Coming Home After Summer

The day after arriving home from summer vacation, I walked into my regular yoga practice and told my instructors that I wasn’t in a particularly good place. I hoped that returning to the mat, to my breath, and to something familiar might slowly bring me back to center, to help me find my gravity again.

It had been a blessed summer, filled with abundance, travel, family, and experiences I am deeply grateful for. And yet, beneath all of that fullness, there had also been a growing sense of emotional disconnection within myself.

I often write that I like getting lost. I dive because I love disappearing beneath the surface for a while. I hike into unfamiliar places and enjoy not quite knowing what is around the next corner. There is a kind of freedom in choosing to lose your bearings when you know, eventually, you will find your way back.

But this August, I was truly lost.

I’m not even talking about the post-vacation blues; the sense of lostness had already started during the vacation.

It has been a while since I wrote this kind of inward-looking article, but I suppose writing it is also part of how I am processing this transition and finding my footing again. Movement, breath, meditation, writing—these are some of the practices that help me regulate and reset. Familiar rituals that usually bring me back into my body and give my mind room to settle.

However,  this isn’t really a story about how to reset. But if you, too, have ever felt a little lost in a season that was supposed to feel wonderful, perhaps something in this reflection will resonate with you.

Summer

Summer has always carried a certain romance. The longer days, the warmth, the beaches, the flights, the permission to stay out later and let ordinary routines loosen around the edges. Summer is sold to us as a season of relaxation, as though stepping away from structure automatically means that the body and mind will know how to rest.

But there is another side to that freedom.

When we leave our normal routines, we also leave behind many of the things that keep us grounded. We move between places, people, plans, airports, hotel rooms, and family homes. There is always something happening, something to look forward to, somewhere else to go. It can feel wonderful—the novelty, the anticipation, the adrenaline of being outside ordinary life. So much was happening at once that, amid all that excitement, I had left myself very little space to absorb it, let alone notice what I was feeling.

For those of us who live far from where we grew up, summer is also often the time of year when we go home to see family we may only see once a year. Therefore, we want to be present. We want to make the most of the time we have together. So for that month, we pour so much of our energy into family. It can be deeply nourishing and, at the same time, surprisingly draining. I don’t think those two things contradict each other.

My days were full. My mind was full. And emotionally, there was more happening inside me than I was allowing myself to recognize. Without the familiar structures that normally bring me back to myself, I stayed suspended in that unstable state longer than I realized.

And look, life was wonderful. I don’t want any of this to sound ungrateful, because I wasn’t. But even if you played your favorite song every day, again and again, eventually you’d need a little silence.

Just because you’re on summer vacation doesn’t necessarily mean you’re actually on vacation. There is a difference between going to a party and partying, right?

And then, of course, the drama queen in me came fully to the surface.

Here we go.

The stories became bigger. Somewhere along the way, an entire ten-season soap opera had started playing in my head—and yes! I was binge-watching my own drama all month long.

I May Be Wrong

Before I left for my regular yoga practice, I was choosing a book to read during the commute, and somehow I found myself returning to I May Be Wrong. This time, I picked up the English edition.

I had first read the book in Chinese before. Written by Björn Natthiko Lindeblad, a former business executive who left his career to become a Buddhist forest monk, I May Be Wrong is a deeply personal reflection on uncertainty, impermanence, and our tendency to believe the stories our minds tell us.

I had bought this particular copy in Dubai, which marked the beginning of my summer travels. It was meant to be a gift for someone going through a difficult time, in the hope that the book might offer some of the perspective and steadiness I had found in it myself. But for reasons I couldn’t quite explain at the time, I never gave it away. Somewhere deep down, I had a feeling that perhaps I needed this book more than the person I had intended it for. So it stayed with me and eventually traveled home in my suitcase.

A month later, it turned out I was right.

I was the one who needed it.

I’m going to try my best not to give away too much about the book, because I think part of its beauty is discovering it for yourself. What I can say is that I found it deeply therapeutic, not because it tries to teach you Buddhism or how to master meditation, and certainly not because it gives you a formula for how to live. In fact, much of its wisdom is surprisingly simple.

Don’t believe everything your mind tells you. Accept that nothing is permanent. Loosen your need to know what happens next. Be kind.

These aren’t exactly revolutionary ideas. Most of us have probably heard some version of them before. But there is a difference between knowing something and being able to live it when your own mind is running a ten-season soap opera.

The first time I read the book, I understood those ideas.

This time, I needed them.

Faith

The theme of that day’s yoga practice was faith. Not faith in the sense of taking a leap and hoping everything will somehow work out, but something deeper: trusting the path without needing to know exactly where it leads. Trusting the unknown. Trusting the body. Trusting that perhaps not everything needs to be understood, solved, or controlled before we can take the next step.

That last one landed particularly hard.

What had exhausted me most wasn’t only everything that had happened over the summer—although, yes, that was certainly part of it—but how hard my mind had been working to make sense of all of it. I was holding onto stories, replaying what had happened and what hadn’t, taking stock of the year behind me while already trying to anticipate the months ahead.

Add to that the anticipation, the adrenaline, the excitement, the family goodbyes, and all the beautiful things I was fortunate enough to experience. My nervous system tank was overflowing. Apparently, it had reached capacity weeks ago.

So, after a good cry in the shower, I closed my eyes, sat there calmly, and spoke to my Buddha:

I will give myself fully to the present. Please give me the strength to reset. It’s a promise between us.

And then I stopped asking for answers.

I could hear my breathing again.

Then my ex-husband knocked on the WhatsApp door with a real-life drama.

And just like that—welcome home.

Let It Be

As I close this reflection, I hope that wherever you are, and whatever kind of summer you have had, the pieces are slowly coming together for you, too.

Over the summer, I also completed the Women’s Health and Wellness program at Harvard Medical School. In the weeks and months ahead, I know that much of what I learned—about the body, stress, health, and how we care for ourselves at different stages of life—will find its way into my work here and, perhaps, into whatever work awaits me beyond it. There is so much I want to explore more deeply, especially around what it actually means to regulate, reset, and build a life that our bodies can live well inside.

There is also a new project that began taking shape behind the scenes over the summer, one that will allow me to explore some of these conversations in a different way. When the timing feels right, I will share more detail of it.

Until then, let what has happened settle. Let what hasn’t happened remain unfinished. Let tomorrow arrive in its own timing.

I don’t know exactly what the rest of forty-two will look like. I don’t know how every story will begin and end, but I am slowly making peace with the fact that I was never meant to.

For now, I am home. I can feel the ground beneath me. I can hear my breathing again.

And for today, that is enough.