Summering

Shining a light onto the edges of the brightest season

Sitting in my attic apartment with the shutters drawn and the light shut out, I am sweating without moving an inch. The temperature outside reads 41°C, while I stopped measuring it inside once the thermometer reached 33°C. My face is lit up by a bright screen, and I wonder who will melt first, me or my work laptop.

Desperately, I am searching my book shelf, having always used words as both an escape and an immersion into the world, into all its little details that often go unnoticed, the characters we encounter, and the enchantment of breathing in and creating new stories.

“Wintering”, “How to Winter”, and “The Joy of Wintering” are just some of many books on getting through and embracing the coldest, darkest months of the year. But where is the literature for those of us who find it difficult to adapt to the concept of summering?

When I think of summer, pictures of meadows dappled in sunlight and clouds drifting gently into forms and shapes, sparking imagination, come to mind. I revel in the abundance of juicy watermelons and sweet cherries, dark red, gleaming like jewels in the golden hours of late afternoons. I think of ease, leisure, a sense of being carefree, long evenings watching the silky dusk lifting up a rising moon, the sky painted in pastel colours of light eggshell blue and brush strokes of orange as soft as peaches.

And yet, time seems to shrink under the weight of responsibilities, while society seems to leave me behind, with its flurry of activities and a speed my chronically ill body can’t keep up with. So perhaps it’s not summer I struggle with, but the pace at which we are supposed to go.

I find I experience similar struggles others seem to encounter with winter: We are expected to function each day the same, no matter the season outside and within us. Even when heatwaves arrive, intensified by climate change, we are expected to carry on as usual. Whether we are stuck in attic apartments where heat builds and lingers, or walking beneath eerie skies transformed by wildfire smoke, almost otherworldly.

What feels so unsettling to me is not only the heat itself, but living through a time when the natural rhythms around us are changing, while the rhythms of our own lives are expected to remain untouched. Is the difficulty in the sunlight stretching into the evening or the expectation that we must stretch ourselves with it?

As a society, we are encouraged to constantly be in a “summer state”, always flourishing, happy, pushing away the shadows and darkness. We are told that our lives should be filled with adventure, productivity and endless energy. That we should make the most of every hour, every invitation, every event.

Would the dog days feel so overwhelming if they stretched out in front of me instead? If it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t sleep, being able to take naps throughout the day? Watch the clouds just like when I was a child, listening to the bees hum next to me? If we would have time to learn about our non-human friends, how to nurture the forests and oceans, and support not just us, but them too, so we can all thrive together?

I want to embrace all the seasons, I really do. Each one carries its own beauty and teachings, its blossoming and decaying, but autumn and winter seem to match my own personality just a little bit more. My introverted side finds solace in solitude, in a slower pace of life, rediscovers magic when the cooler air arrives and the morning mist settles over the fields, rich with the scent of petrichor. Still, we all carry aspects of spring, summer, autumn and winter. The wheel of the year keeps turning, the sea ebbing and flowing, everything constantly changing, seen and unseen, returning and starting anew.

Sometimes, I long for the relief of a thunderstorm. Feeling the rain on my skin, a sign of aliveness. And yet, I don’t want to wish this time away either. I want to experience it for what is. Capturing the precious and unique luminescence, the early dawn waking me up gently, the lush greenness in the landscape.

The stories we tell ourselves (and the stories we are told) matter, and often they need to be rewritten. I can both enjoy the idle hours spent in the shade of an old oak tree, listening to the song of leaves swayed by the breeze, interspersed with the soothing melodies of bird song, remembering where joy lives in my body, and still acknowledge the aspects I struggle with, and the wounds greed and disconnection have inflicted on us and the soil we all flourish from.

Acceptance doesn’t mean defeat or inaction. It means paying attention without judgement, without getting caught up in the (real or imagined) stories. And from this place, we can sit with what is and let it move through us, and eventually take action. Climate change and the passiveness of politicians is a huge topic, knocking on our front door (or rather, it has already crossed the threshold), whether we look away or are already painfully aware of it.

When non-human kin suffer, we suffer too. Perhaps we can take little steps, in our own capacity, by putting out water for birds, resisting the urge to consume more than we need, voting for change. For some of us, that might not be possible, especially for the disabled, poor and vulnerable, so we need to take care of each other. Everything has a ripple effect. Choose “active hope”, as Joanna Macy calls it.

Yesterday, I saw a single sunflower growing out of the pavement. The closer I stepped, the more I discovered its intricate details. Actually, what I was seeing wasn’t just one sunflower: I was looking at an inflorescence, a constellation of thousands of tiny florets, each one holding a small part of the whole.

We often look for the one perfect moment where everything falls into place, the version of ourselves who finally has everything figured out. What if life was never meant to be experienced as one grand, uninterrupted bloom? Can we allow ourselves to be seasonal, imperfect, and still sacred? Unique, and still part of an ancient cosmos, made of stardust and hope?

Many small, yet precious moments, glimmers of sweet happiness and droplets of heavy sorrow, creating a mandala, shaping one beautiful flower. A crack between concrete slabs where the almost impossible blooms after all.

Perhaps I don’t need to deeply love every aspect of summer. Maybe it’s rather about seeing each day unfold, with all its delightful surprises, instead of becoming overwhelmed by a block of three or more months as a whole. Labelling them as one thing feels wrong when it contains so many strings of a delicate web, waiting to be explored.

Life is mysterious, and I yearn to immerse myself in its wondrous edges, its flowing rivers and open pages. When the buck moon rises at the end of the month, I want to remember. My own significance and insignificance, the stars and planets swirling in the night sky, my breath in a cycle with the trees. Remembering that we named the full moons according to the changes in the seasons.

Perhaps you might look up and let the names for this full moon melt onto your tongue: Hay Moon, Raspberry Moon, Thunder Moon. Is there a resonance in this wild, wise and still part of you? Maybe you even invent your own name and whisper it out into the soft, warm breeze, part of it all, existing, healing, creating, your words and thoughts swirling out into the milky way and beyond.

For now, maybe it’s okay to build sand castles out of words, colourful kites out of ideas and dreams, out of longing and grief, building and shaping, some to last, some to be swept away. And so I sit in the shade and rest for a moment, knowing that soon my empty bucket will be full of magic and tales of mermaids once more.

Because right next to sorrow is always a seat for joy.

All photos by Christine Dietz © 2026 Christine Dietz. All Rights Reserved