A Courageous conversation with Anne Billen and Neil Davidson, And Now What?

What does it mean to face the realities of acute existential threats for humanity and complex life on Earth? In this conversation, held just before the r3.0 Conference Sept 9-11, 2025, we explore this question with Anne Billen and Neil Davidson.

Their initiative And Now What? creates the "safe enough" containers to hold people and communities in feeling, processing and integrating ongoing social and ecological collapse.

Infused with the Shambala Warrior's qualities of compassion and insight (as described by Joanna Macy in her book Active Hope), their approach supports people on a journey that ultimately leads to the question: And Now What?

As Anne describes, even getting to this point of asking "And Now What?" is a journey in itself – a journey of letting go of old expectations of the world, of facing reality with an open heart and mind, of letting come the important things in the world that are calling out for our action and our agency. On such a journey, it becomes critical to find the relationships and partnerships where we can share and express grief and be seen and held by one another in our vulnerability.

As life partners in this sacred work, Neil and Anne embody these complementary dimensions of holding and being held, inner and the outer work, facing challenges to let transformation come.

From these practices, the idea of convening place-based, in-person confluences was born last year through the Equinox Collective in Belgium, to offer a physical space for cohesion, emergence, deepening and integration – so as Neil says "we can see each other more fully and interact more beautifully around priorities that might mean more to us in our local places." 

Speaking of beauty, be sure to watch until the very end of the interview, as Neil shares one of his perfectly apt for the occasion and glorious poems!

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