Elisa | Living with Ecological Grief

ChildfreeAnimal RightsOverpopulation

Jun 23

Written By Population Balance

Raised in Greece by progressive, highly educated parents, Elisa felt little pressure to become a mother and ultimately chose a childfree life shaped by concerns for her own mental health and the future of life on Earth. We explore her work on ecological grief and why society often overlooks grief related to environmental loss and the death of companion animals. Dedicated to the protection of animals and the more-than-human world, Elisa finds deep satisfaction in the freedoms that her nomadic, minimalist, childfree lifestyle offers her.

Elisa (00:00):
Ecological grief has to do with grieving the world as it was. The world as it was is not anymore. This is also what I'm experiencing now after they destroyed the forest next to me. I was walking my dog every day there and I'm grieving because I suddenly started waking up listening to the chain saws cutting down the trees and we are experiencing collectively ecological grief, but people I don't think they really realize it. It's not acknowledged on a personal or societal level when we also grieve our pets, because they are not human kids and even more the people who have farm sanctuaries when they grieve their rescued pigs or cows, people who rescue rats, animals that are considered as pests. So all these people are experiencing grief and they don't have a safe space to share the grief because society would never understand or would never acknowledge this type of grief.
Nandita Bajaj (01:05):
That was today's guest, Elisa. Hi everyone and thank you for joining me. My name is Nandita Bajaj and I'm the host of Beyond Pronatalism: Finding Fulfillment With or Without Kids, an interview series in which through intimate conversations with people from diverse backgrounds, I explore how they are courageously and creatively navigating pronatalism - the often unspoken pressures to have children, whether from family, friends, or the culture at large. Each episode features a personal story, born out of liberated and informed choice, about redefining what family means, including being childfree or childless, having biological kids, adopting or fostering children or animals, or creating close-knit communities of friends and loved ones. Hi, Elisa and welcome to Beyond Pronatalism. It's wonderful to have you here.
Elisa (02:01):
Hi, Nandita. It's really nice to be here. Thank you for having me.
Nandita Bajaj (02:06):
Absolutely. And Elisa, could you please say a few words to introduce yourself?
Elisa (02:12):
So I was born and raised in Athens, Greece, but I now live in the south of Sweden after having spent almost four years off the grid in a custom-made eco tiny house on wheels, a first of its kind in my country, Greece. And before that, I was living nomadically for three and a half years with my two dogs and my cat. They're all rescued. And we were living in remote villages in Greece and in Spain. And at that time I was working as a freelance researcher for nonprofit organizations who work on animal advocacy. But I really feel more alive when I'm traveling and this is also something I wouldn't be able to do if I had kids. I have studied mathematics in Athens and biodiversity conservation in Montpellier, France, and Lesbos Island. I am an activist. I worked a lot volunteering my life as an animal caretaker in wildlife rescue centers and farm sanctuaries in Greece, the Netherlands, and Spain.
(03:09):
I have also founded and directed Ethos and Empathy, an anti-speciesist initiative, which ended up mostly as an online encyclopedia. Lately, I decided to do a career change and I am slowly starting work as a grief recovery specialist and I'm approaching 40.
Nandita Bajaj (03:24):
Wonderful. So of course the life you're living, you said it could not have been possible if you had kids, but you grew up in Greece, which is a very pronatalist culture. And I'd love to hear what it was like for you growing up in Athens and what kind of messages were you receiving from the culture and family around you?
Elisa (03:46):
So in Greece, everyone around us had kids when we were in Evia with my partner. The typical question when people meet a man or a woman without kids is, when are you going to have kids? A woman told me years ago that you just haven't met the right man yet. A man without kids also experiences pressure in Greece. People are telling him, Are you going to end up all alone in life? And of course the typical, Who is going to take care of you when you will be old as if we procreate in order to have caretakers later in life. A woman without kids in Greece is considered as a woman that is lacking of something. Some people, regardless of sex, get punished by the parents by not receiving inheritance from their ancestors. Mothers would say, If you don't have kids, I won't let any property add to your name. And Greek couples in general experience such pressure from parents.
(04:42):
But in my case, because my mother died when I was young, but she was also very different than typical Greek mothers because she studied in France, she had a very French mentality, so she never told me anything about kids when she was alive. And my partner experienced with his ex-wife a lot of pressure from society. I'm not sure if his mother said anything, but uncles and aunts, everyone expects couples, especially in rural areas like Evia Island to have kids. And one of the reasons that we left from Evia and we came here is that because everyone around us had kids and we were just childfree, vegan, flight-free, and we were feeling like alien there. So here it's very different. No one is asking if we are married, if we have kids, this is not even a question. It's very normal in Sweden and Scandinavia in general not to have kids.
(05:35):
So we don't feel odd here anymore. In Greece, while I was doing this nomadic life, I think because of my strong personality, not many people ask me, but if sometimes they would, when I was starting to explain why, I mean, I remember specifically a man, he said, Yeah, yeah, I can see you are educated and you didn't get married and you did the right thing. You know what you are doing. And I was like, Wow, this is an old man on an island talking to me like that, I was like, wow. So I think because of my strong personality and me being vocal, I don't even let others to do the conversation. I didn't feel the pressure that other women have felt, but I know from people around me in Greece, from women in Greece that it's always happening, especially in rural areas.
Nandita Bajaj (06:23):
Right. And what was the situation with your father's side of the family or your dad?
Elisa (06:30):
Well, my dad is an activist in the humanitarian sector. We don't speak since many years ago because I grew up with my mother. When I was seeing him every now and then, he never asked me anything about when I'm going to get married or when I want to have kids because I think both of my parents, because of their education, the level of their education, they both did a PhD. The one went in France and the other went to the States in Harvard. I think they knew that it's not the purpose of life to have kids. They were more concerned about my studies and what I'm going to do in my life. And also I think it plays a role that I have mental health issues and I have struggled from the day I finished school. It started being evident and I needed help. So I think that it was more important for them for me to be okay.
(07:20):
And they knew that I always loved animals and I wanted to rescue animals and take care of them. The parents of my father, they were also people who had PhD, which is not common in Greece. So having a grandmother, having a PhD and being a professor at the university was like, whoa. And my grandfather has been a vice minister in a Ministry of Internal Affairs. So they were people of very high level of education. My grandmother came from Sparta. So the family of my father was a family, we could say matriarchal, not patriarchy with this very strong opinionated grandmother who when she was doing her PhD in France, she had her kid in a boarding school because she needed time to study. I think it's obvious why no one ever asked me if I'm going to have kids and why? Because I think that they felt the struggle of having a kid and having to do studies at the same time.
(08:21):
So this is the side of my father. So the side of my mother, both grandparents were working in the National Bank of Greece, but when my mother had to go to France to study, my grandfather told my grandmother, You have to stop working now and you have to go to France to help our daughter. My mother was never asked about it. She never wanted her mother to be there. I remember my mother telling me, I just wanted to be there with my friends and study and I had my mother and I didn't want her there. I don't know for how long she stayed, but I believe that my grandmother was a victim of patriarchy and because of that, she didn't want this for her daughter or granddaughter. So that's why I think not even my grandparents ever told me, When are you going to get married? When are you going to ... No, the conversation was always about trips and education and my mental health. These are priorities.
Nandita Bajaj (09:14):
Very, very cool story to have your grandparents be that highly educated and that progressive in their thinking. I mean, it makes perfect sense why you have made the choices that you have. So you didn't have that much to navigate when it came to pronatalism, but I'd love to hear how you came upon animal rescue and your love for animals. Were there moments in your upbringing that made you more aware of animals and their needs?
Elisa (09:48):
I don't have a specific event. It came naturally. From a young kid, I loved being around animals and my grandparents from my mother's side had a dog and I adored him, but I couldn't have him all the time around me, but I was so happy when he was around. And I was asking my mother, Can we also adopt a dog? And she was like, No, we live in a flat. It's not possible. So I started feeding the cats of the neighborhood because we have so many stray cats in Greece and at some point I think I have 50 cats around and people in the building were not happy, but thankfully they didn't throw poison or anything because this happens in villages, but luckily it didn't happen. And I was taking care of all of them. And between homework, I was just going downstairs and I was feeding the cats and I was so happy with them.
(10:37):
I was keeping a little bit of my pocket money to go and buy food for them. So when my mother died, I got her retirement for a couple of years so I had some financial freedom. So I stopped working while I was studying and I started doing voluntary work in all the wildlife rescue centers that we had in Greece. And at the same time, I started organizing, collecting money from other people and buying medicines and food and taking them to shelters. I started sterilizing dogs and cats and finding families for them. So I mean, I always loved seeing happy the other animals.
(11:16):
As I grew, then I became vegetarian and then I went vegan and then I started going to farm sanctuaries because I couldn't be anymore in wildlife sanctuaries. It's very hard to feed meat to other animals who need to eat meat. So I prefer to be a volunteer in farm sanctuaries with herbivores and it was so nice. And my idea, my goal was to have a farm sanctuary myself in Evia island. That's why I got this land where the tiny house is. But the climate collapsed and I couldn't do that anymore. I realized that if we don't know if we have water, we cannot rescue animals because how are we going to give them the water they need? It was not sustainable anymore, my idea. So I had to leave back the dream and come here and now I'm embracing grief. I'm grieving still my dream and I experience ecological grief and I want to start holding some spaces for ecological grief for people here in Europe.
Nandita Bajaj (12:15):
Can you talk a little bit more about ecological grief? I think a lot of people experience that, but don't always know that's what is happening to them. I think a lot of people don't know how to also process these emotions. Can you speak to your own experience of what ecological grief felt like and how you have coped with it or are coping with it?
Elisa (12:39):
So I would like to share the definition of ecological grief. It's 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. Grief has been identified as a response to acute extreme weather events, for example, a hurricane, a heat wave, or a wildfire. It's a natural response to ecological loss, which is particularly pronounced in people who retain close relationships with a natural environment. Anticipated future loss relates to that of species, landscapes, ecosystems, ways of life or livelihoods. And eco-anxiety is a response impending threats by climate change, rising sea levels, desertification, and eco-anxiety is an inevitable and even healthy response to the ecological threats that we are facing currently. So I think it's necessary to give the exact definitions because they are very new things and people are not aware of them.
(13:42):
So maybe they think that there's something wrong with them, but this is totally normal and totally healthy. For me, there is something wrong with the people who don't feel ecological anxiety or ecological grief. Ecological grief is also what I'm experiencing now after they destroyed the forest. So there was a very nice forest next to me. I was walking my dog every day there and I came here from a very dry area in Greece, so I was really enjoying the green and the tall trees. I even have shinrin-yoku, which means forest bath. So I really love being in the forest because I know the benefit that gives you when you are in the forest. And now some doctors prescribe to be in nature if you have depression. So there are scientifically proven benefits when you are in the forest. So now I don't have suddenly the forest next to me and I'm grieving. I cried a lot when it happened because I suddenly started waking up from listening to the chainsaws cutting down the trees. And ecological grief is also when you're grieving the world as it was, like the world as it was is not anymore.
(14:50):
In Greece, we have the heat waves, the one after the other, the wildfires, the one after the other. So you cannot go and live in the forest in Greece because you're always going to be scared of a wildfire that can destroy your home or you're always going to be in danger if you have animals, the animals as well. So since 2017 that we have all these wildfires and the heat waves, we are experiencing collectively ecological grief, but people I don't think they really realize it. So it has to do with grieving the world as it was.
Nandita Bajaj (15:20):
Yes. Thank you for sharing that. And I think so many people in our community who are tuned in to what is happening ecologically experience that and it's not talked about enough and even less so we don't talk enough about how to identify it when we're experiencing it. I mean, there's no real way to cope with it when you keep losing the thing that you love.
Elisa (15:47):
The biggest problem, ecological grief is very disenfranchised and it describes forms of grief that are not acknowledged on a personal or societal level. So ecological grief and when we also grieve our pets because they are not human kids, these are the two types of more disenfranchised grief and even more the people who have farm sanctuaries when they grieve their rescued pigs or cows, people who rescue rats, animals that are considered as pests. So all these people are experiencing grief and they don't have a safe space to share the grief because society would never understand or would never acknowledge this type of grief.
Nandita Bajaj (16:30):
Yes, totally. I'm so glad you spoke about that. And it seems to me that you're living in deep alignment with your values. You're childfree, you're vegan, you're flight-free, you said, and you try to live a nomadic life as much as possible in a tiny house. I'd love to hear more about what that lifestyle is like. But before that, I want to see if there was ever a moment in your own life where you personally felt the desire to have children and at what point did you make a decision to not have them if so?
Elisa (17:09):
Well, to be honest, I felt it once in my life and it was very strange when I felt it because up until that moment I was never feeling it. I was feeling that I have to pressure myself to become a married woman with kids. But at some point in my life, I fell in love strongly with someone and without even thinking, because back then I didn't even have addressed really seriously my mental health situation. So I have been pregnant and I have aborted because when pregnancy came, depression came back as well and it was the moment that I realized that it would be really unfair for the kid because the kid is going to experience things that are not good for a kid to experience. So I think for me, it's more responsible to say that I'm not capable of doing that. So yes, I have felt it, but then the logic came back in my brain. I was like, No, no, no, this is not the right thing. So yeah, it was early enough to be able to terminate the pregnancy.
Nandita Bajaj (18:10):
And then did you decide after that that you were going to remain childfree by choice or did it just never happen?
Elisa (18:17):
Yeah. After that I was like, of course, because even before that, when I studied in France by biodiversity conservation, I will never forget the first slide of the course, ecology of the ecosystems, and it was showing how the human population is growing and at the same time how we experienced the biodiversity loss. And I was like, oh my God, we are doing this to them. We are the reason that they are losing their habitats. And so yeah, after this adventure, let's say, with the abortion, from that moment until today, I never felt that I want to have kids, never, ever. And I must say here that I respect women who decide not to procreate even though they want to have kids, because for me it was easy for environmental and ethical reasons to say, Okay, I'm not going to bring a kid. But if I wanted and I had to say no because the environment is in that state and the world is in that state, that would be difficult and I have a lot of respect for them.
Nandita Bajaj (19:12):
Yes, yes, I agree. And you spoke about how if you'd had children, you wouldn't be able to live the life that you have lived and are living today. Can you speak more about what life looks like for you today? What are the kinds of freedoms that you've had to explore the things that you wanted to explore?
Elisa (19:31):
I remember now a moment that when I lost Misoy, 14 months ago, my dog, my soul dog, Misoy died. It was so hard and my partner took us on a trip with my other dog and my cat and we went somewhere where we have been with me soy in the past. It was still hard for me to be there. So at some point he said, Let's just go for a drink, the two of us. We had a real nice Airbnb. So we left the dog and the cat there and we went for a drink. You wouldn't be able to do that with kids, right? You cannot leave your kids just in an area and go have drinks. So that was a moment I was like, Ah, nice. And I would say that sometimes I feel it with the pets because when they grow up and they become seniors, they have needs, the one catastrophe after the other so you burn out sometimes as well.
(20:19):
But then I think this we have to say the problem is capitalism and the individualistic way of living and not really bringing up the child. Because I think that if I was living maybe 200 years ago, 300 years ago, in a society where people were living in communities, I think having kids was easier because you were not raising the kid by yourself. There was a whole community taking care of the kid. And when you are grieving, the community takes care of the kid because when you're grieving, you are not in a state to take care of even yourself. We shouldn't be living in a flat, two people with one dog or one cat or two people with one kid. This is not sustainable. This is not healthy. I have a very free life. I have done things that most people with kids could not do and I'm happy for living here because as I said, it's a country where being unmarried and childhood is not considered as something strange.
(21:12):
And we have friends from several countries in several ages and they're all childfree. It just happened. Of course, they're all vegan. I will be visiting farm sanctuaries. There is one nearby we went to right when we arrived to see the pigs and all the other animals. I'm going to be always in need to be in contact with many animals, many animal species, but I think I will be having one or just two pets so I can be able to move around with them while we are experiencing these uncertain times.
Nandita Bajaj (21:43):
Yes, well said. It's been so nice to talk to you, Elisa. We share a lot of values of course in how we live and in our love for animals. So it's been just so nice to hear your story and how much you've aligned your life with your values. I know it's been difficult at times to do that, but it's very inspiring to see people who are doing all they can to live their values. I really appreciate you sharing your story with me and I appreciate everything you're doing and it's wonderful that you are working in the area of grief therapy because so many people need access to that. Thank you very much for joining me today.
Elisa (22:30):
Thank you so much for having me.
Nandita Bajaj (22:33):
That's all for this edition of Beyond Pronatalism. To share feedback about the show or a particular episode or to share your own story on the podcast, please get in touch with me using the link in the show notes. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate us on your favorite podcast platform and share it widely. We couldn't do this work without the support of listeners like you and hope that you will consider a one-time or a recurring donation. Thank you so much again for joining me today as we collectively discover and celebrate the many different pathways to fulfillment beyond pronatalism. This podcast is brought to you by Population Balance, the only nonprofit organization advancing the rights and wellbeing of people, animals, and the planet by confronting pronatalism and other harmful ideologies. This podcast is produced and hosted by me, Nandita Bajaj, with the support of my production team, Josh Wild and Alan Ware.