When Love Becomes a Revelolutiony Act

Reflections on Bell Hooks' "All About Love" and the Radical Practice of Loving Ourselves First

I am more than halfway through Bell Hooks' "All About Love," and it feels like looking into a mirror that reflects not just my own soul, but the collective longing of a world that has forgotten how to tend its own heart. This isn't just a book about love—it's psychology reimagined, spirituality grounded, a blueprint for revolution that starts in the quiet chambers of our own being.

The Great Substitution

One passage stopped me cold: Hooks' interview with Lil' Kim, where she unveils a truth that cuts across every socioeconomic line like lightning through sky. It doesn't matter if you're counting coins or counting millions—we all believe we want love, but we've been taught not to believe it exists.

So we perform the great substitution.

Instead of doing the deep work, the quiet work of loving ourselves, we chase the tangible ghosts: sex, money, power, respect [is the key to life]. We reach for what we can hold instead of what can hold us. These substitutes feel safer because they're measurable, achievable, controllable. Love, real love, asks us to surrender control—and we've been taught that surrender is defeat.

But what if surrender is actually coming home?

The Sacred Practice of Solitude

Hooks writes about solitude not as punishment, but as sanctuary. This resonates in my bones because I've been living in deep solitude as of late. Others recoil from it like it's a disease they might catch.

I think of conversations with my friend Felicia (names changed to protect the innocent). I offer gentle interrogations: Don't you like being alone? Aren't you curious about your own company? Have you ever lived with just yourself as witness?

Her answer was always no, and I could see the bristle in her response when she admitted that being alone didn't feel comfortable. Something had taught her that isolation was dangerous. Now she lives in a house full of people, but paradoxically, she can't live fully. She can't love loudly (literally and figuratively). She cannot enjoy the loudness that is the release of sex or uproarious laughter. She cannot bring partners into her space without everyone knowing her business. She cannot experience the wild freedom that comes with being accountable only to her own heart.

I used to think my mother's love of isolation was toxic—the way she could disappear into her own world for days, content with her own thoughts as companions. But I'm beginning to understand the wisdom in it. When you're alone, you don't have to argue with anyone about who you are. You don't have to fight to be seen. You don't have to compromise your essence to keep the peace.

After days of self-isolation, I find myself kinder, more open and understanding to the world around me. To my betterment, I feel less apologetic for being myself. Isolation offered practice.

Learning to Self-Soothe

I've come to believe that I need seasons of aloneness like a tree needs winter—time to go dormant, to send energy deep into my roots, to remember what feeds me from the inside out.

This isn't about becoming a hermit, well maybe just a little bit. It's about learning to self-soothe, to understand my own rhythms without the interference of romantic or even platonic influences constantly telling me who to be. It's about developing my own mind, my own opinions, my own desires that aren't shaped by the gravitational pull of someone else's needs.

In this solitude, I'm learning practical love: how to cook for myself like I matter, how to move my body like it's sacred, how to listen to my own motivations without the static of other people's expectations. I'm discovering what I actually like versus what I've been told to like, what I genuinely want versus what looks good on the highlight reel of my life.

As I prepare to step more fully into living the bold and audacious dreams stirring in my soul, having my own mind isn't just important—it's essential. How can I guide others to their authentic selves if I haven't excavated my own?

The Tragedy of Emotional Outsourcing

This morning I texted a former lover, we will call him Barry. I suggested that he read this book. I know it sounds bold, but I had a revelation about our past relationship that I needed to share, even if just with the universe.

I believe Barry was outsourcing the emotional labor of our relationship—not out of malice, but out of patriarchal programming that never taught him how to access his own emotional vocabulary. Hooks writes brilliantly about how men have been denied the muscle memory of genuine love, care, and compassion because these have always been labeled "women's work."

I think Barry has an ocean of love inside him, but he's terrified. He believes he will drown in it. It will remove the double P (provider / protector) status men seem to be addicted to. Even in our post-relationship reflection, he said he never felt safe bringing up his emotional needs because we were always focused on mine. The truth is, I don't remember him ever bringing them up—but maybe I never created space for them. Maybe I never asked. It’s a worth relationship exit interview observation.

The tragedy isn't that one of us was wrong. The tragedy is that we were both swimming in a culture that taught him to suppress and me to over-function emotionally, and neither of us knew how to break that cycle.

Love as Identity Detector

One of the most revolutionary aspects of this book is how it reframes our relationship with material possessions and external validation. Hooks asks a question that should be printed on billboards (paraphrased): If we truly love ourselves and others, why do we feel the need to have that brand name thing?

Who are we trying to impress? Do we actually love the bag, the car, the neighborhood for what it is, or for what it says about us? Does it help build the framework of the persona that tells people who you are and what we worth?

This hits me like a lightning bolt because I've spent years wrestling with identity through work titles and company names. I needed the Fortune 100 company logo on my business card, I needed the VP title to tell me I was worthy. I was outsourcing my sense of self to external validators, letting brands and titles do the work that self-love should have been doing all along.

Now I have those titles, and they mean absolutely nothing in terms of my actual worth. Years ago, if you had told me I'd reach this level, that of VP, approaching 50 without a degree, without all the "required" credentials, I would have laughed. Yet here I am.

The Manipulation Masquerading as Love

Perhaps the most devastating revelation in Hooks' work is this: We are taught to be caregivers, but we are not taught to love. This comment was specific to women. Women learn to manipulate to receive what we believe is love and adoration, particularly from [male gendered] romantic partners, but we are never taught the actual practice of loving and that includes oneself.

This distinction is everything.

Caregiving can be performed, controlled, measured. Love requires vulnerability, presence, the willingness to be changed by the act of loving. Manipulation has an agenda. Love has a surrender.

The Revolutionary Act

As I continue this journey through Hooks' wisdom, I'm planning to buy the physical copy (I listened via audiobook) so I can return to these passages like a pilgrim returning to sacred sites. This isn't just a book—it's a manual for revolution that starts in the mirror.

The most radical thing we can do in a world that profits from our self-hatred is to love ourselves completely. Not the conditional love that says "I'll love you when you lose weight, get the promotion, find the partner"—but the revolutionary love that says "I love you because you exist, because you're here, because you're trying."

When we operate from this place of authentic self-love, nothing becomes impossible. Not because we become invincible, but because we stop needing external validation to feel worthy of our dreams.

The world doesn't teach us this kind of love. The world teaches us to perform, to achieve, to acquire, to become someone loveable instead of recognizing that we already are.

But what if the revolution we're all waiting for starts with loving ourselves so completely that we overflow with love for others? What if the change we want to see in the world begins with changing how we see ourselves?

What if love, real love, is the most subversive act of all?

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This is part of an ongoing exploration of self-love, authentic relationships, and the courage to love fully in a world that often makes love feel impossible. What would change in your life if you truly believed you were worthy of love exactly as you are?

Unlearning with Love,

Ja’Nohn