Hold on to your butts! Summer is here people.
If you’re anything like me, you have a calendar chalk full of summer fun lined up. And yes, sometimes all that fun can feel a bit like obligation at times. And yes, all the packing and unpacking and never ending laundry is often a lot of work. And yes, a large part of the next two months will be dedicated to properly applying OFF and sunscreen, followed by tick checks and treating poison ivy rashes. Summer- it’s a beautiful mess!
Our schedules are out the window. It’s light out until well past our usual bedtimes. Ice cream and water time reign supreme. It’s brief, bright, and glorious.
With the summer solstice just around the corner, I’m sharing an invitation I also share at my summer yoga series at McQuade Safe Harbor- find a one word intention for the summer.
It’s been six months since you set your sankalpa on the New Year- do you even remember what it is? Perhaps your intention for the year works well for the summer. Perhaps you need a new word just for the summer.
Last year I chose the intention presence. I painted it on a stone and it is in a butterfly garden just outside my door. All summer the stone reminded me to be present. Then I forgot all about it. It was buried in leaves and then snow, and now it has reemerged.
I have decided that presence will be my word again this summer. Sometimes the only way out is through! I love summer in a sort of too-tight-embrace. By the end, I cannot wait for a return to normalcy.
This year I am in the midst of a large professional transition, we are hosting our first yoga retreat out-of-state in July, I am training for a half marathon, and we have all the other annual summer traditions on the calendar. I have loons to count for the DNR and the BWCA to visit. I have children to take camping and fires to sing at. I need to make ice cream in the ice cream ball we use a few times a year and it makes the stickiest, messiest, most delicious ice cream you’ve ever tasted.
People say, can’t you cut back? Cut back on family reunions and sweet corn dripping in butter? Cut back on fresh watermelon and skipping stones? Cut back on yoga on Lake Superior in the fresh cut grass? Cut back on taking my small kids camping and exploring, creating some of what will someday be cherished family memories? Nope… I can’t really cut back.
Auntie Stacy at the beach being forced to play “Three Little Pigs” with our kids. lol!
It’s all good. Will I handle all this perfectly, no. Will I lose it at times, definitely. Things can be wonderful and hard and wonderfully hard and wonderfully wonderful.
That is the beautiful magic of summer. There are flowers worth admiring and state parks to visit. There’s shade to be lounged under and lakes that must be floated upon. There might be tee-ball or baseball games to watch under the hot summer sun. There might be epic road trips or time at a cabin. Whatever you have in store, perhaps a one-word intention can help you navigate.
I will be present for all of it. I have found that even in the most stressful circumstances, I can still stop and marvel at the abundant displays of perennials in June.
What will your word be?
