Self-love everyday

Valentine’s Day has come and gone (Down with Hearts! Up with Shamrocks!) and people can carry on with their lives after a day of feeling lonely, unsatisfied with themselves, completely smitten or comfortably in love.

One of my closest friend’s yearly traditions (before entering a relationship of her own) was to send a message reading ‘Happy Crap Day’ on February 14th. I would laugh at the message, but also feel the bitter pinch of unhappiness that often comes with the day.

The commercialism of the day is backed up by unrealistic expectations of what it means to be in love and how affection should be shared – and thus leading a stream of people into disappointment.

When doing interviews for an article I wrote for our Sex and Relationships issue, Marcie Fehr and I ate crepes together and talked about the need for self-love in a person’s life.

Fehr, a research assistant for the department of gender and women’s studies at the University of Winnipeg, expressed how she feels that Valentine’s Day should be shadowed by a self-love day.

“There’s no one day of the year that’s about loving yourself,” she said. “Like having sex with yourself, and dressing sexy and eating chocolate in bed alone.”

For women, this past February 13th, 2011 was the launch of Madly In Love with Me, a campaign for women and girls to love themselves and take (at least) the day to focus on themselves. (Although, aside from the girly flowers and language, I see NO reason that a man cannot follow this self-love guide as well.)

The campaign was launched by Christine Arylo, author and self-proclaimed self-love guru.

The free downloadable guidebook gives tips on how to love yourself, reasons to love yourself, knowing that self-love is not necessarily dirty and the differences between having self-love and self-esteem.

It also dares the reader to live by these five rules of self-love:

1. I know who I am and what I want from this life.

2. All of my relationships support me to be my best me and to live the life I want, or I don’t have them.

3. My body is my temple.

4. I am nice to myself. I stop beating myself up.

5. Self-Sustainability. I take care of ME, without guilt.

So, I dare you, dear reader, to take up this challenge of self-love and let me know the difference it makes on your life.

Because, I don’t know about you, but making time to love myself sounds pretty good to me.

I’m cheesy. Deal with it.