Tag Archives: valentine’s day

Celebrating in the Dark, Holiday Redux

LoveGram: Be Brave with love today!

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Hello, my dear friend.

Thank you for offering support and cheering me on for my very first television segment that happened on Friday.

I was really nervous and scared. But I wrote myself a note that said, “Today I will remember that my desire to help people live a life filled with love and without regrets is greater than my fear.”

It’s Valentine’s Day and today I’m encouraging all of us to be more BRAVE in living our lives and in expressing our love. 

I’m not just talking about romantic relationships. I mean all of the people we love.

It can feel vulnerable and uncomfortable to be the one who reaches out. However, the payoff is huge.

Who we become in the process of expressing more love, gratitude, and appreciation is simply amazing.

Do you know what I mean?

Today’s LoveGram is posted on this page. Click to get it! 

I hope you will listen all the way through, because I offer you a tiny Valentine’s Day challenge.

During this pandemic more people than ever are grieving, isolated, sick, and depressed. People NEED love, light, and joy. 

Can you step up, break through any resistance or vulnerability, and be the one to shine light today? 

Let’s do it, together!

Thanks for being by my side.

I’m here for you, too.

Sending special love on Valentine’s Day!

Seek celebration — even in dark corners,

xo Sherry

 

💓 P.S. If you do what I encourage you to do in today’s LoveGram, please email me and share with me about it, okay. When we share our experiences it “anchors them in” — meaning, it helps them settle solidly in our bodies. Those experiences stick!

💓 P.P.S. Watch the KTVU television segment here!

Celebrating in the Dark, Holiday Redux

Last-Minute Valentine

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Commercial holidays can be hard for so many. Reach out this weekend to someone who needs a boost of true Valentine’s LOVE. Read on:

My friend (whom I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting in person, but will some day!) Deanna Bowers is a fellow fan of a brand of shoes called John Fluevog Shoes.

What I love about Fluevogs is that they are colorful, comfortable, playful, and FUN.

Every day Deanna participates in something some Fluevies (sassy fluevog wearers) do called Color of the Day (COTD).

During this past week, the COTD just happened to match my book, “Say it Now!”

I wanted to share what Deanna posted because it made me so HAPPY.

You can see that Deanna included the book in her COTD post, but what she was too humble to mention is that she is INCLUDED in my book.

Deanna painted a very colorful + beautiful likeness of her friend, Nancy Shanteau. That painting really showcased Nancy’s positive, bright, loving spirit.

I used Deanna and Nancy’s story to illustrate the gift idea of painting, drawing, photographing, or doodling a positive and uplifting image of someone in your life.

Can you do something like this for someone you love? (Especially someone who may not be feeling or seeing their color or spirit these days because they’re grieving, sick, or isolated?)

It can be as simple as a quick watercolor, ink drawing, or DOODLE that you make and underneath it you write three things you love about this person.

It could be that you find a photograph that really shows that person in their best light. Send them a text or email with that photo and again, a few things you love about them. (This could literally be done in 10 minutes! The impact could be huge!)

When we’re depressed or grieving it can be hard to see the color and light. Help someone see it in themselves. (And watch how great YOU feel in the process of sending that love!)

Celebrating in the Dark, Kindness as a Gift

Heck with the Hallmark kinda Valentine’s …

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I don’t have anything against Hallmark. Or Valentine’s Day.

I don’t have anything against special occasions. Or celebration. (Of course! I love ’em!)

But what irks me is this: when we’re fed ideas about these “picture perfect” lives that for most people simply don’t exist. Our culture tends to lure us into specific ideas about what our lives should look like. Those shiny heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, the perfect red roses, and the even-shinier and rosier laughing faces of lovers at an expensive restaurant can be a set-up for deep disappointment, loneliness, and regret.

If you’ve got that Hallmark card kinda life, great!  I’d almost say there’s no need to read on. But that’s not true. Because even if you do have a life that looks like that, I dare risk it to say, that there’s still something much better waiting for you this Valentine’s Day. And it doesn’t come in a box — heart-shaped or otherwise.

And if you don’t have that Hallmark kinda life, join the crowd. Most of us don’t have lives that look like catalogues and commercials. But you know what? Even if our lives don’t look like that, they can feel like we’ve always imagined.

What if Valentine’s Day weren’t about jewelry and chocolate and hearts and lovers? What if, *gasp*, it were simply about love?

What if we chose to make it about love? Of all shapes and sizes.

What if each of us set out on our own small personal mission to create a few pinpricks of light for people in our lives this Valentine’s Day? Sure, one of those people can be someone we romantically love. But what if we included our family, our co-workers, and people we never met?

Consider reaching out to everyone in your life whom you want to express your love to — wish them all a happy Valentine’s Day. But also, give some special thought to anyone who might be lonely, sad, or grieving on this Hallmark holiday. Can you offer an extra boost of love to anyone who may be feeling left out this week?

And read on for a really fun way to spread even more love …

 

Poet Rosemerry Trommer and I have teamed up to offer a 7-Day Challenge. It’s called Secret Agents of Change Challenge: Operation Love. Your Valentine’s gift to yourself and the world could be your commitment to participate!

Every day we will give you a poem and a prompt. You go out into the world to perform your secret kindness challenge and then report back. Easy Peasy.

Here’s the link to join the Facebook Group, where it all starts on Sunday, February 15th!

Beauty + Joy, Celebrating in the Dark

Have it Your Way.

We just finished Happy Hour on the Simply Celebrate Facebook Page. There was a great discussion about Valentine's Day and how it can sometimes feel like we are being told how and when to celebrate the people in our lives. The commercialism can set up expectations that don't match how we might be feeling at the moment. Pictures get created in our heads of how we should feel or the types of gifts we should give. Days like this can create pressure that leads to unhappiness, rather than joy.

Folks at the Happy Hour seemed to agree that it is important to focus on the people we love all year round, especially by simply remembering on a daily basis how grateful we are for the people we love and by expressing our love and appreciation in ways that feel authentic.

All that said, it also can sometimes be a good to have something outside of us that reminds us to remember what is really important in our lives. I received a note from Amy, a friend and Simply Celebrate reader, who has a beautiful Valentine's story to illustrate this. What I loved most about Amy's story is it really underlines the shift that can happen when we remember to come from a place of love. Amy had been feeling a bit unseen by her spouse. Rather than let that feeling overtake her, she decided to step into a different story. Here's what she told me:

My husband  and I have been in a real rough patch lately, and I've been thinking a lot about stuff you say about shifting thinking, deciding to be happy, etc. and I realized I had some control over the situation. (I knew that, of course, it's just so easy to ignore/forget).

So, sometime yesterday afternoon, I decided to go kind of over the top for Valentine's day. First, I took some epsom salts, fragrance, and dye and mixed up some custom wonderful smelling bath salts for Scott, all from a left over soap-making kick. Then I grabbed this month's issue of Martha Stewart living, and cut out every heart in it. I modpodged them to an old Vietnamese tea tin that I had lying around, and filled it with the bath salts. Next, I got out some decorative paper I had, and cut out about an infinity of hearts of different sizes.

Now here's what you have to know about Scott. Several years ago, he had a brain tumor, and is dependent on several different medications to keep his endocrine function going. He has a very precise morning routine, that involves walking the dogs, taking his medication, putting on the coffee, and eating breakfast. I crammed hearts everywhere I could think of along his routine path, all the while giggling at the thought of him finding them and chuckling to himself in a way that I love. I put them in his pill bottles, in the coffee, in the cereal, in his coffee cup, taped in side the cabinets, everywhere I could think of. Right before bed, I took sidewalk chalk and made a path of valentines to his car.

He loved it, and, being who he is, what he loved most is that I made him feel loved without spending a penny.

I'm so grateful to Amy for sending me this story today. Her line about him "chuckling to himself in a way that I love" just totally pulled at my mushy bone. Her experience reminded me that as hard as it can be to do or remember, sometimes when we want more love, we just gotta give more love. And we can do it in whatever way works the best for us.