Valentines Day

Of all the days in the year, Valentine’s Day has always been my favorite. Not because of chocolates or cards or grand gestures — but because it carries the soft, ancient whisper of love itself. Love that has traveled through centuries, through ritual, poetry, devotion, heartbreak, healing, and remembrance.

There is something tender and mystical about February 14th. The air still holds winter, yet beneath the frozen ground, life is stirring. And that feels exactly like love to me — quiet, patient, steady, and inevitable.

The Ancient Roots of Love

Long before heart-shaped boxes and handwritten notes, this time of year was honored through ancient ritual. The Romans celebrated Lupercalia, a fertility festival devoted to renewal, life force, and the stirring of creation. It honored the natural rhythms of the earth — the subtle awakening after deep winter rest.

I love the idea that love was once honored through cycles and seasons, through simple awareness of life returning. There is something grounding in that — a reminder that love doesn’t need to be loud to be powerful.

Later, this pagan celebration was transformed by the early Christian church into St. Valentine’s Day, honoring martyrs who risked everything in the name of love, devotion, and sacred union. There are multiple Saint Valentines whose stories became woven together — priests and bishops who secretly married lovers, healed the sick, and chose compassion over fear, even at the cost of their own lives.

That quiet devotion has always stayed with me. It reminds me of my grandparents, who lived simply and tenderly, finding beauty in the smallest of offerings.

And then, in the Middle Ages, poets gave Valentine’s Day a new language — the language of romance, longing, devotion, and soul-connection. Geoffrey Chaucer, often called the Father of English poetry, was one of the first to link Valentine’s Day with romantic love. His words helped shape the way we still understand love today — not just as duty, but as poetry, longing, and sacred devotion.

My grandma used to tell me how every Valentine’s Day, without fail, my grandpa would stop at the gas station on his way home from work and buy her a small chocolate heart. Just one. She said it made her feel like the most cherished woman in the world. No grand gestures. Just remembrance. Just love, offered quietly and consistently.

So Valentine’s Day isn’t just a holiday.
It’s a story of humanity remembering love again and again —
in prayer, in poetry, and in small, ordinary moments.

What Love Really Is

Love is the breath of Source made visible.
It is not just an emotion.
It is not just a connection.
It is the space where harmony and wholeness are born.

Love is the steady force that keeps life from falling apart.
It is strong enough to hold opposites without breaking.
It brings balance where there is difference.
It reflects truth without distortion.

When you feel love, you are not receiving something from outside of you.
You are remembering yourself — your natural state of wholeness.
You are meeting another from that place, without fear or defense.

Love is not attraction.
Attraction is the pull between opposites.
Love is the stillness that remains when that pull softens.

Love is not attachment.
Attachment is fear — fear of loss, fear of not enough.
Love is the breath that remains when nothing is being held.

Love is not sacrifice.
Sacrifice forgets worth.
Love remembers that nothing real can be taken.

Love is constant.
It is the breath of life moving through everything.
It is the gentle spiral that carries us away and always brings us home.

When you ask about love,
you are really asking about the part of you that already knows.

And the answer is simple:
You are already what you seek.

Why Love Matters in Healing

This is why love is the foundation of my healing work — especially in therapeutic massage.

Touch infused with love becomes something far beyond technique. It becomes a field of safety. It becomes a doorway back into the body. It becomes permission to exhale.

When loving presence meets the nervous system, the body remembers how to rest. When safe touch meets stored tension, the tissues soften. When gentleness meets trauma, the heart begins to trust again.

Loving touch calms the vagus nerve, slows the breath, steadies the heart, and invites the parasympathetic system — the body’s natural healing state — to come forward. In this space, muscles release, fascia unwinds, emotions surface safely, and old patterns begin to reorganize.

Many of us carry complicated histories around touch. Some carry absence. Some carry harm. Some carry confusion. When touch is offered with clarity, intention, and unconditional presence, it gently rewrites those stories. It teaches the body that it is safe to receive. That it is safe to soften. That it is safe to be held without expectation.

And in that moment — healing happens.

Not because anything is fixed.
But because something is remembered.

Valentine’s Day, Reimagined

Since my grandparents passed, I carry their tradition forward. Every Valentine’s Day, I gift small valentines to my loved ones — and often to strangers who cross my path. A little chocolate. A handwritten note. A simple smile. Tiny offerings of love, given freely.

It is my way of keeping love moving.

I love Valentine’s Day. I love its poetry. I love its softness. I love its invitation to slow down and remember what actually matters.

To me, Valentine’s Day is not about romantic perfection.
It is about presence.

It is about choosing kindness.
Choosing gentleness.
Choosing compassion — for ourselves and each other.

It is about honoring the sacredness of touch, connection, breath, and being.

And maybe, just maybe, it is a reminder that love has always been here — beneath the surface, quietly waiting for us to notice.

Because in the end, love is not something we seek.

It is something we remember.

Love Always,

Irma Rose <3