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.
I never wrote about ‘My mom and me’ but I thought for hours and months about it, Sunita. My mother and I have several differences of opinions. I’m 54 and even now, she feels that I do not know what is right for me. She is upset about my choice of everything – when I say everything, I mean things like clothes I buy, vegetables I choose to cook each morning and when(not) I’m supposed to do gardening etc.
I love your thought about ‘letting go’ – enjoyed reading the poetic expression. And, ‘The cobweb of… false humility’ is also profound.
Thanks for reading and sharing. It takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable and half the battle of letting go is accepting facts. Our mothers generation will always be mothers and will always feel that they have to guide and correct us. That is the way they have been brought up. We need to work around that, accept it and find ways to keep ourselves sane and happy.
Such a strong and authentic post, Sunita. Sending you only love as you tread this path. Hugs and love.
Thank you so much Corinne. It means a lot to me.
This is a great list, Sunita. In fact, we all need to sit and do some mental and emotional decluttering every few months. Thank you for the reminder. 🙂
Yes, it’s true. Sometimes the mental and emotional clutter hold us down so much that we don’t even see the physical clutter