Loving Out Loud

A review of Cristina Nehring's A Vindication of Love in this weekend's New York Times Book Review led me to an excerpt that I wish to share with you:

To be respected as a thinker in our world, a woman must cease to be a lover. To pass for an intellectual of any distinction, she must either renounce romantic love altogether or box it into a space so small in her life that it attracts no attention. If a man, as William Butler Yeats once claimed, "is forced to choose/Perfection of the life or of the work," a woman is too often forced to choose perfection of the heart or of the head. Should she choose to follow her heart, she needn't bother her head about philosophy or feminism because the world will mock her efforts. A strong mind, we've come to believe, precludes a strong heart. This, at least, is the mantra under which female artists have labored for centuries, and continue, to some extent, to labor still.

I have not read the entirety of Nehring's book. I can't make claims for the durability of her argument. But I am reminded of a conversation I once had with a widely respected male author (of, might I add, notoriously heartless stories) who essentially discounted my own work, not to mention my life, for being overly saturated with love. Sentimental was the word that he used. It was several years ago, just a few books into my career, and I can't begin to tell you just how long I felt the sting of his appraisal, how I began to cower behind, to feel ashamed of, the size and shape of my heart. You love too much and your writing shows it. That's the thought that kept tidal waving through my head.

Not any more. I am out in this world as who I am. I am living my love. I am dancing my love. I am cooking and gardening and walking my love. I am writing and I am blogging it—no apologies, and no one harmed. I put my heart and my head, such as they are, on these lines.