By: Brandon Herring
Roses are red, violets are blue, its Valentines Day 2018 and I STILL ain’t got no beau……. *inserts face palm emoji*
Valentines Day 2018 will be here in just a few short days. A holiday filled with love, romance, intimacy and all types of public displays of affection. Couples on Facebook everywhere will post pics of extravagant gifts, pictures of their beau, and all of the fun times they will have to celebrate their love and showing intense appreciation for their partners.
While this is great, and I’m here for a celebration of love-especially BLACK love, we can’t forget a very BIG segment of the world that can sometimes feel left out during this beautiful celebration and exchange of love. Single people make up a huge portion of the world; those of us who have not quite found the love of our lives yet either by choice or by force. Thus, Valentines Day can be a day of isolation and sometimes draw us to a dark place where we negatively self-reflect on why we aren’t good enough for love or why not us again. This cycle can really take us to an unhealthy place and the constant images of couples in deep love flashed before our eyes can really cause a lot of self-doubt and self-judgment.
While we all can fall into a trap of feeling insecure and “not enough”, I’m here to give you a singles guide and tips to navigating Valentines Day, because hell we deserve to celebrate too!
1. Date Yourself
One thing I preach wholeheartedly is self-care! To me, it’s one of the most important things we can tap into to live our best life. Taking care of ourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually are all equally important in my eyes. So why not, on the biggest day of proclaimed love, make a pledge to love yourself and all of your imperfections and flaws. Instead of lamenting over why you’re not enough, take Feb 14th as a day to truly date yourself. Go see a movie alone, get your nails done, hair did, buy a new outfit, or even get dressed up and take a stroll downtown and eat lunch or dinner at a restaurant you’ve never tried. This year I’ve committed to dating myself in whatever ways I see fit. If it means stopping in a store I’ve passed for years or even taking a turn to travel a different road on the way home from to discover a new exciting journey. All in all, it gives me a sense of liberation that words can’t explain. You learn so much when you date yourself. You become the BEST version of you that will one day become the BEST spouse to that lucky person.
2. Host a Single-Awareness Party
This is a term I first heard in college. I laughed when the young lady said “Happy Single-Awareness Day’ on Valentines Day. However, when you sit back and think its true but not necessarily a bad thing to become more aware of your single status. As a single millennial navigating the workplace and attempting to make a mark on the world we all often find ourselves too busy to catch up with friends, or return calls, and sometimes even text back. It’s a sad reality, but it’s just that…reality. We all get busy and consumed with our work life and day to day obligations that the friends we once saw every day sitting in a lecture hall become the same friends we wake up and realize we haven’t seen in over a year. My recommendation, to both men and women, takes Valentines Day to host a friend gathering and catch up with your single friends. Nothing helps more when feeling down than to be surrounded by positive energy and good vibes!! Besides, after dealing with Susan’s bullshit at the office all week you need to kick back and relax with some good people. Trust me, everyone involved will appreciate it.
3. STOP THE SELF DOUBT!!!!
This one I’m going to solely target my female readers, although it applies to my men as well. This Valentines Day I want to charge you all with the task of stopping the self-doubt. All too often, I hear women both in and out of my inner circle make self-defeating statements like they aren’t good enough for love or worthy of being loved. Bashing oneself is a terrible habit that I want you to stop NOW! This Valentines Day we’ll make some affirmations together that we ARE good enough and we are worthy! Self-doubt is ugly and changing the way we approach our thoughts is key to making a change overall! One commercial holiday built on the principles of profit can NOT determine your worth. So stop that ISH today!!! Please and thank you
This Valentines Day will be different. We’ll approach the season of love with the most important love of all; SELF-LOVE!!!! We’ll commit together to loving ourselves with the purest and most transparent approach ever. We’ll celebrate our singleness as an opportunity to love ourselves more than ever, to talk positively about our experiences, and to reflect on all the reasons we are ENOUGH!
Roses are red, violets are blue, this Valentines Day its okay to just love YOU!!!
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Great post! Valentine's Day doesn't have to be about couples – it's about love, so self-love, friend love, etc.
-Lauren
http://www.shootingstarsmag.net
This is so true! Great post, I really like self-care posts and this is a great one 🙂
Jeanny from http://www.glitzbeautyblog.com