Embedded Files
Overview
Overview
This is where the rubber meets the road. After nine modules on love—what it is, how to practice it, and how to extend it in various contexts—the final question is: how do you keep going? How do you choose love amid loveless systems, devastating news, cruel politics, a collapsing economy, climate crisis, and exhausted people? bell hooks concludes All About Love by saying, "When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear, against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect—to find ourselves in the other." This module teaches maintaining a love practice in a world not built for it—fostering resilience without toxic positivity, hope without naivety, and persistence even when it seems impossible.
This is not the end. This is the beginning of what you practice for the rest of your life.
Core Question: The world feels terrible. Love feels impossible. How do I keep going?
Answer Preview: By remembering that love is a practice, not a destination. By choosing love daily, not perfectly. By understanding that your small acts of love are not small—they're the foundation of a different world. By never doing this alone.
Key Concepts
Key Concepts
Love as Resistance: In a loveless world, choosing to love is a political act
Sustainable Practice vs. Burnout: How to love for the long haul, not just in bursts of energy
Hope as Discipline: Mariame Kaba's framework—hope is not optimism, it's a practice you commit to
Joy as Strategy: adrienne maree brown's insistence that pleasure, rest, and joy are not luxuries but necessities for sustaining love
Love Ethic in Public Life: Bringing the six components into every space you occupy—home, work, school, politics, digital spaces
Legacy and Continuity: You are not the first person to practice love in a loveless world, and you won't be the last
Content
Content
[BOOK CHAPTER] bell hooks - All About Love, Chapter 13: "Destiny: When Angels Speak of Love"
Link: https://dn790000.ca.archive.org/0/items/all-about-love-new-visions-bell/All-About-Love-New-Visions-Bell.pdf
The final chapters. On healing through love. On the cultural desire to return to love. On destiny as practice, not fate. hooks writes that we heal when we surrender power and accept that hurt and healing are both necessary to know love.
[VIDEO] Valarie Kaur - "3 Lessons of Revolutionary Love in a Time of Rage" TEDx
Link: https://www.ted.com/talks/valarie_kaur_3_lessons_of_revolutionary_love_in_a_time_of_rage
Sikh activist and civil rights lawyer on revolutionary love as the call of our times. Three practices: love for others, love for opponents, love for ourselves. A framework for sustaining love in a political crisis. Kaur asks: "What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?"
[PODCAST] For the Wild - "How to Survive the End of the World/All About Love"
Link: https://forthewild.world/listen/episode-swap-how-to-survive-the-end-of-the-world?rq=bell%20hooks
This episode grounds the season’s focus on love in a conversation about what it means to actively love as a part of survival. As adrienne and Autumn discuss the joys of witnessing love in the face of despair, the accountability that comes with true love, and the growth and nourishment made possible through love, they impart deep wisdom about how to cherish this world for all it has given us.
[VIDEO] Faith in the Time of Monsters: Dr. Cornel West on Justice, Love & Healing America
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp0j79_J2b8
This is more than a lecture — it’s a blueprint for moral courage in turbulent times. Whether you are a faith leader, activist, artist, or seeker, you’ll come away inspired to build a more just, loving world.
[PODCAST] Hope Is a Discipline feat. Mariame Kaba - Beyond Prisions Podcast
Search: https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/hope-is-a-discipline-feat-mariame-kaba
Kaba's framework for sustaining activist work without optimism. Hope isn't about believing things will get better—it's about committing to act as if they can, regardless of outcome. Multiple free interviews and transcripts available.
Supplementary Content
Supplementary Content
Books & Academic Texts
Valarie Kaur - See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love
Rebecca Solnit - Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Movements, and How Uncertainty Is Our Friend
Cornel West - Race Matters
Video & Audio
How to Survive the End of the World - adrienne maree brown & Autumn Brown
On Being - Krista Tippett
Reflection and Engagement Options
Reflection and Engagement Options
Journal Prompts
How has your understanding of love changed since Module 1? Write your definition of love now. Compare it to what you would have written before this curriculum.
What love practices have you actually started doing? Not what you intended to do—what did you actually do? What stuck? What didn't? What surprised you?
Mariame Kaba says hope is a discipline. What does your daily hope practice look like? If you don't have one, what could it be?
Where do you encounter lovelessness in your daily life? At work? In the news? Online? In your family? In yourself? How do you respond to it now versus before?
What would it look like to bring a love ethic to every space you occupy? Your workplace. Your social media. Your family dinners. Your voting. Your spending. Your rest.
Write a letter to the you who started Module 1. What do you know now that you didn't know then? What has changed? What still needs to change?
adrienne maree brown says "what you pay attention to grows." What are you paying attention to? Is it growing what you want to grow?
Complete this sentence: "The world I'm building through my love practice is one where..." Be as specific as possible. Name the world you're making with your daily choices.
Discussion Questions for Learning Communities
How do you sustain a love practice when the world feels loveless? What keeps you going? What makes you want to quit? What brings you back?
Mariame Kaba says hope is a discipline, not a feeling. What's the difference? How do you practice hope when you don't feel hopeful?
adrienne maree brown insists that joy and pleasure are essential to justice work. Do you believe that? Where is joy present in your love practice? Where is it missing? Where have you been taught that joy is frivolous?
bell hooks writes about "returning to love." What are you returning to? What did you lose along the way that you're trying to find again?
Cornel West says "justice is what love looks like in public." What does your love look like in public? In your politics? In your community? In your spending? In your silence?
What systems need to change for love to be easier? This isn't just a personal practice—it's a political one. What policies, structures, and institutions need a love ethic?
What does a system look like that loves you back? After ten modules, how do you answer that question? How has your answer changed?
Creative & Artistic Engagement:
Visual Arts
Create a visual "love manifesto"—your personal commitment to practicing love, designed beautifully enough to hang on your wall.
Make a "before and after" piece: who you were when you started this curriculum and who you are now. What shifted?
Design a piece of public art for your community that embodies what you've learned. (Even if it stays on paper—imagine it.)
Performance & Movement
Create a group ritual for your community—something you'll do together regularly to practice love. A shared meal, a circle, a dance, a moment of silence, a reading.
Choreograph a piece that moves from lovelessness to love. What does the journey feel like in the body? How does the body change when it decides to keep going?
Music & Sound
Create your final playlist: "The Soundtrack of a World That Loves Us Back." Songs of resistance, joy, grief, hope, connection, and freedom. Share it.
Host a final listening party. Play each other's playlists. Witness what love sounds like to the people around you.
Digital & Tech
Create a final social media post or series: "What I Learned About Love." Share it. Let it ripple. You don't know who needs to hear it.
Build a resource hub (a simple website, a shared doc, a link collection) of everything that helped you in this curriculum. Make it accessible to others.
Community Art
Host a culminating community event—a potluck, a reading, a performance, a circle—that celebrates what you've built together throughout this curriculum.
Create a community zine collecting reflections, art, poetry, and commitments from everyone who engaged with this curriculum.
Plant something together—literally. A garden, a tree, a seed. Let it grow as a physical reminder that love is always growing, even when you can't see it.
Writing & Documentation
Write an essay: "What a World That Loves Us Back Looks Like." Be specific. Be imaginative. Be bold. What systems exist? What doesn't? How do people treat each other? How does it feel?
Write a letter to someone who will go through this curriculum after you. What do they need to know?
Document your journey through all ten modules. What shifted? What broke open? What are you carrying forward?
Homework
Homework
Solo Practice: Love Ethic Life Map (45-60 minutes)
What you'll need: Large paper or journal, markers/colored pencils, the six components list, uninterrupted time
Instructions:
Draw a map of your life as it is right now. Include: relationships, work, home, community, health, creative life, political engagement, digital life, spiritual life. (Use whatever format works, circles, boxes, a literal map, a web, a solar system.)
For each area, assess: Where am I practicing love (care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, trust)? Where am I not? Use the six components as your checklist. Be honest, not punishing, but honest.
Identify three areas where you want to deepen your love practice. Not all at once. Three.
For each one, write a specific commitment:
What will I do?
How often?
Who will hold me accountable?
What will I do when it gets hard? (Because it will get hard.)
Write your personal love ethic statement. Three to five sentences that capture what you believe about love and what you're committed to practicing. This is your compass. Not a set of rules, a set of commitments. Examples:
"I believe love is a verb, something I choose to do every day, not something I fall into. I am committed to practicing care, honesty, and showing up consistently for the people in my life, starting with myself."
"I believe that systems of oppression make love harder but not impossible. I am committed to building community that centers mutual aid, joy, and honest communication, and to staying when it gets hard."
"I believe that grief is evidence of love, not evidence of brokenness. I am committed to being the kind of person who shows up for others in their worst moments, and to letting others show up for me."
Put your love ethic statement somewhere you'll see it every day. On your wall, in your phone, on your bathroom mirror, as your screensaver, taped to your laptop. Let it remind you who you're becoming.
Group Practice: Closing Circle and Commitment Ceremony (90-120 minutes)
What you'll need: Everyone who's gone through this journey together, food (always food), a candle or centerpiece, large paper for group commitment, markers
Instructions:
Opening ritual (10 min): Light a candle. Read hooks' definition of love aloud together: "The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." Sit in silence for one minute. Let the definition land in your body.
Reflection round (30 min): Each person shares: "When I started this curriculum, I believed love was... Now I understand love is..." Give each person 2-3 minutes. No crosstalk. Just witness. Let people take their time.
Gratitude round (15 min): Each person names one person in the circle (or outside it) whose love has sustained them through this journey. Be specific. Name the action, not just the feeling.
Individual commitments (15 min): Each person reads their love ethic statement aloud to the group. The group responds after each one: "We see you. We're with you."
Group commitment (15 min): Together, write a group love ethic statement on the large paper. What does this community commit to practicing? How will you stay connected? What will you do when it gets hard? Everyone signs it.
Closing ritual (15 min): Go around one final time. Each person says one word that captures what they're taking with them from this curriculum. After the last person speaks, read together: "When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear, against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect, to find ourselves in the other." — bell hooks Blow out the candle together. The light isn't gone, it's in you now.
Note for Solo Learners/If you don't have a group, modify this practice by:
Journal through all steps. Write your love ethic statement.
Read it aloud to yourself, in a mirror, with eye contact.
Put it somewhere you'll see it every day.
Then share it with one person.
Not because you have to, but because love, by definition, extends beyond the self.
Before You Move On: The End is The Beginning
Before You Move On: The End is The Beginning
Reflection questions to sit with:
What kind of world are you building with your daily choices?
Who are you becoming through your practice of love?
What does a system look like that loves you back—and what are you doing to build it?
You are not alone in this. You were never alone in this. The loneliness you felt in Module 1 was real—but it was also a lie. There have always been people building toward love. Now you're one of them.
The world wasn't built to love you. So we're going to build a new one. Together. One practice at a time.
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