Healing as Communion: bell hooks on Connection
Healing is an act of communion. — bell hooks
—What lingers after this line?
One-minute reflection
What feeling does this quote bring up for you?
Reframing Healing as Relational
bell hooks’ line shifts healing away from a private, self-contained project and toward a shared experience. By calling it “communion,” she implies that repair happens through relationship—through being witnessed, affirmed, and held in the presence of others. The wound may be carried in one body, but the conditions that soothe it often arise between people. From there, the quote invites a broader question: if isolation can deepen pain, what forms of togetherness make recovery possible? hooks points toward the idea that healing is not merely what we do to ourselves, but what we practice with one another.
What “Communion” Actually Implies
The word “communion” carries spiritual and ethical weight: it suggests a bond grounded in care, honesty, and mutual responsibility. In many traditions, communion is not a solitary act but a ritual of belonging—an agreement that no one eats, grieves, or hopes alone. Read this way, hooks is not romanticizing togetherness; she is naming a discipline of connection. Consequently, healing becomes less about “fixing” and more about re-entering relationship—repairing trust, restoring dignity, and building a sense of shared life where pain can be spoken without punishment.
Witnessing as Medicine
Communion begins with witnessing: the moment someone else recognizes your reality without minimizing it. Trauma researchers often describe how validation and safe attachment support recovery, because the nervous system learns that danger has passed when care is reliably present. Even outside clinical language, people know this intuitively—like the friend who doesn’t offer solutions, but stays on the phone while you breathe through a hard night. In that sense, hooks’ claim emphasizes that healing requires an audience of compassion. The simple act of being met—rather than managed—can be a turning point.
Healing and the Politics of Love
hooks frequently wrote about love as an action rather than a feeling, and “communion” fits that framework. If love is practiced through commitment, attention, and accountability, then healing becomes political as well as personal: it asks communities to create conditions where people are not discarded when they are hurting. This resonates with liberation traditions in which care work—checking on neighbors, feeding others, making space to grieve—is a form of resistance. Thus, communion is not just closeness; it is a shared ethic that counters cultures of domination, silence, and shame.
Mutuality Versus Dependency
At the same time, communion is not the same as relying on others to do one’s inner work. hooks’ framing suggests mutuality: each person brings sincerity, boundaries, and willingness to grow, so that connection remains nourishing rather than consuming. Healthy communion allows differences and imperfection while still insisting on respect. As a result, healing becomes a reciprocal practice—offering support and receiving it—where everyone learns that care can circulate without erasing autonomy.
Everyday Practices of Communion
Finally, the quote becomes practical when translated into daily habits: telling the truth with kindness, listening without rehearsing replies, apologizing with specificity, and building rituals that restore safety. Communion can look like group therapy, mutual aid, prayer circles, family dinners, or even a consistent weekly walk with someone who makes space for your story. Over time, these small acts accumulate into a lived environment where healing is not a lone ascent but a shared path—precisely the kind of connected life hooks gestures toward in a single, spare sentence.