Footnotes

1. Why do I call nature “she”? Has nature always been feminine to me? I don’t think so. Always erotic, always sensuous, always loving, always wise and majestic, but not necessarily feminine. That has come with my reading of ecofeminism, Native American spirituality, and Wiccan lore. [Return to The Forest and the Sea]

2. The pain of living in a new country was social. At school, I experienced the simple childhood crises of wanting to be liked, but being ostracised for being bright, a “poser”, and different (a “pom”). Not ‘fitting in’ was tragic and terrifying at the time. [Return to The Forest and the Sea]

3. The White Lady is a key figure in Celtic lore. See Robert Graves’ ‘The White Goddess’ (1961, Faber & Faber) [Return toThe Woods]

4. That is, to what extent was the healing power of the forest due to my European associations with it? How much was my experience of the Australian rainforest coloured by my European roots? Was I gaining healing through my ancestral memories or the ‘actual’ qualities of that place? [Return to The Woods]

5. See ‘The Psychotic Experience: Disease or Evolutionary Crisis’ edited by Stanislav Grof (1986, a special issue of Revision, 8) for several articles casting ‘nervous breakdown’ as a ‘spiritual emergency’. [Return to The Rainforest - My Story]

6. Michael Harner's 'The Way of the Shaman' (1980, Harper & Row); John Seed and colleagues' 'Thinking Like a Mountain' (1988, New Society Publishers); Starhawk’s ‘the Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess’ (2nd ed., 1989, Harper & Row); and Judith Plant's edited 'Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism' (1989, New Society Publishers). [Return to The Rainforest - My Story]

7. Susan Griffin’s ‘Split Culture’, p.17, in ‘Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism' (1989, New Society Publishers, pp.7-17) [Return to The Rainforest - My Story]

8. In 1992-3, I conducted in-depth interviews with forty people who lived in the area surrounding the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area - farmers, environmental activists, alternative lifestylers, and people living in the suburbs who said they rarely went out into natural environments. This was one part of my larger PhD research project investigating how people in contemporary Australian society understand their relationship with the natural environment - ‘Towards Ecological Self: Individual and Shared Understandings of the Relationship Between ‘Self’ and ‘the Natural Environment’ (1995, James Cook University of North Queensland, Townsville) [Return to The Rainforest - Other Stories]

9. See Marion Woodman’s ‘The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation’ (1985, Inner City Books, Toronto). [Return to The Rainforest - Other Stories]

10. For a review, see my article ‘Towards ecological self: Deep ecology meets constructionist self theory’ (1996, Journal of Enviornmental Psychology, 16, pp.93-108) [Return to The Rainforest - Other Stories]

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