Love is a choice, not a feeling we wait for. bell hooks' "all about love" is centered around that truth, and I know the weight of it personally: I first picked up her book over 15 years ago and put it down twice, stopped in the Preface by what it showed me about my own story.

Episode 92 of Self-Love Through Their Eyes goes inside the book and looks at what love is made of, why real love cannot be sold to us, and the chapter she found hardest to write, her own Self-Love. Because the woman who defined love for a generation still had to practise it. And so do we.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why bell hooks insisted on a definition of love
• What changes when love becomes a verb, a choice we practise, instead of a feeling we wait for
• Why the chapter on Self-Love was the hardest one for her to write, and what her honesty reveals about knowing the work versus living it
• The inconvenient bell hooks: her warning about comfort that asks nothing of us, and why "lovelessness is a boon to consumerism"
• How fear stands between us and love, and what choosing love in the face of fear looks like
• One simple practice for the week: choosing love on the days you feel no love at all

Resources Mentioned:

• All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks, 2000
• The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck, 1978
• bell hooks, her life, love and legacy, from Berea College: https://www.berea.edu/centers/the-bell-hooks-center/about-bell

Connect with Lulu:Website: https://www.luluessey.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lulu.essey/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-marie-essey/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lulu.esseyThis is an inside job. Please share this episode with people you love. And follow while you are here 💛