Letter 7: bell hooks on How to Find Love
bell hooks’ 5 Tips on How to Find Love At Every Age
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With Love
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bell hooks’ 5 Tips on How to Find Love (at every age)
When bell hooks book All About Love: New Visions came out in 1999 it was ahead of its time in challenging the way our culture misunderstands love, offering a new definition rooted in care, commitment, trust and spiritual growth.
In a 1999 interview on Word on Words with John Seigenthaler, bell hooks spoke about different types of love, drawing on concepts from The Road Less Traveled and Erich Fromm’s definitions, and reflected on her own childhood where she felt cared for but not truly loved, a distinction that became central to her understanding of what love is and isn’t:
She wrote All About Love to fill what she saw as a cultural void where everyone talks about love, but few truly understand or practice it. For hooks, redefining love was part of a lifelong project to build a more just, connected and compassionate world.
Choosing to Love is a Radical Act of Healing and Transformation
Deeply influenced by Buddhist teachings, hooks believed that choosing to love, despite living in a society shaped by patriarchy, fear and emotional disconnection, is a radical act of healing and transformation. Let’s look at bell hooks work in 5 universal Tips on How to Choose and Find Love in your own life, at every age.
1. Love Is a Choice, Not a Feeling
The word love is most often defined as a noun, yet all the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb... Love is as love does. Love is an act of will, namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.
— bell hooks, All About Love
Drawing on the work of M. Scott Peck and Erich Fromm, hooks emphasizes that love is a conscious decision rooted in growth. Peck, in The Road Less Traveled, defines love as “the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.” Similarly, Fromm, in The Art of Loving, writes that love is “the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love.”
Together, these definitions challenge the myth that love is purely emotional or instinctual. Instead, they frame love as a sustained commitment, a daily choice to show up, to act with intention and to support the growth of ourselves and others. To love is to will growth for ourselves and others, over and over again.
Try this: Before you respond to a message, speak to a loved one or even talk to yourself, pause. Ask: Am I choosing to nurture growth here? Let that question shape your words, tone and presence, every day.
2. Love Is Choosing Connection Over Fear
At any stage of life, love asks us to do something radical: to move toward connection, even when we’re afraid. In All About Love, bell hooks writes:
When we choose to love we choose to move against fear — against alienation and separation. The choice to love is the choice to connect — to find ourselves in the other.
―bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
This isn’t easy. Our culture often teaches us to protect ourselves by shutting down, pulling away or clinging to sameness. As hooks observes:
Fear is the primary force upholding systems of domination. It promotes the desire for separation, the desire not to be known... When we are taught that safety always lies in sameness, then difference, of any kind, will appear as a threat.
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
Real love asks us to unlearn that fear. Whether you're learning to trust again after heartbreak, navigating love later in life, or opening up for the very first time—choosing love means choosing to be seen. It means refusing to let fear dictate who gets close.
Try this:
Learn how to really listen to the person you’re speaking to. Give them your full attention—without interrupting, fixing, or waiting to reply. Notice what happens when you open space for connection instead of retreat. Let love begin with attention.
3. Love Won’t Save You, But It Can Transform You
Many people spend years chasing a version of love that looks like perfection, certainty or endless bliss. But as bell hooks writes in All About Love, that fantasy keeps us stuck:
Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified... Dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love—which is to transform us. Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. They want to do nothing, just passively receive the good feeling.
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
This message matters at every age, whether you are still learning what love looks like, rebuilding after heartbreak or learning to receive love in a new season of your life. Real love doesn’t rescue you. It reshapes you. It is not a high but it is a slow, steady practice that changes who you are from the inside out.
Try this:
Take five minutes to reflect: What story have I believed about what love should feel like? Then ask yourself: What if love is less about being swept away, and more about being deeply rooted? Write down three qualities of love you want to give, not just receive.
4. Having the Courage to Be Known
Honesty is one of the deepest expressions of love and one of the hardest. On this, bell hooks writes:
To know love we have to tell the truth to ourselves and to others. Creating a false self to mask fears and insecurities has become so common that many of us are more in touch with the mask than with our true feelings. We may even believe the mask is our real face. We long for love and yet run from the truth, because the truth requires us to face our wounds and contradictions.
― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
At any age, telling the truth might mean admitting what you really need, confronting an old pattern or letting someone see you without your defenses. We often think honesty will drive others away but in reality, it’s what allows intimacy to take root.
Truth can be messy. But it’s the ground where real love grows.
Try this:
Pick one place in your life where you’ve been silent to keep the peace, with yourself or someone else. Journal about what you haven’t said. Ask yourself: What would love sound like if I told the truth here?
5. Love Begins Where You Are
Before we can offer love freely or receive it without fear, we have to believe we are worthy of it. That begins with self-love. bell hooks writes:
One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others. It is silly, it is sad, but many of us go to therapists and to self-help books looking for love. We look for it in relationships with partners, with friends and family, hoping they can offer us the love we long for. We have to first learn to love ourselves. Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give to yourself.
— bell hooks, All About Love
Meet yourself with the same tenderness, patience and honesty you long for in others. It’s about staying on your own side when things get hard. At every age, self-love is the soil that makes real love possible.
Try this:
Instead of asking, Who will love me?—ask, How can I love myself better today? Choose one small act of care: nourish your body, say no to something draining, or speak to yourself like someone who matters. Because you do.
In Conclusion… Love Is a Lifelong Practice
bell hooks taught us that love isn’t a destination or a reward, it’s a practice we return to again and again. At every age, we are offered the chance to begin. To let go of old fantasies. To confront fear. To tell the truth. To tend to ourselves. To love not just romantically, but radically, with attention, care and courage.
Whether you're finding love for the first time, rebuilding after loss or learning how to love better in your later years, the invitation remains the same:
Despite the hardness of the world, its grief, its betrayals, its loneliness, it is a radical act to keep your heart open. To choose love instead of shutting down. To meet life not with retreat, but with tenderness.
Journal Prompts to Deepen Your Practice
Use these prompts anytime you want to reflect more deeply on your relationship to love:
From Tip 1 — Love Is a Choice, Not a Feeling:
What would it look like to choose love, intentionally, at this stage of my life?From Tip 2 — Love Is Choosing Connection Over Fear:
When have I let fear stop me from connecting with someone I care about?
What would it feel like to move toward connection instead of retreat next time?From Tip 3 — Love Won’t Save You, But It Can Transform You:
What story have I believed about what love should feel like?
What if love is less about being swept away, and more about being deeply rooted?
(Optional: Write down three qualities of love you want to give, not just receive.)From Tip 4 — Having the Courage to Be Known:
What have I been avoiding saying, to myself or someone else?
What would love sound like if I told the truth here?From Tip 5 — Love Begins Where You Are:
How can I love myself better today?
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Thank you for reading.
Much Love
— Earth Poet
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References / Bibliography
hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. William Morrow, 2000.
Fromm, Erich. The Art of Loving. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1956.
Peck, M. Scott. The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth. Simon & Schuster, 1978.
hooks, bell. Interview on Word on Words with John Seigenthaler. Nashville Public Television, 1999.
hooks, bell. Selected quotes retrieved from Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/10697.bell_hooks
Image Still from Word on Words with John Seigenthaler, 1999 interview with bell hooks. Link.
The article was already brilliant but the added « try this » was actual genius. Thank you for this