Interview with Marianne Williamson: The Woman Who Spoke for Love

For more than three decades, Marianne Williamson has been one of the defining voices in modern spirituality and conscious living. The author of fourteen books - four of them New York Times number ones - she’s helped shape how we think about compassion, consciousness and personal growth. Her words have carried across generations, becoming both a touchstone for seekers and a rallying cry for anyone willing to choose love over fear.

Long before manifestation became a hashtag or self-help turned into a billion-dollar industry, there was Marianne - quietly leading the conversation. A soft-spoken powerhouse, she’s spent her life reminding us that politics and spirituality were never meant to be strangers. Her voice, steady and sure, has filled lecture halls, headlines and hearts around the world, always returning to one simple, radical truth: when practiced collectively, love becomes a political act.

When asked what the world might look like if love held office, she doesn’t hesitate.“The first announcement,” she says, “would be that our children’s needs would be tended to in ways not demonstrated before.”

It’s classic Marianne - equal parts compassion and accountability.“Children can’t vote and they don’t hold economic power,” she continues, “so their needs are too often ignored. If love were a political force, children would be our top priority.”

There’s a calm certainty in her vision. Even as democracies wobble, she finds hope in what she calls “the sacred sadness” - that collective ache we feel for something better. “Once someone feels that deeply,” she says, “the next phase is activation.”

That idea runs through everything she’s written - her 1992 groundbreaking, ahead-of-its-time book A Return to Love became a spiritual touchstone, introducing a generation to the idea that love isn’t a feeling but a daily practice - a conscious act of returning to grace when fear tries to take the wheel. She deepened that message in The Law of Divine Compensation, reframing abundance not as luck or privilege but as the natural result of aligning your work and thoughts with love. And in Healing the Soul of America, she stretched her philosophy from the personal to the political, arguing that moral courage and compassion are the real tools for reform.

While she’s stood on countless stages, it’s her early lectures on A Course in Miracles that still feel most like home. “That’s where the message lives,” she says - love as a discipline, not just a mood. Whether she’s writing about faith, finance or democracy, her voice hasn’t changed. The message is always the same: transformation - personal or collective - begins with one simple instruction: choose love.

Her most famous words still echo like a modern scripture:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure... We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us".

For someone whose work has inspired millions, she answers the question about what might surprise people about her with a laugh. “I doubt much of anything I do at this point would surprise anyone.”

Yet there’s something disarming in her humility. This woman who’s debated presidents and filled arenas still speaks like your most grounded friend. Her younger self, she admits, would be astonished to see her finally slow down. “When you’re young you can’t really imagine that.” she smiles.

Music remains her quiet refuge - Miracles by Jefferson Starship, anything by Beethoven, and Pachelbel’s Canon are always on repeat. It’s the same blend of idealism and order that shapes her philosophy: beauty as proof of higher design.

When asked how she’d like to be remembered, she pauses before offering an answer that lands like a mic drop: “She spoke for love.”

Marianne Williamson will tour Australia in 2026 in a series of evenings that promise equal parts lecture, conversation and soul-reset. However you label her - political mystic, spiritual strategist, cultural conscience - her presence feels like a long exhale. The world might be noisy, but she still speaks with the quiet authority of someone who believes that love, in the end, is the only policy that works.

Marianne Williamson — Australian Tour 2026 Brisbane City Hall – Sunday 22

Palais Theatre, Melbourne – Wednesday 25 February

The State Theatre, Sydney – Thursday 26 February

Tickets available here.