A Conversation with Carla Fernandez, Co-Founder of The Dinner Party
“Breaking bread and healing hearts, one (virtual or IRL) dinner party at a time." Featured in Oprah Magazine, The Dinner Party's Carla Fernandez joins us as we collect tools for well-being and answer the question ‘what is eco-grief?’ and how can we manage it?”
Carla Fernandez, Co-Founder, The Dinner Party
Can you tell us about your organization?
The Dinner Party is a community of grieving peers, aged 20-40, that uses peer-led collective care as a model for meaningful support, growth, and forward motion. “Dinner Partiers” can participate in one or more programs (tables, buddy pairs, special events, story-telling campaigns) and connect across platforms to build community for life after loss.
Pre-COVID, we had about 400 active tables (small, peer-led groups of people who’ve experienced a major death loss) that met in over 100 cities and towns worldwide. Since the pandemic, we’ve continued to meet the ever-growing need for grief support through special virtual events including 100+ Virtual Tables and a new program where peers are hand-matched to connect one-on-one.
Death isn’t the only thing that causes us grief. We’ve also looked at how this model we’ve created can be applied to other loss experiences, and ecological loss and grief is one of them.
How would you define eco grief?
Researchers Neville Ellis & Ashlee Cunsolo define eco grief as “the grief felt in relation to experienced or anticipated ecological losses, including the loss of species, ecosystems, and meaningful landscapes due to acute or chronic environmental change."[7]” This can be a loss of species, a specific place, a way of life. It can be losing a home or a sense of security because of a climate-change related crisis or emergency. In Cunsolo’s research with Inuit people in Labrador, it’s been about how losing ice is changing their way of life, their mobility, their customs, and the immense struggle it presents.
The Dinner Party has hosted a few eco-grief tables. We gathered our first table on the one-year anniversary of the devastating fires in the Columbia River Gorge outside of Portland, where guests had a chance to reflect on how it felt to lose a place, and the impending threat of other fires. We also hosted a table on the eve of the Climate Action Summit in San Francisco. The evening gave climate change activists a chance to sit back and reflect on their emotions - outside of the charts and carbon sequestration strategies - and ask important questions, like: What was keeping them in the fight, despite the odds? It was the first time for many to face these kinds of questions and share their sense of loss with peers. We need our people prepared for the long game, and if we don’t have spaces to decompress and process, this work can’t be sustainable.
What tools can we share with the audience on processing it?
Firstly, just naming that you’re feeling ecological grief can be a big step, and finding people who can relate to what you're going through personally. This is about our relationship to our life, our sense of deep safety, and our connection to the places we love, so the part of you that might feel silly for naming it, know that it’s brave. And we really believe in the power of peer care, and not going through hard things alone. Know that naming the grief doesn’t mean you’re getting stuck in it or dwelling on it - but quite the opposite. It’s about naming the elephant in the room so that we can all move forward.
I also think once we’ve had a chance to sit and face the grief, the next stop is what do we do about it? How can it actually be the jet fuel that keeps us moving? For me, focusing on a small area where I can make a significant difference matters. I live part of the year in Joshua Tree, California, and have gotten involved with Mojave Desert Land Trust, which is doing incredible conservation work, building wildlife corridors and advocating for policy changes. Through supporting their work, I’m learning so much more about the natural world around me, the history, the animals, the plants. It turns up the technicolor in my own life, and helps me feel more grounded in moments where it all can feel like a lot. Follow your own curiosity and find your own small stretch of earth that you can fight for.
How can our followers get involved and find your resources?
Check out our website TheDinnerParty.org where you can sign up for a table. We don't currently have any ecological grief tables - with COVID our work has been really focused on death loss - but if there’s enough interest, anything can happen!
For resources specific to Eco-Grief:
