I Who Have Known Love: A Collection of Letters

In hidden drawers and forgotten boxes, tucked between the pages of books and saved in jewelry cases, these letters waited decades to be found. Written by women who loved other women from 1970 to 1999, they reveal a world where love required extraordinary secrecy and courage.

These intimate letters, preserved by the women who wrote them or discovered by relatives after their deaths, capture three decades of love lived in the shadows. From stolen moments in supply closets to partnerships that lasted decades without recognition, from women who lost everything for love to those who found ways to build hidden families, these voices illuminate what it meant to love authentically when the world demanded invisibility.

Raw, passionate, and achingly honest, I Who Have Known Love recovers stories that were never meant to be public, celebrating women who chose truth over safety and proved that love finds a way even in the darkest times.

A testament to the power of authentic love and the courage required to live it.

"My beloved,

I know the world sees us as half-lives, as women who have failed to find our proper place in the order of things. But I know the truth. I know that what we have is fuller, richer, more real than most of what passes for love in the world. I know that we are the lucky ones, even if we can never say so out loud.

Hold fast to that truth, my love. Hold fast to us.

Yours always, K."