Valentines against white supremacy
By Kate Madeira

On Valentine’s Day this year celebrate yourself!  It’s perfectly okay to take a day to acknowledge yourself and all the work you’ve done.  Celebrate yourself and all your awesome qualities!  Feel proud of the fact that you are a survivor.  You are surviving like a boss.

I’ve been doing a lot of self reflection and taking a long hard look at my life recently.  I’ve been confronted with accepting the fact that it’s not my abusers standing in the way of my recovery (at least not entirely).  What is standing in my way are my own negative, self hating, self-destructive core beliefs.  If I don’t believe that I deserve recovery, health and happiness, then I can’t expect those things to just fall into my life with the wave of a magic wand.

I’m not ready to let go of lifelong core beliefs.  Not yet.  It’s going to be a long journey.

But that journey is beginning with a single step.

Acknowledging that maybe, just MAYBE, my core beliefs aren’t true.  Maybe, just MAYBE, there is another option for me.  Maybe, just MAYBE, I could live a life where I do celebrate myself, I do believe in myself and I do believe that I deserve good things.

This Valentine’s Day, I hope that you find love.

Trust me, self love will last a lot longer than that box of chocolates.

Though you deserve chocolates too!  Buy them for yourself tomorrow, they’ll be 50% off!