm, and to do so I had to take the proverbial fork in the road; I viewed the world through untamed eyes.

I joined the program to learn how to plant a garden. Instead what I learned was the interdependent, interconnected responsibility and relationship within the natural world and within me. I learned that to understand the intrinsic qualities of plants like chamomile, valerian, or nettles is to understand myself and the whole ecology.

With this radically shifted mindset, I planted my home garden with native plants that included trumpet honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens). I was introduced to this plant in my biodynamic training and knew that its red berries would attract songbirds and its flowers were a favorite of hummingbirds.

When the flowers appeared in late spring so did the hummingbirds. They came to feed at the flowering vine exactly the same time every day and watching their tiny acrobatic bodies was thrilling. One day, my eyes were drawn to the ground to a gold spot just below the vine. There was a tiny ruby-throated hummingbird that hit the side of house and was dazed yet still alive.

How do I rescue a wounded hummingbird?

In my current earth awareness training program, I’ve re-learned the basis for climate distress that includes grief, anxiety, sadness, helplessness, dread, anger, and overwhelm tied to ecological loss. At its core, climate distress is grief for what we love: ecosystems, species, places, futures, relationships impacted by climate change. This distress includes chronic fear of environmental doom and rage over environmental injustices that particularly affect low-income and marginalized communities.

Solastalgia is the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting people while they are directly connected to their home environment; distress caused by climate change. (Glenn Albrecht)

The scale of ecological harm is immense, both locally and globally. Widespread feelings of alienation, polarization, and isolation contribute to feeling alone in our grief. This can give rise to common patterns of avoidance, turning away from, numbing or distracting ourselves, which may bring short-term relief and in the long term can lead to anxiety, despair, and hopelessness. Instead of feeling restored by nature, we may feel sadness, grief, or anxiety upon seeing smoke, drought, or species decline. The natural world becomes a source of pain instead of solace.

In my current, nearly year-long earth awareness teacher training program, I’ve learned that a key to healing climate grief is to companion our grief individually and communally. To rescue a hummingbird or rescue our planet begins with connecting with our emotions, to feel our feelings rather than deny, avoid, or deflect. We accompany strong feelings within us long enough for new awareness to emerge and to re-orient our lives. We can’t do this alone but instead as a communal act of social witness.

We grieve what we care about, what we love, what is meaningful and important. This is a sign of our shared humanity. Turning toward grief (not numbing or avoiding) allows us to transform emotional energy into care, connection, and meaningful action. In some ways, re-learning how to be with grief and take action on what we care about, what we love, what matters is the new ‘fork in the road’ that we are being invited toward.

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