love is a skill we can strengthen

I made a new zine: love is a skill we can strengthen.

It’s 32 pages, half size, including covers.  Text heavy, with many lists of things to try, and contextualizing intro material about how love is a skill we can strengthen.  There’s philosophy about love and gender, love and capitalism.  An Audre Lorde quote, and a bell hooks quote.

For so long, I worked on this zine, off and on.  It’s a companion zine to to love: abusers in radical spaces.

“Will it be too didactic?  Dull?  Strange?” I worried.  The listiness is very appealing to me, but hard to tell if others will like it.  It turned out a good mix of abstract and concretely practical.  There are lofty ideas, and there are actual things to try in the physical world.  I love the combination!

I’m bad at not drawing strawberries; I can’t keep myself from drawing strawberries.  But I drew some other things too, like a trilobite and some reading glasses.

mentality and behavior

This zine could help improve people’s mentalities about love, and hopefully behaviors also.  I speak about how love is supposedly the most important thing in the world, but it’s rarely studied!   It’s supposed to be automatic and easy, but then why do so many people fail?  It’s a set of skills, and we can do better.

Loving societies could really help the world, if most people became good at it.  Right now I see many people who are not good at doing family, kindness, romantic relationships, communication, consent–even work relationships.  Yes, the zine is partly about relationship shills.

Please live according to your values, if your values include love and community, and showing up for people in a real way, ready to meet halfway.  Please open your heart.  Don’t think you’re doomed.  Just like we can learn to bake a cake, drive a big rig, or speak another language, we can do better at love.

I’m up for trades.  Please contact me to trade for other zines, art, a review.