On the second day of summer, we gorged ourselves on strawberries: filling our faces, filling our bowl, and digging among the leaves and runners in search of more. We ate strawberries until we thought that an explosion might actually be possible, and kept eating until the curious cats that circled us gave up hope for something tastier – a bird, perhaps –  and wandered away.

I have been paying attention to my people, watching the process of letting go, and I notice patterns emerging. I want you to imagine that these patterns are beautiful, like shadows cast through wrought iron on a sunny day. They are mutable and consistent at the same time. These past few years, I have been releasing my own treasures: physically, emotionally, mentally. There has been a downsizing of beloved people, pets, and material things. So many material things – costumes and props from past lives, pieces of history.

So I saw this article on self-compassion, and I want to talk about it.

I want to talk about it, because self-compassion is a practice that has absolutely and unequivocally changed the way I move through the world.

However, I can’t talk about it honestly without talking about my drinking, so this is going to get a little personal, y’all. Even if you don’t relate to my story of addiction, stay with me.

Some of you may or may not know that I used to drink. Lots! I started on peach pastel “champagne” at around 15, moved over to espresso martinis and lemon drops in my early 20’s, and settled into a steady routine of various shades of wine around 25. Occasionally, when the massive quantities of bottles stacked up for recycling, I would tell myself, “I’m not alcoholic, I just have European sensibilities.” It was never, ever, less than a half bottle at dinner.  Most often it was more. Sometimes much more. Once, it was five bottles of Chardonnay (a “tasting”) over the course of an afternoon with a friend. One afternoon. One friend. I used to wake up, like clockwork, at 2 in the morning, and lie awake for almost exactly two hours. I would dedicate this time to a special practice I call “self-loathing”.

I really did. Dear friends, I would itemize all of the ways I knew better and could do better, and how I was just a little extra trash, because I knew better but DIDN’T do better. I knew in surgical detail what this consumption was costing me financially, emotionally, physically.

This happened nightly, because there was never a night without alcohol. Fourteen hours a week of concentrated self-loathing. Fifty-six hours a month.  I became an expert.

I would take penance: run to the gym, clean the house. Fortunately, I did not loathe myself during other hours – not audibly.

I had the good fortune to work in a terrible job with a wonderful woman. I don’t remember if I was engaged in a full-fledged confessional (it’s possible), but she started talking about the concept of self-compassion. She used words that struck me as distinctly old-school woo-woo, like “inner child”.

But listen: the “inner child” is an absolutely apt metaphor, because we are all on a fundamental level, soft-bodied, comfort-craving creatures who lack meaningful lifetime experience and are driven by base desires. On some level, we are all fumbling as toddlers, bundles of feelings and impulse, and inescapable bodily functions.

At those two o’clock in the mornings, I gave time to the idea that I could forgive myself a litany of fuckups, just as one would forgive a puppy for pissing on the carpet or chewing a precious family photograph. Ideal? No. Deserving of compassion and understanding? Yes and yes.

At two in the morning, I started to silence that voice that spewed vitriol in my own direction. I started to regard myself as that kind of fucked-up little mammal who meant well, but who kept pissing on the carpet (Metaphorically, you guys. Metaphorically). I began to respond to myself in same the way I would respond to my loved ones: with gentle forgiveness, and encouragement to do better.

Do you know what? It was transformative.

It cleared the space so that I could really learn to love this incarnation.

My world is much more richly textured, now. Some days I am given to delusions of grandeur – I won’t go into detail, because it’s embarrassing, but let me tell you: those days are fun. Other days, I am convinced that I move through the world with all the social grace and sexiness of a high-pitched Mr. Bean. Some days, I am basically a rocket scientist; other days, it takes me ½ an hour to realize that if the office kettle is broken, I can still make tea in the microwave (true story). I let myself have all those moments: moments of being amazing and moments of being a little weird and kinda gross, because frankly, we all are all of those things, and none of them affect our ultimate value.

I did, ultimately, learn to moderate my drinking. I still need to be careful: if alcoholism is a riptide and sobriety is the shore, I still stand in the inter-tidal zone. I am vigilant about portions, and about balance: marking my sober days on a calendar, and paying attention to the contents of the recycling.

The self-compassion allows me to still love myself when I fuck up (and fuck up I do). It also lets me see honestly where I am, and allow me to adapt my behaviour accordingly.

Even more, the self-compassion also allows me to spend time painting, even though I will never achieve perfection in paint. It gives me permission to write when I should be cleaning out the sentient beings that may have spawned in my fridge. It lets me take responsibility for my failings, and move forward.

All of this is easier without the weight of untempered shame.

I am imploring you to try it. I promise it will feel profoundly ridiculous and embarrassing, but so does everything. It is like the lifting of a heavy blanket that you didn’t know was suffocating you.

This Valentine’s Day, I am holding space for all of my brothers, sisters, and gender-fluid siblings, who have fallen in love with someone inappropriate, or unavailable. I am holding space for every person who has ever watched love back quietly out the door, for everyone who has ever been held captive by their own hearts. I am thinking about those for whom romantic love has been ruined, and those who exist on the starvation diet of active imaginations and acceptance.

We are told, over and over, that this is a world for THAT kind of love. That for love to be real it must be singular and intensely sexual, that it must be a happily ever after, and that anything else is beneath consideration.

None of this is true. Love IS a thread that stitches us together and rips us apart, but it also is also a light that illuminates everything, whether we want it to or not. 

Tomorrow morning, when you wake up, take a moment to adore your own body, in all the places you are free from pain. Take a moment to remember a kindness that you have done for someone else, and a kindness someone has done for you. Commit to paying the latter forward, because love is not static: sometimes it is steeped in joy, and sometimes it demands sacrifice.  You have probably experienced both.

Tomorrow morning, take a breath in gratitude for the loved ones you have had to release into the world to continue their travels without you: lovers, children, parents, pets. Take another for those who have loved you, and let you go (there are more of these than you probably realize). Take a breath in gratitude for the love that still permeates your life, and one more, in faith, for the love that you haven’t learned how to see (it is massive).

There is no question that Valentine’s Day is a commercial construct with dubious origins. That is the truth. But it is also a day we can choose to be reminded that love is expansive, not singular; it does not require chocolate or diamonds, or expensive dinners. 

I am choosing to celebrate Valentine’s Day in this way – not because I haven’t yet figured out how to swim the murky waters of romantic love, but because romantic partnership is just one slice of a very large, delicious pie that we all deserve to dine from.