For many of us, we have spent our lives exploring who we are, shaping our identity to the self. From a young age, we are given language and symbols that orient this forming identity to the world from a cultural perspective relayed to us by our parents, caregivers, media, and our education system. Included in this shaping of our identity is how we view and relate to other animals. What is that relationship today? How did it come to be? How does it in turn shape the way animals exist in and around our human communities, and what might this contemporary relationship be doing to our own health and well-being? I attempt to explore these questions and more in this episode. 

This will be the first of a series of episodes on the topic of animal relations, as I have come to find through the production of this first part just how complex of a topic it is. 

To begin, I am joined by Matt Fogarty, an author and a mental health counselor who practices place-based therapy in his professional work. We talk about the importance of connecting to animals, what it means to be an animal as a human, the trauma of separation, and how we can look towards children for keys to the answers to our own healing. You can find more information about Matt and his work at https://www.truenaturecounseling.com/

I also meet up with Maddie Cole, Director of the Fiddle Heads Forest School, an outdoor preschool in the Washington Arboretum in Seattle, WA. She gives me a mini-tour of the outdoor classrooms for preschoolers and we chat about how the children spend their time in the fully-outdoor immersion experience. You can find more information at https://botanicgardens.uw.edu/education/youth-family/fiddleheads-forest-school/

I'd love to hear your own thoughts about how you relate to other animals or being an animal yourself, and how this relationship steers the way you act in the world.  Please follow the link to the website and post a comment in the below section. https://theecopsychologyproject.wordpress.com/

You can find more information on the research end of things from these sources that I've gathered:

Kahn, P. H., & Hasbach, P. H. (2013). In The rediscovery of the wild (pp. 93–118). essay, MIT Press.

Melson, G. F. (2020). Rethinking children’s connections with other animals: A childhood nature perspective. Research Handbook on Childhoodnature, 1221–1236. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67286-1_70

Olin Myers, E. (1999). Human development as transcendence of the animal body and the child-animal association in psychological thought. Society & Animals, 7(2), 121–140. https://doi.org/10.1163/156853099x00031

Saari, M. H. (2020). Re-examining the human-nonhuman animal relationship through humane education. Research Handbook on Childhoodnature, 1263–1273. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67286-1_69