Solastalgia – the word used to describe the grief we feel at the loss of beloved landscapes, creature and ecosystems – is woven through Frances Weller’s much-loved work about the importance of embracing, rather than denying our personal and existential grief. “Grief,” he writes, “offers a wild alchemy that transmutes suffering into fertile ground.” Profound, poetic and comforting, this is a book to stir the soul of anyone who has loved and lost.
With so many immediate and intensifying crises unfolding around us, how can therapists adapt to promote healing and growth? Climate psychotherapist Steffi Bednarek’s response, in the form of this collection of essays by Francis Weller, Bayo Akomolafe, Hāweatea Holly Bryson, and others, attempts to answer this urgent question.
While Western psychotherapy views our practice as a way to bring clients back to baseline “normal,” Bednarek argues that our society’s “normal” is profoundly unwell, and that our lives reflect the same unsustainable systems that erode our ecosystems, accelerate global destruction, and ultimately extract our humanity. Which means that finding healing and purpose in uncertain times entails altering not just the way therapy is done, but the way we think about mental health.
Holistic and intersectional, this collection reckons with the ways power, colonialism, and capitalism impact our myriad crises—while shaping Western psychology as we know it.
Part of Lucy Jones’ genius lies in her instinctive, incisive grasp of our animal natures, and in this luminous exploration of Homo Sapiens’ physical and mental needs, she charts how much of civilization has become dislocated from the natural world. Our minds and bodies need the lavish abundance of the wild, Jones argues. And if we don’t protect it, we jeopardize the very ecosystems that sustain us. – Liz Jensen