Happy Monday Lovelies! Being that Valentine’s Day is on the horizon, there’s a fluster of emotions that we all are probably experiencing this week. Some of us may be excited about the holiday and looking forward to spending time with family, friends, or a significant other. Another portion of us may be dreading the holiday and can’t wait until it 12:00 a.m. the next day. Finally, some of us feel as though it’s just another day and aren’t experiencing either somber or elated moods. Out of all these emotions, I think the most harmful one to experience is the feeling of dread. To ensure that neither of us falls into the Valentine’s Day Blues, we must confront places of emptiness.

Society has an awful way of making us feel like we are missing pieces of ourselves. We scroll through social media, watch tv and glance through magazines discovering more and more of these “missing” pieces. Have you ever experienced a moment of disappoint after obtaining something that you thought would complete you, but in the end, still felt empty inside? You probably thought you would find wholeness in a new position, relationship, or material thing, but quickly found that those things weren’t big enough to fill the void piercing the center of your heart. Each time, the search continued, and so many of us went on picking up pieces from places that our timelines told us would make us more valuable. We believed that those pieces would fill our puzzles to completion, not thinking that a search of the outside could never complete us on the inside.

When we were young children, we didn’t have to reach as far for self-contentment as we do now. We rode our innocence over hills of fear and through valleys of doubt, into open plains where no one could convince us that we weren’t good enough the way God made us. Sometimes, I like to think back to those days and reminisce on the time when I subconsciously valued myself more than the opinions of others. The time before society made me feel anxious about being alone or made me feel like my worth depended on the tangible things I could obtain.

One of the simplest, yet most powerful quotes I’ve ever read was written by Toni Morrison. At the end of her novel, Beloved, she writes:

“He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. “You your best thing, Sethe. You are.” His holding fingers are holding hers.

“Me? Me?”

This quote planted itself inside my mind. It made me realize how much time we waste searching for our worth outside of ourselves. Imagine what life would be like if we poured the same (if not more) amount of love into ourselves as we so eagerly pour into another. If we treated ourselves like there was nothing more golden or shiner than our own beings, we’d find that we were born into the best gift that we could have ever received. This Valentine’s Day season let’s unwrap ourselves with the same excitement as a child would unwrap a gift on Christmas Day. Let’s hold ourselves in a grandeur light, and open our eyes to what we’ve been missing. For all this time we’ve wondered about, overlooking what we’ve been needing and truly searching for: ourselves.

Happy Self-Love Week Lovelies,

🦋Arlaina🦋