Queer Ecology and Group Therapy
Continuing reflections inspired by Sophie Strand’s work on Queer Ecology.
The more I opened to nature’s embrace, the queerer my inner world became. I found new ways of loving — not aimed at possession, not locked into binaries, but flowing outward toward life itself.
Sophie Strand’s writing gave me a framework to understand this: Queer Ecology.
Queer ecology asks: What if nature isn’t tidy, straight, or "normal" — but messy, diverse, wildly experimental? What if our own desires and ways of relating could reflect this ecological reality?
Strand writes:
“Queer ecology seeks to trouble how cultural dualisms get grafted onto entangled complex ecosystems. It interrupts the tired monologue of hegemonic heterosexuality and the sterile fiction that we as humans are, in fact, differentiated from the natural world.”
Nature, it turns out, is profoundly queer: lesbian foxes, hermaphroditic fish, promiscuous squirrels. Intimacy in the wild is fluid, creative, abundant.
This perspective deeply resonates with how I hold group therapy. In group work, there’s no single protagonist; relational intelligence emerges between us, like a mycelial network. Healing isn't about fixing an isolated self, but remembering our embeddedness in an ecosystem of feeling, presence, and mutual influence.
When we gather in group, we practise letting go of linear stories. We explore nonlinear, communal ways of relating — rich in complexity, nuance, and multiplicity.
Group therapy, like queer ecology, invites us to move beyond narrow relational scripts — toward ways of being that are more fluid, authentic, and alive.
I may never "partner" again in the traditional sense. Still, I am not single. I am part of a living web of connection — plural, erotic, alive.
“I don’t know where all this love comes from, where it goes, or what to name it. But I know that every time I breathe out, it overflows.” — Sophie Strand