I was recently asked why I got involved in mutual aid. My answers were the same as they have always been, it’s the end of the world and we need to take care of each other, it is a part of my politics, and a natural (human) response to crises. All of these things are very much true, and they all center me and my orientation in this moment of time. However, there is a piece of mutual aid that I’ve failed to name, but one that I feel deeply through the most sacred parts of my body.
I first learned about love, or a version of it, from my parents. Then I learned about it through my childhood friends, and then when I was sixteen, bell hooks taught me about love in ways that shattered and comforted me all at once. bell hooks definition of love is, “the will to extend one’s self for the the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. ‘ Love is as love does. Love is an act of will–namely, both an intention and an action” (All About Love). This definition felt more true to me than anything I had ever read or heard before. At that moment I started to understand where love was lacking or lying in my life, and I was able to affirm and follow the parts of myself that had a deep longing to love and be loved. Feeling actual, active and intentional love and recognizing it as such changed my life.
Mutual aid is A LOT of things, but a part of it is love. Love for yourself, your comrades, your neighbors and the earth that we live upon. This idea of “mutual”, mutual care, mutual love, mutual respect. That isn’t the love I was raised in, but it is the love that I needed. We take care of each other, we are invested in all of our health, fulfillment, and growth as we know that by teaching each other to love we are creating, together, the world we are trying to build. I’ve learned so much from my time building and working with my neighbors in our mutual aid, but something I will be forever grateful for is the lesson of love I am continuously being taught. It is sacred, transformative, and life-giving. It is the closest thing to embodied politics (embodied liberation) that I can imagine.
By participating in groups in new ways and practicing new ways of being together, we are both building the world we want and becoming the kind of people who could live in such a world together
Mutual Aid by Dean Spade
Unruly Bodies 
I was taught that love was a feeling growing up, and I spent a long time wondering why I didn’t feel it very much. What you said with “Feeling actual, active and intentional love and recognizing it as such changed my life” was the same really powerful realisation I came to a while ago when I asked myself why I didn’t just “feel” love very often. Changing my mindset to look at love as intentional act made me a much happier and more loving person, and for me it has proved to be a really authentic way of thinking about and practicing love. I also was really touched by what you said about love as a mutual practice. Too often we think of love as a giving, a gift, a charity, and it just sets up a subtle power dynamic that means love can be taken away, that its a conditional reward. Love as a mutual practice takes away this power dynamic, leaving only what should be left (love). This was a really moving piece, thank you!