Valentine’s Day has a way of wrapping itself in ribbons and roses, promising romance while quietly stirring up something far more complicated beneath the surface. For many, it’s a celebration. For others, it’s a mirror — reflecting memories, expectations, insecurities and the long road towards self-worth that has little to do with bouquets or grand gestures.
In this candid guest post author, poet, speaker and innovator Natalie Rachel traces her relationship with Valentine’s Day from awkward teenage longing through marriage, heartbreak and healing, unpacking how cultural cues about love and validation shape us long before we realise it. She shows us what matters and what doesn’t through her honest, nostalgic, and sharply observant story.
Valentine’s Day has been hurting hearts for decades. It’s been gaslighting hearts for decades too.
On this day where pink and red reign supreme, hearts dominate shop windows and florists make bigger bank than any other day of the year, many hearts continue to ache.
Imagine this…
It’s 1993, and I’ve just started high school. I’m overwhelmed enough with the big brick classroom blocks, the quadrangle full of all the bigger kids, and my newly teenage hormones, perhaps about six months before my period started.. little buds, my first training bra, a bit of baby fat around my belly, a sprinkling of freckles on my nose and my itchy kilt that feels a bit too long and heavy (but mum insisted it couldn’t be shorter because ‘you’d look like a tramp’… if that was the case, it seemed the whole school was full of tramps, and I was the only ‘little lady’ left. Oh how I was jealous of their shorter skirts).
My new schoolmates beckon me to look at their handmade posters, made on pale pink cardboard with red permanent marker. Ads for Valentine’s Day, encouraging us to buy secret carnations for our crushes. I wasn’t yet crushing on anyone… lust had not yet entered my young body, and wouldn’t follow for another three years. But then and there, amidst the squeal of the thirteen-year-old girl gang… I wanted one of those carnations. I needed to have one. Why? Because all the girls did. Because life was one big popularity contest. And I had just entered the game.
For the next two weeks, I watched the more confident girls (or dare I say validation-seeking girls, the ones that probably ended up in therapy with ‘daddy issues’) prance about in front of the poor year seven boys, who had even less of a clue about flirting rituals than I did. Some of them turned crimson, pink. Some of them quickly caught on that they could dangle the potential of a carnation to get the girls to jump, bend, and walk to their command.
The next generation of love-bombers and breadcrumb scatterers in the making. At recess the girls would be counting how many boys they would expect to get carnations from. And a couple others were brave enough to declare their young infatuation by spending their hard-earned two dollars on a secret carnation gift for the boy of their teenage dreams. I was too timid, too awkward to flirt, but I secretly hoped that some boy…any boy… would pick me. A quieter kind of ‘pick me’ girl.
I did not receive a carnation that year… or any year. But, come year eleven, I had a boyfriend who didn’t go to my school… and that year, I did get my red rose (carnations were so infantile, weren’t they? Roses were the real deal). Didn’t matter that he was a bit of a lug
who honked my breasts like they were squishy toys… I was deliriously happy with my Valentine’s Day validation.
So you see, from a very young age, we have been taught that these red flower gifts are a sign of our value, our worth. That they are more important than the man behind them… than love itself.
Fast forward fifteen years…. I’m in my late twenties… and I’m married to a guy who always buys me flowers. Forget those single carnations. I’m getting beautiful bouquets regularly. And jewellery. Love notes. Surprises left and right. Gifts were his primary love language… and I thought they were mine too. But between the gift giving, there was disconnection, moments of tension, discord… or day I say…dislike.
And for some years, the flowers and the gifts seemed to mask it. On the surface, I had a doting husband. I had the trinkets to prove it. And my Facebook posts were full of these expressions of love. (There was no Instagram back then!) In some ways we were both hiding behind these shows of love, gaslighting ourselves into believing we were madly in love. Fancy flowers, fake smiles and a love that looked great on the surface, but was lacking lust and that kind of soul-nourishing sparkle that needs no filters or frills.
Jump forward in time another ten years, and I’m a divorced single mum, who’s learned to buy myself flowers (just like Miley Cyrus taught us too). To validate my own loveliness. And to get here, I had to go back and tend to that young teenage version of me, who learned that a man buying me flowers was a mark of my value. To teach her that we have all been spoon-fed bollocks like this since the beginning of time. That she is a fucking epic masterpiece who does not need anything or anyone to prove it.
And I have spent hours connecting with the newly-wed version of myself, who ignored reality, because the flowers and gifts meant that love was present. I have taught her to look at actions and words, and consistency, and to not let her panties melt to the floor just because a man brings a bouquet… or a pair of Jimmy Choos. She can no longer be lulled into a sleeping state and allow someone or something that’s not right to conquer her.
And even after all this healing… there’s a part of me that would still be tickled pink if I received a bunch of flowers this Valentine’s Day. But my self-worth doesn’t depend on it. Nor will I go gaga, and glaze over into submission if I do.
Flowers are lovely, but a healed heart… that’s the real flex this Valentine’s Day
Natalia Rachel is a writer, trauma-informed educator, keynote speaker and cultural innovator. She is the author of Other Lovers, her debut novel and the first in the Love Sex Poetry Peace trilogy, out now
