Ah Springtime!  What a great time of the year, especially for those of us who have emerged from a long, cold winter.  Time to open up the windows and let the breezes blow through our homes. Time to plant the seeds and flowers that will ultimately go into full bloom.  Time to clean out the closets, throw out the old and bring in the new.

Spring is a metaphor for divorce recovery.  The initial stages of separation and divorce are a long, cold winter filled with the grieving stages of a death of a way of life.  We  are angry, sad, depressed.  We are confused, scared and lonely.  We wonder how we are going to survive this upheaval.  It is a stark landscape that looks like the darkest, cold, barren winter day.

But that is what winter is supposed to be.  It is what it is and it is a normal cycle of the seasons.  All of the emotional trauma that you may be experiencing associated with your divorce are normal, albeit painful.  You are where you are supposed to be.  The key is to honor your feelings and process through them.

Then Spring arrives and the need to clean out the closets arises.  Which closets?  The closet of the mind, where endless chatter about what this divorce means about you is on constant tape loop.  The thoughts of being alone, unlovable, broken, rejected, afraid and the self-loathing, criticisms, judgments and loss of self esteem have got to go.   These thoughts and feelings are what are holding you back from moving on in life.  They are your stumbling blocks and until they go, you stay mired in your misery.  You get to choose to clean the closets or not?  Not a hard choice.

Take a good look at what the facts are about your marriage and attempt to separate the facts from the meanings you attach to those facts. Facts are simply things that happened that are unarguably true:  My husband left, fact. My marriage is over, fact. My husband had an affair, fact.  But you may say that your husband left you and that means you are a failure.  You may say that your marriage is over and you will probably be alone the rest of your life.  You may say that your husband had an affair and that means that you are undesirable. Get it?  These are all meanings and not hard and true facts.  You create one meaning but your ex can create an entirely different one.  Which is true? Neither!

When you begin to see how the interpretations of the facts or the meanings you attach to the facts are the core beliefs that are running you, you begin to see that in accepting just the facts and releasing all the meanings, you feel much more grounded in reality and alive.  You see that you in accepting where you are now in life is just the beginning of a new chapter for you.  You see the unlimited possibilities in your life again.  You see that meanings are not who you are or who your ex is or what happened.  Meanings are things we created for a myriad of reasons. They are as fleeting as your feelings and emotions which are constantly changing.  You wouldn't live your life according to the roller coaster of your emotions and you cannot live your life according to the meanings you have attached to events or facts.

As I gaze outside today, the sky is a brilliant blue and a cool breeze blows. the earth has erupted with flowers, blossoms, leaves and plants.  It is a time of rebirth and renewal.  Use this season to clean out the closets of your mind and replace them with new and empowering thoughts about the new life that awaits you.