Welcome, February my friend! The month of love. Goodbye January, you have overstayed your welcome. You came in all guns blazing on the coat tails of the Festive Season but you hung around interminably leaving us little reminders of over eating and over spending until we were glad to see the back of you. February has arrived with its promises of Valentine hopes and love, both old and new.
Love your hair
Before we all rush out to the shops (again!) to buy our Valentine cards, tokens and trinkets, perhaps now would be a good time to pause and think about that most precious of commodities; love. The greatest of which is self love; not the egotistical, vainglorious type but that God given spark in all of us that needs cherishing and nurturing to allow us to fully grow as individuals. Love yourself first, and the rest will follow.
Self love or self esteem is often bound up in how we look. If we look good, we feel good. We all want to present ourselves in the best possible way from head to toe, and our crowning glory is our hair. The way our hair looks very often determines how our day, week or even our lives go. How then is it possible to love yourself if your self worth has hit rock bottom by the fact that you have very little or no hair at all? That is when we must try to look inwards and see the love inside. When we look at someone we love, we don’t see them purely as a mass of skin, teeth and hair; we look at them as a whole, we see their inner and outer beauty. When a mother looks at her child suffering from chemotherapy or alopecia, does she love them any the less because they have no hair? Of course not, she loves her child unconditionally. Learning to love yourself in the same way can often be an uphill struggle, and perhaps one battle that we might never win. That is no reason not to try.
This Valentine’s Day, whether or not you are with a loved one, spare a thought, a gesture or a kind word for the one who needs your love the most: you!