bell hooks

But it was love’s absence that let me know how much love mattered.

We can never go back. I know that now. We can go forward.

We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until we let go grief about the love we lost long ago, when we were little and had no voice to speak the heart’s longing.

I was still mourning—clinging to the broken heart of girlhood, to broken connections. When that mourning ceased I was able to love again.

Redeemed and restored, love returns us to the promise of everlasting life. When we love we can let our hearts speak.

Overcome by sensations of being pulled underwater, drowning, I was constantly searching for anchors to keep me afloat, to pull me back safely to the shore.

Yet whenever a single woman over forty brings up the topic of love, again and again the assumption, rooted in sexist thinking, is that she is “desperate” for a man.

No one thinks she is simply passionately intellectually interested in the subject matter. No one thinks she is rigorously engaged in a philosophical undertaking wherein she is endeavoring to understand the metaphysical meaning of love in everyday life.

Men theorize about love, but women are more often love’s practitioners. Most men feel that they receive love and therefore know what it feels like to be loved; women often feel we are in a constant state of yearning, wanting love but not receiving it.

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”