Climate Distress and the Practice of Connection: A Dialogical and Poetic Approach to Ecopsychology

Abstract

How might we build community and connection as the wounded world grows warmer and more unlivable? How might we address climate distress in ways that honor right relationships between people, planet, place, and our more-than-human companions? We ask questions like these in this article and seek to answer them as we present a narrative case study of an Australian community of practice focused on climate distress. We draw from the transcripts of a series of audio-recorded dialogues between our members, all authors of this article. Combining exegesis and artful, poetic inquiry, we articulate the tumult of ourselves in a world of ecosystemic crisis. We wonder how to live in reciprocity and how to respectfully learn from Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing. We consider the limits of language and the complicated solace of wild things. In the end, we suspect that all our words and truths jostle just enough to invite others to contemplate their own wild places.