Summer Solstice Prompts

Made on a typewriter 🌞

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Hello friends,

The summer solstice is tomorrow. I was chatting with a neighbor the other day and she said, “oh no, that means the light is going to start going away.” I laughed. “I think we still get to enjoy it for a bit.”

I like the end of May and early June because it’s the “before” time. The energy building towards solstice, the promise of summer that lies ahead. Later in July it will be too hot out and I will feel sluggish. Inevitably I will lament all the summer things I haven’t gotten around to, how I wish that summer could be like summer used to be. You know, summers when I was a child and had no responsibilities, no deadlines, no demands. Just wild and free.

I know I am not alone in those summer feelings. “… every summer is basically a mid-life crisis in miniature,” writes Kate Bowler. “How can I get back my old self? How can I stop time and stay in this moment?”

I always wish that the solstice would stretch. That I could lengthen the pause of the sun, let it go for just a little bit longer. But we can’t stop time now can we? Instead, I try to enjoy the long days while they’re here. Soak up a little bit of that frenetic, wild energy that comes from the sun setting late at night. Not think too many days ahead. I’ll try to let summer be whatever it needs to be.

I like how Katherine May describes the summer solstice, as a “peak and a pause.” I think of it as the top of a really long inhale, how you can feel the energy in your body build, then the softening as you finally decide to let it all go.

In years past, I’ve done a little digital midsummer creative retreat (yes of course you can go dig around in the archives). I didn’t have the bandwidth for that this year, but I thought that instead I’d send you a few summer solstice prompts, good for taking a little moment of pause and reflection.

I typed them out on the typewriter, because that felt way more fun.

Happy solstice, happy summer,

Anna

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Thank you to the daisy models!

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