Dr. Margaret asks, "How's Your Love Life?"
What does it mean to be loved and to love well? This is a question that Margaret A. Brunson asks often. The Durham-based life coach describes herself as a leader and a luminary who uses love as a strategy to help people authentically connect—both with their inner selves and with other people.
“Love is my journey,” she shared with me in a recent conversation about her new talk show, TheLoveLife with Dr. Margaret, which launched in January and is streaming on YouTube and Facebook.
Brunson, a warm and charismatic presence, was born and raised in North Carolina, and her academic roots in the area run deep. She earned her BA in psychology from UNC-Chapel Hill, a master of public administration from North Carolina Central University, and a PhD in leadership studies from North Carolina A&T State University.
The inspiration for TheLoveLife with Dr. Margaret came from a moment when a friend asked about Brunson love life. It’s an ordinary question, one normally asked in reference to romantic love, and one that anyone single is bound to encounter multiple times. This time, though, the question made Brunson stop: she answered that she is single but experiences an abundance of love in her life. After the exchange, she couldn’t stop thinking about how she wanted to define her love life.
“What does my love life look like?” she says. “It could be spending time with my niece and nephew and feeling really loved by them and experiencing that joy that comes from loving and from being loved. I felt like this is the lens that I want to see my life through.”
With this new lens, Brunson began to live her love life out loud. On social media, she created the hashtag #TheLoveLife(TM) and began to document her experiences of love. As her love lens sharpened, she took notice of other people’s fulfilling lives that are rich with love for their family, work, passions, food, or other things. This inspired her to reframe the question that her friend asked, and develop a show exploring the concept. TheLoveLife with Dr. Margaret, now two episodes in, has featured a church leader and the founder of a lifestyle brand; at the top of each episode, Brunson asks each guest that not-so-simple question: “How is your love life?” Answers, so far, have led into life-affirming conversations about friendship, spirituality, creativity, and wellness, among other topics.
The conversations on TheLoveLife also provide tools and resources. One resource, referenced in the show and again in my conversation with Brunson, is the acclaimed book All About Love by the scholar and critic bell hooks. Brunson counts hooks as one of the teachers who taught her how to practice a love ethic.
Published two decades ago, hooks’ masterfully crafted new vision of love still resonates today.
“What resonates most with me is just the idea of the book at all,” says Brunson, who was a senior in college when she first read hooks’ treatise. “The fact that this Black feminist scholar, years ago, decided, ‘I’m gonna center so much of my work around this seemingly very simple thing’…is profound.”
Read full Article via Indy Week: “Margaret Brunson Wants to Know, How’s Your Love Life?”
Portrait by Jade Wilson for Indy Week