🌞 Growing Around Grief: What Summer Teaches Us

Geri Watson
Jan 9
3 min read

Summer arrives with a kind of boldness — long days, warm nights, fireflies rising from the grass like tiny lanterns. The world feels expansive, alive, overflowing with color and sound. But when you’re grieving, summer can feel strangely out of sync with your inner world.

The brightness can feel too bright.

The joy can feel too loud.

The pace of life can feel too fast.

And yet, summer has its own quiet lessons for grieving hearts — lessons about growth, resilience, and the ways we learn to live alongside our loss.

🌿 Grief Doesn’t Disappear in the Sunlight

There’s a cultural myth that summer is a season of ease — vacations, celebrations, gatherings, laughter. But grief doesn’t take time off. It doesn’t soften just because the days are longer.

You might feel:

Out of place in joyful spaces
Exhausted by social expectations
Tender around traditions or memories
Surprised by waves of sadness on sunny days

This doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong.

It means grief is part of your landscape — and landscapes don’t change overnight.

🌱 Summer Shows Us That Growth Is Not Always Visible

Look closely at a summer garden and you’ll see something important: growth is happening everywhere, even in places that look still.

Roots deepen underground. Branches strengthen quietly. New leaves unfurl without fanfare.

Grief works the same way.

You may not feel like you’re healing.

You may not see progress.

You may not recognize your own resilience.

But you are growing — slowly, quietly, in ways that may only become clear later.

🌾 We Don’t “Move On” — We Grow Around the Grief

There’s a well‑known idea in grief work: we don’t get smaller around our grief; we grow larger around it.

Summer embodies this truth.

Plants don’t erase what came before — they grow around it.

Trees don’t forget their storms — they widen their rings.

Flowers don’t deny the darkness — they rise through it.

You are doing the same.

Your grief remains part of you, but so does your capacity to keep living, loving, remembering, and becoming.

🌤️ Summer Invites Us to Rest and Restore

Even in its fullness, summer holds pockets of rest:

A shady tree
A slow morning
A warm breeze
A quiet evening walk
A moment of stillness at sunset

Grief is exhausting.

Summer reminds us that rest is not indulgence — it is nourishment.

Let yourself slow down.

Let yourself soften.

Let yourself be held by the season.

🌺 A Gentle Summer Ritual for Growing Around Grief

If you want to honor this season, here is a simple ritual to support your heart:

1. Step outside and notice one thing that is growing.

A leaf, a vine, a blade of grass. Let it remind you that growth can be subtle.

2. Hold a small object from nature.

A stone, a flower, a shell, a fallen leaf. Let it ground you in the present moment.

3. Speak one sentence of truth.

It might be:

“I am growing, even if I can’t see it.”
“My grief is part of me, not all of me.”
“I am learning to live with this.”

4. Close with a breath of gratitude.

Not for the loss — but for your own resilience.

🌞 Summer Teaches Us That Life and Loss Coexist

Summer is a season of abundance, but it is also a season of memory. The warmth can bring back moments you shared with the person you miss. The light can illuminate the places where their absence feels sharp.

This coexistence — of joy and sorrow, of warmth and ache — is not a contradiction. It is the truth of being human.

You are allowed to feel both.

You are allowed to grow and grieve at the same time.

You are allowed to carry your love forward in your own way.