Valentine’s Day for Those Who’ve Lost

Valentine’s Day is everywhere. Hearts in shop windows, roses on tables, messages of love shouted from screens. For many it is joy and connection, a reminder of the people who make their hearts full. But for some it is different. For those who have lost someone, this day can feel empty, even painful. Love does not leave. It lingers in the spaces once filled by voices, hands, and faces now gone.

Grief and love are not enemies. They coexist. The people you have lost, the relationships that ended, the friends, parents, and partners who are no longer here, their absence is a presence. It sits in your chest. It comes quietly or sometimes sharply, a reminder that love has depth and weight.

It is okay to feel it. To remember the moments that made your heart rise and the ones that broke it. To sip your coffee alone and think I loved and I still love. This day does not have to be roses or chocolate. It can be the memory of a laugh, a touch, a voice. It can be honoring the love that shaped you and stayed with you even after it was gone.

Carrying that love is not weakness. It is proof that you felt deeply, that you lived fully, that you loved without holding back. It is proof of resilience. It is proof of humanity.

So today, on Valentine’s Day, hold space for all kinds of love. The love that is here. The love that is gone. The love that whispers in the quiet corners of your heart. Take a moment to breathe it in. To honor it. To let it remind you that the people you carry with you are not truly gone. They live in memory, in gesture, in thought.

If you are carrying someone today, share their memory. Speak their name. Write a few words about them. Let us honor them together. Let us acknowledge that love endures even in absence.