Reclaiming our Peace in the Midst of Intensity with the Summer Solstice
When Everything Feels Like Too Much
I’ve never written a guide on Summer Solstice before. It’s the farthest from my comfort zone. I starting this Reclaiming Rituals series with the Winter Solstice. Yule. Christmas. That is where my words flow most freely. And now here we are standing opposite, glancing across a chasm of time. Hello summer.
I’ve never much been a summer girl. I don’t like the intensity.
I live in the south of the United States. Summer here is blazing hot and unimaginably humid. It is our rainy season so everything is wet and muddy. Mosquitos flourish. You instantly start sweating when you walk outside of any building. Creating outfits that feel flattering and are also comfortable and are also not ruined by sweat marks is a puzzle I just don’t have the energy for most days.
I find myself experiencing S.A.D (Seasonal Affective Disorder) in the summer. I feel myself hibernating in the summer. I feel myself most overwhelmed and uninspired and wanting to just curl up and sleep till it’s over in the summer.
Not the best foundation for crafting a poignant and compelling guide to celebrating the summer solstice is it?
In the ecosphere of my Reclaiming Rituals journey, I care the least about summer. There I said it. Now I don’t feel like a big phony writing this for you. If you LOVE summer, this may not be the seasonal guide for you. But if you, like me, find yourself overstimulated and underjoyed, read on. In this essay we’ll be looking into the past and using it to inspire our present, I’ve got some lists of high energy and low energy ways to celebrate as well as a Tarot spread and journaling prompts for you. Let’s go…
This year, having come through so much understanding of myself with my discovery of autism and through so much healing with my work in RRT, I feel like I finally have insight into why this season is a struggle for me. I experience summer as peak intensity.
If summer were a moment in the laboring process of delivering a baby, it would be transition. That moment when you’re in the thick of it. There’s no stopping it. The only way out is through. You’ve gotten this far and you feel like you don’t have anything left to give. And then you somehow find the strength deep in the depths of yourself. This, to me, is the height of summer. INTENSITY.
The Science-y bits:
Summer Solstice, scientifically, is the day when because of the earths tilt and orbit, we receive the *most* hours of sunlight. It is the “longest day”. And while that was a joyous and boisterous festival, to me, a generally overstimulated mom of two, working from home attempting to be an artist and businesswoman who is also more than a bit neurodivergent, I don’t want long days. I want the day over so my kids go to sleep and I can light candles and enjoy a quiet (and cool) house. I don’t want prolonged intensity. I want ease.
But nature does nature things despite my personal preferences, and that is why I love this journey through the wheel of the year. It has so many teachings for us. Because life also doesn’t cater to my personal preferences. And there are seasons of peak intensity that I have had to and will still have to face and weather. So how can I find something worth celebrating in them? How can I find ritual, groundedness, and connection?
Let’s dig shall we…
History of summer solstice festivals and Litha
Historically, people groups all over celebrated or at least marked the summer solstice with celebrations and traditional revolving around light and fire. Big bonfires were lit, people celebrated the abundance of nature and the growth that has exploded since seeds were planted in early spring. We see the (sometimes literal) fruits of our labors.
In northern European folklore, this was the time the Oak King and the Holly King battled and the power shifted. Summer solstice marked the end of the Oak King’s reign as the power shifted to the Holly King for the next 6 months as each day got a little darker and shorter from this point on culminating in the darkest and shortest day of the year on winter solstice where they’d battle again and the Oak King would take control welcoming more and more light again.
Solstice celebrations around the world shared common themes of fire, gathering, feasting, dancing, gratitude and reflection.
In Wiccan practice, the Oak king and the goddess are are at the height of their power and she is VERY pregnant. She is filled with the life of her coming child just as the earth is filled with the growth that will soon be harvested. Keep breathing, just a few more pushes.
Egyptians built the pyramids to perfectly align with the setting summer solstice sun. Stonehenge was built in a similar fashion to align with the sun. So we can see that marking these seasonal shifts is something humans have done for all of time and it isn’t tied to one religion or belief system. We all feel it. It connects us.
High energy ways to celebrate Summer Solstice:
If you feel energized in the summer, and want to celebrate big and also use this as a reclamation of summertime celebrations, then I suggest taking ideas from summer solstice festivals of old and bringing them together for your own summer BBQ or if you live in America, for a 4th of July celebration. I’m not personally the most patriotic so I love pulling from a focus on nature instead of on nationalism for our summer celebrations and looking to Litha traditions has been a really beautiful way for me personally to do that.
Some ideas for you:
Bonfires
Flower crowns
Swimming or water elements (or visiting a body of water like the lake or beach)
A feast of grilled meats and fresh seasonal veggies that are at peak right now
Baking with summer herbs and flavors like lemon, lavender, elderflower, berries, rosemary, mushrooms, etc.
(I personally like reframing fireworks as fire elements celebrating the light and intensity of summer but that’s just me.)
Put together a fairy garden (it was thought that the world of fae was more easily accessible on solstice, but this is also just a fun and whimsical craft)
Color associations: yellow, green, red, orange, white
Low energy ways to celebrate Summer Solstice
If you are more like me and you feel like hibernating in the summertime because it’s just too much, here are some more mellow ways to mark this seasonal shift.
Some ideas:
Make suncatchers
Go for a hike or walk in the late afternoon/evening when there’s still light but the temperature is cooler
Light candles after sunset
Journal on what abundance you are seeing in your life, what intentions that you planted in the spring have grown? What is intense right now? Where have you expanded? What are you grateful for having seen grow so far this year? What is at peak fertility in your life?
Gather herbs
Order takeout and have a picnic
Dance to the setting sun, drop into your body, feel your vitality
Pick wildflowers to decorate your home with
Eat sunflower seed “peanut butter” cups from Trader Joes as a nod to the sunflowers (this one is for my super busy super low energy celebration friends, haha)
We may not be able to stop the intensity from building. We may not be able to ease the heat. But we can find ways to support ourselves through the burn. My reflections this year on summer solstice are that there is so very much to feel grateful for and at the same time, the only way out is through. There’s an element of Dory’s “just keep swimming, just keep swimming” advice as I myself am in the midst of birthing new things, growing new things, and expanding into new versions of myself in life right now. What about you?
If you are new to the Reclaiming Rituals journey and rebuilding an entire holiday of traditions sounds overwhelming, I always suggest you start by adding instead of taking away. Add 1 meaningful new tradition, no matter how small and see how it feels. Perhaps it just something self reflective this year. Then add another next year and some more the next. Soon you’ll have hand-crafted a celebration that feels just right for you and your family. This is how I started with Yule and then Easter and how I’ve been slowly shifting Thanksgiving and this year now Fourth of July. This year I'm honoring that everything feels like a lot. And that I am not the person who enjoys all of that all at once and that’s okay. We move through these seasons just like we move through the others and they all have an important role when we slow down and pay attention.
If you’d like a tarot spread to use to prompt any journaling you do for the summer solstice, my favorite is a very simple one that goes like this:
(Also, shameless plug for my Self Healers’ Summer six week tarot-inspired series that starts on Thursday. All you need to do to participate in the journalling challenge is to be subscribed to the blog. Every Thursday for the next 6 week’s I’ll be leading you through a self-reflective journaling practice using the imagery of the tarot to unlock inner wisdom from your subconscious. Read more here.)
Tag me on instagram (at beckarobinson) if you post any of your celebrations over the upcoming weeks. Or comment and let me know what you do for you and how it feels. I can’t wait to see how you reclaim.
xo, B
Becka Robinson’s (she/her) degree is in Psychology. She is a Certified Consulting Hypnotist and is trained in mimetic modalities as a way to facilitate healing from traumas both big and small. She grew up in pentecostal evangelical christianity and even served on staff in ministry before leaving at the age of 22 and has been deconstructing and sharing about it ever since. She is a neurodivergent, late blooming queer, artistpreneur and healer living in Central Florida with her husband and two kids pioneering utilizing RRT for people healing from religious trauma and reclaiming their power and agency. You can read more about her work and book a private session via her website: www.beckarobinson.com.
Thank you for being here.