V - Love

Love

“Love is as love does. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and action.” Erich Fromm, The Road Less Traveled.

At 56 years of age, I am finally daring to put my writing out into the world. Up until now I have spent time and money, lots of both, writing and rewriting the events of my life and recording the inner workings of a depressed mind in poetry and song. Although I have escaped the Mennonite World, and yes, it felt at first, like an escape, I have not been able to find a secular community like the one I left years ago.

After my move to Toronto from Winnipeg when I spoke on the phone with my mother it didn’t take long until she asked, “Are you going to church?”

I tried to avoid giving her an answer. I knew every time she asked my response it was likely to feel like a hit to the heart.

The answer to this question remains the same to this day. However, this does not mean she isn’t still praying for me, which, I have come to realize is a blatant disregard for my life choices. I resist the shame and guilt that lies in wait for me. And the shame and guilt I experienced throughout my childhood, adolescence and adult years for not being able to believe like she does.

In bell hook’s book “all about love” hook starts off with Fromm’s definition of love and explains how if she had known what love was then she might have made different choices in her intimate relationships. She distinguishes between love, affection, care and delight. “My family of origin provided, throughout my childhood, a dysfunctional setting and it remains one. This does not mean that it is not also a setting in which affection, delight, and care are present.” bell hooks, 2000.

This is liberating. It allows me a more intricate, complex and nuanced understanding of what I did and did not receive growing up. It allows me to acknowledge the “good stuff” but not to minimize the damage done growing up in a religious home.