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d42c62a
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Feminist thinking teaches us all, especially, how to love justice and freedom in ways that foster and affirm life.
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freedom
feminist
life
justice
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Bell Hooks |
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859990a
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It is not surprising that young white males - most between thirty and forty - play major roles in the production of hip-pop. It's easy to forget this because when most people critique rap and hip-pop harshly, they assume that young black men are the sole creators and producers of misogynist rap. In fact, nothing is unilaterally produced anymore. As we've discussed, once you have a corporate takeover of the street culture, it is no longer th..
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representation
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bell hooks |
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03539f6
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Women, even the most oppressed among us, do exercise power. These powers can be used to advance feminist struggle. Forms of power held by exploited and oppressed groups are described in Elizabeth Janeway's important work Powers of the Weak. One of the most significant forms of power held by the weak is "the refusal to accept the definition of oneself that is put forward by the powerful". Janeway call this the "ordered use of the power to di..
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powers-of-the-weak
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bell hooks |
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72bbe01
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While it has become "cool" for white folks to hang out with black people and express pleasure in black culture, most white people do not feel that this pleasure should be linked to unlearning racism."
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bell hooks |
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c08f235
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A distinction must be made between that writing which enables us to hold on to life even as we are clinging to old hurts and wounds and that writing which offers to us a space where we are able to confront reality in such a way that we live more fully. Such writing is not an anchor that we mistakenly cling to so as not to drown. It is writing that truly rescues, that enables us to reach the shore, to recover.
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feminism
writing
memoir
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bell hooks |
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ef4a06c
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Men theorize about love, but women are more often love's practitioners. Most men feel that they receive love and therefore know what it feels like to be loved; women often feel we are in constant state of yearning, wanting love but not receiving it.
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Bell Hooks |
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e2aa706
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None of us should be ashamed to speak of our class power or lack of it. Overcoming fear, even the fear of being immodest, and acting courageously to bring issues of class- especially radical standpoints - into the discourse of blackness is a gesture of militant defiance, one that runs counter to bourgeois insistence that we think of "money" in particular and class in general as private matters."
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bell hooks |
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f4cc640
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Time and time again when I talk to individuals about approaching love with will and intentionality, I hear the fear expressed that this will bring an end to romance. This is simply not so. Approaching romantic love from foundation of care, knowledge, and respect actually intensifies romance.
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romance
love
foundation
intensity
respect
knowledge
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Bell Hooks |
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4546eec
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Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels, as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.
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feminism
politics
radical-feminism
imperialism
domination
society
ideology
oppression
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Bell Hooks |
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18a2e95
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We need to highlight the role women play in perpetuating and sustaining patriarchal culture so that we will recognize patriarchy as a system women and men support equally, even if men receive more rewards from that system. Dismantling and changing patriarchal culture is work that men and women must do together.
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Bell Hooks |
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422b74b
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One of the greatest difficulties the left faces in reaching out to masses of people in America is its profound disrespect of spirituality and religious life...people on the left need to acknowledge - we need to grapple with - the question of religion.
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bell hooks |
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c784faa
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enslaved black males were socialized by white folks to believe that they should endeabor to become patriarchs by seeking to attain the freedom to provide and protect for black women, to be benevolen patriarchs. Benevolent patriarchs exercise their power without using force. And it was this notion of patriarchy that educated black men coming from slavery into freedom sought to mimic. However, a large majority of black men took as their stand..
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patriarchy
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bell hooks |
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cc55746
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Even the wealthiest professional woman can be "brought down" by being in a relationship where she longs to be loved and is consistently lied to. To the degree that she trusts her male companion, lying and other forms of betrayal will most likely shatter her self-confidence and self-esteem."
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Bell Hooks |
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7fcc0de
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While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weakens and damages connection. Lerner points out that we do not usually "know the emotional costs of keeping a secret" until the truth is disclosed. Usually, secrecy involves lying. And lying is always the setting for potential betrayal and violation of trust."
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Bell Hooks |
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99b0cab
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Many of us learned that passivity lessened the possibility of attack.
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Bell Hooks |
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1308606
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The widespread assumption that ethical behavior takes the fun out of life is false. In actuality, living ethically ensures that relationships in our lives, including encounters with strangers, nurture our spiritual growth.
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fun
love
growth
morals
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Bell Hooks |
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f771147
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As long as women are using class or race power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized.
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bell hooks |
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9e9de3f
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Feminist consciousness-raising has not significantly pushed women in the direction of revolutionary politics. For the most part, it has not helped women understand capitalism-how it works as a system that exploits female labor and its interconnections with sexist oppression. It has not urged women to learn about different political systems like socialism or encouraged women to invent and envision new political systems. It has not attacked m..
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bell hooks |
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5574a02
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Remember, care is a dimension of love, but simply giving care does not mean we are loving.
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Bell Hooks |
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e4de871
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There can be no love without justice.
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Bell Hooks |
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01a616a
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Lying has become so much the accepted norm that people lie even when it would be simpler to tell the truth.
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Bell Hooks |
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737cc7f
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The soul of our politics is the commitment to ending domination.
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Bell Hooks |
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895bb09
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Whether we learn how to love ourselves and others will depend on the presence of a loving environment. Self-love cannot flourish in isolation.
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Bell Hooks |
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03ef012
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Feminist effort to end patriarchal domination should be of primary concern precisely because it insists on the eradication of exploitation and oppression in the family context and in all other intimate relationships. It is that political movement which most radically addresses the person - the personal - citing the need for the transformation of self, of relationships, so that we might be better able to act in a revolutionary manner, challe..
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bell hooks |
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af0c579
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Within neo-colonial white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the black male body continues to be perceived as an embodiment of bestial, violent, penis-as-weapon hypermasculine assertion. Psychohistories of white racism have always called attention to the tension between the construction of black male body as danger and the underlying eroticization that always then imagines that body as a location for transgressive pleasure. It has taken con..
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fetishism
objectification
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bell hooks |
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4c9b27d
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Critically intervene in a way that challenges and changes.
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bell hooks |
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37fa8bc
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I had the strength to rebel, but I did not have the strength to let go.
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bell hooks |
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08b2ac9
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Our freedom is sweet. It will be sweeter when we are all free.
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bell hooks |
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5ee6d31
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And when we love, we know love will last. Significantly, we know, having learned through much trial and error, that true love begins with self-love. And that time and time again our search for love brings us back to the place where we started, back to our own heart's mirror, where we can look upon our female selves with love and be renewed.
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Bell Hooks |
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456e320
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The word "love" is most often defined as a noun, yet al the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb."
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Bell Hooks |
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fff95df
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All relationships have ups and downs. Romantic fantasy often nurtures the belief that difficulties and down times are an indication of a lack of love rather than part of the process. In actuality, true love thrives of the difficulties. The foundation of such love is the assumption that we want to grow and expand, to become more fully ourselves. There is no change that does not bring with it a feeling of challenge and loss. When we experienc..
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love-quotes
true-love
relationships
love
disputes
growth-process
growth
fighting
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bell hooks |
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293d937
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Concurrently, the growing class power and public voice of conservative and liberal well-to-do black folks easily obscures the class cruelty these individuals enact both in the way they talk about underprivileged blacks and the way they represent them. The existence of that class cruelty and its fascist dimensions have been somewhat highlighted by the efforts of privileged-class blacks to censor the voices of black youth, particularly gangst..
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sociology
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bell hooks |
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456354f
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Imagine living in a world where there is no domination, where females and males are not alike or even always equal, but where a vision of mutuality is the ethos shaping our interaction.
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Bell Hooks |
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e1cfd55
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Black males who refuse categorization are rare, for the price of visibility in the contemporary world of white supremacy is that black identity be defined in relation to the stereotype whether by embodying it or seeking to be other than it...Negative stereotypes about the nature of black masculinity continue to overdetermine the identities black males are allowed to fashion for themselves.
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visibility
masculinity
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bell hooks |
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f0b362d
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When we black people commit ourselves to living simply as a political action, as a way of breaking the stress caused by unrelenting hedonistic desire for material objects that are not needed for survival, or essential to well-being, we will not be talking about ebonics. We will be out in the streets demanding that the public schools have enough teachers so that all kids, cross color, can read and write in standard English and in Spanish too..
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simple-living
priorities
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bell hooks |
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b288b96
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Erotic attraction often serves as the catalyst for an intimate connection between two people, but it is not a sign of love. Exciting, pleasurable sex can take place between two people who do not even know each other. Yet the vast majority of males in our society are convinced that their erotic longing indicates who they should, and can, love. Led by their penis, seduced by erotic desire, they often end up in relationships with partners with..
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love-quotes
sex
men
love
erotica-romance
eroticism
penis
sexual-attraction
erotica
sexuality
sexy
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bell hooks |
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4aa321d
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Politically progressive black people on the Left who are not nationalist, like myself, share a perspective that promotes the eradication of white supremacy, the de-centering of the West, redressing of biases, and commitment to affirming black self-determination. Yet we add to the critique of white Western imperialism a repudiation of patriarchy, a critique of capitalism, and a concern for interracial coalition building.
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bell hooks |
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d215cd1
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Poetry is a useful place for lamentation...poems are a place where we can cry out.
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bell hooks |
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d3ae1b3
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Men do oppress women. People are hurt by rigid sexist role patterns. These two realities coexist. Male oppression of women cannot be excused by the recognition that there are ways men are hurt by rigid sexist roles. Feminist activists should acknowledge that hurt, and work to change it--it exists. It does not erase or lessen male responsibility for supporting and perpetuating their power under patriarchy to exploit and oppress women in a ma..
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Bell Hooks |
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709e220
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Racism has always been a divisive force separating black men and white men, and sexism has been a force that unites the two groups.
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Bell Hooks |
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053e3b3
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We knew that there could be no real sisterhood between white women and women of color if white women were not able to divest of white supremacy, if feminist movement were not fundamentally anti-racist.
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Bell Hooks |
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cd104de
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Concurrently, when it comes to matters of the heart we are encouraged to treat partners as though they were objects we can pick up, use, and the discard and dispose of at will, with the one criteria being whether or not individualistic desires are satisfied.
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satisfaction
relationship
heart
love
object
partner
desire
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Bell Hooks |
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f2364d5
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Fluidity means that our black identities are constantly changing as we respond to circumstances in our families and communities of origin, and as we interact with a wider world.
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bell hooks |
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eb82e10
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As more people have found the courage to break through shame and speak about woundedness in their lives, we are now subjected to a mean-spirited cultural response, where all talk of woundedness is mocked. The belittling of anyone's attempt to name a context within which they were wounded, were made a victim, is a form of shaming. It is psychological terrorism. Shaming breaks our hearts. All individuals who are genuinely seeking well-being w..
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pain
responsibility
honesty
love
healing-shame
hurting-heart
wounds-to-the-heart
discussion
wounds
confrontation
woundedness
wounded
self-love
hurting
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bell hooks |