Valentine’s Day: Love, Healing, and the Courage to Grow
By Sarah Claire Colling, LMHC, QS | Bungalow Counseling
Valentine’s Day can hold a mirror up to our hearts—whether we are longing for love, healing from it, or learning how to grow inside of it.
For some, today is a celebration. For others, it is a tender ache, a longing, a wound still healing. And for many of us, love is not a static destination, but a living, breathing process—one that asks us to keep showing up, peeling back layers, and choosing courage over comfort.
Love, in its most powerful form, is not just finding the right person—it is becoming the person who can love and be loved well.
The Mindset Shift That Changed Everything For Us
Richard Schwartz, the founder of Internal Family Systems (IFS) and author of You Are the One, offers a radical reframe:
"The love you seek is already within you. The healing you long for begins inside."
This is the shift that changed how my husband Adam and I approach our relationship. Instead of seeking completion in each other, we began to understand that our inner world must be nurtured, healed, and integrated first.
Adam and I were operating from unconscious wounds, and we entered our relationship hoping the other person will:
✅ Make us feel worthy.
✅ Heal our past pain.
✅ Fill our emotional gaps.
But true love—conscious love—does not work that way.
Healing Through Love: The Difference Between Conscious and Unconscious Relationships
In IMAGO Therapy, developed by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, we learn that we are often attracted to partners who mirror the wounds we need to heal.
When our therapist first told us this were both grimaced. “Ughhhh why does this feel so annoying and so true???”
If we come into a partnership and we are unaware of this, relationships can feel like an endless loop of triggering, hurting, and longing.
Unconscious partnerships look like:
🚩 Reacting instead of responding.
🚩 Expecting our partner to meet unspoken emotional needs.
🚩 Seeing conflict as a sign of incompatibility instead of an invitation for healing.
Conscious partnerships look like:
💛 Taking responsibility for our own emotional wounds.
💛 Viewing challenges as opportunities for mutual healing.
💛 Communicating with curiosity, compassion, and courage.
In my relationship with Adam, we have learned that our triggers are not the enemy—they are the doorway to deeper healing. Our love has exposed old fears, survival strategies, and inherited patterns, not as a way to break us down, but to invite us to rise together. But it wasn’t until we accepted this reality that we could step deeper into healing and love with each other.
And yet, we could not have reached this place without committing to our own individual work first.
You Must Do Your Own Work First
I wish this wasn’t true, and I wish it could be the other person that just needs to change to fit exactly what and who you want them to be…
But unfortunately, No relationship—no matter how romantic, deep, or spiritual—can replace the work you need to do within yourself.
As Esther Perel wisely says:
"The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives."
But I would add:
The quality of your relationship with yourself determines the quality of your relationships.
Before we can love another with depth, respect, and devotion, we must:
✅ Face our wounds without expecting someone else to fix them.
✅ Build a foundation of true love that is not dependent on external validation.
✅ Learn to hold our own hearts with the same tenderness we long for from another.
Adam and I are still walking this path—not as two halves trying to complete each other, but as two whole people who choose to heal, love, and grow together.
Love That Is Spiritually Free
The deepest love does not possess, control, or complete—it witnesses, encourages, and liberates. It is patient and kind and can be the mirror you need in order to grow and expand spiritually.
Adam and I are also spiritually inspired by the source of all love—Divine Love. We embrace the mystery of the Love and work to offer the grace and kindness we have received back to each other. The love that asks nothing of us except to return home to ourselves and to the love of God… so that we can love others from a place of fullness, not emptiness.
So whether you are:
💛 Seeking love,
💛 Healing from it,
💛 Or learning how to expand within it...
Know that love begins within you.
The way you love yourself will shape the way you love another.
The healing you long for in a relationship starts inside of you first.
And when two people do this work together?
💫 That is when love becomes something unshakable.
An Invitation for You
On this Valentine’s Day, I invite you to shift the focus from seeking love to embodying love.
What would it look like to nurture the love inside of you first?
What parts of you are still longing to be held, seen, and understood?
How can you bring more awareness, healing, and courage into your relationships?
Love is not a fairy tale. I thought it was once upon a time and wished it to be true. But thankfully I see now the fuller picture of what love can be. It is not about never being triggered, never struggling, never feeling afraid. It is about learning to hold all of it—the joy, the fear, the healing—with open hands and a steady heart.
And when you do?
Love stops being something we wait for.
It becomes something we are.