The holiday for lovers has been friend-zoned.

Over the past decade, enthusiasm for Galentine's Day, a day to celebrate friendship rather than romance, has surged to a critical and commercial mass. Meanwhile, the bloom is off the rose for Valentine's Day.

Leslie Knope, the patron saint of female bonding, debuted the idea of Galentine's in a 2010 episode of the NBC hit sitcom "Parks and Rec." Knope, the show's lead character, played by Amy Poehler, described it as "Lilith Fair, minus the angst. Plus, frittatas."

She explained the origin story for the uninitiated: "Oh, it's only the best day of the year. Every Feb. 13th, my lady friends and I leave our husbands and our boyfriends at home, and we just come and kick it, breakfast style. Ladies celebrating ladies."

This was a siren call to every woman's brunch-loving heart, especially those who needed an excuse to gather with their girlfriends.

Jennifer Walski said the episode inspired her and her friends to start their own Galentine's ritual.

"We used to call it Singles Awareness Day," she said. But even after she got married, the friends have kept up the tradition. Earlier this month, they hired Posh Picnic Events to set up a heated, decorated pod in the snow for drinks and dining as their Galentine's Day celebration. Company owner Rebecca Polys decked the pod with pink table settings, flowers, tulle and mini hearts.

"We knew that Posh Picnic was a little over the top," Walski said. "Our husbands wouldn't have enjoyed it."

In the spirit of Galentine's Day, she has also planned an outing to see "Mean Girls" at a local theater with another group of girlfriends. She had been needing some time with her friends after having a baby four months ago.

Walski says she loves her husband, and that they dutifully book dinner dates on Valentine's -- "but, honestly, I have much more fun doing Galentine's."

In fact, the whole Valentine's Day-timed romance seems a little forced, she said.

Walski is hardly alone in that sentiment.

The number of those participating in Valentine's Day activities has dropped off over the past decade. In 2009, 72% of adults aged 18-34 and 65% of those aged 35-54 said they planned to celebrate Valentine's Day. Ten years later, a 2019 survey from the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights and Analytics found that a little more than half of those under age 55 planned to celebrate.

A 2017 NRF poll revealed the top reasons consumers skipped out on Valentine's Day: They felt it was over-commercialized, they didn't have anyone to celebrate with or they just weren't interested. While about half of U.S. adults still plan to celebrate Valentine's Day this year -- and spend a total of $21.8 billion in the process -- that figure is down from $27.4 billion in 2020, according to the NRF.

Now, factor in a two-year-plus pandemic that has made dating even more challenging. Sana Habib, a St. Louis pediatrician, said that fewer social gatherings have meant that she's met fewer people. She plans to attend a Galentine's brunch with single and married women alike.

"You don't have to be in a relationship to celebrate love and friendship," she said.

The inclusive nature of Galentine's opens a larger customer pool for businesses looking to commercialize the sentiment.

Brianna Mullally tried to launch an event-planning business right before the pandemic struck. She works as a makeup artist, and teamed up with a photographer to host a Galentine's Day photo shoot and party for friends and past clients. They found a restaurant space, catered food and drinks and headed to a drag show after the event.

While "a lot of people think Valentine's Day is overrated now," Mullally said, "the idea of celebrating your friends has really gotten to people. We don't do that enough."

Galentine's is a slightly subversive take on a holiday that often leaves out the uncoupled. It's a message of empowerment parents can share with their daughters, rather than measuring one's worth by relationship status.

Mullally's business didn't survive the pandemic, but she plans on hosting another Galentine's Day in the future.

"We can claim this holiday for our own, on our own terms," she said.

Across the country, there are children confined to hospital rooms -- missing school, cut off from peers, unable to even step outside -- for no medical reason.

There's simply nowhere else for them to go.

The ongoing pandemic has caused mental health crises among the young to skyrocket. An increasing number of these children and adolescents are admitted to emergency rooms, where they are assessed and stabilized.

And then they wait.

One child at St. Louis Children's Hospital has been waiting for somewhere to go for nearly six months, according to Trish Lollo, president of the hospital.

"This is something that is not only a Children's issue. This is a national crisis that we are going to have to contend with immediately," Lollo said. She was one of four St. Louis-area hospital presidents who wrote an open letter sounding the alarm about this catastrophe.

"On any given day, our emergency department rooms are home to significant numbers of kids with mental health concerns, most of whom languish for days for access to a treatment facility," the letter said. "When we get to the point that there is no hope of transfer to an appropriate facility after holding these children for multiple days in our emergency departments, we end up admitting them to a hospital room."

Imagine a child, already suffering from severe mental health problems, stuck in an emergency department -- which is not at all equipped to provide what they need -- for days or weeks.

In some situations, the child needs a "step-down" alternative from a hospital, like an intensive outpatient program. Or the child might need a therapeutic bed in a residential facility that can provide treatment in a social setting, or perhaps a foster home placement -- but nothing is available in the state. In other cases, the parents or caregivers may refuse to bring a child back home after he or she is stabilized because they believe the child will again become a danger to themselves or others.

"This has been a particularly heartbreaking component of the crisis," Lollo said.

While they are waiting in the ER, these children are known as "boarders." There have always been a few cases like this, even prior to the pandemic, but now there may be up to 50 children boarding in ERs across Missouri during COVID-19 surges, according to Kyle John, vice president for Behavioral Health at Mercy Hospital St. Louis. Children who test positive for COVID-19 must be quarantined in the hospital before another facility will accept them. There are fewer residential beds for children and adolescents available in the state than there were before the pandemic, because some facilities have shut down.

John said Mercy has a child staying in the hospital who was transferred from a neighboring state. She is medically cleared to return, but the state won't take her.

"The home state can't find a shelter, foster placement or residential bed," John said. The consequences of lingering in an ER or hospital bed for weeks can be devastating for patients, who may start to regress and act out.

It can also be dangerous for the staff who care for them.

"It's a very challenging situation to keep our staff safe," Lollo said.

Alyssa Harrell, a nurse and clinical instructor at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital, has seen the toll it takes on patients and nurses. A handful of times during the pandemic, she worked a full day shift, then came back from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. to serve as a one-on-one behavioral health "sitter" for a child, which involves watching the patient constantly and documenting their status every 15 minutes. Once that was over, Harrell would then work another full nursing shift.

Heather Dolce, spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Social Service, said the Children's Division is in the process of securing a 15-bed emergency shelter facility in Jefferson City to provide temporary housing for some of these children. She could not provide a date for when the shelter might open.

"Facility build-out and staffing efforts are well underway. We assure you that the Children's Division has made moving forward with this as soon as possible a priority," said Dolce in an email.

It will take a multipronged effort to address a crisis that has been building for years. The state needs to pay a living wage to the caregivers who would be staffing these additional beds in order to attract and retain workers. Additionally, there needs to be a financial incentive for hospitals and facilities to open additional pediatric behavioral health units.

Lollo said she often thinks about the societal costs of children who need care but cannot get it, and about the long-term impact of boarding on a child's ability to recover and thrive.

The child who has been waiting at Children's for 160 days had had an earlier long-term admission there, too.

"He's been with us almost an entire year, in a hospital room," she said.

Waiting for a place that will take him.

Winter has always been rough for Erin Suess.

But last year Suess, 42, sank lower than she had in years.

"2021 really broke me," she said: The demands of working from her home while helping two young children with their virtual schooling, along with the ongoing pandemic anxiety and the deaths of people close to her, compounded her winter blues.

She lost interest in everything and just wanted to hibernate or lie down. Insomnia stalked her at night. She gave up crocheting, which had been a much-needed creative outlet. Her daily steps, once near 10,000, dwindled to 1,000. She didn't do anything other than work and take care of her family.

"It was like Groundhog's Day," she said. "There was nothing to look forward to."

When she mentioned it to her primary care doctor, he dismissed her complaints and said her case was just "situational depression."

Studies that examine gender disparities in health care find that women are more likely than men to have their medical concerns dismissed or downplayed. It took Suess more than a year to broach the subject again with a different doctor.

Christine M. Patterson, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness-St. Louis, said the country's mental health crisis is exacerbated by a shortage of mental health professionals and other barriers to access. Many people seeking care encounter considerably long wait times; others can't find affordable mental health services at all.

The pandemic -- surging as it enters its third year, having already taken a serious toll on children, teens, young adults, working parents and the elderly -- is making a bleak winter even more challenging for many.

"Everyone thought we were almost through it," Patterson said. "We saw the light at the end of the tunnel, then increasing isolation started happening again."

The omicron surge, coupled with the post-holiday crash, may have worsened symptoms for those vulnerable to seasonal affective disorder, a type of depression associated with decreasing light outside.

Cynthia Woodcock, 53, is a psychiatric nurse practitioner in St. Louis who knows the winter is a trigger for her.

"My mom died in December when I was young," she said. "The time after Thanksgiving until Valentine's Day was always bleak."

Getting COVID-19 in December despite all the precautions she has taken knocked out her endurance.

"Everything kind of goes gray," she said. "I feel sluggish and like hibernating under a blanket."

Woodcock was able to talk to her doctor about adjusting her medication. Plus, she began using a rowing machine to exercise at home and a weighted blanket to help with sleep. The combination has helped her feel like her foundation has resettled in the past few weeks.

Suess had also tried her usual over-the-counter strategies, including a light therapy lamp, to lift herself from the depression she was experiencing. But it wasn't enough.

"If your serotonin levels have cratered, there's no amount of self-care in the world that would right that ship," she said.

In September, she finally found a doctor who prescribed the correct dosage of medicine to help her. The process of finding a psychiatrist with available appointments who would take her insurance, and then making time for doctor visits away from work, was even harder given her depression. Titrating to the proper dose of medication was also difficult. But now she's sleeping and feeling much better.

"I'm solar-powered," she said. "Without the sun, I can't work."

Getting proper medical care has been a game-changer for Suess. This winter season has been significantly better than the last one. She's performing better at work and able to enjoy her hobbies again.

"I feel like a participant in life instead of just hibernating through it," she said.