For years I thought I was obsessed with love, but I was wrong. I was fixated on the idea of love, not the truth of it. And although I spent many nights and months asking when — or if — I would ever find it, I never paused to think about precisely what it was. I only knew that it was something that seemed to always be beyond my capabilities. Why could I walk away from a job I was unhappy with, but not from a bad relationship? Why did I have agency over every other aspect of my life, but not in love? Why did I assume marriage would be the end of something, and not the beginning? My suspicion that I had misunderstood love completely was what Elizabeth Gilbert once described as a ‘breadcrumb of curiosity’, a clue that I needed to pick up and follow. It is why I started this newsletter.
 
Since I began writing it over three and a half years ago, my view of love has expanded into a big, boundless thing. I’ve listened to people talk about their love for a person, for a city, for a poem, for a tree. I’ve listened to people who have fallen in love in the midst of grief, and to those who have found meaning in loss, and mystery in marriage, and connection in writing. I’ve also read some of your love stories, which you have so generously shared with me along the way.
 
The more conversations I had, the more questions I asked, the more I realised that we are all searching for answers in love every day. Maybe you are looking for a relationship or, in a secret place in your heart, asking whether you should leave one. Maybe you are in a long-term partnership, wondering how to sustain love through life’s many storms. Maybe you want to be more compassionate towards yourself. Maybe you are a parent and you want to be a better one; or you’ve lost a parent, and that loss suddenly seems to dwarf everything else.  On the surface what we want and need from love is different. But I have found that our individual questions are often rooted in three bigger ones: How do we find love? How do we sustain it? And how do we survive when we lose it?  These are the questions I have now explored in a book, also called Conversations on Love, through interviews with:
 
Alain de Botton • Roxane Gay • Ariel Levy • Gary Younge • Emily Nagoski • Ayisha Malik • Philippa Perry • Greg Wise • Heather Havrilesky • Dolly Alderton • Susie Orbach • Esther Perel • Stephen Grosz • Lemn Sissay • Sarah Hepola • Juno Dawson • Candice Carty-Williams • Dr Lucy Kalanithi • Mira Jacob • Susan Quilliam • Melanie Reid • Diana Evans • Justine Picardie • Lisa Taddeo • Poorna Bell
 
The book also includes some of my own love stories. It’s about firsts: my first love, my first pregnancy, my first year of marriage. It’s about mistakes: looking for love in the wrong places, wrestling with the burden of uncertainty and losing my sense of self along the way. It’s about finding romance in hospital waiting rooms, tenderness in the aftermath of a fight, and humour when I least expected to. But most of all, it’s about understanding that in every ordinary moment we have the opportunity to choose love.
 
Truthfully, I was terrified to write it. How can anyone hope to write about something as unknowable as love? But every time one of you emailed to say you learnt something from my interviews, or that they were a comfort to you during a difficult time, it gave me the courage to try. This book would not exist without your kind words and encouragement. And I’m excited to share the cover with you today:

       
        

I'm so thrilled that the book will be published by Viking on 15th July 2021. If you have enjoyed reading or learnt something from this newsletter, I’d be so grateful if you pre-ordered it at Waterstones, Amazon or your local independent today, or shared the link with anyone who you think might like it. (Pre-orders make such a difference to debut authors.) I don’t find self-promotion easy (!) but I do believe there are precious lessons in the new conversations I’ve had. And I hope they might be for you what they have been for me: a reminder to not let the people you love slip into the background; an invitation to take love more seriously; and an encouragement to make something meaningful out of the life you have been given.
 
Thank you so much for reading.
 
With love,
Natasha x

P.S Normal newsletter service will resume this month! Upcoming guests include Sara Collins, Delia Ephron, Emma Forrest, Bolu Babalola, a relationship researcher, a best-selling psychotherapist and many more! I can’t wait to share their wisdom with you.