How To Let go of the Summer Season
I like to think of the shifting of a season like saying goodbye to a friend you won’t see again for a while. To me, all things have a soul, including the seasons and I think it's important to acknowledge the role it played in your life and to give yourself space to grieve its departure. Too easily do we humans do little or nothing to mark the passage of one season to the next. But let us remember that we are not just humans. We’re spirits in a human incarnation, here to fully experience all that the material world has to offer. The earth nourishes our bodies but the awareness and gratitude of the earth’s energy nourishes our souls.
In this post, I’ve outlined three ways to send your mindfulness and thankfulness to the summer season. These are simply ways to hold space for whatever your journey has been these past few months whether you were full of abundance and expansion or your path has been littered with burnout and shadows. This is your chance in these last few days of summer to make sense of all you have experienced and to say farewell until next year.
Document Your Journey
Writing and journaling is such an important part of any spiritual practice but it has a practical use as well. Just like taking notes in school or rewriting things in your own words, journaling helps to stitch your experience into your mind and soul. Writing creates stronger memories and helps you to process what you’ve been through. But it also gives you a record of your life. Imagine not being able to remember details in fifty years. All of us will suffer from some loss of memory; that’s just the inevitable process of aging. But how wonderful would it be to go back to these journal pages and read the tale of your life or to pass these stories on to your children and grandchildren.
Recount the story of your summer, starting from the summer solstice until these last days of summer. Write down your full experience, focusing on key details you’d like to remember. Some things you may want to consider are:
Places you’ve been
People you’ve met
People you’ve spent time with
Accomplishes
Frustrations
Changes in your job, where you live or what you do during the day
The weather, especially anything unusual
What you’ve learned about yourself this summer
What you’ve learned about others
World events
Spiritual practices you’ve engaged in
How you felt this season
What you wish you could’ve done differently
What you did for fun
How you took care of yourself
Things that were different from summer’s past
Write to Summer
Write a letter to summer, describing what you believe the season has taught you. Even if you had a poor summer experience, challenge yourself to find a reason for your circumstances. Not necessarily a silver living but rather, an understanding of how you can use this information to your benefit. Reflect on why you’ve had this kind of summer experience. Don’t worry about whether or not your answers make sense. It's not about getting this right or wrong. You’re training yourself to see the bigger picture and at the same time, to listen to the subtleness of your spirit.
If you feel stuck, close your eyes and take several deep breaths. Feel the air deeply in your lungs and down to your belly. Hold the breath in for four seconds and then slowly release. Repeat this several times until you feel relaxed and calm. Then visualize the summer season. It can be a person that represents summer, a place, an object or even just a feeling. When you’ve brought summer into your consciousness, ask it “What have you taught me this year?” And let summer respond fully and without needing to make sense of it. You may feel emotional and if you do, let those emotions wash over you. Let yourself feel all that you’ve carried this past season.
When summer has said all it has to say, thank it for its part in your spiritual journey. Thank it for bringing these emotions to the surface so that you can release them. Then open your eyes and immediately write down everything summer shared with you including any strong feelings that came up for you during your visualization.
Alternatively, if summer has been especially challenging for you this year, write a letter of frustration. Curse summer out, say all of the things you wish you could say to someone else. Rant and rave and give yourself time to be totally pissed off or sad or whatever is coming up for you. And then on the day of the fall equinox, burn the letter.
Set an Intention for Next Summer
Send summer on its way with your idea of who you wish to be when summer returns next year. Sometime just before bed in the last days of summer, imagine who you’ll become in the months between now and next June. Will you change at all? Are there any things you’d like to accomplish?
The next day, make a list of everything you want to happen. Then make a vision board. Keep it small and simple, pasting photos on a single sheet of paper. Or alternatively, making a vision board in a program like Canva. Then on the back, write down who you’d like to become along with a prayer to summer, asking it to hold this vision of you. You can use the prayer I’ve provided below or make up your own.
Dear Summer,
Take with you the vision I see for myself.
Carry it to spirit and allow it to take root.
Please tell your sisters fall, winter and spring,
To help me on my sacred path.
And when you return, you’ll see what I’ve become.
The vision of me you’ve carried,
Embodied completely for next summer’s fun.
Fold up your vision board and place it in an envelope. Seal and write down today’s date and time along with the words “my summer intention.” Place it in a safe place and open it on the summer solstice next year.
