Charting number 1 on the Billboard Top 100, Miley Cyrus’ new song “Flowers” is a disco-pop breakup anthem after her divorce from the actor, Liam Hemsworth. The song is the first new Billboard Hot 100 №1 of 2023, the fastest song in Spotify history to reach 100 million streams, and the first song to reach this milestone in under a week of its release.
And it makes sense. The breakup anthem exemplifies a more modern-day take on breakups and love: we deserve better, so we will take care of ourselves until we get better.
Mm, I didn’t wanna leave you
I didn’t wanna fight
Started to cry but then remembered I
I can buy myself flowers
Write my name in the sand
Talk to myself for hours
Say things you don’t understand
I can take myself dancing
And I can hold my own hand
Yeah, I can love me better than you can
Lyrics from “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus
The song begins with a mention of a good relationship she had, where everything was going well. But slowly she watched the relationship fall apart. Like many of us when a relationship starts to crumble, we hope it doesn’t actually fall apart. We might hold on, praying it gets better. Cyrus said she didn’t want to leave the relationship and she didn’t want to fight. She was about to cry, and then realized: she can buy herself flowers.
It’s a symbolic take on the new modern-day movement focused on healthy relationships. In the last half-decade, there has been more discourse online about mental health, bringing more awareness to concepts like self-love, self-care, and childhood development. In fact, one of my favorite benefits of the mass array of information online is that it does help dispel ignorance. We have an entire generation of people getting more up-to-date information on the importance of self-love and our relationship with ourselves. We are becoming more emotionally intelligent as a human race.
Cyrus’s song is a tribute to the cultural shift in relationships. People are less likely to tolerate toxic or unhealthy relationships with a partner who does not make an effort for them. They aren’t going to do that because they realize they deserve better. And they can give themselves better.
It’s one of the first love lessons I learned and try to share. Every relationship you have with someone else will end up being a mirror for the relationship with yourself. This also means your relationship with yourself will dictate the kind of relationships you have with others. If you have critical people around you, it is because you are typically being critical of yourself. We attract and stay with people who are familiar and remind us of ourselves.
Our brain is wired for survival, and familiar things mean survival to us. So the most important relationship to cultivate into a loving and healthy one is the relationship that you have with yourself. You accept the love you think you deserve. And what you think you deserve is based on the relationship you have with yourself.
This is a lesson more people are learning, especially Generation Z and millennials, who have a lot of information online about the law of attraction, and attracting who you are into your life. If you are loving, you can attract more love into your life. Cyrus created a break-up anthem that shows the more current worldview of break-ups among younger generations. We realize we will not tolerate toxic or unhealthy relationships because we will only accept the love we know we deserve. And we deserve a pretty freaking great love because we can give that to ourselves. It’s an empowering way to view breakups, which can also help in emotional healing after heartbreak.
Yes, breakups hurt. We cry, a lot. But then we can take the time to heal and move on, by realizing we can meet our own needs and we got our own backs. We will be okay. We can buy our own flowers and of course, if we meet someone who loves us the way we deserve, we can give them a chance.
As one comment on her music video stated, “Too many heartbroken folks out there not realizing they can just spoil themselves instead of waiting for somebody else to do it. ❤”
This empowering break-up anthem is a great capture of the break-up sentiment today. Don’t tolerate unhealthy relationships, even though break-ups hurt. Trust us, you can be okay. You don’t need someone else to make you happy. Happiness is a choice, and you can make yourself happy. For now, we will buy our own flowers. And hold our own hands.
❤
N
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit:Antonino Visalli on Unsplash