I’m Changing Valentine’s Day and You Can Too

It’s Valentine’s Day.  Again.

Maybe this excites you.  Maybe it makes you groan with annoyance or painful emotions.  No matter your reaction, I think it needs a rewrite.

How Can This Be Meaningful?

When a knee-jerk holiday or observance day rolls around on the calendar, my inner, anti-commercialized and ‘make it all meaning-full’ voice asks: What’s this about?  How could it be truly significant?

Create Your Own Celebration

Instead of waiting for society to come around, I infuse meaning by creating a practice of my own, a ritual of some sort.

Let’s do that with this day, the day of Love, which gets primarily cast in the vein of romantic love.

Not Part of the Target Market

But what about those who don’t have a romantic interest or partner?  We’ve all been in that position, perhaps it’s the case now.  When holidays and celebrations that are exclusive, such as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day roll around and we’re not part of the “target market”, that can bring up sadness, longing, and/or grief.

Can’t we just celebrate each other and all beings, all of the time, as in every day?

A Proposal

I propose we celebrate and love on ourselves first, then we are much better equipped to share our love with others.

In the words of the folks at Passion Planner (from their Instagram post):

“If you can’t have a self-love fest once in awhile, how can you expect anyone else to? ?
Take time (every. single. day.) to explore ways to love yourself. ❤ Challenge yourself this week to write down a list of things you love about yourself so you can look back on it when you need to!”

I love this practice and have taken up the challenge.  Will you?

Love Yourself First

When you are having a rough day and cannot find one good thing about your life or yourself, take out your colored pencils/pens and some nice paper and begin your list.

Sending you Love on this Valentine’s Day.

Rose & chocolates photo by Annerose Walz on Unsplash

Journal photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash