I still get the warm fuzzy feelings when I think back to Valentine exchanges in my elementary school days. Decorating a shoe box with an opening in the top to receive handmade notes of affection from my class mates. Or, on the years when we opted for convenience and instead bought from the store tiny cards with cheeky love-puns and fussed for hours the night before at the kitchen table which ones felt appropriate to give to which person. After all, you don’t want to send mixed messages on Valentine’s Day.
When I was in my early twenties and fresh to living on the island, I re-enacted this grade school tradition with twelve friends and housemates. Over a potluck brunch we traded the handmade valentines we’d spent the night before collaging and painting, slipping them into our versions of the classic shoe box. Childlike smiles all around.
When love-day inspires less than fuzzy feelings
There was a time in between those sweet ones though when I shrugged off Valentine season. A part of me still delighted in the vintage imagery, the colors, and everything heart shaped, but the heavy marketing messages tainted the previously felt lightheartedness of it all. The pressure to be coupled, to participate in performative acts of affection, to splurge outside of your means, to make grand gestures. It can feel exclusive, excessive, inauthentic, and disappointing. Is that really the version of love we wish to celebrate?
The release of A Venusian Valentine was a years long dream finally brought to fruition, born of a desire to reconnect with the sweetness of the Valentines I recall from childhood but all grown up.
Imbuing intention back into Valentine season
With Valentine’s Day near, love is in the air — and heavy in our inboxes. The opportunity to monetize yet another national holiday is hard to pass up for businesses, and in my way, I suppose I’m one of them — but with more intention. The release of A Venusian Valentine was a years long dream finally brought to fruition, born of a desire to reconnect with the sweetness of the Valentines I recall from childhood but all grown up. Through these offerings, I wish to evoke the same feeling of admiration for warm rosey hues, scents to delight in, and joy in simple everyday things that feel like a treat and have the magic power to elevate an experience.
[A Venusian Valentine: The whole seasonal offering. A gift of time and space and a reminder of the magic that is the body. A well-deserved indulgent offering to your Self, or perhaps someone else you love. Includes a Body Altar Home tee, Indigo artisan soap, Mediterranean sea sponge, and Aphrodite botanical altar candles.]
And maybe it’s the Libra in me and the heavy Venus placements in my astrological birth chart, or the childlike optimist who’s always on the side of love, but I’m here to advocate for reclaiming Valentine’s Day from the big card companies. Let’s transform it into a day to delight in simple pleasures, to romance ourselves, to find beauty where there may seem to one none, to find belonging in our bodies, to delight in the ordinary and find it extraordinary. Simply, to fall in love with our experience of life.
Reflection.
What memories do you have of Valentine’s Day as a child or younger person?
What feelings does Valentine’s Day stir up for you now? Why do you think you feel this way? Be honest with yourself.
If any part of you feels less-than-warm-and-fuzzy about Valentine’s Day, how might you transform any of those feelings by reclaiming the day?
What does love mean to you? What does romance mean to you? How might you imbue your definitions of these words into your life for yourself?