Surprise Valentines: Giving and Receiving Love

This is an excerpt from the weekly News-Loveletter. If you would like it sent to your inbox directly (with all the other juicy bits, including a mini joy practice), you can add yourself to my mailing list here.

Happy Valentine’s week, dear Joy Collective! I am schmaltzy about holidays in general, redefining them in ways that are sweet for me. Valentines is no exception.

I love author Victoria Erickson’s take on love: “Consider soulmates/ to also /be in the form /of friends and animals,/ the wind, the tides,/ the plants, pieces of art, / and the moon. /Great love lives everywhere.” I am in love with all of life. How happy to set aside a day to celebrate that!

I found myself deep in the Love on Tuesday, recording a special meditation about loving our bodies. (Oh — another very important love … self-love!) Record, playback, re-record, playback. I felt so relaxed, particularly when I added the ocean soundtrack which has a very womb-like quality. I would finish the meditation in time to send out o my Core Alignment with Joy classes for Valentines Day. Today, it is released on YouTube for the rest of you.

Leo barked emphatically. I paused the recording and breathed through his alert, guessing there had been a delivery. An hour later, I remembered to look for a package on my porch and wondered why my new microphone stand was so long and came marked “Tulips.”(Seriously, I didn’t get it.)

I peeked inside to discover 3 bouquets of luscious pink tulips “with love …[from] the Wednesday morning Joy Collective.” Tulips are my favorite cut flower. Getting them as a surprise, divine. The irony of their delivery intersecting with the meditation, thoroughly amusing. A huge thank you to my Wednesday morning class, reminding me that ALL of you in the Joy Collective are my Valentines, and that we give and receive in tangible and intangible ways daily.

How do you live your love? Does your giving ever intersect in amusing ways with receiving? How do you celebrate love?