My name is Klara!

Let me tell you a bit about my background.

I was 17 when massive Fridays for Future protest swept the streets, awakening me to urgency and depth of the climate catastrophe. Together with a small group of people, we started organizing protest in the small Bavarian town where I grew up. Despite the empowering feeling of protesting next to hundreds of likeminded people, in the quite moments when immersing myself more and more into climate news, I soon felt more desperate and speechless about the lack of global action. Yet, none of the loving people in my life seemed to be able to compassionately bear witness to my bottomless distress after reading about a 4—degree warmer world, or mass extinction of wildlife. My pain felt muted.

So what did I do?

I started researching eco-emotions and slowly came across Renée Lertzman, the Work that Reconnects, and Psychologists for Future, and many others. To better understand grief and to learn how to hold space for this transforming process, I trained for two years to become a grief counselor with Chris Paul, confronting me with other personal losses that were waiting to be felt. Wanting to immerse myself further, I interned with the Climate Psychology Alliance and researched how young people can cope with eco-emotions. The information gathered in a toolkit can be seen on the blog page. For the past four years, I have been developing the Turning Circles based on research, creativity, my own experience, and much listening to knowledgeable others, young burnt-out activists, and the humming of our changing world.