Joanna Macy was a scholar of deep ecology, systems thinking and Buddhist wisdom. She was a beloved teacher of many, guiding us to breathe through our grief for this world so that we may feel the strength of the pain as the strength of our love: strength enough to heal it. She was also our dear friend. We first met Joanna in the late 1980s, and over many years of a life fully lived, Joanna gathered a range of potent processes to reawaken our capacity to feel part of Gaia. Her gift to the world is what she called The Work That Reconnects. This global network helps people discover and experience their innate connections with each other, transforming despair and overwhelm into inspired, collaborative action. Since that first meeting in the 1980s we were honoured to work alongside Joanna and introduce The Work That Reconnects to allies in Africa. With her guidance, it became a central thread of Gaia’s Earth Jurisprudence Trainings, and has taken root among the African Earth Jurisprudence Collective.