This may come as a shock, but there was once a time when Suits star and lip-gloss ambassador Meghan Markle was not engaged to Prince Harry. Wild, I know! In those dark, pre-Harkle days, Meghan was just a regular gal trying to navigate life, love, and the perils of being single on the most romantic Hallmark holiday of the year.
“Hook, line and sinker, I am such a sucker for Valentine’s Day,” Markle wrote in a 2015 post on her now defunct lifestyle blog the Tig. Though it’s unfortunately been taken down, Meghan’s post had some great advice for anyone who has yet to be proposed to by a prince. According to People, she wrote:
Last season I was chatting with my Suits sister wives, Sarah [Rafferty] and Gina [Torres], and was in some sort of funk, bemoaning something that was so futile I don’t even remember what it was now. But I was faaaaaar from showing [myself] self love,” she wrote.
“One of them stopped me — truth be told I can’t remember which one because they both impart their sage wisdom with me on the daily — but one of the stylish wise ones stopped me and said, ‘Hey! That’s my friend you’re talking about. Be nice to her.’ “
“They were protecting me from myself,” she continued. “From my own criticism, and my own self doubt. They were reminding me to treat myself as well as I treat those closest to me. To be my own valentine.”
Beautiful. And how did non-princess Meghan plan on being her own valentine in 2015?
“This Valentine’s Day I will be with friends, running amok through the streets of New York, likely imbibing some cocktail that’s oddly pink, and jumping over icy mounds in my new shoes through the salted snowy streets of the West Village,” she wrote.
“But those shoes, by the way, were my gift to myself. Because I’ve worked hard, because I’m not going to wait for someone to buy me the things I covet (nor do I want to), and because I want to treat myself as well as I treat those dearest to me. Because I am my own funny Valentine.”
In other words, be nice to yourself this Valentine’s Day, and maybe, someday, you too will be the subject of a romantic Lifetime movie, or have some terrifying dolls made in your likeness.
In the meantime, happy Lent!
