Grow Wild Summer Girl

I remember her well.  My teenage summer girl.  I was fortunate enough to spend my summers a house built by my great great greats in a small village near the beach.  We had a group of other families that spent summers with us in their houses built by their great great greats and we spent our days together at the beach, picking blackberries, making jam, playing dominos and guitars late into the summer nights and just doing what comes next in summer.   There was lots of time to entertain ourselves so I spent hours embroidering chambray shirts, painting rocks, making things like friendship bracelets and reading on my bed on the porch.  My sheets were delightfully mismatched, laundry was hung on the line and sandy towels hung over the balcony every day after the beach.  No TV...lots of quiet time for a girl to spend just being who she was.  The way she came to this world with her true wild guiding her.  I yearn for that feeling, of just being absorbed in the business of summer.  Barefoot with messy hair, my freckles glowing from days in the sun.  My mom's blackberry pie for breakfast, reading late at night out on the porch in my bed with a flashlight.  The time when I was just me, before life got a hold of me and shook me all around.  I miss my summer girl.....

I've decided it's time to bring her back in every way that I can. I've decided to take back my summer and bring back that girl.   While I cannot leave my job or spend hours a day, every day at the beach. I can grab onto moments of summer girl pursuits.  And I have enlisted a few friends to do the same, I've gathered a tribe and it took just a moment of sharing my thoughts with a few friends who shouted "I'M IN" without hesitation because  clearly we all need this.  I'll be sharing ideas and the ways that we join together  from where we are, to live a summer girl life.  It will be different for everyone but I know that there is a way to find that part of you that you've been missing.  We take care of so many other people and things, life gets a little hectic and heavy sometimes.   Put it down just a bit, the should dos and business of being busy. Remember what summer is for. Your kids, they can entertain themselves without you for a bit, or if they can't...train them.  Teach them to be summer kids.  Take off your shoes and walk in the grass, find a book you want to read and curl up in a cozy spot and give yourself an hour.  Float in water, paint rocks and have pie for breakfast.  The world will not come apart if you fall back into yourself. I promise...it just won't.  

There's a wild, wild whisper
Blowin' in the wind
Callin' out my name
Like a long lost friend
Oh, I miss those days
As the years go by
Oh, nothin' sweeter than summertime
And American honey

~Lady Antebellum!  

I'll be sharing lots of good summer girl ideas but my first is to gather a reading list and make some  friendship bracelets for my tribe. There are tons of tutorials and YouTube videos out there..I'm starting with this one

http://www.the-red-kitchen.com/2012/01/lots-of-knots-friendship-bracelet.html

Come with me won't you, gather a group of girlfriends who also are feeling a bit like adulting has taken a bite out of them.  Find ways to immerse yourselves even for small pieces of time in what it was like to just be you.  A summer camp for your soul....Can you imagine if all the girls you know decided to do the same.  I think your world and mine would be a better place full of happier women giving themselves over to just being who they are and doing things that make them happy .  Less social media, more reading with flashlights.   I desperately need to let go of all the stuff that has been weighing down my world, not quit it all but put it in it's place.  Get right with myself and embroider my jeans and for goodness sake.... lighten up.  Back to the girl I have missed so much.  Let your hair free, turn your face to the sun and listen to that whisper calling your name. I will be doing a series of blogposts about the Summer Girl Life....I hope you will come along with me and summer the heck out of this Summer.  Welcome home summer girl, grow wild and free.

<3 

B