Valentine’s Day, Reimagined: Tending the Relationship That Touches Everything

Valentine’s Day, Reimagined: Tending the Relationship That Touches Everything

Valentine’s Day usually points us toward one relationship.

The romantic one.

But there’s another relationship shaping your nervous system, your choices, your body, and your sense of possibility—every single day.

Your relationship with money.

For many women, this is the most neglected relationship of their lives.

Not because they don’t care.

But because somewhere along the way, money stopped feeling safe to be close to.

When any relationship is neglected, it doesn’t stay neutral.

It tightens.

It loses warmth.

It loses trust.

We see this with our bodies.

With rest.

With self-care.

With our own inner lives.

Money is no different.

And because money touches everything—how we move through the world, how we relate to our partners and families, how we respond to those who have more or less than we do, how we care for the planet—neglect here doesn’t stay contained.

It spills.

Money is not separate from love.

It is a conduit for connection.

This Valentine’s Day, I want to offer a different invitation.

Not to fix your relationship with money.

Not to optimize it.

But to tend it.

Tending is not passive.

And it’s not forceful.

It’s attentive.

It’s relational.

It’s alive.

When we tend something, we show up regularly.

We listen.

We respond.

We act when action is needed—and rest when it’s not.

Here are five qualities that restore intimacy with money—not as concepts, but as lived relationship.

Gratitude

Not gratitude as positivity.

Gratitude as recognition.

Money has likely supported you in ways you’ve never paused to acknowledge—through survival, through choice, through moments where something worked, even imperfectly.

Gratitude isn’t about praising money.

It’s about letting yourself receive what has already been given.

Recognition softens the relationship.

It creates contact.

Allowance

Allowance is where the nervous system exhales.

Most of us approach money with tension—trying to control it, override it, or improve it.

That tension is often older than the numbers themselves.

Allowance says: this is what’s here right now.

No fixing.

No reframing.

No self-judgment.

Nothing real changes without allowance.

It’s the ground everything else stands on.

Honor

Honor is respect without fear.

It’s how you position yourself in relationship with money.

Do you meet it with contempt—or with dignity?

With avoidance—or with presence?

Honor doesn’t mean obsession.

It means right relationship.

When money is met with respect, shame begins to loosen its grip.

Trust

Trust doesn’t mean blind faith.

It means releasing the illusion that control is the same as safety.

Trust in your intuition.

Trust in timing.

Trust that what is present carries information—not punishment.

When trust enters the relationship, urgency softens.

You stop forcing outcomes and start listening for direction.

Tending

This is where intimacy becomes embodied.

Money needs participation.

Attention.

Movement in the real world.

Tending means attending to money regularly—not dramatically.

Making choices.

Following through.

Adjusting when something isn’t working.

It’s stewardship without heaviness.

Action without aggression.

And here’s the quiet truth:

When you stop avoiding money and start tending it, something else happens.

You become more attentive to your body.

To your nervous system.

To your needs and limits.

To the world around you.

Because money was never just about money.

It has always been a mirror.

A powerful one.

This Valentine’s Day, you don’t need to fall in love with money.

Just stop abandoning the relationship.

Bring presence.

Bring care.

Bring a little more juice where there’s been avoidance.

That’s how intimacy returns.

And from there, everything else begins to shift—naturally, relationally, and in real time.