With Valentine’s Day coming up, I was reflecting recently on all the V-Days of my past. To be totally honest, one of the best experiences I had was as a single woman, with 14 other single women. Someone arranged a dinner and chick-flick evening with all the single women in her circle and everyone had to bring 14 little self-love gifts to go in the goodie bag. So, everyone went home with 14 valentine’s gifts and a night of laughs, sharing of dating war stories and gushy movie action. Bliss.
In the spirit of celebrating singledom in February and providing singles with an opportunity to bask in the fun of the occasion, Singles Awareness Day or S.A.D was developed. S.A.D is celebrated on February 15th and despite the somewhat depressing acronym, is a wonderful opportunity for celebration rather than self-pity.
There are countless ways to celebrate S.A.D. and you can either make it about yourself or others. If you’d rather not focus on yourself (maybe you’ve recently been through a painful break-up and it’s all too much) consider other ways you can send love out into the world:
- Call a hospital and ask for the name of someone who is alone and has not received any flowers, and send them an anonymous bunch
- Approach a homeless person and give them a heart shaped chocolate and a smile
- Make a donation to a charity of your choice in the name of love
- Take the opportunity to send a thank you note to someone you feel grateful for
Whilst these may sound like selfless acts, research shows that helping others can have amazing health benefits for us too. Medical scientists studying this have found that there is an antibody that helps the body defend itself from infection. Harvard psychologist, David McClelland measured this antibody in students before and after watching a film on Mother Teresa, about her work helping the homeless. Dr McClelland found that merely watching a film on selfless service strengthened the immune response in the students. So, making someone else’s day on S.A.D will not only make you happy, but healthy too!
Or, you might prefer to focus your loving energy on yourself on S.A.D – and why not, you deserve it. It’s the perfect opportunity to invest in yourself and nurture all that is YOU. Some popular self-loving S.A.D activities include:
- Make a date with yourself – go to a romantic movie, take yourself to that restaurant you’ve been eying off or take the plunge and go roller skating
- Indulge in a spa treatment, massage or pedicure
- Take some time-out to sit somewhere peaceful, reflect on your life and write about all the things you are grateful for
- Or maybe it’s the perfect day to book that holiday, sign up for that course or get that hair-cut you’ve been putting off for ages
So, if Valentine’s Day is too much to handle (or you can’t bare the commercialism of it all) just wait another day and make the most of S.A.D.
Happy S.A.D!
