Summer Self-Care Edit
Summer arrives and immediately hands you a list.
Make memories. Get outside. See everyone. Go somewhere. Be present. Slow down, but also don’t waste it. Look good in the photos. Feel good about looking good in the photos. Have the best summer of your life, ideally by the end of June.
Your nervous system, once again, would like a word.
There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from trying to perform a season, and summer is the loudest offender.
No other time of year comes pre-loaded with this much cultural pressure—the nostalgia, the FOMO, the ambient sense that everyone else is living their most golden, sun-drenched, effortlessly joyful life while you’re just...trying to stay hydrated and answer your emails and stop Googling whether your weird fatigue is dehydration or a personality flaw.
The “best summer ever” mythology starts early. It’s built into every end-of-school countdown, every travel influencer, every Instagram grid that looks like a highlights reel of a life you haven’t quite figured out how to live yet, and honestly, neither has she, but her color-grading is exceptional.
But here’s what nobody mentions: the pressure to maximize a season is the fastest way to stop actually experiencing it. You can’t be present and perform simultaneously. You have to pick one.
Real summer self-care is the quiet, slightly countercultural act of choosing presence over performance; letting this season be what it actually is, not what you’ve been told it should look like.
So here is my Summer Self-Care Edit. Less highlight reel and more real life.
1. Let Summer Be Ordinary Sometimes
Not every day needs to be an event.
Some of the best summer moments are the ones nobody photographs—the slow morning with nowhere to be, the conversation that goes longer than planned, the evening walk where nothing happened except the light was nice and you noticed it.
Ordinary is not a consolation prize. Sometimes it’s the whole point. (This is something I have to tell myself approximately four times per week, so.)
2. Protect Your Rest Like It’s a Reservation
Summer schedules have a way of filling themselves. Every weekend suddenly has somewhere to be, someone to see, something not to miss.
Rest doesn’t get added to the calendar unless you add it; so add it. And add it with the same energy that you’d protect a non-refundable flight with.
The cost of skipping it is real. You just don’t always feel the bill until you’re crying in the Target parking lot in late August and you’re not totally sure why.
3. Give Your Body Grace in the Season That Asks the Most of It
Summer is the season that makes the most demands on how we feel about our bodies—and the least forgiving about them. The swimsuits. The shorts. The photos. The relentless, unasked-for commentary.
This is not an invitation to fix your body before you let yourself enjoy the season. It’s an invitation to enjoy the season in the body you have right now.
Wear the swimsuit. Eat the thing. Go to the thing. Don’t let a number or a reflection determine how much summer you’re allowed to have. (For the record: you’re allowed to have all of it.)
4. Redefine What “Not Wasting It” Means
The fear of wasting summer runs deep. It’s practically encoded in childhood, right next to the theme song for whatever show you watched on Saturday mornings.
But rest is not waste. Saying no is not waste. A quiet weekend at home is not waste. Reading an entire book by a fan because it’s too hot to go anywhere is not waste.
You know what actually wastes summer? Spending it so anxious about missing out that you couldn’t feel the parts you were actually in. Don’t do that.
5. Let Yourself Want Simple Things
Summer has a way of making everything feel like it should be bigger, better, more.
But sometimes what you actually want is a porch and a cold drink and nobody asking you anything for an hour. Sometimes you want to swim. Sometimes you want a nap. Sometimes you want to watch a movie in the dark in the middle of the afternoon, like a person who has fully opted out and is not sorry about it.
Simple wants are not small wants. They’re often the most honest ones. The porch and the cold drink? That’s a life.
6. Move for the Feeling, Not the Outcome
Summer movement has a different energy than the rest of the year, and it’s worth leaning into.
The early morning walk before the heat arrives. The swim that’s actually just floating. The spontaneous something that doesn’t count as a workout but definitely counts as alive.
Let your body move because it wants to, not because it owes you something. Your body does not owe you anything. It’s been out here doing its best.
7. Stay in the Moment Long Enough to Actually Have It
Put the phone down for a minute.
Not as a digital wellness prescription—I’m not your therapist right now (well, I am, but I’m off the clock)—just as a small act of generosity toward yourself. You genuinely cannot take a memory home if you were busy documenting it instead of being inside it.
The best summer moments don’t need a caption. They need your full attention. Give them that.
What Your Enneagram Type Needs This Summer
Because the pressure to have the “best summer ever” doesn’t land the same way for all nine of us—and your type has something specific to say about where you’re most likely to get in your own way.
Type 1 — The Improver Summer will tempt you to optimize your leisure. Better sleep schedule. More intentional mornings. A reading list with actual goals. (A reading list with goals, you guys.) Your invitation this season: let fun be inefficient. Do something with no measurable outcome. Let a day go sideways without calling it a failure. Rest that you haven’t earned is still rest you deserve. Write that down somewhere you’ll actually see it.
Type 2 — The Helper You will coordinate the trip, remember everyone’s food preferences, and make sure the whole thing comes together beautifully, and then quietly wonder why you feel depleted by vacation. Honey. This summer, build something into the season that’s yours alone. A morning. A day. A trip nobody needed you to plan. You are allowed to have summer for yourself. (And I say this with love: nobody is going to give it to you. You have to take it.)
Type 3 — The Achiever The “best summer ever” pressure was basically written for you, and it will absolutely run you if you let it. Your self-care this season is radical ordinariness. A weekend with no agenda. A day that doesn’t produce anything. Let summer be something you live rather than something you accomplish. This will feel wrong. Do it anyway.
Type 4 — The Romantic You’re already attuned to the bittersweetness of it all—the way the long days feel both endless and fleeting, the nostalgia that shows up before the season has even finished, the small grief of a good thing passing. (Deeply relatable. Hi, it's me.) Your invitation is to stay in the present tense. Let this summer be its own thing, not a comparison to every summer before it or a trailer for when it’s over.
Type 5 — The Investigator Summer is loud and social and full of unstructured time, which is either a dream or a genuine personal threat depending on how yours is set up. Your self-care this season is scheduling solitude on purpose, so it doesn’t have to be seized defensively like you’re rationing emergency reserves. Protect your recharge time before you’re depleted. And then, from that full place, actually let someone in. Just a little. You can do it.
Type 6 — The Loyalist You may spend the whole summer half-present because some part of your nervous system is already scanning for fall—the schedule, the unknown, the thing that might go wrong before you’ve even bought school supplies. Your self-care is practicing landing in the day you’re actually in. Summer is asking you to trust it a little. Let it be good without waiting for the catch. (There might not be a catch. I know. Wild.)
Type 7 — The Enthusiast You planned the best summer ever—possibly in January, over a color-coded spreadsheet. The trips, the concerts, the experiences, the spontaneous adventures that you somehow also pre-planned. (There’s a version of you that has already mentally had a spritz in Positano and it’s February.) And somewhere in the middle of all of it, you’ll feel a flicker of emptiness you can’t quite name. That’s not a sign to add more. It’s a sign to go deeper. Let one thing fully land before you’re already onto the next. The season is enough. You’re enough. (Yes, even without the next thing.)
Type 8 — The Challenger You want summer on your own terms, and you will absolutely fight for the right to have it that way. That energy is good, and I respect it. Your invitation is to channel it toward receiving, not just controlling. Let someone else plan the thing. Let yourself be taken care of for once. Let summer surprise you. You don’t always have to be the one holding it all together, and sometimes the people around you would really love the chance to try.
Type 9 — The Peacemaker You’ll accommodate everyone else’s summer and call it easy-going. And you’ll be good at it. And you’ll get to September and quietly realize you never once asked for what you wanted. Your self-care this season is wanting things out loud, before the window closes. What do you want summer to include? What would make it feel like yours? Don’t wait until the leaves turn to figure that out. Ask now. Then ask again.
The best summer ever isn’t the one with the most stamps in the passport or the fullest camera roll or the body you finally felt good in.
It’s the one where you were actually there—present, honest about what you needed, generous with yourself about what you couldn’t do or be or have yet.
Some of it will be golden. Some of it will be humid and hard and ordinary and fine.
All of it counts.
Have a real summer, not a performed one. That’s the only version worth having.
With Love & Gratitude,
Katie
