Thanatologist Kriss Kevorkian on Environmental Grief, Coping with Covid & the Importance of Laughing During a Pandemic

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Thanatologist Kriss Kevorkian (@agrievingworld) talks about environmental grief, coping with covid, why we need to laugh at tragedy and much more with Skaana (@skaanapod) host Mark Leiren-Young (@leirenyoung). Kriss came up with the terms “environmental grief” and “ecological grief” and she developed these concepts by working with people working for the southern resident orcas.

“I help support people who are dealing with environmental grief or ecological grief, or just the grief that people are feeling from all the chaos in the world today.”

“If a corporation can have rights, I think Mother Nature should.”

Please join the virtual book launch for Orcas of the Salish Sea – for elementary school students – and the board book Big Whales, Small World – May 1 2020 at noon PST on Facebook Live courtesy of the National Arts Centre of Canada and #CanadaPerforms.

Skaana connects you to stories about oceans, eco-ethics and the environment.

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Legal rights for the Salish Sea: http://legalrightsforthesalishsea.org/
The Climate Reality Project: https://www.climaterealityproject.org/ 
Global Earth Repair Foundation: https://globalearthrepairfoundation.org/

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Kriss Kevorkian
The lessons I find from grief – and from death – are appreciating what we have in the now.

“The lessons I find from grief – and from death – are appreciating what we have in the now.”

“What is environmental grief? …It’s the grief reaction stemming from the environmental loss of ecosystems caused by natural or man-made events.”

“Ecological grief is the grief reaction stemming from the disconnection and relational loss from our natural world.”

“I don’t see grief as a disorder. I see it as a life issue. And I wish people would stop trying to medicalize it, or put it as some sort of mental illness because I don’t see my environmental grief or ecological grief as a disorder. I see it as a proper reaction to what’s happening on the planet.”

“Laughter is just one of those things that’s helped us get through dark times.”

“This pandemic is also teaching us that mother nature has a way of managing without us.”

“If Jane Goodall can maintain a sense of hope, then who am I not to?”

“I look at the rights of nature as helping… If a corporation can have rights. I think mother nature should.”

“We need to start putting nature first.”

“When we get rights for the Southern residents, they will be the first species to have rights of nature”

Leah Abramson
“I started researching orcas and was just sort of fascinated by them and their whole social structure and everything. Everything that I researched, I just kept going down rabbit holes until I knew that I had to make some kind of project.”

“When I was really little I had these recurring dreams about a pink beluga whale in a swimming pool, and I don’t know why or how, or it was a very lonely whale and it was pink and I was its only friend, and this was like recurring dreams that I had around the age of, I don’t know, four or five.”


“I started researching orcas and was just sort of fascinated by them and their whole social structure and everything. Everything that I researched, I just kept going down rabbit holes until I knew that I had to make some kind of project.”


“People seem to really respond to it. I mean, I think we’re at a time where people are really waking up to the environment”


“Whales are such a iconic set of animals, especially on the West coast, because, you know, we sort of have this idea of ourselves as wild and, you know, the orcas are jumping and it’s all happy and, you know, we’re obviously in a bit of a, um, crisis with the orcas right now.”


“I know a lot of people have found it quite sad to the project and I don’t know if there’s any way around that, you know, and I think that’s a grief that we have to feel and that it’s important to feel because otherwise we don’t do anything about it. So there’s that as well, you know, like allowing people space and time to feel those feelings of environmental grief, which, you know, you sort of have to slow down a little bit to do sometimes.”