There is love in this place, just like there is love everywhere we care to look for it. There is beauty and there is hope and there is a boy and there is a mother and there is the past and there is the future but most importantly there is the now, and everything that exists between them that has got them from one moment to the next. The now is where we find the golden glow where, for the briefest of moments, the sky rips open and we see what it is we are made of.
Tell me a story, he asked me.
And so I began.
Clementine Ford is a person who has loved deeply, strangely and with curiosity. She is fascinated by love and how it makes its home in our hearts and believes that the way we continue to surrender ourselves to love is an act of great faith and bravery.
This tender and lyrical memoir explores love in its many forms, through Clementine's own experiences. With clear eyes and an open heart, she writes about losing her adored mother far too young, about the pain and confusion of first love - both platonic and romantic - and the joy and heartache of adult love. She writes movingly about the transcendent and transformative journey to motherhood and the similarly monumental path to self-love. 'We love as children, as friends, as parents and, yes, sometimes as sexual beings, and none of it is more important than the other because all of it shows us who we are.'
How We Love is heartfelt, funny, confessional, revelatory, compassionate - and essential reading. It shows us to ourselves in moments of unwavering truth and undeniable joy.
'Sensitive, soulful and utterly captivating.' -Jamila Rizvi, author and editor of The Motherhood
'Such gorgeous and powerful storytelling your heart will feel tender, shattered, and whole-all at once.' -Michelle Andrews and Zara McDonald, Shameless podcast
'Clementine Ford is a phenomenon, unmatched in her fearlessness. Every time I read her work, it feels like I'm putting on armour.' -Benjamin Law, author of The Family Law
'Ford reminds us that, even when they hurt, our feelings are the very meat of life.' -Yves Rees, author of All About Yves: Notes from a Transition
'Everything in How We Love pierced me as I read - the humour, the honesty, the blistering detail. I laughed, and my heart ached.' -Alice Robinson, author of The Glad Shout