Communion and the Art of Coming Home to Yourself

A few weeks ago, a video popped up on my feed. Of course it was a video. Honestly, I am not even sure if it found me organically or if I was caught in one of those algorithm rabbit holes, but either way, the premise was simple.

A woman was talking about how the couch lover, aka the second in leadership, had written a book with a title that felt very similar to one written by Bell Hooks, a Black woman. She encouraged people to read Hooks’ book instead, especially since the couch lover’s book was set to be released one day before Juneteenth.

Of course.

I shook my head and downloaded the audiobook.

Now, listen. The topic of love is an interesting one for me. While I am open to love, I do not see myself getting into a relationship anytime soon. For the last few years, I have been focused on learning how to love myself. Really love myself.

Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash.

I have been trying to pour all of the love I gave away so freely into my own cup for once.

It’s been an interesting journey because, for most of my life, I felt fundamentally unlovable. After two horribly abusive marriages, you start wondering if:

a) you’re unlovable,

b) you’ve simply never been in the right relationship, or

c) you’re queer and spent decades forcing yourself into a box you were never meant to fit inside.

So when I started listening to Communion and realized it was actually the third installment in Bell Hooks’ series on love, I felt a little bamboozled.

A whole series about love?

Sigh.

But the further I got into it, the more everything started clicking into place.

Because what Hooks was actually writing about wasn’t romance.

It was self-love.

It was about the idea that healthy relationships cannot exist without a healthy relationship with yourself first.

And honestly?

That made a lot more sense to me.

Another thing that stood out was her challenge to the idea that women are somehow naturally better at loving than men.

Again, yes.

Because being socialized to care for everyone around you is not the same thing as being taught how to love in a healthy way.

Many women are taught sacrifice.

Many women are taught endurance.

Many women are taught to disappear.

Those things are often mistaken for love.

Another theme that stood out to me was Hooks’ discussion of sisterhood and solidarity. She advocates for women moving away from competition and toward genuine support for one another.

Which, yeah.

Because what exactly are we competing for?

A man?

To be the “lucky” one who gets the husband, the house, the babies, and somehow also ends up carrying most of the emotional labor, household labor, and mental load?

Sigh.

What resonated with me even more was her emphasis on the importance of deep, non-romantic friendships. Hooks argues that these relationships are vital for emotional well-being and stability, and as I listened, I found myself thinking about my best friend, Dawnie.

Both of us were married to horrible men. Men who cheated. Men who were verbally abusive. Men who were physically abusive.

But we had each other.

We spent countless days together with our children. We cooked together, cleaned together, shared parenting responsibilities, vented, laughed, cried, and made sure neither of us felt completely alone.

Neither of us had much, but we had community.

Looking back, I can see that what we built was its own kind of love.

Platonic, yes.

But love nonetheless.

And if I’m being completely honest, many of my so-called romantic relationships never filled my cup the way that friendship did.

For a long time, I thought the love I missed was romantic love.

Now, standing on the other side of the hardest parts of healing, I know that isn’t true.

What I miss is Dawnie.

I miss the friendship.

I miss the sisterhood.

I miss having someone who understood exactly what I was carrying because she was carrying it too.

That is exactly what Hooks means when she writes about love as healing and community. She describes love as a force capable of helping us recover from trauma and creating bonds that sustain us through life’s hardest seasons. Reading about it in theory felt different once I could see it clearly in my own life. Dawnie and I were already living it. We just did not have language for it at the time.

Hooks’ discussion of aging and midlife carried that same recognition for me. She argues that midlife should not be viewed as a period of decline but as a time of freedom, self-actualization, and reinvention. A time when women can redefine beauty, purpose, and love outside the narrow expectations placed on youth.

Whew.

She is not wrong.

Because as I have been writing from the middle, undoing, unlearning, and deconstructing, I have discovered things about myself that I never would have uncovered twenty years ago. The Dawnie years were survival. This season is something else. It is the part where I actually get to become.

I have realized that I have far more freedom than I once believed.

Now, does it always feel that way living in this timeline?

Absolutely not.

The world feels chaotic. Rights feel fragile. Every day seems to bring a new headline that makes me wonder what fresh bullshit we have all been forced to endure.

But even within that reality, I have freedom.

My children are grown.

I no longer organize my life around being someone’s wife.

I have spent the last two years openly living as a queer woman.

And there is something incredibly freeing about finally allowing yourself to exist as yourself.

I do not care if I leave the house with my hair in a messy bun and no makeup on.

I do not care if I am no longer performing femininity in the way society expects.

I do not care what men think I should look like, act like, want, or be.

That is not my job.

For decades, I measured my worth by whether someone loved me.

Not whether I loved myself.

Not whether I felt safe.

Not whether I felt seen.

The goal was always being chosen.

Looking back now, that feels like such a strange thing to build a life around.

Because being chosen did not protect me.

Being chosen did not heal me.

Being chosen did not make me whole.

And perhaps that is one of the biggest lessons I took away from Communion.

Love is not just something we give.

Love is not just something we receive.

Love is also the permission we grant ourselves to exist without constantly seeking approval.

For so much of my life, I thought love was something that had to be earned.

If I was prettier, more agreeable, more accommodating, more useful, more self-sacrificing, then maybe I would finally be worthy of it.

But that kind of thinking turns love into a transaction.

What Hooks writes about is something entirely different.

She writes about love as a practice.

A choice.

A way of being.

And I guess that is why this book landed so differently than I expected.

I picked it up because of a social media video.

I kept listening because I was curious.

I ordered the first two books because I needed to understand how she got here.

But I finished it realizing that some of the most important love stories are not about finding another person.

Sometimes they are about finally coming home to yourself.

Photo by Sarah Sheedy on Unsplash.

Sometimes they are about the friends who carried you through impossible seasons.

Sometimes they are about discovering that freedom and self-acceptance can be acts of love, too.

And for those of us doing our own undoing in the middle of life, that might be the most radical kind of love there is.