PDF Summary:Milk and Honey, by Rupi Kaur
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1-Page PDF Summary of Milk and Honey
Rupi Kaur experienced oppression and abuse throughout her life. From an uncle who raped her as a child to a father who demanded she stay silent, she grew up in an environment that taught her she was worthless. However, as she grew up, her experiences with love and heartbreak taught her how to find the beauty in herself and how to heal in the face of painful experiences.
milk and honey is an award-winning collection of poems that dive into the themes of sexual assault, the complexity of relationships, and the healing power of self-love. Through her use of beautiful language, Kaur takes you on her emotional journey to love herself in the face of painful and oppressive experiences.
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When they were finally ready to have sex, it was passionate and loving. Where her abuse had once kept her from experiencing love and sex as one, she finally began to draw the connections with this man. Because she felt empowered by sex, she enjoyed the intimacy rather than fearing the loss of control. As their relationship blossomed, Kaur realized that she wanted their love to be complementary, not codependent. To do that, she began to give herself the value that had been stripped away when she was a child.
Heartbreak and Mixed Emotions
While her first serious relationship started in a strong place, it deteriorated over the years. This resulted in a nasty breakup that caused a variety of emotions to surface. Immediately following the breakup, she grappled with her mixed feelings and tried to hold onto the self-worth she’d begun to build.
Seeing the Toxicity
After they broke up, Kaur noticed the red flags she had ignored throughout their relationship. He sometimes claimed to have to stay at work for a few extra hours but wasn’t at the office when Kaur checked. He grew more distant and even said another woman’s name in bed. Her love for him blinded her to the less desirable qualities he had.
Mixed Emotions
Part of Kaur wanted nothing to do with her ex after the breakup. She claimed she didn’t need him anymore. She was done with his lying and disrespect. This side of her emotions led her to claim that her ex would regret losing her. However, another part of her desperately wanted him back. When she had romantic or sexual encounters following their breakup, her mind would race back to him. She longed for him to return to her bed and be a part of her life.
Holding Onto Self-Worth
Despite the intense emotions she felt following the breakup, Kaur worked to maintain the self-worth she had built. By the end of their relationship, he had treated her like she was a commodity to be used and left instead of a partner to care for and support. She knew that she was worth more than that. She didn’t want to be something he just wanted to fool around with. She wanted a relationship where he needed to be with her and gave her the respect she deserved.
Healing and Moving On
As she moved on from her first love, Kaur learned that the key to happiness in life is self-love. Throughout her childhood, she felt defined by her surroundings. In her relationship, she felt defined by her lover. With distance from both of those, she realized the only person who could define who she was as a human being was herself.
Finding Self-Love
Kaur saw that there was no use in clinging on to someone who didn’t want her in return. In fact, she realized that there was no use entering a relationship at all until she loved herself. She concluded that the only way to have a healthy relationship was to embrace that she deserved more than love that hurt her.
She realized that her self-love taught other people how to love her. The more she valued herself, the more others valued her. This wasn’t because she changed anything about herself. Rather, her best qualities began to rise to the surface because they were no longer bogged down by insecurity.
Claiming Her Femininity
Following her breakup, she embraced her femininity. She realized that she was not owned by any man. She learned to love the things about her body that others hated. She discovered a lot of her identity by embracing the things others may view as ugly or problematic such as her period, her body hair, and her stretch marks. She explains that every person is born beautiful, but society convinces them that they aren’t.
Kaur cries for women to begin embracing their own beauty and stop judging other women. She believes every woman is different, and what they do with their body is their business. With this in mind, she calls for women to support each other and value one another for their intellect and resilience instead of just their looks.
Women of Color
Kaur believes that society tends to see her physical traits and those of her fellow women of color as undesirable. She explains that her hooked nose, dark complexion, and strong legs are often seen as ugly in North American culture. She rejects this premise. As she began to love herself and her body, she embraced her racial and cultural qualities as beautiful and as something that connected her to her rich ancestry.
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PDF Summary Introduction
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PDF Summary Chapter 1: Abuse and Oppression
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Gender Oppression
Growing up, Kaur and her mother were told to be silent. Any time Kaur would try to speak up, her father and other men in her life would shut her down. Her father was afraid of her voice, so she grew to be afraid of it too. This may have been because her father taught her that women having an opinion made them less desirable to the rest of society.
Because she was told to stay silent, Kaur began to view herself as unimportant. She would look at herself in the mirror and tell herself that she was nothing. When she tried to convince herself that she was allowed to exist and have an opinion, her insecurities would silence her. She submitted to the demands of the men in her life and remained silent and unseen throughout her childhood.
Sexual Assault
It’s through this demand for submission that Kaur asserts that women have been taught that sex is similar to a pit stop for men. They may come and go as they please, but they never have to stay for long. In her own experiences, she couldn’t draw the connection between sex and love for a long time.
The first boy Kaur kissed held her down and forced himself on her. She was five years old at the...
PDF Summary Chapter 2: Love and Sex
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When they were finally ready to have sex, it was passionate and loving. Where her abuse had once kept her from experiencing love and sex as one, she finally began to draw the connections with this man. To her, their foreplay was like making music and their intimacy was like dancing. Because she felt empowered by sex, she enjoyed the intimacy rather than fearing the loss of control. In fact, she began to view sex as passion rather than obligation. Even when they fought, they would always return to sex as a way to remind each other of the passion both of them felt.
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Learn more about our summaries →PDF Summary Chapter 3: Heartbreak and Mixed Emotions
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Ultimately, she realized that her ex was a selfish lover. He wanted her to fulfill his needs, but he never had any regard for hers. Whereas she had begun to feel like an independent woman at the beginning of their relationship, she began to feel less than whole being around him. The distance he kept and the way that he used her started to take a toll on her self-worth. He didn’t intend to commit to her. Instead, he threw her aside when the relationship wasn’t convenient for him.
The Mixed Emotions
Part of Kaur wanted nothing to do with her ex after the breakup. She claimed she didn’t need him anymore. She was done with his lying and disrespect. This side of her emotions led her to claim that her ex would regret losing her. She said that she had so much to offer him, but he refused to take it. She said that he would struggle to love another woman because he would long for the one he lost.
However, another part of her desperately wanted him back. When she had romantic or sexual encounters following their breakup, her mind would race back to him. Even when she tried to remove him from her life, her thoughts would always come back to him. She longed for him to...
PDF Summary Chapter 4: Healing and Moving On
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Despite her pain, Kaur insists that everyone should love passionately and wholeheartedly. She insists that nothing else matters if you can’t offer and accept love. You could have the greatest job in the world and make obscene amounts of money, but, without love, you’ll never feel fulfilled.
Claiming Her Femininity
She recognized the misogynistic ways of her former lover as well as the other men in her life. Once, her lover told her that she wasn’t like other girls. Kaur hated this phrase as it implied that the only way she could be loved was to be different from other women. It was as if he were saying women are typically undesirable.
Following her breakup, she embraced her femininity. She realized that she was not owned by any man. She began to love her body, and she saw that she could do with it as she pleased. She learned to love the things about her body that others hated. She discovered a lot of her identity by embracing the things others may view as ugly or problematic such as her period, her body hair, and her stretch marks. She explains that every person is born beautiful, but society convinces them that they aren’t.
**Kaur cries for women to begin...
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