How to Hold Space for Yourself on Valentine’s Day

The Day I Pretend Doesn’t Exist

Every February, the world goes pink and red and slightly insufferable, and I do the same thing I do every year. I roll my eyes, mutter something cynical about the commercialism, and pretend the day has nothing to do with me. Overpriced roses wilting in petrol station buckets. Heart shaped chocolates in plastic that screams effort was made, but not really. Couples performing affection on Instagram like it’s an audition. Valentine’s Day has always felt less like romance and more like a corporate trust fall.

When I’ve been in a relationship, the day has usually passed with a glass of wine, a shared eye roll, and dinner somewhere we’d have eaten anyway. No grand gestures. No printed cards. No pressure. Just two people choosing not to participate in the theatre. That version of the day is fine. Almost charming. The cynicism feels easier when you’re sharing it with someone.

But single, in my forties, after a couple of heartbreaks that genuinely rearranged my insides? The day hits differently. It’s not the absence of a partner that stings. It’s the way the world insists on reminding you, repeatedly, that love is something other people are doing this week. You’re fine until you’re scrolling at 9pm with a face mask on, and suddenly the loneliness creeps in like a slow draft under the door.

The Loneliness Is Allowed to Be There

Here’s the part no one tells you about being a grown woman who has done the work. You can be deeply at peace with your own company, genuinely enjoy your solo life, and still feel a small ache on a day designed for couples. That ache doesn’t mean you’ve regressed. It doesn’t mean your healing was fake. It means you’re a human being with a heart that has loved and lost, and that heart is allowed to notice the date.

For a long time, I treated any flicker of loneliness like a personal failure. I’d shame myself for it. I’d push it down, distract myself, drown it in plans, and then wonder why it kept resurfacing. Turns out feelings don’t disappear because you’ve refused to acknowledge them. They just wait in the hallway for a quieter moment, usually when you’re trying to fall asleep, and then they walk in uninvited and sit on the end of your bed.

So now I try to do the opposite. I let it be there. I notice it. I say, oh hello, you again. Recent heartbreak, are you? Cool. Pull up a chair. We can sit together for a bit. The minute I stop fighting it, it stops fighting me. It becomes something I’m feeling, not something I’m suffering through. And that small distinction changes everything.

Make the Day About Something Other Than the Day

The trick I’ve landed on, after years of getting it wrong, is to refuse to let the 14th of February exist as a referendum on my romantic life. It’s a Tuesday. Or a Friday. Or whatever it lands on. It’s a day with twenty four hours, and I get to decide what fills them. The world can be in its pink and red costume. I’ll be in mine, doing whatever I’ve decided makes today feel good.

I’ll book myself a long lunch somewhere with proper napkins. I’ll order a glass of wine I don’t need at 1pm because I am a grown woman and the diary said yes. I’ll go to the salon. I’ll get my nails done in something dramatic. I’ll text the friends I love and tell them I love them, because Valentine’s Day was never meant to be exclusively romantic anyway. We just let advertisers convince us of that.

The point isn’t to manufacture a perfect day to prove you’re fine. The point is to let yourself enjoy the day on your own terms, without the looming sense that you’re supposed to be doing something else, somewhere else, with someone else. You’re not. You’re here. Lulu is asleep on the bed, looking like a small fluffy storm cloud. The afternoon is yours. That’s enough.

Holding Space Isn’t a Pinterest Aesthetic

When wellness people talk about holding space, it can sound like you’re meant to be sitting cross legged on a sheepskin rug, journalling with a fountain pen, while a candle burns in the background and your hair does something effortless. That has never been my version of it. I am not that woman. I will never be that woman. And I am at peace with that.

Holding space for yourself, in my version, is messier. It’s sitting on the bathroom floor in a towel because you got out of the shower and the feeling arrived before you could get dressed. It’s eating dinner at the kitchen bench with a glass of wine and a TV show that requires nothing from you. It’s letting yourself cry over a song that ambushed you in the supermarket and then carrying on with your day like a functioning adult. It’s small. It’s ordinary. It’s real.

What it isn’t is performance. You’re not holding space for yourself if you’re documenting it. You’re not holding space for yourself if you’re trying to make the loneliness look pretty for an audience. You’re just sitting with yourself, the same way you’d sit with a friend who was having a hard day. No fixing. No fleeing. Just company. And the company is you.

You Are Allowed to Love Yourself Loudly

The bit I want you to take away, if you take anything at all, is this. You don’t have to wait for someone else to make February 14th feel like a celebration. You don’t have to wait for a partner, a date, or a romantic comedy ending. You can decide, right now, that you’re going to love yourself loudly on a day that was designed to make you feel small if you’re single. You can choose the flowers. You can book the dinner. You can wear the outfit. You can buy the silly little chocolates and eat them in bed.

I’m not pretending self love is a substitute for romantic love. It isn’t. They’re different things, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling a course. But self love is the foundation underneath everything else. It’s the thing that means you won’t accept crumbs from someone just because the calendar told you to feel desperate. It’s the thing that lets you go on a date in March without the residue of February’s loneliness clinging to your dress.

So if Valentine’s Day is hard for you, let it be hard. Don’t bully yourself out of the feelings. Don’t pretend you’re above them. But also don’t let the day flatten you. Make a plan. Or don’t. Eat something good. Wear something that makes you feel like yourself. Be the friend to you that you wish someone else was being. The world will be back to its regular colour scheme on the 15th, and you’ll still be here, slightly softer, slightly stronger, slightly more on your own side. That’s the whole point.

We Need to Stop Clapping for Basic Decency – Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity

In today's episode of Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity, we're unpacking why we need to stop clapping for basic decency. You know the script. A man texts back within twenty-four hours and we're screenshotting it to the group chat. A man plans a date more than three hours in advance and we call him a unicorn. A man manages to listen, pay attention, and behave like a fully formed adult, and our nervous systems short-circuit because we genuinely don't know how to receive it.Here's the truth nobody is saying out loud. The bar has been dragged so low that Satan himself needs a chiropractor after a competitive round of limbo. We've been culturally trained to be grateful for behaviour that should not require gratitude. We've been told these things are bonuses when they're actually the entry requirement. And in the meantime, women have been quietly doing the basic decency thing forever, without applause, while men get standing ovations for outputs we generated for them.Today we're talking about why a great man is genuinely just an average woman, who benefits when the bar stays low, the invisible labour women have been performing for free for centuries, and the friend-test that cuts straight through every excuse we've ever made for mediocre men. Let's get into it.For more visit BryJaimea.com or follow over on IG @BryJaimea

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