I stayed in the house with the kids after the divorce, and I decided I needed to spruce the place up a bit.  A friend had recommended an interior designer to me, named Betty. I came to call her Crazy Betty because she was always hitting on me, and, invariably after our meetings, she would conveniently “forget” something requiring her to come back so she could hit on me some more. While it was somewhat gratifying to be getting this type of attention, Betty was over-the-top with all her compliments, her incessant pats on the back, gleeful giggles with the accompanying touching of my arm, and her shameless flirting. I always felt like a hurricane passed through my house after she left.

I put up with Betty because she was very talented and had an almost clairvoyant way of knowing what I liked. In the span of about three months, my family room, kitchen, laundry room and master bed and bathroom were transformed simply using a little paint, wallpaper, and moving some furniture around. The house now clearly had my fingerprints all over it. It felt good. It felt like me. It felt like home.

One of the most difficult aspects of divorce is letting go of your marriage and all the hopes and dreams that it was built upon. This is especially true if your physical surroundings have not changed. Every day is a constant reminder that something is missing, and that something is your former spouse. Help yourself to begin the hard, but necessary, process of letting go by making some simple changes to your physical surroundings. A little paint can go a long way toward helping you begin to enjoy the present and look forward to the future.

For see, the winter is past, the rains are over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of pruning the vines has come, and the song of the turtledove is heard in our land. – Song of Songs 2:11-12

Originally posted 2014-06-03 06:00:01.