TerrAPhilia: n An intrinsic affection for and connection to the Earth and its community of lives. Without this connection, we are lonely, lacking, no longer whole. Terraphilia is a word my wife, writer Susan J. Tweit, and I started using to convey the notion that each of us is inextricably connected to the whole world, and that a happy, well-adjusted human being ought to have kind, loving feelings extending beyond the illusory boundaries of our skin, and we ought to recognize and acknowledge those feelings. We were familiar with E. O. Wilson's concept of 'biophilia,' but found it inadequate to our conversation, largely because much of my work alludes to the 'bones of the earth' (John Van Alstine's phrase) and that component of my work seems to be excluded by 'biophilia's' focus on 'bios.' A friend suggested 'geophilia,' which seemed, at least superficially, to take attention away from 'bios,' which certainly wasn't what we wanted. We thought of gaiaphilia, but weren't happy with the implied emphasis on the world as a single organism - not that we resist that notion - it just wasn't where our conversation was going. So we started using the word 'terraphilia' and made up the definition above to capture the sense we intended. We've seen the word used with a different sense in land use planning, but neither of us is a land use planner, so we don't feel confined to that sense of what the word means. Our definition is full of assertions that we regard as self evident. If either of us were an academic psychologist there would be a lot to prove before we could just adopt those assertions as part of the definition, but neither of us has any inclination toward academic psychology, so we don't feel bound by that set of rules. We're interested in ecopsychology, and hope to have our conversation informed by that scholarship, but don't feel like we're plugging into any existing literature in a way that would require us to abide by existing conventions. We're artists; Susan with words and me with things. There are ideas we each want to express about our work, and we've defined the concept of terraphilia to be just right for that conversation. We'll be happy if it's useful to others.