Saturday, September 26, 2026: 8:30 am — 10:00 am
on Zoom
Topic: Story Exchange with Shoshana Perry
Eco-chaplain Shoshana Perry will guide us in connecting with others using Narrative 4’s Story Exchange methodology.
The Goal: Provide a safe space to exchange ideas and felt sensations in a caring and compassionate environment—together, as an Earth Care community grappling with climate change and current policies in place.
The Earth Care meeting uses Narrative 4’s approach to unite communities and express shared values and concerns in a trusting forum. It can foster greater care for oneself, others, and the planet. This approach can address many social topics like ecological causes, immigration, and community issues, including data center sprawl. Climate change asks a great deal of us—grief, fear, responsibility, hope, and the daily work of figuring out how to live and act in its face. We don’t always have the words for this, or the space to say them out loud. This session is an invitation to slow down, tell a true story, and be heard.
Narrative 4 is a global nonprofit that uses story exchange to empower people to improve lives, communities, and the world. Leading in empathy and education, N4 employs its story exchange to address division and promote healing. Supported by artists, educators, and students dedicated to “radical empathy,” N4’s work centers on themes like faith, identity, immigration, violence, and the environment.
To Prepare: Outside of courage and an open mind and heart, the only thing you need to bring is a story from your life that you are willing to share. Below are prompts to help you choose, focused on the earth, climate change, and how we as a community are learning to cope and communicate. Remember, each of us is made up of countless stories, but during our time together we ask that you bring just one story from your life. While a typical Narrative 4 story exchange can unfold over days or weeks, in the interest of time, we ask that you limit your story to no longer than 5 minutes.
A fellow Earth Care participant will receive the story you bring to the workshop and then share it—as their own—with the larger community.
Some prompts to consider:
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Think of a moment when climate change—or a policy tied to it—stopped feeling like something distant, and became something you carried personally. What happened, and what did it awaken in you?
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What draws you to care so deeply about the earth? Is there a value, a teaching, a memory, or a relationship that connects you to this concern?
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Has there been a time when you longed to speak honestly about your fears, grief, or hope for the environment, but held back? What made it hard to give voice to what you were feeling?
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What does it mean to you to be held by a community where you can speak these truths freely — without needing to have it all figured out, and without fear of judgment? Has that kind of trust made a difference in your life, here or elsewhere?
If you have any questions, please contact the Earth Care group at EarthCare.Dharma@gmail.com
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89034438884?pwd=yMSPIojkQlhFFgzBbtt6BI29dFdWSi.1
Meeting ID: 890 3443 8884
Passcode: EarthCare
Shoshana Perry is a Lead Trainer at Narrative 4, a member of the Artist Network, and co-initiator of the Climate of Emotions 2025 for UN Climate Week. She graduated from Columbia University with an MFA in fiction, worked in journalism, fiction, and film—her film “Down To Earth” won Best Documentary at EcoCinema International. Now a mindfulness educator trained in trauma-sensitive work with the Lineage Project, she offers meditation and qi gong to diverse groups, including staff, formerly incarcerated men, psychiatric patients, students, and prisoners in Washington, DC. She also led workshops through the NYC Park Service and co-founded Heart Root, a Brooklyn-based Sangha. Her passions include caring for the natural world, animal welfare, justice, poetry, dance, qi gong, meditation, and her children Jack and Lia. Shoshana’s daily mantra is “May I meet this moment fully, may I meet it as a friend.”