This blog post was written in response to the prompt in Write Bravely – March 2026 Week 2.
Spring Cleaning, emotionally and mentally
It is spring time. In India, it doesn’t create such a hullabaloo as in the west. There is no spring cleaning, maybe because for the most part our winters are not wet and damp. Rather they are nice and dry after the rains, which is why the cleaning happens at Diwali, just after the monsoons.
But no matter when it happens, clearing out the stuff that is no longer useful – or doesn’t serve you – is an important ritual and I think I need to adapt it to my mental and emotional self as well.
My mom and me
The first thing I would throw out are the memories of feeling hurt as a kid (and an adult) when my mom treated me as if I were her stepchild.
Actually more than that, I need to do away with the expectation that she will ever find anything good in me. I need to distance myself from this toxic relationship which just makes me end up feeling less and useless — a bad person even.
So yes, this relationship or rather the dynamics of this relationship needs to be thrown out of the door.
Throwing out guilt
Another thing that definitely needs to go is the guilt and what-ifs when I think of my husband. He has been dead these last 16 years and each year the “if onlys” seem to keep increasing.
I need to remind myself daily that I had acted to the best of my ability, given my knowledge, awareness and maturity. Hindsight, as they say, is always 20/20, but what they don’t say is that circumstances were different.
I was different — and maybe if we went back to the past, we would most probably do the same things all over again. So these painful memories and reminiscences need to be put in the boat of “letting go” and set sail on the river of forgetting.
Dealing with myself
The third room that needs a thorough cleaning, more than the others, is me.
The cobwebs of doubt, of self-effacing, of false humility all need to be swept out of the door.
There is enough evidence of my ability and capability to deal with life and I need to carpet my new self with them. Paint the walls with hope. Grow some plants of love and just be.
Be accepting. Be loving to me and others. Be kind. Be me.