A poem for self love. An invitation to craft your own
A week to affirm your beautiful self: scars, shadow, all of you
Friends, in the landscape of our lives, the second week of the shortest month of February brings the energy of St. Valentine’s day.
In our culture, Valentine’s Day can stir up all kinds of emotions. It can make us feel lonely or less than, deeply ambivalent, valued or held. I’m curious about the origins of how a love-fest in midwinter emerged—and why it’s transformed into an occasion to equate the expression of love with spending money. Is there another way to experience it?
Cue Jonathan Van Ness’s Getting Curious podcast (one of my favorite weekly rituals). If you’re curious about what he calls ‘the steamy history of Valentine’s Day’, take a listen to his conversation about how writing love letters, giving roses and chocolates as expressions of love came about and how we might challenge the traditional ways that we’re ‘supposed’ to celebrate.
Like many of us in midlife or later, I’ve experienced Valentine’s Day as a single and yearning person, a recently heartbroken person and as a coupled person who continues to work out what love and commitment means.
This Valentine’s Day, I’m inviting you to explore and play a bit. This week’s writing prompt uses the affirmations I created on those little candy hearts pictured above. I can’t wait to read what you create from them.
My Valentine gift for you is one of my favorite poems ‘Love After Love’ from the brilliant Derek Walcott. While it may feel like a post-breakup read, I see it as an invitation to return with compassion to love and to honor ourselves every day. In this chaotic world we humans inhabit, it’s too easy to be removed from the depth of love and connection at our core. The deeper I make a commitment to that love, the more I have to give to my parter, to family and friends, to my life commitments and dreams.
Read this deep and delicious poem and let it crack open your heart. I recorded it above in case you’d like to listen while you read.
Love After Love by Derek Walcott The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.
Writing Practice:
Set aside 5-7 minutes for this practice. Write in a journal or open a ‘Journey with The Season’ document where you can return each Sunday.
Read over the messages on these candy hearts. Notice the one that speaks to you. It is your Valentine’s heart.
Write about why you picked this particular heart. What would it mean to live into this affirmation, just for today? What would you need to let go of? What is an example of how you live into this expression?
Deepening Practice:
Write an honest to God love letter to yourself. A Valentine card. Write about all of the ways that you are amazing, strong, vulnerable, beautiful, vibrant, kind, badass, simply human. Read the message on Valentine’s Day, tape it to your mirror, put in your box of things that lift you up when you’re down. (You have that box, right?! Message me if you need help making one).
A PS for anyone in a relationship:
These three books have helped my husband and me work on our marriage over two decades; sharing in case they’re helpful to you:
Getting The Love Your Want by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt
Us by Terrence Real
Buddhism for Couples: A Calm Approach to Relationships by Sarah Napthali
Thank you for being here! Word of mouth is the primary way that I’m growing this community. Send this Valentine message on to your friends who might need it!
If you’re interested in joining my next online expressive writings series Soulful Spring, registration is now open. Four weeks in community exploring our own transformations in the season of awakening, beauty and rebirth.