Aug 26 - Oct 14 5-6:30pm Pacific

Widening Circles Book Group

An Engaged Dive into Joanna Macy’s Memoir

facilitated by Lydia Violet Harutoonian and special guests

Register Here

Honoring Joanna Macy (1929–2025):

A Life of Courage, Compassion, and Service

Exploring Widening Circles: A Memoir — and the Question: What Now?

“Trust the love that comes in you, that erupts in you, for life itself, for all beings. Trust that. Trust your impatience sometimes when you think there must be a better way of conceiving this. Trust that, and garb yourself in the patience of intense creativity. Listen to the wild thoughts that are there. Listen to the wild thoughts bringing us home.” - Joanna Macy

An Invitation to Reflect, Remember, and Live the Legacy

In July 2025, the world bid farewell (in this realm) to one of its most courageous and compassionate voices: Joanna Macy — scholar, teacher, activist, and guide.

This book group offers a space to gather in the wake of her passing — not just to mourn her death, but to reflect on how she lived, and to explore how we might take what we most admired in her and carry it forward with integrity.

Together, we’ll read and discuss Widening Circles: A Memoir, Joanna’s deeply personal telling of her life — from Cold War activism to her embrace of Buddhism and systems thinking, to the creation of The Work That Reconnects. Through her stories, we see not only the evolution of a remarkable human being, but a mirror of the spiritual, ecological, and political crises we continue to face. Through her profound synthesis of systems thinking, Buddhist philosophy, deep ecology, and activist experience, Joanna created a body of work that doesn’t just educate — it transforms. Her teachings are not theories to be admired from afar, but living, breathing practices meant to be inhabited in community, especially in times of uncertainty.

This is not a study of ideas. It’s a chance to ask:

What mattered most to Joanna? What matters most to me? How do I want to live, now?

What to Expect

8 Weekly Sessions: Facilitated group conversations, rooted in selected chapters from Widening Circles

Grounded Reflections: Prompts and discussion questions that invite meaningful, personal engagement
A Space for Grief and Gratitude: Holding Joanna’s passing with care, while celebrating the clarity and conviction she modeled
Integration Practices: Optional journaling, simple rituals from Joanna’s “Work That Reconnects,” and ways of bringing insight into action
Community: A supportive circle of others drawn to this work, walking their own path through climate grief, spiritual growth, and personal transformation

Why Widening Circles?

Of all her writings, this memoir is perhaps Joanna’s most vulnerable and accessible. It reveals not just her teachings, but her process — how she wrestled with doubt, how she followed intuition, and how her commitments were shaped over time by loss, friendship, faith, and love for the Earth.

Each week, we’ll read a section of the book and use it as a springboard for group dialogue, reflection, and personal insight. Our aim is not to analyze Joanna’s life, but to listen closely to it — and in doing so, listen more honestly to our own.

This Group Is For You If:

Joanna Macy’s work has impacted you, and you want to honor her life in community
You’ve never read Widening Circles and are curious to meet Joanna through her own words
You’re seeking clarity, courage, or companionship in uncertain times
You want to explore what it means to live with purpose, humility, and connection
You’re asking, like many of us: What now?

Lydia has also studied dedicatedly with deep ecology elder and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy for the past 15 years, learning how we can metabolize planetary despair, anxiety, and community traumas into energy for resilience, action, and community healing. She founded and runs The School for The Great Turning, which creates access to an education that will empower humanity's life-sustaining legacy. www.schoolforthegreatturning.com

About Your Facilitator

Is an Iranian-Armenian-American folk multi-instrumentalist, revolution-bringer, culture-tender, grief-worker, and mischief-maker. In her performances, she weaves together her songwriting, folk standards, Iranian ballads, love of harmonies, fiddle, banjo, and collective singing into an altar of music to rest upon. She has engaged in vibrant collaborations with world-renowned artists Climbing PoeTree, Rising Appalachia, MaMuse, and Lyla June. She is the creator behind Singing the Bones, a course with Leah Song of Rising Appalachia, and a music project that brings American artists together to explore and share folk music from their ancestries, encouraging cultural revitalization and diasporic healing. Through her Music As Medicine song circles, she facilitates music-making that not only summons beauty, but tends to some of our most pressing existential questions in these times.