There’s a specific kind of Sunday that shows up every August. The pool towels are still damp on the railing. The kids’ schedules are about to flip from “whenever” to “6:45am, no excuses.” And somewhere in the back of your mind, a quiet voice starts asking what you actually did with these last few months.
I felt that voice this week.
Summer has a strange power over adults. We don’t get summer vacation anymore, not really, but we still feel its ending in our bodies. The light changes. The pace changes. And if we’re honest, most of us made a list back in June of everything we meant to do with this season, and most of us are looking at that list right now wondering where the time went.
Here’s what my summer actually looked like. I became a grandmother, I spent time with my grandson, my son, and my daughter-in-law in DC, I went to Scottsdale with one daughter, visited another in Charlotte, flew to Michigan to see my best friend from college, someone I’ve known since we were eighteen, and had my three youngest home with me the whole season. I was on the road more than I was at my desk, and when I wasn’t on the road, my house was full.
And if I’m honest, some part of me feels a little guilty about that. Not because any of it was wrong. Because I’m used to measuring my summers by output, and this one doesn’t look like that on paper.
Here’s what I want to offer you instead of guilt, mine included.
Endings are information.
The end of summer works like a checkpoint. You get to look at the last ten weeks and ask a much more useful question than “did I do enough.” You get to ask: what did I learn about what I actually want?
Maybe you learned that you need more unstructured time than your calendar currently allows, maybe you learned that the trip you almost didn’t take was the best decision you made all year. Maybe you learned that “relaxing” for you doesn’t mean stillness, it means a different kind of motion. That’s useful data, and it’s worth writing down before the fall calendar swallows it.
This is the third piece of the REAL Method®: Ask Yourself What You Want. Not what you think you should want. Not what worked for you five years ago. What you actually want, right now, based on what this season just taught you.
Transitions are where confidence gets built.
We tend to think confidence lives in the big, dramatic moments. The stage. The pitch. The interview. But confidence is mostly built in small transitions like this one, the shift from summer’s looseness back into fall’s structure. How you handle that shift, whether you meet it with dread or with intention, is a rehearsal for how you’ll handle every other transition ahead of you this year.
That guilt I mentioned, the quiet voice keeping score of hours worked versus hours spent with my grandson, my daughters, my oldest friend, comes from an old measuring stick, one built for a season of my life that isn’t this one. Becoming a grandmother this year changed what I want my time to add up to. I don’t need to apologize for a summer that reflected that.
So before the backpacks come out and the calendar fills back in, take fifteen minutes this week. Not to plan Q4. Just to notice.
Here are three questions worth sitting with before Labor Day:
- What worked this summer that I want to protect going forward? Maybe it’s a slower morning routine, a weekly dinner with no phones, a project that finally got your full attention. Name it specifically so it doesn’t quietly disappear when the schedule fills back in.
- What did I learn about what I actually want? Not what you thought you’d want in June. What the last ten weeks actually showed you.
- What am I ready to let go of? An obligation you kept out of habit, a version of “busy” that never served you, a comparison you kept making. Fall is a natural moment to set it down.
Summer’s almost over. Think of it as a hinge, the point where we get to decide which way we swing next.
Here’s to a strong close to summer, and an even stronger start to fall.
What’s one thing this summer taught you about what you want? Hit reply and let me know, I read every response. Olivia and I actually talked through becoming a grandmother and how confidence grows through family transitions in this episode of Her Unshakeable Confidence, or you can find the full REAL Method® framework in REAL Confidence.
