August is National Wellness Month, but what does wellness mean? For the past few years, "Self-care" has become a catch phrase as the solution for all our problems. It's the new "ginger ale" (IYKYK).
For me, being "WELL" means your physical health, social-emotional health, mental health, sexual health, etc. That means when I'm reflecting on if I'm WELL, I'm asking myself—am I eating balanced meals, drinking water, exercising, does my back or knees hurt? Am I connecting with family, friends, my husband, when's the last time we spent quality time? Am I sleeping well, am I taking breaks from my work? When's the last time I did the things I enjoy—read, color, watch a Kdrama, play The Last Campfire? Oh, what about my boundaries? Have I been keeping them in place or are they slipping and getting overwhelmed by everyone else's needs?
This is my personal litmus test for when I'm LESS well than I'd like to be, and my "self care" plan is JUST as personal. As should everyone's.
BUT wellness and self-care begins with a HEALTHY self-love. And for that to happen, we need an understanding of healthy love. Some of us learn it through growing up, others learn it later in life, and some are still searching.
In All About Love: New Visions, bell hooks offers the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces.
"The word 'love' is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb," writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness--not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society's failure to provide a model for learning to love.
As bell hooks uses her incisive mind to explore the question "What is love?" her answers strike at both the mind and heart. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the "100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life." All About Love is a powerful, timely affirmation of just how profoundly her revelations can change hearts and minds for the better.
Have you read All About Love by bell hooks? Your thoughts?
