The Art of Unravelling
A seasonal practice of rewilding, mourning and emergence
A living bookshelf: the authors whose work is the foundations of, and companions to, The Art of Unravelling
These books do not all agree with each other. Some I return to often, some I wrestle with, some sit quietly and grow in influence over time. They are here as threads in the wider weave: guides, provocations, and companions for those tending endings, grief, kinship, and emergence.
They are in no particular order, and I will add more as they come to me.
Francis Weller The Wild Edge of Sorrow (2015)
Grief as communal, sacred work.
Stephen Jenkinson Die Wise (2015)
On dying well and hospicing culture.
Atul Gawande Being Mortal (2014)
Why endings matter, and what they teach us.
R. G. & R. E. Menzies Mortals (2021)
How fear of death shapes society.
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Ernest Becker The Denial of Death (1973)
A classic on how cultures avoid mortality.
These works helped open important conversations about trauma in the body. They alone are not sufficient for understanding collective, ecological, or systemic grief and they must be held alongside kinship, power, and place.
Bessel van der Kolk The Body Keeps the Score (2014)
Trauma, grief, and the body.
Gabor Maté The Myth of Normal (2022)
Trauma, illness, and healing in a toxic culture.
Robin Wall Kimmerer Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)
Reciprocity and kinship with plants.
David Abram The Spell of the Sensuous (1996)
Language, perception, and the more-than-human world.
Tyson Yunkaporta Sand Talk (2019)
Tyson Yunkaporta Right Story, Wrong Story (2023)
Indigenous pattern thinking.
Tyson Yunkaporta, Megan Kelleher Snake Talk (2025)
Snake lore across the world.
Donna Haraway Staying with the Trouble (2016)
“Make kin, not babies.”.
James Bridle Ways of Being (2022)
More than human intelligences.
Samantha Sweetwater True Human (2025)
Remembering our true humanity and connection.
Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti Hospicing Modernity (2021)
Decolonial hospice for dying systems.
Jared Diamond Collapse (2005)
Why societies fail.
Joseph Tainter The Collapse of Complex Societies (1988)
John Michael Greer The Long Descent (2008)
Slow decline vs. sudden collapse.
Mark Fisher Capitalist Realism (2009)
Why it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
Thomas Homer-Dixon The Upside of Down (2006)
Catastrophe as renewal.
Peter Turchin War and Peace and War (2006)
Empires rise and fall.
Daniel Schmachtenberger
Interviews on the metacrisis. There is no one book: search for him on whichever podcast platform you use.
Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone Active Hope (2012)
Adrienne Maree Brown Emergent Strategy (2017)
Nora Bateson Small Arcs of Larger Circles (2016)
Gregory Bateson Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972)
Nora Bateson Combining
Donella Meadows Thinking in Systems (1999)
Donella Meadows Leverage Points (1999)
C.S. Holling (2001)
A paper on resilience and panarchy: how systems hold, break and reorganise.
Daniel Wahl Designing Regenerative Cultures (2016)
Fritjof Capra & Pier Luigi Luisi The Systems View of Life (2014)
Margaret Wheatley Leadership and the New Science (2006)
Charles Eisenstein The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible (2013)
Rebecca Solnit A Paradise Built in Hell (2009)
David Whyte Consolations (2015)
Michael Singer The Untethered Soul (2007)
Sohail Inayatullah Understanding Sarkar: The Indian Episteme, Macrohistory and Transformative Knowledge (2001)
Carol Sanford The Responsible Business (2011)
Carol Sanford The Regenerative Business (2017)
This shelf will keep evolving. Books will come and go, as the practice itself does. You do not need to read them all. Follow the threads that pull at you and see where they lead.