Days of Love.

My sweet friend Shelby has been doing this series for a couple of years, and I was thrilled to be a part of it this year!

Here's what I had to say about love (but you should read the rest of the series as well because they'll make your heart all kinds of happy). 

February: Be more honest.

I know, I know, it's February. The "love" month. I should have picked "be more loving" or "be more sentimental" or even "teach yourself to like the color pink even though you've refused to for years." 

But I didn't--because I think being more honest kind of leads to being more of those things (not the pink thing. The loving and sentimental things).
I'm also a terrible liar--so why did I choose to work on being more honest for February?

I think we all like to hide from reality behind knee-jerk responses and carefully calculated subject changes.
I'm notoriously bad at letting people help me solve problems and even worse at showing my emotions.
Being vulnerable isn't one of my strengths--but I'm working on it.
That's why this month, I'm trying to be more honest; more honest about my feelings, more honest with the people around me, and more honest with myself especially.

I think I've always equated feelings with weakness. Being vulnerable about anything meant that I wasn't capable of handling something on my own, whether it was an essay I was struggling to write, an event I was planning where I may have bitten off more than I could chew, or coming to that point in a relationship where I realized that this was good but acknowledging that would mean I had something to lose and losing is one of those things I hate.
I'm one hundred times better at helping people fix their problems then fixing my own--or heaven forbid, making somebody help me figure mine out.
But (and this is huge for me), I've realized that I make things a million times more difficult for myself if I'm trying to keep everything inside and figure things out by myself.

We (or maybe just it's just me here) in this world filled with the idea that things have to be perfect to be good. Nothing is perfect, not everything is easy, and good grief, some of us have really really bad
days.
This month, I'm teaching myself that it's okay to have a bad day, it's okay to be emotional about things, and it's okay to really feel.
Maybe this love month will make me less heartless after all. ;)