All About Love: New Visions

by bell hooks

Women, more often than not, speak from a position of lack, of not having received the love we long for.

And we spend a lifetime undoing the damage caused by cruelty, neglect, and all manner of lovelessness experienced in our families of origin and in relationships where we simply did not know what to do.

My family of origin provided, throughout my childhood, a dysfunctional setting and it remains one.

Remember, care is a dimension of love, but simply giving care does not mean we are loving.

there is no stigma attached to acknowledging a lack of love in one’s primary relationships.

honestly and realistically confronting lovelessness is part of the healing process.

Being hurt by parenting adults rarely alters a child’s desire to love and be loved by them.

Lerner outlines the various ways in which constant pretense and lying alienate women from their true feelings, how it leads to depression and loss of self-awareness.

Creating a false self to mask fears and insecurities has become so common that many of us forget who we are and what we feel underneath the pretense.

When we hear another person’s thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, it is more difficult to project on to them our perceptions of who they are.

Simply learning how we have acquired feelings of worthlessness rarely enables us to change things;

The wounded heart learns self-love by first overcoming low self-esteem.

It is silly, isn’t it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself.

Behaving unethically, with no thought to the consequences of our actions, is a bit like eating tons of junk food.

But we do fear and fear keeps us from trusting in love.

Genuine love is the foundation of our engagement with ourselves,

I tried to do the emotional work for both of us.

Much of the anger and rage we feel about emotional lack is released when we forgive ourselves and others.

there is truly enough of everything for everybody.

The path to love is not arduous or hidden, but we must choose to take the first step.

In adult life they meet people who fall in love with their false self. But this love does not last. At some point, glimpses of the real self emerge and disappointment comes.

most people remain reluctant to embrace the idea that it is more genuine, more real, to think of choosing to love rather than falling in love.

Yet when we commit to true love, we are committed to being changed, to being acted upon by the beloved in a way that enables us to be more fully self-actualized.

As long we are afraid to risk we cannot know love.

Wounded hearts turn away from love because they do not want to do the work of healing necessary to sustain and nurture love.

Fear of facing true love may actually lead some individuals to remain in situations of lack and unfulfillment. There they are not alone, they are not at risk.

Growing up is, at heart, the process of learning to take responsibility for whatever happens in your life.

We longed to be rescued because we did not know how to save ourselves.

Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.

When we practice forgiveness, we let go of shame.

Estrangement from the realm of the senses is a direct product of overindulgence, of acquiring too much.

Being positive, living in a permanent state of hopefulness, renews the spirit.

This is our reminder that even if fear exists it can be released by the experience of perfect love.