Looking for summer reading recommendations, inspiring podcasts, meaningful movies, and seasonal favorites? Here’s what’s accompanying me through a slower, softer summer focused on wonder, healing, and personal growth.
Slipping Into Summer
Memorial Day weekend is often considered the unofficial kickoff to summer. Schools are wrapping up their final weeks, grills are being fired up, and families are making plans for vacations, pool days, and beach trips.
If I’m being honest, I’ve been longing for summer for much longer than that.
Maybe since early May. Perhaps even late April.
I think something inside me was simply done.
Not done with life. Not done with responsibility. Just done with the pace. Done with the heaviness. Done with pushing quite so hard.
It was like my can -> can no longer.
So I started dreaming of summer freedom.
Soft blue skies. Billowing white clouds brightened by the afternoon sun. Long evenings. Bare feet. Cold drinks over ice. A slower rhythm.
Something softer.
And eventually something had to give.
My wake and bedtimes shifted a little later than normal, to what I jokingly call my “summer hours.” My playlists changed. My reading stack changed. Even what I watched in the evenings began to shift.
Without fully realizing it, I started choosing stories filled with wonder, hope, healing, transformation, and a touch of magic.
That is how I found myself slipping into what I have privately dubbed my Summer of Magical Realism.
Now, not everything on my reading list falls neatly into fantasy or fiction. As I explored in Ease vs. Effort, I still need nourishment that helps me learn, grow, and deepen my understanding of myself and the world around me.
But this summer, I seem to be seeking that nourishment in gentler ways.
Less striving.
More wonder.
Less pressure.
More possibility.
So today I thought I would share a few of the books, shows, movies, podcasts, songs, and simple pleasures accompanying me as I settle into the season.
Listening
Podcast
Spirit Outspoken
I recently discovered this podcast and have been steadily making my way through the episodes. The conversations feel thoughtful, expansive, and spiritually grounded. It has become one of my favorite companions for morning drives, household chores, and quiet moments throughout the week.
Music
RAYE – This Music May Contain Hope
Particularly the song Click Clack Symphony.
There is something simultaneously hopeful, honest, and cinematic about this album that feels perfectly suited to summer. It has become one of those albums that seems to find its way into multiple moments throughout the day.
Reading
Looking over my reading list, I notice recurring themes of healing, identity, hope, spirituality, transformation, and becoming.
Apparently these are the lessons my soul is interested in studying this summer.
Current and upcoming reads include:
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
- The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile
- Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
- Healing What’s Within by Chuck DeGroat
- Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende
- The Justice of Jesus by Joash P. Thomas
- Paula by Isabel Allende
- Catching Hope
- The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
Interestingly, I did not intentionally set out to have an Isabel Allende summer, yet four of her books found their way onto my reading list so far. Her stories weave together family, memory, spirituality, resilience, history, and a touch of the magical, many of the same themes that seem to be calling to me during this season.
Watching
A few recent favorites include:
- The Secret: Dare to Dream
- Practical Magic
- The Secret Garden
- Beauty and the Beast
- Jane the Virgin
While very different on the surface, these stories share common threads of hope, healing, family, destiny, resilience, and transformation. They remind me that life is often more layered, mysterious, and beautiful than it first appears.
A Few Small Summer Rituals
Along with different books and stories, I’ve found myself enjoying simple seasonal rituals.
Lately that has looked like pineapple juice mixed with mineral water over ice in the early evenings, a tiny act that somehow tastes like summer.
Small pleasures matter.
Especially in a world that often encourages us to rush through our days in pursuit of the next accomplishment.
Giving Myself Permission
Looking over this list, I notice recurring themes of healing, hope, transformation, wonder, and becoming.
For a long time, I believed growth always had to feel serious.
Productive.
Intentional.
Worthy.
But this season is teaching me that growth can also arrive through stories.
Through beauty.
Through imagination.
Through music playing on a sunny afternoon and books read while summer afternoon rain rolls across the horizon.
Perhaps what I needed wasn’t less growth.
Perhaps I simply needed permission.
Permission to slow down.
Permission to choose softer things.
Permission to delight in beauty and wonder.
Permission to trust that not every season of life is meant for striving.
Some seasons are meant for becoming.
This summer, I’m allowing myself to slip into them.