Every springtime, we talk about spring cleaning.

We turn our attention to our external environments – sorting through the clutter we’ve collected over wintertime and muddling through the dust under our beds.

We talk about the ways in which we’re clearing our houses and we talk about clearing our heads. We plan to take road trips, to get out of town, to break away from the stagnant routines of the wintertime and try our best to reset our mindsets for the spring.

But we don’t talk about clearing our hearts.

We don’t talk about the spring cleaning we really need – the kind where we dust our souls out for cobwebs and clear the pain that has been plaguing us for so long.

We don’t talk about clearing our hearts, but we should. We should talk about making it a priority.

Because the truth is, until we get down to the core of what drives and what compels and what’s blocking us, we’re never going to be able to move forward completely. Until we understand all that we’re hiding from ourselves and all the things we still have to work through, we will forever be standing in our own way.

Maybe it’s time that we all opened our hearts up, took a good hard look at what’s inside of them, and asked ourselves what we’ve been holding onto for too long. Maybe it’s time we sorted through the drawers of our greatest downfalls and swept the dust out from under the rug of our regrets. Maybe we all need to roll up our sleeves this springtime and allowed ourselves to get down and dirty with the pain that we’ve been procrastinating feeling.

Because doesn’t it make sense to begin maintaining our hearts with the same contentiousness and diligence with which we maintain our physical environments? Doesn’t it seem like the best way to heal?

The thing about emotional clutter is that it builds up, no matter how much we try to push it down. Our traumas peek out from the cupboards we’ve hidden them in to taunt us in the dead of night. Our pain seeps unbridled through our blood stream and slips out at every nick and bump that we encounter. Our wounds heal on the surface but keep bleeding internally until we get right down to the heart of where our bruises lie.

So this spring season, what if we stopped focusing on our external environments and turned our attention to our internal challenges and struggles?

Maybe there’s someone you still need to say you’re sorry to. Maybe there’s a wound you need to allow to bleed out. Maybe there’s a question your heart has been asking for far too long, that you finally need to find the answer to.

Because no matter how much surface work any of us do – no matter how high we climb the corporate ladder, no matter how hard we hit the gym, no matter how many impressive feats we accomplish or incredible experiences we encounter, we are never going to be able to let those experiences in fully until our hearts are open and ready. And sometimes, in order to get them to that place, we have to do a deep clean.

We have to open ourselves up, clear the dust out from the corners of our past and finally drag out all the filth we have been shoving under our beds. We have to painfully part ways with the feelings that no longer serve us and make room for the new – for the brighter and better and purer.

We have to clear out our hearts in their entirety before we can allow the seasons of our lives to keep on changing.

And hasn’t it been winter inside of your heart for too long?

Maybe it’s time you let the springtime back into your spirit.

And maybe all it’s going to take is one last big, courageous cleanse.