Valentine’s Day: Be Open to All Kinds of Love

LOVE A NEIGHBOR

So many of us do not truly choose where we live. Approach the people found at this intersection of location & lack of control with love and kindness.

LOVE A FRIEND

If you are lucky enough to have good friends, let them know that their friendship is a miracle. If you do not have good friends, seek to be one by loving well & openly sharing yourself.

LOVE A FAMILY MEMBER

Families are often filled with love and pain. Love your whole family or a member of your family by modeling good boundaries, interdependence, and self-advocacy. These things both build relationship and reveal dysfunction. Be what your family needs. “Love” will never mean hiding or excusing bad behavior.

LOVE A PARTNER

Romantic and erotic love is glorious and good. tell your partner how special and important they are to you. There are likely many people who would make a good partner for you. The beauty of this moment is that even through immense unlikelihood, you encountered your partner as a stranger and chose to love and keep choosing to love every day.

LOVE A STRANGER

A stranger is a person that is yet to have been met. Stranger danger can be real, but most violence is enacted by those who are known and not by strangers. Be cautious, and be open to the unknown and to those who are unknown. fear or anxiety of a stranger is very likely an echo of our evolutionary history, not a reflection of danger. Love a stranger in the way that you would want to be loved by a stranger.

LOVE YOURSELF

This might be the hardest one. Many of us haven’t gotten to see self-love done well, so we are left to figure it out without much help. Many of us have habituated rigid, punitive self-talk and unknowingly structured damaging, shame-filled self-concepts. Love yourself by accepting yourself, your thoughts, your emotions, the good, the bad, and the stuff you want to look away from. Do not chastise or punish yourself for making mistakes, instead move slowly and offer yourself an abundance of compassion.

LOVE

Find ways to share it <3