Summer Solstice is Here!

Ritualize the New Season

Ready for Summer Energy

Celebrating the change of seasons is an essential part of my nature-based spiritual practice. Whether it’s a solstice, equinox or one of the cross-quarter days in-between, I always like to do something special that is in alignment with the spirit of the season. Summer solstice is a joyous holiday for me, marking the start of the long hot days of summer.

Summer for me means playing in the river, camping, hiking and backpacking (my favorite summer activities), barbeques, outdoor music, eating outside (love this, especially at restaurants), summer dresses and loose flowy clothes, fireworks, my garden (even if rabbits have eaten most of it this year), the buzz of hummingbirds and bees, wildflowers, butterflies, skinny dipping in alpine lakes, outdoor art fairs and flea markets, the farmer’s market, yard sales, weddings, eating fruit from the vine or tree, salads and cold soups, walks late into the evening, dancing with friends, and family travel.

Getting my summer on last week at a friend’s beautiful garden wedding outside of Philly. Such a summer vibe!

Summer is rambunctious, abundant, bright and full of energy. Some years I’m not ready for it, as I wrote last summer when I was feeling like slowing down instead of speeding up:

But this year, I’m feeling more ready for the summer season. I want to call in more energy into my body in a way that is new for me. As someone who grew up with undiagnosed ADHD (especially as a girl) I was taught over and over again that I was disruptive, talkative, wacky, crazy, too loud and too much. I grew to believe that avoiding humiliation, getting in trouble, shame, being made fun of or not being taken seriously, meant that I needed to be cool, calm and collected. A lot of that naturally unregulated, uncontrolled energy that I had as a kid got suppressed and manifested in anxiety as an adult. But now I’m ready to make friends with that energy again and what better time to do so than in summer!

Create Your Summer Solstice Ritual

Rituals are essential to my practice as longtime readers already know. Our culture is filled with rituals from our daily practices to big life rites-of-passages to holiday celebrations. Sometimes they follow a traditional lineage, sometimes we make them up.

I invite you to make meaning out of this weekend by creating your own ritual. It can be 5 minutes long or 5 hours long. First, figure out what your intention is, your prayer, or what you wish to call in.

For summer solstice, I am calling in silly, playful, wacky, loud, active (and maybe even sometimes a little uncomfortable) energy! Perhaps take 10 minutes to journal about what you want to call in for summer solstice. Are you feeling a little slower like I was last year (read above link for ritual ideas)? Or do you feel the building energy of the season? What would be the perfect medicine for you right now in this season of the year and of your life? Take some deep breaths and write from your heart.

I recently listened to mythologist Michael Meade’s Living Myth episode 489 Rituals to Transform and Renew. I really appreciated this quote, “The way I'm talking about ritual, it intends to change things. Healing is a changing that makes things whole. Awakening is a changing that change the level of understanding in a person or a group's life, and so the most meaningful rituals involve transformation and change. And for that to happen, there has to be an awareness and an acceptance of the sense that we can begin a ritual having some idea of what we're doing, but if it's a ritual of transformation, we will encounter a time when we don't know what to do, and or a time when something enters that we had not imagined at all, and that's the thing we were intended to encounter.”

Ritual can be transformative if you allow yourself to deepen into a relaxed state (like “the zone”) where time fades away and you feel fully present with the moment. What are some things you like to do in summer that put you in “the zone”? That may be creating art (maybe build an Altar to the Earth), going for a forest walk, cooking for friends, playing music, yoga, running, building, decorating, gardening, etc. Any of these can be a ritual when given intention and a little bit of structure—a beginning, middle and end.

Meade suggests using a poem as an entry point to the ritual. You can peruse through these from the Poetry Foundation and see if any call to you. Or perhaps you already have one in mind. I like this one by Joseph Stroud that reminds us that there is darkness within the light and the two are never absent from each other:

Night in Day

The night never wants to end, to give itself over
to light. So it traps itself in things: obsidian, crows.
Even on summer solstice, the day of light’s great
triumph, where fields of sunflowers guzzle in the sun—
we break open the watermelon and spit out
black seeds, bits of night glistening on the grass.

But this one by Alix Klingenberg might be most befitting for me this year, calling back the fairy that I was born to be:

The Midsummer Fairy

The Midsummer Fairy wakes after dark,
on the longest day of the year,
to share her wisdom and mischief with me.

She places plums in my pockets
and teaches me new ways
of playing human for another year.

We share our truths
and call them fiction,
we sing the same song
in our heads.

We dance wildly together,
under the strawberry moon,
while the trees pretend to sleep.

Initially I was considering planning a party with friends with cacao and a bonfire, doing some drumming and trance, but that didn’t pan out. Then I thought, well I have to do something! So, I was going to go to a Solstice breathwork class because I love breathwork and it is certainly ritualistic. But in the end, I decided that time alone is actually what I want. A bonfire at sunset, my drum and a song, sun tea and whatever play wants to come through me spontaneously. Your ritual might not be exactly what you envision but what’s important is that it feels authentic to you and aligned with your intention.

If you open with a poem, find a way to close it too. I like to end rituals with a moment of gratitude for everything in my life the dark and light, and all the support and resources I have in place.

Wishing you a very merry summer and a wonderful weekend whether you’re partying with friends or chilling out at home!

More Ways to Ritualize Summer Solstice: