09: Summer Doesn’t Feel Like A Break

Written By Denisa Nica
 

Summer is supposed to feel lighter. So why are you still tired?

If life looks good on the outside, but something still feels a little off, this might feel familiar.

In this episode, I talk about the kind of weariness that can linger even in good seasons, and what I've been noticing about it lately.

Here on Walking Anyway, we practice staying with our lives as they are instead of rushing toward how we think they should be.

In this episode, we explore:

  • why beautiful seasons can still feel demanding

  • what we often assume tiredness means

  • what we miss when we stop paying attention to what a season has required of us

If this is where you are right now, this episode might help you stop treating your tiredness like a problem to solve.

Links + Resources From This Episode:

Find Denisa Elsewhere:

  • 09. Summer Doesn’t Feel Like A Break

    I’m Denisa Nica, and welcome to Walking Anyway. You’re listening to episode 9..

    This is a podcast about living faithfully in uncertain seasons—
    when life feels unclear and nothing is quite settling yet.

    If this is your first time listening in, this is a place for anyone carrying questions of any kind and for any reason, and is not quite sure how to move through this in a way that feels steady an d true,

    If this is your experience, you’re in the right place to keep walking anyway. Each week I offer a reflection and a simple way to faithfully walk one more step.

    I’m an author and spiritual director, and the founder of The Table— a contemplative space shaped by a weekly rhythm, where women practice this kind of faithful living together,
    at their own pace, in the middle of their real lives and faith.I live in Spain, where life moves a little slower, and that has changed the way I pay attention, and the way I live inside my own life.

    This week I’m sharing what I’m learning about weariness, truth-telling, and carrying ourselves a little more gently through the rest of the summer.

    Listen in.

    A month or so ago, I came across a word that stopped me in my tracks. The word was languishing. I was reading an article in New York Times

    by Adam Grant called There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing. I’ll link it in the show notes because I think it’s worth reading.

    I remember getting halfway through the article and thinking, that’s it.

    Now, the article didn’t tell told me something I didn’t know, but it  gave me language for something I already recognized.

    Adam Grant describes languishing as the space between depression and flourishing. The place where we’re not actually depressed and not thriving either. Somewhere in the middle.

    And the more I sat with it, the more familiar it felt.

    I know what burnout feels like. I know what grief feels like.

    I know what it feels like when something is clearly wrong.

    This felt different. It felt more like those seasons when life keeps moving, and you keep moving with it, but something feels slightly muted.

    You’re functioning. You’re showing up. You’re doing the things that need to be done. But life feels a little less colorful than it once did.

    Since reading that article, I’ve started hearing echoes of it everywhere. At The Table, in spiritual direction conversations, emails, conversations with friends and if I’m honest, in my own life, in very ordinary ways.

    Someone saying, “I don’t know. I just feel tired.” Or, “Nothing is really wrong, but something feels off.” Or maybe, “I should be more content than I am.”

    And every time I hear some version of that, I find myself thinking about that word again. Languishing. Or maybe, for the sake of this conversation, weariness.

    Because that’s the word I keep coming back to. And perhaps it’s especially noticeable this time of year. It’s July and summer comes with its own set of expectations. Maybe not consciously, but they’re there.

    This idea that summer is supposed to be the season when we finally exhale. The season when life gets lighter. In summer, we get to rest, enjoy ourselves. Summer, it’s when we finally have time.

    And if not now, when? Because before you know it, September is around the corner and everything starts up again.

    Summer has definitely arrived here in Spain. As I’m recording this, the beaches are full, the cafés are louder, and finding parking near the sea requires both patience and prayer.

    I live on the southern coast of Spain, and one of the things people learn about me pretty quickly is that I love the sea.

    I’ve always loved the sea. There’s something about looking out toward the horizon that settles me.

    I’ve read that looking into the distance for 45 seconds can help regulate the nervous system. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that something in me relaxes when I can see a wide open horizon.

    These days I can reach the Mediterranean in about eight minutes.

    Sometimes I’ll drive down there early in the morning before the heat settles in and stand by the water for a few minutes. I have a theory that the sea and the sunshine make everything at least forty percent better.

    I can’t prove that scientifically, but I’m standing by it.

    There is beauty here. Real beauty. There are answered prayers everywhere I look. And still, I can be tired.

    This is our third summer in Spain. And I think I assumed that by now things would feel more settled. Not perfect, just..more familiar.

    There’s something about rebuilding a life that takes more energy than you realize while you’re doing it.

    You don’t notice it at first because you’re busy solving the next problem, learning the next system, figuring out where things are, finding your footing. You just keep going.

    And then one day you stop long enough to realize how much energy it has all required.

    Maybe that’s why this word landed so deeply for me. Not because something was wrong. Because it gave me language for something I was already experiencing.

    Maybe you’ve felt something similar - maybe you didn’t move countries but maybe life has asked something of you. Perhaps you’ve spent the last few years caring for aging parents, navigating a difficult relationship, maybe you’ve been grieving or have been holding a family together. Or you’ve simply been trying to show up faithfully to the life in front of you.

    Whatever it is, life has a way of requiring more from us than we notice while we’re busy living it. And of course my mind immediately wants to argue with me. Maybe yours does too. A voice shows up and says, “Yes, but you have so much to be grateful for.” Which is true.

    I live beside the Mediterranean, after all. And the longer I live, the less interested I am in arguing with reality. And I suspect God is even less interested in arguing with reality than I am.So much of my spiritual life has been learning to tell the truth about what is actually here instead of rushing toward what I think should be here.

    Sometimes two things are true at the same time. You can be deeply grateful and genuinely weary. You can love your life and still find it demanding. You can be surrounded by beauty and still feel the weight of a very full season. A Christian writer recently reminded me that the good things are often the arduous things, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that sentence. Because when I look at my own life, it’s true.

    The things that have shaped me most have also asked the most of me. The people I love. The work I care about. Marriage. Friendship. Building a life. Remaining present through seasons I’d rather rush through. None of those things are bad. They’re meaningful. And meaningful things ask something of us.

    I think that’s one reason weariness can be difficult to talk about. Most of us aren’t talking about things we hate. We’re talking about the people and places we’ve given our hearts to. Which means that admitting we’re tired can sometimes feel dangerously close to admitting we’re ungrateful. At least it can for me. But I’ve never found those two things to be connected. Gratitude doesn’t erase weariness. And weariness doesn’t erase gratitude. Most of the time they sit together at the same table.

    And maybe that’s why I’ve been wondering if weariness deserves a little more compassion than we usually give it. Not endless analysis or diagnosis, just compassion. The kind that looks honestly at a season and says: “Of course you’re tired. Look at what this season has required of you.”

    As I’ve been thinking about all of this, I’ve noticed something else. When we’re tired, our instinct is often to ask: What should I do, try harder at? What should I fix? And maybe these are not the right questions.

    Because when I feel this kind of weariness, my instinct is usually to assume that what I need is rest. More rest. Better rest. A few days off. A weekend away. An empty calendar.

    And sometimes that’s exactly what’s needed. I love silence and solitude. I love retreat houses and sitting beside the sea with a book and nowhere I need to be.

    There are seasons when the most faithful thing we can do is stop. But I’ve also noticed that sometimes I get the thing I thought I needed and it doesn’t quite touch the deeper weariness. The vacation ends, the weekend passes. And somehow I find myself in the same place. Still tired, still a little disconnected from my own life. Not miserable, or depressed. Just not quite as alive as I’d like to be.

    And that’s what I’ve been wondering about this summer. What actually nourishes us? Because if languishing is what happens when life feels drained of color, then maybe the question isn’t “How do we escape our lives?”

    Maybe the question is “How do we allow life to reach us again?” Maybe weariness isn’t always asking for less of something Maybe sometimes it’s asking for more of something, more presence.

    When we’re tired, we often assume the answer is absence - taking time off so we get more space. A quieter calendar. A little less being needed by everyone else. And sometimes that’s exactly what’s needed.

    But I’ve also noticed that some forms of weariness aren’t healed by absence. They’re healed by presence. By paying attention to our lives again. By noticing where we've drifted away from ourselves and gently returning. And by adding something instead of taking away something. That’s why I keep coming back to the word nourishment.

    But I’ve been wondering lately if relief and nourishment are actually different things. Because sometimes the things that bring relief don’t necessarily bring me back to life. Relief helps me step away for a little while. Nourishment helps me return. And I think I’ve spent a lot of years assuming those were the same thing. And often nourishment arrives through surprisingly ordinary things.

    What comes to mind as I say this, is my niece Gloria. She’s four years old and completely delightful. Golden curls, bright blue eyes, and the kind of smile that makes you wonder how one small person can carry that much joy around. When I was in Romania a few weeks ago, we spent an afternoon together pretending to run a gelato stand. We invented ridiculous flavors, took turns being the customer and the owner, and conducted very serious business negotiations over imaginary ice cream. Later we walked into town hand in hand, eating actual ice cream and discussing important matters like where we should go next. Nothing particularly important happened that afternoon.

    Nobody’s problems were solved, the future remained exactly as uncertain as it had been that morning. And yet when I look back on that trip, that’s one of the moments I remember most clearly. For a little while, I wasn’t carrying tomorrow around with me.

    I was simply there. And I felt alive. I actually felt more myself than I had in a while. Maybe because children have a way of pulling us into the moment we’re actually living instead of the one we’re already worrying about. For an afternoon, I wasn’t rehearsing the future. I was eating ice cream with a four-year-old.

    I want to leave you with a simple question this week. Actually, three questions.

    At the center of a page, write: “What nourishes me?” Then draw three arrows. And write beside each one: “Where, Who, What.”

    Where do you come alive? Who helps you come alive? And what are you doing when you feel most awake to your own life? Maybe it’s the friend you always leave feeling lighter after you’ve spent time together. Maybe it’s an afternoon in the kitchen when a cake is cooling on the counter. Maybe it’s a walk by the sea. Maybe it’s somewhere else entirely. You don’t have to justify your answers, or earn them. You’re simply paying attention to what helps your soul lean forward. Paying attention to what brings a little color back into our days.

    Because I’ve found that life has a way of reaching us when we’re paying attention. Usually not through dramatic breakthroughs, but through ordinary moments that arrive quietly and almost unnoticed. Maybe that’s what I’ve been circling around in this episode. Not how to become less weary. But how to keep living faithfully in the middle of an ordinary life.

    How to notice the people, places, and practices that help us come alive. And perhaps that’s what walking anyway looks like in a season of weariness. Not pushing through, but remaining open. Taking one small step toward what nourishes us. We’re not trying to become a better version of ourselves or to squeeze more out of life. God created us to be fully alive.

    I’ve come to believe that faithfulness looks less like pushing harder and more like paying attention to what helps our souls lean forward. Trusting that God is already there.

    Before we go, I want to leave you with these words from Jesus in Matthew 11: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” This is the Word of God. It is true and it can be trusted.

    Thanks for listening to episode 9 of Walking Anyway.

    I hope this simple practice of naming where God is quietly meeting you in the middle of your right now life, helps you keep walking anyway. Some seasons don’t arrive as crisis, they arrive as weariness, and sometimes the invitation is to simply follow where grace moves and receive its gifts.

    Because the way you’re walking through this—right in the middle of what hasn’t settled yet— is already forming something steady in you.

    If you’re wanting a place to actually practice this—not just think about it—you can begin with a 21-day guest seat inside The Table. It’s a quiet space where you learn to stay with God in your real life and  where you don’t have to do that on your own.

    If this episode resonated with you, you can follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes come out every Tuesday. And if someone came to mind while you were listening today, maybe send this episode to them too.

    As always, you can find me at denisaonica.com., or on Instagram at denisa.o.nica. I’d love to see you there. As you step back into your day, notice what stayed with you, and let that be enough for today. And just like light moving through a room— you don’t need to see everything at once to keep living faithfully here.

    I’ll leave you with Mary Oliver’s words from a poem called The Messenger: “My work is loving the world. Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.”

    Thanks for listening, and  I’ll be here with you next time.

    Description text goes here

Download the transcript
 
Back to all episodes
Denisa Nica
Next

08: When You Realize You Can’t Fix This