THE WORK THAT RECONNECTS with Lydia Violet Melbourne Jan 15-17 2027

The Rainforest Information Centre presents THE WORK THAT RECONNECTS with Lydia Violet. Tickets are sliding scale from $150-$600 - $150 student or unemployed, $600 well off, or choose an amount in between. 25% of the proceeds will be donated to The Rainforest Information Centre Details: • Fri 7pm - 9.30, Sat 9am - 9pm, Sun 9am - 4pm • Vegetarian lunches Sat & Sun and dinner on Saturday will be provided, gluten-free and vegan options by request after booking. FROM JOHN SEED: Lydia Violet worked closely with Joanna Macy for 20 years and is the founder and director of the . schoolforthegreatturning.com . Joanna chose Lydia to be her (ie Joanna’s) voice in the forthcoming audiobook of Thinking Like a Mountain - Towards a Council of All Beings. I hadn’t worked with Lydia till last month when I zoomed into workshops in Oregon and California which I cofacilitated with her and Erika Aligno. I felt almost like I was watching Joanna at work. Lydia's first Australian tour, an incredible opportunity. The ecological crisis is not only a political, economic, or technological problem — it is also a crisis of identity. We have been taught to experience ourselves as separate from the Earth, and from this illusion of separation much destruction follows. Yet beneath the industrial trance there remains an older memory: that we belong to a living Earth and are expressions of her unfolding story. In this Experiential Deep Ecology workshop, we move from ecological ideas into lived ecological identity — from despair to empowerment, from alienation into kinship, and, at last, into remembering that we were never separate from the living world. Separation loosens. Wonder enters. We remember that we belong to an ancient unfolding far larger than ourselves. I have increasingly come to see these ceremonies not as optional additions to environmental activism but as essential foundations for it. Facts and policies matter enormously, of course. Laws must change. Economies must transform. Forests must be defended with urgency. But if activism is not rooted in belonging, exhaustion follows quickly. Despair overwhelms. People burn out. Ceremony helps replenish what industrial culture erodes. It restores wonder. It metabolises grief. It widens identity. It transforms loneliness into community. Most importantly, it helps us fall in love again with the living world. You were never separate. Welcome home. For more information, [email protected]