Communion: The Female Search for Love (Love Song to the Nation Book 2)

by bell hooks

Rejection and abandonment by fathers and mothers is the space of lack that usually sets the stage for female desperation to find and know love.

From birth on, most females live in fear that we will be abandoned, that if we step outside the approved circle, we will not be loved.

Midlife for many of us has been the fabulous moment of pause where we begin to contemplate the true meaning of love in our lives. We begin to see clearly how much love matters, not the old patriarchal versions of “love” but a deeper understanding of love as a transformational force demanding of each individual accountability and responsibility for nurturing our spiritual growth.

The communion in love our souls seek is the most heroic and divine quest any human can take.

Reading the ending of Olsen’s short story “I Stand Here Ironing,” what questing female heart could not be stirred by the mother saying of her daughter, “My wisdom came too late.

“good girls go to heaven and bad girls go everywhere,”

Men do not wound women only when they act violently and abusively. They wound us when they fail to protect our freedom in every aspect of our daily lives.

A female who chooses to be a bitch is actually choosing to stay within the boundaries sexism has prescribed for us; she is neither a genuine rebel nor a revolutionary.

“Everything is bearable when there is love. My wish is that you try to give more people more love. The only thing that lives forever is love.”

“Learning to live as a man of conscience means deciding that your loyalty to the people whom you love is always more important than whatever lingering loyalty you may sometimes feel to other men’s judgment on your manhood.”

“Feminism is the theory and lesbianism the practice.”

“I’ve come to think of commitment as something beyond a marriage contract.” She adds, “We’re not sure what to call ourselves. We have no holidays. We don’t know what our future holds. We have only love and the story we are making up together.” Can we imagine that she would say of a committed relationship to the partner of her dreams “we have only love”? From the perspective of midlife, many women can testify that lasting love matters, whether we know it first or only in romantic friendships and/or in bonds of love with nonplatonic unions.

Commitment is the ground of our being that lets us make mistakes, be forgiven, and try again.

If women of all ages freely embrace the term “romantic friendship,” we will open up the space where we can develop primary bonds in platonic relationships that are constant, committed, and able to last a lifetime.

Joyless sexuality is not life-affirming.