Love Beyond Valentine’s Day
Not sure if it’s the best thing for a greetings card company to admit, but we’ve never been fans of Valentine’s Day. We think it’s a load of commercial nonsense, wrapping love up in grand gestures and pre-packaged romance when, in reality, that’s not what love is about at all.
Since losing my first husband, that feeling has only deepened. Grief teaches you a brutal and unrelenting lesson about love - one you never signed up for. It strips it down to its core, revealing what really matters. Love isn’t a bouquet of roses on the 14th of February. It’s not a heart-shaped box of chocolates or a fancy dinner reservation. It’s in the everyday moments, the unspoken understanding, the small acts of care that say, I see you. I know you. I’m here.
It’s in the cup of tea they make you in the morning before you’ve even asked. Cleaning up a child’s sick in the middle of the night, and wiping away their tears. The text that simply asks what you’d like for tea. It’s in the quiet, ordinary gestures that build a life together - not in one big, glittering display for a single day of the year.
And love isn’t just romantic. It’s the purest form of energy there is. It’s in friendship and laughter, in parenthood, in being a daughter, a niece, a sister. It’s in the colleague who makes work bearable, the friend who always tags you in memes because they know you’ll laugh, the neighbour who brings some food over as they’ve made extra. It’s in the way someone remembers how you take your coffee, the way your child reaches for your hand without thinking. The way grief itself exists because, at some point, love was there.
Love isn’t just about the highs - it’s in the hard moments too. It’s in the person who sits with you in silence when there are no words. The friend who answers the phone even though they’re exhausted because they know you need them. The partner who holds you when you’re grieving someone else. It’s in the way someone stays.
Grief changes the way we see love. It reminds us that time is never guaranteed, that words left unsaid stay unsaid forever. So, if Valentine’s Day feels hard - because of loss, loneliness, or simply not buying into it - maybe this week to look for love in all the places it quietly exists. Not in a greetings card aisle or a set menu, but in the people who show up for you, in the memories that still hold warmth, in the small, meaningful ways love lingers.
Because love isn’t about a single day. It’s about all the days. And it doesn’t disappear - it just changes shape.
At LoveLossDiscoballs, we believe love should be recognised in all its forms, on all days - not just the ones with hearts and roses stamped on them. That’s why our cards aren’t just for ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’ or ‘Happy Birthday,’ but for ‘I see you,’ ‘I’m proud of you,’ ‘I’m standing with you.’ Because life is colourful. And love, in all its messy, complicated, wonderful forms, deserves to be seen.