(you) can't control me anymore. I be alone sometimes.

“Meditate and learn to be alone without being lonely…learn to be quiet enough to hear the sound of the genuine within yourself so that you can hear it in other people…A few minutes every hour, a half hour every day, a day a month, a week a year-in dedicated silence-is a goal to pursue.”

Marian Wright Edelman

I’ve had two missions this summer to improve my quality of life. Slowing down and healing from burnout has been one of them, but I suppose a deeper one has been to heal from the lovelessness in my life. And perhaps lovelessness reads as being dramatic, hell, I’ve been accused of worse. But, I mean it when I say lovelessness. People love me. Deeply. As much as they can at least. As much as my wounds allow them to…and that is another post for another day. The lovelessness I mean is sketched out in the pages of bell hooks’ work All About Love. In that seminal love text she describes what it means to live by a love ethic. Approaching the topic of love from traditional psychology, Christian Scripture, Black literature, and more…her ethic of love constantly shines a mirror on the areas I lack it. I have endeavored this summer to identify the lovelessness that no person can see.

And so. I’ve sat with myself. For hours. Days. Waking up in the morning and sitting in the silence until the tears begin to form…lovelessness manifesting as grief. I haven’t been afraid to do this work because I know that it is necessary. I know that I deserve to be unencumbered by lovelessness. I’ve let these moments alone heal me. Returning to the Marian Wright Edelman quote I opened this musing with, I’ve been learning to be alone without being lonely. I feel…different. Quieter in some ways. Stronger in some ways. Lovelessness is insidious and impacts us all in different ways, usually across the fault lines of our traumas, childhoods, and experiences. I’m learning, at my big big big age, that practicing love towards myself is life-long. I won’t graduate at some point. I can evolve from “glory to glory” if I am patient and brave.

It has taken me decades to become who I am now…both good and bad. It will take decades to become fully who I desire to be. I hope you hear that whenever I write I do believe that I haven’t obtained the things that I desire, especially those things that I desire to emulate. And I must share here that I’ve chosen to talk about the art of being alone and self-healing, but please don’t mistake that for how quickly choosing to be alone can become isolation. It can become a way that the traumatized have learned to shield themselves from harm. There’s an aesthetic to it that can be a bit misleading. Isolation can help us for a time, but sustained isolation isn’t good for sustained healing and self-growth. Here, I merely point to aloneness as a tool. Silence as a tool. Reflection as a tool. Grace to you this upcoming week.

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