Galentine’s Day: Celebrating Yourself, Your Best Friends and Amy Poehler

Happy GALENTINE’S Day, everyone! Wait, what’s that? Aw, man you don’t know about it!? Well, as the great and powerful Amy Poehler once said, “What’s Galentine’s Day?! Oh, its only the best day of the year . . . February 14, Valentine’s Day, is about romance but February 13, Galentine’s Day is about celebrating lady friends! It’s wonderful and it should be a national holiday!” There you have it. Happy Galentine’s Day!

We’re mixing it up just a bit this year though by adding an important component to the mix. We’re making Galentine’s Day about more than just your gal pals (or pal pals, we can open this up to men, as well); we’re making it about ourselves, too. I consider myself to be a pretty optimistic, happy and jolly person, and I’ve found that there’s a secret weapon for navigating your way to such an attitude (besides really expensive Jedi training). It goes as follows: Don’t get in your own way and let other people help you when you start to fumble. Far more often than not, it’s the things I say to myself or let myself feel that put me in a foul, restless, vengeful mood. I have to stand up to the sour version of myself and say “NO. I decide how we feel. Sit down! We’re going to crack a joke, look at pictures of blankets we’d like to crochet and then eat meat and candy because that’s what we want!” It usually works. I am my own ship, my own captain AND my own best friend. It’s pretty cool.

 

The other half of the secret weapon is equally as important. Leaning on people isn’t weakness. Letting your friend grab you a 7-11 bag when you've crying and throwing up on a sidewalk after a night out partying (sulking) because of a breakup isn’t weakness. There is strength in numbers and having people behind you when you’re being blown over by the winds of change is never a bad thing. Those who I count among my crew have helped strengthen my backbone and helped make me who I am. These are the people I get my resilience and energy from, the people who constantly encourage me to rally on even when they don’t know they’re doing it and I let them lean on me, too. My parents, my grandma, my sister, my boyfriend, my best friends near and far. They make me laugh, make me think, make me grateful, they challenge me and push me to get up and keep on movin’ (even when I’d rather just vomit and weep on the sidewalk). So tonight, for Galentine’s Day, some of my best gals and I are hitting the town for a fancy dinner to treat not only each other, but ourselves.

 Today is about celebrating the amazing and inspiring friends you have around you and the friend you have in yourself. Without any of them, the road to happiness would be a lot harder to charge down.

P.S. In light of all of this, I would also like to take just one moment to celebrate Amy Poehler, whom I do not personally know but know would be one of my #1 gal (pal) if I knew her. Amy you are my inspiration; you my ROCK. Will you be my Galentine?

Read more from Ms, Rockabye, our favorite gal pal, below: Stevie Nicks Tambourine