4 Ways To Reimagine Black Love And Revolutionize Our Collective Healing

#1: Self-love

The most important relationship we have is with ourselves. Loving ourselves teaches others how to love us.

Self-love looks like boundaries, taking alone time, practicing joy, communicating, and being vulnerable.

#2: Community Love

bell hooks once wrote, “rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.”

Who makes you feel safe, supported, and cared for?

#3: Reimagining Relationships

Even if you’re not polyamorous, conversations about polyamory help us reimagine what relationships can look like, both platonic and romantic. Many polyamorist practices mirror traditional African relationships predating anti-Blackness enforcing monogamy on our ancestors.

#4: Environmental Love

Many natural remedies our ancestors preserved throughout enslavement required them to have loving relationships with nature.

How can we find love within the soil our ancestors toiled?

#5: Revolutionary Love

Love, like Blackness, isn’t monolithic. Only when we see Malcolm X’s declaration of “by any means necessary” through the lens of revolutionary love do we understand the lengths our ancestors went to ensure our freedom.

At the root of Black Liberation is love and our spiritual wellness depends on this. Black Love IS the protest.