Across the world, many of us are feeling the same questions rise up: How do we stay grounded and human in these times of crisis and profound disruption? How do we meet ecological and social breakdown without turning away or burning out?
On our recent Resilience & Possibility call, Samantha Sweetwater, author of True Human: Reimagining Ourselves at the End of Our World, offers an inspiring framework, orientation, and practices to help us understand the moment we are living in—and how we might walk through it together with clarity, humility, and courage.
Living in a Planetary Crucible
Samantha names our current moment as a planetary crucible—not as a metaphor, but as a lived, biophysical reality. We are exceeding planetary boundaries, degrading ecosystems, and facing the breakdown of information systems that help us make sense of the world. These forces and pressures create the conditions for an initiatory experience: a species-wide rite of passage pushing humanity to grow up, to remember who we are, and to choose a different way of being. This moment invites human beings to mature into a deeper relationship and responsibility with each other and our planet.
Shifting Away from a Hero’s Journey and Towards a Kinship Journey
At the heart of this invitation is a shift from what Samantha calls the Hero’s Journey to the Kinship Journey. The Hero’s Journey, which is so dominant in modern culture, centers individual achievement, self-actualization, and “winning” in a zero-sum game. It begins with proving oneself, and often includes having power over others in order to succeed.
The Kinship Journey begins somewhere else entirely. It starts with the pain of separation becoming too much to bear. It begins when we feel, in our bodies and hearts, that disconnection—from Earth, from one another, from ourselves—is no longer viable.
The Kinship Journey asks different questions, such as How am I in relationship? What is life asking of me? How do I contribute to the health of the whole? It invites us to climb down off the top of the pyramid of human supremacy and back into the circle of life, where our sense of purpose and identity arises from participation and mutual care.
This shift resonates deeply with Pachamama Alliance’s understanding that we are not separate individuals on the Earth, but an integral part of the living Earth. Samantha’s framing of a “True Human” reflects this worldview, describing it not from an individual perspective but what it means to be in relationship with the land, the water, our ancestors, future generations, and each other. “True” is not about an abstract or universal truth that is detached from context; it is about being in integrity within a web of relationships over time. A True Human, she says, is someone who participates in the continuity and emergence of Life’s Song, creating the conditions for life to flourish across generations.
A Spiritual Awakening: Enlifenment
Samantha also offers a powerful reframe of spiritual awakening. Rather than enlightenment, which is often imagined as transcending the world, she speaks of enlifenment. Enlifenment brings our attention and love down into the grit of life itself: into our bodies, our communities, our ecosystems, and our daily choices. Enlifenment invites us to become more alive, more responsive, and more attuned to the intelligence of the living world. It is a path of devotion and being awake to the miracle of being alive, in a human body, at this time on Earth.
This way of living is grounded in three simple but profound pillars from what Samantha calls the True Human toolbox: Integrity, Reciprocity and Complementarity.
Integrity asks us to be in an honest relationship with ourselves and with each other - to really know our bodies, our nervous systems, our capacities, boundaries and limits. Do our choices align with our values? It includes the practices of resting when needed, tending to our grief, speaking the truth, and knowing when to back off and when to engage.
Reciprocity invites us to notice whether our human and more-than-human relationships are extractive or mutually beneficial. It shows up in how we source our food, how we engage with strangers on the street or the cashier at our local coffee shop, or how we care for land, water, and community. Reciprocity requires our attention and intention to show up with presence and to give and receive with love.
Complementarity reminds us that none of us is meant to do everything. Like any healthy interdependent ecosystem, human communities thrive when diverse people contribute their unique gifts to the whole. It invites us to ask: What is my role in the larger web? How do we create more together than we could alone?
Together, these pillars (along with other practices and frameworks provided in the book) offer us a path through the planetary crucible—not as a way out, but as a way through. They can help us live with complexity, hold the contradictions of being human, and stay connected to purpose and beauty even as we face loss.
As Samantha shared, language matters. Naming this moment, and naming the journey we’re on, can help us recognize that many of us are already walking the Kinship Journey. It helps us to remember that we are not alone, not separate, and not powerless. We are all active participants in a living Earth who are being called, again and again, to become True Human.
We highly recommend that you pick up her book, True Human, and explore her offerings as a beacon and a compass in these times!
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