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Deborah Clifford

Relationships

Updated: Oct 20, 2021

It feels a little shameful to admit but today was the first time I finally clued in that ecology was about the relationships of organisms with their environment and with each other. I’ve been wondering why ecopsychology wasn’t called biopsychology, since so much of what we do is study all life or all living matter. Now that I’ve finally clued into the fact that ecology is about the myriad of relationships, it makes perfect sense now. Ecology does not stop with the flourishing of one species. It extends outward. Individual flourishing is not enough. It is not ecological flourishing if it is limited to one individual, and it is also not ecological if that one individual is not concerned with its needs. Health comes from meeting first one own needs, then, from that place of health, one moves outward, extending that field of care, into a wider world.


Relationships – wow! That’s loaded for me. So many of those throughout life and so much loss connected to the idea of relationships. Huge changes happen when we engage in connection, which is really for me, the core of relationships. I have loved so much, connected so intensely and mourned so often in relationships. At almost fifty-nine, the word relationship, brings a lot of grief to the foreground. Loss and trauma are predominant for me in this space. Letting go is hard to do.


And yet, I have chosen or rather, life has brought me to this place of focus on relationships and connection as one of nature’s key inviolate principles. My grief arises from what seems to me to be my inherent belief that to have another human connect to me deeply, should be attached to the idea of permanence. Interesting here the word permanent. Is this grief, also attached to the dominant cultural story of what 'successful" relationships look like? I have spent much of my life trying to create those images, of mate, family and close friends, and then having massive grief attached to the reality of my life as opposed to the Hallmark fantasy.

Ecopsychology is such a grounding for me here as I also wake up to the reality of many and diverse. A myriad of relationships, some perhaps not necessarily deep, however, in this web of relationships, others, which are sustaining and deeply rooted. I begin to notice where these grow and stop straining to make relationships happen.



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