Love has to do with friendships. - John Goodenough

Love isn’t all hearts and flowers.
Sometimes, love is asking if you’ve remembered to take your vitamins or drunk enough water.
Love is a friend who checks in on you, even when you say you’re fine.
Love is a family member who worries you’re making the wrong choices, and that can often feel like anything but love, but the truth is, they live in fear of you getting hurt because they feel every inch of your pain along with you.
Love can come in all shapes and sizes but never does unconditional love look like an expensive gift or a romantic weekend away. That’s just frosting.
You’re more likely to find it in a cup of tea, made just for you.
Love is real and ugly and shouty sometimes.
Lots of tears and lots of pain as the people involved break and bond and grow together as humans.
Valentines Day should be about counting all the love you have in your world and giving gratitude for it - that may not look like a steak dinner for two...
and that’s ok.
If you are loved my friend, at all, you are blessed. And if you have found some love for yourself along the way, then you are really winning at life.
That’s worth celebrating.
Happy Valentine’s Day
(And let’s not forget the actual St Valentine, the man who sacrificed his life to let young couples marry in the eyes of God, when it was banned for all. What a guy. He’s worth celebrating too ). - Donna Ashworth, To The Women: words to live by