RIP Hot Girl Hibernation: It’s Spring Cleaning Season

04/17/25 • 31 min

The days are getting longer, flowers are blooming, and it's finally time to shed that winter coat of emotional baggage. Welcome to your spring awakening after heartbreak!
Ever notice how winter breakups hit differently? There's something about those dark, cold months that amplifies every painful emotion. As Ilma candidly shares from her own experience, "When I had my winter breakup, I actually thought I was going to die." The combination of Seasonal Affective Disorder and heartbreak creates a particularly potent emotional cocktail that can feel impossible to overcome.
But spring—glorious spring—brings a natural energy shift that makes taking control of your life not just possible, but exciting. It's the perfect season for reclaiming your space (both physically and emotionally), implementing boundaries, and finally acting on those self-improvement goals that hibernated alongside you all winter.
We dive deep into practical strategies for post-breakup renewal: transforming your living space to be unapologetically yours (goodbye, beard trimmings in the sink!), saging away negative energy with friends, limiting social media doom-scrolling, and adopting positive journaling practices that rewire your brain toward gratitude. Ilma shares her powerful approach: "I only choose to write positive things because your brain will then only remember positive stuff."
Throughout our conversation, we acknowledge the reality that healing isn't linear. Some days you'll feel on top of the world; others you might find yourself analyzing everything and feeling overwhelmed. That's perfectly normal—and knowing that tomorrow brings new possibilities is part of embracing this season of renewal.
So what baggage are you leaving behind this spring? What fresh start are you creating? Listen now to discover how to transform your breakup into a breakthrough, just as winter transforms into spring.

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Send us a text

Instagram:
@the_breakup_diet
TikTok:
@thebreakupdiet
Email: [email protected]

Previous Episode

Jess Hobbs on Why Being Selfish in Your 20s is the Best Thing You Can Do

What happens when your wanderlust collides with your love life? Jess joins us to share her refreshingly honest perspective on choosing adventure over romance, even when the relationships were genuinely good. As a fellow Australian in London, she offers a unique window into the expat dating experience and why Aussies abroad seem to find each other everywhere they go.
Our conversation tackles the modern dating landscape with unflinching candor. From the frustrations of dating apps producing "pen pals" who never actually meet up, to the nerve-wracking art of making eye contact with attractive strangers, Jess shares both practical advice and entertaining anecdotes. Her experiments with meeting people in real life instead of through apps reveals both the challenges and unexpected rewards of taking dating offline.
Where this episode truly shines is in challenging conventional wisdom about relationships. Jess embodies what it means to be "selfish" in your twenties in the best possible way – prioritizing personal growth, travel, and self-discovery over settling down. Now approaching thirty, she's neither desperate to find someone nor closed off to possibilities, but instead occupies that rare sweet spot of genuine contentment with her single life while remaining open to someone truly special.
Whether you're nursing a broken heart, contemplating a major life move, or simply trying to navigate the bewildering world of modern dating, this conversation offers both practical wisdom and permission to put yourself first. Because sometimes the bravest thing you can do is choose yourself – even when it means saying goodbye to someone you love.

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Next Episode

We Broke Up on Our One-Year Anniversary… and I Still Had to Live in His House with Ava Belle

What does heartbreak look like when it spans continents? Wedding industry veteran Ava takes us on a journey through her "global heartbreak" experiences across London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Australia, revealing how each relationship ending taught her something valuable about love and herself.
From crying for two months straight after an early breakup to developing healthier coping mechanisms as she matured, Ava's evolution offers a roadmap for anyone navigating relationship grief. "Now my life is busier," she explains. "It's like you've got two days, girl, you need to cry this out and then get back into all the positive things." Yet she emphasizes the importance of truly feeling your emotions rather than masking them with distractions.
Particularly fascinating is Ava's perspective on long-distance love, having attempted seven international relationships. She shares the raw reality of breaking up on a one-year anniversary while living in her partner's home abroad, unable to speak the local language, then cohabitating with him for another month afterward. These situations create unique challenges that test emotional resilience in profound ways.
At the heart of Ava's experiences lies a powerful shift from creating fantasy relationships to seeking authentic connections. In her twenties, she constructed idealized versions of partners, experiencing "the feeling of losing something that never existed" when these relationships ended. Through self-reflection and growth, she learned to build connections based on mutual respect and genuine admiration.
Whether you're healing from heartbreak or simply curious about relationship dynamics, this conversation offers practical wisdom about processing grief, breaking unhealthy patterns, and remaining open to love despite past disappointments. As Ava beautifully puts it, "Grief is pain because it's love that has nowhere to go."

Send us a text

Instagram:
@the_breakup_diet
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@thebreakupdiet
Email: [email protected]