Love Is a Practice, Not a Holiday

Valentine’s Day can feel romantic… or heavy. Joyful… or lonely.

In this impromptu episode, I offer a grounded pause around love - not as a holiday performance, but as a daily practice.

What if love isn’t proven on specific days?
What if it starts with how you speak to yourself, hold boundaries, and honor your needs?

This isn’t a relationship “fix.” It’s an invitation to shift from outsourcing love to embodying it - whether you’re single, partnered, or somewhere in between.

✨Reflection Questions✨
• Where in my life do I equate love with validation instead of connection?
• What is one small way I can practice love toward myself this week - not because it’s Valentine’s Day, but because I matter?

Chapters

• 0:00 Why This Impromptu Check-In
• 0:59 Valentine’s Day Without The Hype
• 2:39 Childhood Messages About Love
• 3:30 Love As Practice Not Performance
• 5:03 From Validation To Self-Trust
• 6:46 Everyday Acts That Build Love
• 8:23 Reflection Questions And Breath
• 9:00 Card Pull: Radical Responsibility
• 9:40 Closing And What’s Next

Transcript

Shannon: 0:00

Welcome back. You're listening to the Pure Possibilities Podcast. I'm your host, Shannon. So this episode is a little bit impromptu. I've been traveling and have had some personal things to tend to and hadn't planned another episode until next week. But as Valentine's Day is approaching and I've been deep into my listen to your body talk content and preparing for a live QA in the podcast community, this topic felt important and not as part of the relationship series. We're gonna dive back into that next week. And this isn't like a big teaching, it's just, I don't know, a moment to pause and reflect about Valentine's Day and love and all that juiciness. So I'm single right now. And even when I've been in relationships, Valentine's Day has never really been a huge priority for me. I it's funny, I like I get frustrated that the restaurants charge more on Valentine's Day and it's always hard to get in. And when I ran the theater, it was always like crazy busy. And then, you know, I fell in love with making bouquets and flowers. And like the two weeks leading up to Valentine's Day, flowers are ridiculously expensive. So now I go the day after Valentine's Day and buy my flowers, and they're like 50% off, and I get gorgeous bouquets. So it just feels silly because it's just never really been like this defining marker of love in my life. But love absolutely is a priority. And not just the way that we are often taught to measure it. Valentine's Day can feel fun, it can feel romantic, and it can also feel really heavy. And for some people, it brings joy, for other people, it brings loneliness. You know, like Galentine's Day has become a thing over the last several years. There's comparison and pressure and all of these expectations. And I remember when I was growing up, I remembered exchanging Valentine's in class. And, you know, there was something really sweet about it: decorated boxes, little notes, the little candy hearts. I always loved those. And there was also like a little bit of anxiety: like, is everyone gonna get one? Is someone gonna get more than the other person? Am I gonna feel included? And so even as kids, we start to attach meaning to how love is expressed and received. And somewhere along the way, we start to believe that love is something that gets proven on specific days, whether it's Valentine's Day or your birthday or the holidays. And what I believe now is that love is not a performance. It's not a holiday, it's not flowers once a year. Love is a practice. And the most important relationship you will ever practice love inside of is the one that you have with yourself, which is one of the reasons why I create my bouquets, because it's a way I show myself love. When I was in relationships, like I would love it when my partner would just bring me flowers just because they wanted to, because they love me, not because it was my birthday or a holiday, but because that was a way that they wanted to express their love. And that always felt good to me. And so I decided that I was gonna do that for myself. So if you only feel love when someone else is demonstrating it, that is outsourced and can often be inconsistent. If you only feel worthy when someone chooses you, that's exhausting. If your nervous system only feels safe when someone is validating you, that's dependency, not intimacy. And that's not judgment, that's awareness. Because when we deeply reconnect with ourselves, when we listen to our body, when we honor our needs, when we stop abandoning ourselves to keep someone else close to us, something shifts. You don't need Valentine's Day to prove that love exists, you start embodying it. And when you truly learn to love yourself consistently, not perfectly, not performatively, not in a surface level way, but in small, honest, everyday ways, you don't panic when love seems a little bit quiet. You don't chase it when it feels distant, you don't cling and hold on to it when it feels uncertain. You relate to it from a place of wholeness, not from a place of gripping. So Valentine's Day can absolutely be beautiful, but love isn't a one-day event. It's the way you speak to yourself in the mirror, it's the boundaries you hold, the way you allow yourself to rest, the way you tell the truth, the way you forgive yourself, the way you meet yourself instead of shame yourself, that's love. And that is available to you 365 days a year. So if you're single right now, you are not lacking. If you're partnered and it doesn't feel magical, that doesn't mean that something is wrong with you. It means that something is asking for your attention, like we've been talking about in the relationship series. If you love Valentine's Day, go freaking celebrate it. And if you don't, that's okay too. But maybe this year, instead of asking, who is loving me? Ask yourself, how am I loving myself? So before we close, I want to offer two reflection questions. And if it feels safe and comfortable to do so, please close your eyes or soften your gaze and take a deep breath in and release. Where in my life do I equate love with validation instead of connection? And number two, what is one small way I can practice love toward myself this week? Not because it's Valentine's Day, but because I matter. Just allow those to land. We're here for a short time, and love, real love, is not measured in grand gestures. It's measured in presence, in truth, in integrity, in consistency, not inconsistency, but inconsistency. So whether you're celebrating with someone or spending the day alone or ignoring it altogether, I hope you remember that you are worthy of love that doesn't require a holiday. And it all starts with you. All right, I'm gonna go ahead and pull a card from the magic of what if card deck. I hadn't planned to do this, but why not? So I'm gonna pull from the magic of what if card deck volume two, available on my website, purepossibilitiespodcast.com. All right. Card for today. What if I take radical personal responsibility for my life? What if I take radical personal responsibility for my life? And that includes pouring more love into yourself. You know, we don't always love ourselves. There are moments that we don't love ourselves, but what if you can pour 5% more love into yourself today? How would that look? Pour 5% more love into your relationship with your partner. I will be back next week continuing the relationship series because oh my goodness, we have so much more to talk about. But I hope you have a beautiful, beautiful day and an amazing week. Much love.