full & dancing cups

Unless you're lucky enough to have been island dwelling for the past few weeks, you know that the commercial rush of Valentines is permeating everything.  Even on a good day, I find it annoying to have LUV shoved in my face in every shop and business I enter, & on bad days? I just want to kick the teddy bears.

Found this essay today and thought it was worth sharing. 

A Valentine Life~SARK

The whole concept of Valentine’s Day was not ever meant to be only for couples, or if it was, it’s missing out on a lot. If we’re going to have a celebration of love, let’s make it inclusive of EVERYone.

Loving ourselves so we can truly love others is the real valentine, and experiencing what I’m calling a Valentine Life is available to everyone.

I think a Valentine Life is one where we ongoingly blend and alchemize the wonderfull and the terrible into a brand new mixture we more easily use. I call that the “marvelous messy middle.”

I’m currently what I call soulfully single after my beloved fiancé John physically departed 2 years ago, and my soul is exponentially enriched by that love. I could choose to feel sad about Valentine’s Day because my partner died, and I don’t. I feel glad that I experienced that kind of miraculous love and now that love lives on mightily in me. Have I felt terribly sad? Of course! Monumentally so. Again and again.

And love is bigger.

Love is the message and love transcends form and measurement. Love of children, animals, nature is all around all of us and reminding us all the time to fill up on love.

And we are made to fill ourselves up from the inside- because we are all succulent creatures. A succulent consistently gives itself the nourishment it needs. There is no need to wait for love. Love isn’t to be found as much as it is to be felt.

Let the feelings of love fill you from everywhere and then offer that to others and the world.

If you feel alone or lonely, feel those feelings by acknowledging them- say out loud or under your breath; “Loneliness, I see you, I hear you, I acknowledge you.” This allows loneliness to soften and change shape. When we tend and care for our feelings in this way, it builds a tremendous power and resilience.

We do need to feel all of our feelings- I believe we just don’t need to stay quite so long in the challenging ones. Also of course, we aren’t meant to try to skip over the challenging ones. It’s all about the flow and movement. Emotions are made to be in motion and we’re the activators of that motion.

Go forward in love with ALL the feelings in your emotional family, including loneliness and all the others, and live more like a full cup of self love, sharing your overflow with the world.

The world needs all the full cups we can get- not half empty cups trying to get filled with flowers or chocolates or declarations of love from others.

Flowers and chocolates and all else are good unto themselves, and best applied to a full dancing heart, and let us all experience yours.

P.S.??  All chocolates are discounted on the 15th of February!!