Let’s be honest — summer is complicated for moms.

On one hand: no school schedule, more time together, sunshine, and freedom. On the other: no routine, constant togetherness, endless needs, and the pressure to make it all magical.

In this episode, I get real about why so many Catholic moms have a love/hate relationship with summer.

We talk about:
* Why the “summer should be fun” expectation sets moms up to fail
* The real reason you feel overwhelmed when school ends
* How to build a loose rhythm that gives you structure without rigidity
* Finding genuine joy in the messy, unplanned moments

If you liked this episode, you’ll also enjoy:
 Summer Jealousy: When Other Moms’ Lives Look Better
 Family Vacation Survival Guide for Catholic Moms (Best Of)
 Summer Goals That Actually Work for Busy Moms

If you want to walk through summer — and every other season — with more peace and less survival mode, that’s what we build together inside Mary’s Heart Martha’s Order. Come join us at catholicmomcalm.com/marysheart

And if you’re anything like me and a lot of my clients, you realize pretty quickly, oh, I don’t do that. I don’t ask myself, how am I feeling? And what do I need? But you get to do that 10 times a day. And I promise you, if you start doing that 10 times a day. You will start meeting your own needs.  

Of course we’re scared to ask because we think that the answer is going to be. Kind of the million dollars or a new car, something that feels out of reach. But a lot of times it’s just like, I just need a hug. Or I need some water. I need to get up and move my body a little bit. I need to check in with the Lord.  

So two simple questions. It only takes a minute. To ask them and to think about the answer, but. We’ll help you build trust with yourself to do that you’re paying attention to you, that you’re looking out for you. And not just all the people that you have to take care of.  

So today I want to talk about why summer? Like why we have a love, hate relationship with summer. Most Americans love the idea of summer. We’re like summer is so fun and we’re not in school and we go to the beach and we have popsicles, or I don’t know, we just have this like deeply embedded code into our brain. That summer is so fun. 

Summer’s fun. Summer needs to be fun. And somewhere along the way. I don’t know when. But we started to feel a lot of pressure to make summer really memorable.  I had a touch of that. I remember a touch of that. In the nineties. 

So I was born in 84. So by 94, I was 10. You know, so by the late nineties, early two thousands.  I remember thinking. I think some of my friends have a more fun summer than I do, but looking back. My brain just thought that was summer camp. Some of my friends went to camp. And I didn’t go to camp. 

I remember sitting around my house. I mean, really bored. There were a couple places I could walk that I was allowed to walk to. How did TV? I don’t remember sitting around watching a lot of TV in the summer though. So it must not have been very interesting. Which probably is true at that time.

But anyway, somewhere between. Then. I feel like I had a touch of it then, but definitely now . We feel so much pressure. To have a fun summer. I saw one of those. Pictures where someone says summer bucket list and they listed all the things and it stressed me out. I collected my chest tightened up and I was like, oh, there’s a lot of stuff on that list which is fine. 

If you’re one of those moms loves to do all the things for the summer and you love it. It’s fine. That’s great. But when I think I have to have, like make the summer fun for my kids, like that’s my job. It stresses me out a little bit. And then, and I have six kids too, so it’s not really that easy to do some of the things.  

And I know cause I’ve been a mom for 14 years now. That you know, taking the kids to the beach of the lake. Like you got to plan all the food and you gotta make sure you have all this stuff, and then they’re going to track sand everywhere, and then everyone’s going to be tired afterwards. Like it’s a whole rigor. We’re roll.  

And that’s not a problem, but I don’t tell myself that it’s fun for me. And so I think we have this love, hate relationship because one, we do love the sun. And in our minds, we also love sitting by the water or going to the pool, but then. That nostalgic sparkly feeling. And the fantasy of it. Meets the reality of it. And they clash so hard. The reality clashes so hard.  

And then we have what we call cognitive dissonance, which we were trying to hold to. Different views in our mind at the same time, which is summer is fun. And then like, this is awful. So the two thought some version of that, right? I thought this was going to be great. And it’s not. Like don’t we wait all year for summer. 

I’ll just be honest. I’m a redhead. Summer’s not my favorite season, but I know it’s almost all of my friends. Favorite season. So I know it’s very common and I’m just going to pretend that I’m them for this podcast. And I’m like so exciting. It’s summer get to do all these things. And then the reality of it is not quite as sparkly. 

And it stretches our brain a little bit, our brains, like, ah, it hurts. I thought this was supposed to be great. And it’s not that great. So, and what do you think your brain is going to assume? So you must be doing it wrong. Summer is probably great for everyone else, but not you. You’re doing it wrong. You’re a mess. You can’t get it together. Or you have terrible kids and that’s your fault too.  

And so it’s just confusing. And I think actually it’s just those two things together that then makes us angry. We feel angry. That is a pretty common emotion for moms in the summer. Is actually anger. And I think. It’s because of just this one, two punch where we’re like, it’s going to be great. Actually. It’s just life with kids. It’s not even that it’s terrible. It’s just life with kids is not relaxing.  

So if you think summer is going to be fun and relaxing. And then you just turn out you just have kids. It often makes us feel. Angry and underneath the anger is shame or fear. You know, something’s wrong with us. We’re broken. We’re screwing up the kids. It’s never going to be better. All those feelings. Okay. 

So I just want to tell you. You don’t have to feel all of those things. I go into summer being like, Hey. There are some things we get to do during the summertime. That we don’t get to do other times for our family. It is the kids are outside a lot more during the day, which is nice. And I’ll tell you a little bit about how we set that up. So it doesn’t drive me bananas. 

And then, the kids go camping. I go camping with them once or twice. They do a little bit more camping with my husband than that. And then we go to the lake and it’s so funny because as soon as it’s sunny, which has already happened, the kids are like, let’s go to the lake. I’m like, no, no. That frigid Northern Idaho lake is very cold. Like, we’re not going there. 

And so it has to warm up enough in order for lake life to be fun, but it will. And we will go to the lake, but I know exactly what that means. I went to the lake with the children last year. I know what it looks like, and I choose to do it. I like that we go, I just don’t tell myself that I’m going to go sit at the lake and read a book. And feel calm in my body. 

I’m going to go and I’m going to feel alert. I actually like to feel playful. I like to go and splash around in the water with the kids. And I didn’t get to do that for a long time because I always had a baby and none of my babies liked the water. But now my youngest will be four. And he did not like the water last year, but I think this will be the year that he likes it. And then we can all be in the water.  

And I will just resign myself to whatever food we choose to do. So we will either do. Healthy food, which takes me more time to prep. Or we will do grab and go food that isn’t as healthy and I’m not going to feel terrible about that. That’s how I’m going to think about it. And I’m going to take, I’m going to give us way more time to get there. Then we think it should. 

It takes so long. You guys, it takes so long. To get children in bathing suits in a car. I don’t understand. I don’t know that we go places all the time, but the time it takes to pack. For any kind of water experience. It’s just insane, but I know that. So I will literally in my mind be like, it’s going to take us 40 minutes to do that for zero 40.  

But this is how I don’t have an angry mom summer.  Because then when someone’s like, I only have the top of my bathing suit. I can’t find the bottom, even though we used them yesterday.  I’ll be like, okay. Well, we’ve got time. Let’s look for it. I don’t need to be angry because what I expected to happen is what’s happening. 

I may not have known what was going to take us 40 minutes. To get in the car, but I knew it was going to take 40 minutes. And so. This is how I think we make, I like to make memories in the summer. I don’t tell myself I’m going to have a lot of fun.  

I’m just like, I want to make some memories. And I don’t want to be angry. That’s kind of my goal. I don’t like being a yelling mom or an angry mom. and I’m really not. I promise you guys that you can learn tools. To not be grumpy with your kids all the time. 

And of course I have frustration, but then I resolve it, right? Like it’s the first time in summer, when you say, okay, kids, you have to go outside and then they immediately come in and they’re like, well I need some water. Well, I had to go to the bathroom. Well, I wanted my doll. I’m like, you can’t even take your dog outside anyway. No. 

Like. They just stack up and then your thermometers rising through that time. Right? You’re like, oh my gosh, this is nuts. And I don’t even know for you moms with older kids, I didn’t even know. What it looks like to have. You know, my friend called me and can you drive me to her house? We don’t have any of that yet. We don’t have to please drive me to my friend’s house yet. 

Or my friends and I are going to the beach. I don’t even. That’s like a whole other thing, but I know it’s solvable. And so it’s fine that things come up that are new and we feel frustration, but you want to just notice who I feel really frustrated right now. Why is that? 

And one question I like to ask my brain is. What did I think should be happening? Because again, you’re just having that cognitive dissonance where you thought it was going to be one way, and then it’s turning out to be a very different way. And it’s funny how the feeling we have over that is anger. 

So it’s just like, whoa, Sterling. I see that you’re annoyed or frustrated right now. Like what did you think should happen? And then my brain would be like, well I thought the kids should leave the house. And go play outside and not come back for two and a half hours. Like okay. Well, obviously children don’t do that. Unless you enable them.To do what they need to do. 

So we actually made a drinking fountain outside, which is pretty fun. We had like a spicket, like a water spicket. And then we, I don’t know how we did it. It looks like a drinking fountain though. It’s pretty cool. So we solved the water problem. I’d be like, how are we going to solve the fact that kids want water? 

And then I would also be like, you all have to go to the bathroom right now, before you go outside. That significantly increases the likelihood that they will stay outside. And then, I will tell the big enough kids like can you’ve gone to the bathroom. You can come in one time, if you absolutely have to. Because let’s be honest, you might pee. 

And then an hour later, you might need to poo and you didn’t need to an hour before. And, you know that’s just how the body works. We have been talking about building like a composting house in the backyard. So that they could go. To the bathroom outside and noncom. Inside for the summer, but we’ve not done that. And not everybody lives in the country and can’t do that. 

So there’s just like setting yourself up for success on the water bathroom front, and then also just managing your mind around them, coming in and be like, yep, you can come right in. You can do that. And then you can leave and it’s going to require some training. But it’s probably worth it. We have the whole summer to figure this out.  

I want you to feel empowered in your own life and not disempowered. Feeling disempowered or is when you’re like, I hate what’s happening and I can’t do anything about it. And these kids are walking all over me and I’m stuck here and I can’t get out of here and I can’t make it better.  That’s when we’re angry. It’s just a fight response. Your stress since a fight response. 

But instead we can just go. Okay, well what did I think should happen? And then just be reasonable. Like, did you really think? All six of your kids were going to stay outside for three solid hours and not need anything.  

Actually, as I said there right now,  maybe I would have a halfway through bathroom break where I’d be like, are you guys, you’re gonna be outside for three hours halfway through, I’m going to come out. I’m going to get everybody. And we’re going to do a bathroom break and then maybe I’ll give them a snack. Then I could control and that was happening. I liked that plan.  

And so you would just get to decide a bunch of these things. But the problem is, I think mom’s just like they’re putting out fires and fires and fires and they’re just living through the summer and they’re never getting ahead of it.  

And so I want you this year to really sit down and think like, well, how do you want the summer to feel. If you think, it’s going to be fun and relaxing. You’re going to be. Disappointed and probably upset.  

If you want to make memories and not yell at your kids, that’s totally possible. If I want to feel relaxed at the lake, I will go with one of my friends without the kids. I’m going to do that. I’m going to do a mom’s night out at the lake with no kids. It’s going to be pretty fun. And free, which is cool.  

So. This is what my brain sounds like. I’m trying to just give you. A picture of how I think about the summer. Because it doesn’t stress me out. I just don’t let it. I just only do the things that I want to do. And sometimes when I say want, I mean, I’ve decided I’m going to do it.  

You know, I may not be like, This is my favorite activity, but I’ve decided we’re doing it. And so I’m going to do it in a way where I show up, not angry and we make memories. Also, you don’t have to do anything over the summer.  

We have all been trained to say, what are you doing this summer? Your friends are gonna start asking you that. What are you doing this summer? I wish I could get everyone to stop asking that question. Because implied in that question is that you should be doing something.  

And if you’re not, I just want you to say we’re hanging out. That’s what we’re doing this summer. We’re hanging out in the sun, which is what summer is for. That’s what we’re doing. I’m not going anywhere. We’re not doing anything special. We’re just hanging out this summer. 

That used to be a perfectly acceptable answer. I think it still is. I think it’s just in our own minds, we think it isn’t and we kind of scramble and we’re like, oh, I have to say that we’re doing something. And some people do, some people do fantastical things. We don’t. We go camping in the middle of nowhere. So not even like a schmancy place. 

And then we do happen to live by a lake. So we go to the lake, but before, you know, when we lived in Boise, there was no lake. Yeah. When we lived in Boise, I don’t think I said we did anything for the summer. There was a Catholic family camp. Near Boise and all the families would get together and go camping for these three or four days.  

I guess that’s what we did for the summer. That was like the unusual thing we did. Other than that, we just lived. We just lived sprinkler life. We just hung out at home. And I do. More fun and creative things with kids over the summer. I just let it be spontaneous and I just don’t make it mean anything. If I don’t. 

So. This is your permission. You don’t have to do anything over the summer. That is a modern idea. And we don’t have to adopt it. And I think what you really want is not to be angry at your kids over the summer. Not to be annoyed and frustrated and angry. I think that’s what most of us really want. 

So last year we did this really fun workshop called Keep Your Cool, where we invited moms to plan everything for the summer. And that is almost available. We actually have created a super fun summer bundle for moms, which includes the Keep Your Cool Workshop, a Course on Setting Boundaries, our new money course, AI for Moms, and then back to school planning. 

And then some of you like to do back to school planning now, and some of you do it a little bit later, but all of those are gonna be available on Monday as a summer bundle for moms, because I think we wanna do all of those things. Over the summer at our own pace, so stay tuned for details about that. 

But I wanted to give you the principles of a Keep Your Cool Summer, because they’re very simple and I think everyone should do them. In the summer, you’re gonna just ask yourself, what are the snack rules? What are the screen time rules? Are we teaching the kids anything new this summer? I like teaching the kids a new chore over the summer. Like we take the whole summer and each kid learns a new chore. 

And what are the activities that you’re gonna sign them up for? Do you need to buy anything in advance? Do you need to pay for it? Do you need to sign a release form? Are there camping trips? Do you have sunscreen? Like we know the problems that come up in the summer. Just sit down for one hour and think about the summer when you’re not stressed.  

Are they allowed to get food all the time? Can they wake up and watch a movie? They’re gonna be asking you these questions, so you should answer them for yourself first. Are you traveling? When you have a really good plan, you give yourself permission to think I have a plan. And that thought makes you feel peaceful. So in a roundabout way, planning does give you peace. 

I am also gonna challenge you to pray for 10 minutes, to plan for 10 minutes, and to do some sort of exercise for 10 minutes every day over the summer. I just know if I can get you to do those three things. Every day or most of the days, your summer will be so much better. It’s amazing. How 10 minutes of planning. We’ll make your day so much better. 

And so we’re going to do that all together. Let us be, not yelling moms this summer. That’s what you really want. Not to be a yelling mom. You want to make memories with your kids and not feel anger in your body every day. And I can help you with that. I am gonna be hosting a summer q and a on Friday, June 13th at 8:00 AM Pacific, 11 Eastern. Totally free. I want you to come and just ask me a bunch of questions. 

I have been coaching moms on the summer for years, so just come  and tell me what your brain is scared about, and it might be practical things like screen time rules or. Getting everyone from the house to the car to go to VBS. How do we do that without yelling? 

And it might be mindset stuff. It might be, I’m really frustrated. I’m in a really difficult season of life right now and I don’t know how to feel good about it. I just keep waking up with dread and not looking forward to things. But I want to help the moms. 

So I thought, I’m gonna do this summer q and a, you’re just gonna come and you’re either gonna come on video and ask me questions, but you don’t have to. You can just put them. In a Q and A box and ask me questions. I’m gonna answer as many questions as I can in an hour and a half.

And I think you’re gonna find that it’s really helpful and it’s gonna give you the feeling of hope for the summer. Wow, I really think that we could make memories this summer and not yell as much. And I think that’s really what moms want. The tools are simple, and I’ll remind you on that call. To pray for 10 minutes a day, to plan for 10 minutes a day, and to move your body for 10 minutes a day. I’m gonna encourage everybody to do that. 

And then let us just be, let us just be in the house, be with the Lord, be with the kids, and most of all, be with ourselves,  to speak kindly to ourselves in our own minds. That  is a game changer for the summer. I wanna be nice to myself this summer. I wanna enjoy the experience of being with myself. 

All right, my friends.Go to catholicmomcalm.com/summerqa. But the link is in the show notes, and I’m sure it’ll be posted everywhere that we post things. And even if you just go to catholicmomcalm.com, we’ll have a banner that says Summer q and a. It’s free. You can sign up Friday, June 13th. At eight Pacific 11 Eastern. Yes. I will send out a replay so if you know you can’t come, just sign up and we’ll send out the replay after we get it. 

Alright, I am praying for you. Please pray for me. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.