Understanding Love 22 was born from a simple but profound desire: to share the love we found in each other with the world. What began as a relationship rooted in honesty, acceptance, and deep connection between the two of us—Oliver and Alfred—has grown into a living, breathing community built on the belief that understanding is love, and love is understanding. Our relationship has always honored the sacred balance of individuality and union. We are uncompromising in being ourselves, and equally uncompromising in accepting each other for who we truly are. That mutual respect has created a space where we can grow, learn, evolve, and love without condition.
In a world that often feels divided and polarized, we choose to believe in something radically simple: we share more similarities than differences. In those shared spaces—those quiet moments of listening, witnessing, and truly seeing one another—we find connection. We find love. Understanding Love 22 began with just the two of us, but it belongs to anyone who wants to make this planet a better place, simply by taking the time to understand one another. Whether you're trying to understand who you are, nurturing a partnership, healing from disconnection, or seeking a deeper relationship with humanity itself, Understanding Love 22 invites you to explore what love can be when it's not just felt, but fully lived.
For us, love is action. It's not just a feeling or a phrase—it’s what we do. It’s how we show up, how we hold space, how we choose to move from surface-level tolerance to deep understanding. This is not a passive act; it is the gateway to transformation. We invite you to expand your understanding of love while building a community together, where compassion, truth, and joy are foundational.
As for the “22”? That’s the mystery. It shows up everywhere for us—on clocks, receipts, license plates, bus numbers—like a quiet confirmation that we’re on the right path. It’s our reminder that when you truly love, the universe whispers back. You’ll know it when you feel it.
Let love guide you, and understanding hold you.
Building Community Through Understanding
Understanding Love 22 is more than a community—it is a living, evolving space for healing, dialogue, creativity, and collective liberation. Born from our love for one another, we now offer this love outward in the form of live talks, workshops, writings, and community-led conversations that center deep transformation. At the core of Understanding Love 22 is the belief that love is understanding in action—and that understanding is the gateway to liberation. With that as our foundation, we focus our work through the following pillars:
Empowering Queer People
We intentionally use the word queer, not to erase identity, but to liberate it. Queer, to us, is a reclamation: a bold, inclusive term for those who exist beyond binaries, heteronormativity, and prescribed expectations. While labels may serve a purpose, our souls crave liberation beyond categorization. Understanding Love 22 invites everyone under the queer umbrella to explore their truth, define themselves on their terms, and find belonging through shared humanity, not segmented identities.
We are building a queer-affirming community that celebrates fluidity, autonomy, and love, offering spaces where joy, safety, and expression are at the center of what we do
Co-Creating a Post-Capitalist World
We believe the age of capitalism is expiring, moving towards obsolescence, and what comes next must be built intentionally, collectively, and compassionately. Capitalism, like other hierarchical systems (socialism, communism, etc.), carries the burden of patriarchal, colonial, and extractive roots. We don’t seek to replace one failed system with another. Instead, we look toward indigenous knowledge, circular economies, and communitarian values that prioritize reciprocity over profit, care over competition.
In building community, we explore and model what post-capitalist living can look like through shared resources, mutual aid, accessibility, and creative reinvestment in people over institutions.
Committing to Decolonization
Colonialism is not a relic of history—it is a current, active force. We reject it in all forms: political, social, interpersonal, and internalized. Understanding Love 22 stands for the full creative, spiritual, and economic sovereignty of peoples and communities impacted by colonization.
We call on colonizing countries to reckon with their past and present through apology, cessation, and reparations. Our vision includes a world that centers abolitionist principles, challenges borders and nationalism, ends all forms of systemic oppression, and affirms the sacred humanity of people everywhere.
Our livestreams, workshops, and gatherings invite conversation and action around:
-
Empowering racialised and marginalized individuals
-
Zionism and the fight for Palestinian freedom, and highlighting ongoing genocides in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Darfur, Nigeria, , Myanmar, the Uyghur people in China, and Ethiopia
-
Immigration justice and open borders
-
Disability and drug justice
-
Queer safety (especially for our trans individuals), and physical/mental health equity
-
Housing and land access
-
Post-religion spiritual reclamation
-
Creative sovereignty
-
Ending all forms of trafficking, incarceration, and forced labor
This is not a checklist. It’s a continuous unlearning and rebuilding together.
Raising Awareness Around Equity
We do not believe in saviorism, scarcity, or trickle-down liberation. We believe in equity, which means creating the conditions for everyone to have enough—and to be enough. No one is free until all of us are. Abundance is not a future dream; it is a present truth when we organize and care in community.
Understanding Love 22 invites each member to see themselves not as consumers of change, but as creators of it.
Promoting Creativity
Colonialism and patriarchy have silenced the creative spirit in many of us, turning expression into product and art into labor. We believe that creativity is a human right—and a spiritual one. When we are safe, affirmed, and at peace, our imagination can thrive. And from imagination, new worlds are born.
Through workshops, collaborative projects, and shared inspiration, we encourage everyone in our community to create freely and fearlessly, reclaiming joy as resistance and imagination as liberation.
Incorporating A.U.R.A
A.U.R.A.—Accepting, Understanding, Reflecting, and Acting—is the heart of how we build community within Understanding Love 22. It offers a framework for deep personal and collective transformation. Through acceptance, we create spaces where people feel safe to be seen. Understanding invites us to listen with compassion and curiosity. Reflection allows us to examine our impact, while action grounds our values in practice. Within Understanding Love 22, A.U.R.A. guides our talks, workshops, and gatherings, ensuring that love is not only felt but lived. It helps us co-create a community rooted in care, honesty, equity, and the continuous journey of connection.
Through Understanding Love 22, we’re not just talking about love—we are practicing it, expanding it, and living it together. This goes beyond binaries and systems and is grounded in truth.
Ways We Offer Community
Understanding Love 22 provides a supportive and welcoming space where queer individuals can gather, heal, and build community. Through a blend of online and in-person workshops, talks, and gatherings, we create environments that nurture queer well-being and foster honest, non-judgmental conversations about trauma, identity, and liberation.
Our community exists to honor what is happening now while preparing for a more equitable future. We believe that healing and justice are deeply interconnected, and that love must be practiced through understanding, presence, and action.
Queer people deserve spaces where they can show up fully—without explanation, without compromise. At Understanding Love 22, we hold space for each other’s stories, struggles, joys, and growth. Every connection we form here becomes a step toward collective healing and a deeper understanding.
Click the next slides to see the ways you can participate: