“tea & Honey”
the Honeycomb Network’s monthly blog of insights, recaps, recipes, resources, themes & some tea.
February 2022:
“A Love Ethic”
This month’s theme at The Honeycomb is “A Love Ethic” and this entry is an ode to bell hooks and all she taught me about what a true love ethic is (and isn’t). Added to the text are reflective writing prompts in each section to explore your own understanding deeper.
But before diving into the reading, if you want to know February’s list of medicina, you can find this month’s offering of community resources, recipes and herbal allies here:
“For whom the bell tolls”
I, like so many, was stunned to hear of bell hooks' transition in December of last year. Immediately I witnessed the outpouring on the internet with her photos and quotes. Her books ”All about Love New Visions” and “Teaching to Transgress” are currently on the bestseller list as fans - those long term and newly inspired - have either made purchases, started book clubs and/or dusted off books in their home library to revisit.
The book “All About Love…” tends to be where many were exposed or inspired by her writing at an initial stage. It is quoted heavily. I think I started backwards (or right on time for me) with her successor book “Communion: The Female Search For Love” which I found in my college bookstore back in my early twenties. I was a young single mother at Columbia college studying to be a writer and I was in a situationship with my youngest’s child’s father. At this point in my life I had very skewed definitions of relationships and an even deeper skewed vision of myself and my self worth. Dealing with the high’s and low’s of a toxic romance that would last for years, I remember being blown away by the ideas presented to me in the book.
It was the first time I read about centering a love ethic especially within a patriarchal system. This idea of a love ethic which hooks lists as: “...a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust.” in all areas from romantic, to family, to friendship, as well as the work we are a part of was stunning to me. It helped to shift my interpretation of the definition of love in various places in my life
Photo by: Grace Chimezie
"When we love children, we acknowledge by our every action that they are not property, that they have rights—that we respect and uphold their rights." -bell hooks.
As a Puerto Rican young woman growing up in Chicago I had been raised very differently than much of what was being presented in hook’s writing. Culturally it was a shock. Especially when dealing with children. This challenge of our normal notion on parenting and that children should have autonomy in their decision making was foreign to me. I came from a household where kids did as they were told, respect elders no matter what, there was no autonomy in the way she spoke of, no privacy, no boundaries on say so, physical violence was used on a regular basis for discipline and there was a lot of fear conflated as respect.
And this is not to diss my parents, they were surviving too and doing what they thought was right to keep us from trouble, from turning out “bad”. But I had so much to unravel in order to break certain cycles and it was bell hooks who provided the language and bravery to help me to begin that work with my children. Her ideologies and radical mind helped shape me in my work and personal life, especially as an evolving parent.
“The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.”
― Bell Hooks, Communion: The Female Search for Love
bell hooks words also presented a context of self-love that I needed at that time. It helped empower me through the pain of abandonment as a young mother raising my son alone. It helped lift the veil in the ways I betrayed myself by accepting bread crumbs in a desperate attempt to keep love from starving. It planted seeds in me to nurture my heart’s questions, to begin the search in my own soil for the love I truly needed.
It is February 2022 and everyone is radical until it’s Valentine's day. Now we are in full pressure to consume love like chocolate boxes. We are shown reel after reel of new products to help us get the love we want, the brujas are selling love in a jar, the makers are slapping pink hearts on everything, the love market has burst like pastel confetti and if you ain’t in a love partnership you might as well go to sleep or light a vela because ValenTIMES does not know you. Love is a hot commodity, on trend, on market, on brand. It is outside of us, something to own. Something to consume. Something we are being inundated with.
And still so many are feeling unloved. So many are grappling with the grief of loss. So many are clawing their way out of depression and this hyper capitalistic view of this love we are missing at times can exacerbate the feeling of void. As I write this I am home, taking time off to be with my teen who is also struggling with depression, who is also navigating loneliness as a young person in a pandemic with a single parent who works 10-12 hours a day sustaining a brick and mortar. There are so many other layers to how we move in love and where it is most vital to pour into.
TRIGGER WARNING: Suicide
There have been a slew of suicides, especially from young people within the past two years up until very recent. Mental health is center stage especially as we are all collectively pretty traumatized from a 2 year whirlwind of a global pandemic. We have heard of high profile and community deaths from this choice and it has devastated so many. To me in order to have an authentic love ethic we need to pause on the pain. Feel it. Listen to it. Reach for it. Heal it. Set it free.
“To be loving is to be open to grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unending.”
bell hooks wrote that the real power of love is to transform us. To continuously work from a love ethic in authenticity we need to acknowledge that love is for healing, it is for reflective work, because THAT is transformative work. So before buying that love candle or searching outside of yourself, find the source of where love needs to illuminate the wounds within, so it may heal clearly.
“There can be no love without justice” - bell hooks
STEVE SCHAPIRO/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES
Understanding a love ethic to be the necessary basis for justice, collective liberation and decolonization was a game changer for me as a young activist involved in movements to free political prisoners and as an educator, writer and rebel rouser in my community. It helped me to ground in love for my people and taught me lessons on boundaries and the ways we undermine our movements when power or ego supersedes love. This is not to say self empowerment is a negative thing, especially when dealing with powerlessness in systems, we need bolts of energy to keep us courageous. Malcolm X embodied this! But we should always move in love.
Chicago Puerto Rican’s marching peacefully against violence and injustice. | Photo: Chicago Tribune Archives
For me, what I continue to learn is that a love ethic is also heavy on accountability work, it is here for truth telling, it is here to evolve us to get free. It is here to shake us loose, It is here to keep us hope filled. A love ethic is the root of creative expression and how we dream beyond limitation.
Bell hooks stated that “... The civil rights movement transformed society in the United States because it was fundamentally rooted in a love ethic.”
“...time and time again our search for love brings us back to the place where we started, back to our own heart's mirror…”
I am thankful to bell hooks and so many other Black feminist scholars, poets and activists who continue to provide blue prints for embodying a love ethic in my life. When I am weary and wounded, when I am discouraged or fearful, I turn to their teachings and most importantly, I turn within, to my own spirit, and to my home and community because ultimately that is always where a love ethic should begin and reside.
I leave you with a few links to bell hook’s writing to reflect on if you are interested in further reading:
Love as a practice of freedom: https://uucsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/bell-hooks-Love-as-the-Practice-of-Freedom.pdf
Toward a worldwide culture of love: https://www.lionsroar.com/toward-a-worldwide-culture-of-love/
Free Pdf full book of “All about Love: New Visions” https://www.pdfdrive.com/all-about-love-new-visions-e162864122.html
Til next month,
With love & Honey,
Denise
