feral-ballad:

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bell hooks, from All About Love: New Visions

[Text ID: “I wanted to know love but I was afraid to surrender and trust another person. I was afraid to be intimate.”]

antigonick:

“It is possible to speak with our heart directly. Most ancient cultures know this. We can actually converse with our heart as if it were a good friend. In modern life we have become so busy with our daily affairs and thoughts that we have forgotten this essential art of taking time to converse with our heart.”

— Jack Kornfield, in “A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life”, as quoted by bell hooks in All About Love: New Visions

smokefalls:

“Most of the time, we think that love means just accepting the other person as they are. Who among us has not learned the hard way that we cannot change someone, mold them and make them into the ideal beloved we might want them to be. 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. This commitment to change is chosen. It happens by mutual agreement. Again and again in conversations the most common vision of true love I have heard shared was one that declared it to be ‘unconditional.’ True love is unconditional, but to truly flourish it requires an ongoing commitment to constructive struggle and change.”

—

bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

quotefeeling:

“Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power — not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.”

— bell hooks

resqectable:

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”

— Bell Hooks