The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, the moment when the sun lingers in the sky and gives us just a little more light than usual. It is a seasonal reminder of warmth, vitality, abundance, and life fully expressed. The earth is green, flowers are blooming, gardens are stretching toward the light, and children are often pouring out of school buildings into the wide-open possibility of summer.

And maybe that is part of the medicine.

The summer solstice does not only invite us to honor the sun. It invites us to remember what it feels like to be alive under it. Not just productive. Not just responsible. Not just scheduled, needed, useful, or exhausted.

Alive.

Play Is Not a Waste of Time

Somewhere along the way, many of us were taught that play was something we had to outgrow. It became something for children, something silly, something we could do after the work was done.

But the work is never really done, is it?

There is always another email, another bill, another errand, another room to clean, another task on the list. If we wait until everything is complete before we allow ourselves joy, we may end up pushing joy into some imaginary future that never quite arrives.

This is what I think of as the productivity wound. It is the belief that we must earn rest, earn joy, earn laughter, and earn the right to feel good in our own lives. It is the quiet pressure that says if we are not accomplishing something, we are somehow falling behind.

But play is not a distraction from life. Play is part of life.

Play reminds the body that it is safe to soften. It gives the nervous system a chance to step away from constant stress, vigilance, and seriousness. It brings us back into the present moment through laughter, movement, creativity, touch, sound, and connection. We do not need to turn it into a science lesson to understand that something changes in the body when we laugh so hard we forget what we were worried about.

There is spiritual wisdom in that.

The Sacred Act of Remembering Your Younger Self

Play reconnects us with the younger versions of ourselves. Not because we need to become children again, but because there are parts of us that remember wonder, curiosity, and delight before the world became so heavy.

Before we learned to measure our worth by what we could produce.

Before we started carrying responsibilities that shaped our posture, our schedules, our relationships, and our sense of what was allowed.

Before we became so serious about surviving that we forgot enjoyment is part of being alive.

The younger self within us may remember what it felt like to run barefoot through grass, blow bubbles into the air, draw without caring whether it was “good,” dance without wondering how we looked, or laugh at something that made no sense at all. That younger self may not need a five-year plan. They may simply need a little sunlight, a little music, a little color, a little permission.

The summer solstice can become a doorway into that remembering. As the sun reaches its fullest expression, we can ask ourselves where we have dimmed our own. Where have we become too controlled? Too scheduled? Too focused on being good, useful, or impressive? Where have we forgotten that joy is holy, too?

Children Can Be Our Teachers

One of the beautiful things about this time of year is that children often remind us what play looks like. When school lets out and summer begins, there is a shift in the air. Kids run through sprinklers, chase each other through yards, ask to go to the park, beg for one more popsicle, and find entire worlds inside cardboard boxes, sidewalk chalk, and sticks.

Children are often much better than adults at entering the present moment.

If you have children, grandkids, nieces, nephews, or little ones in your life, the summer solstice season is a gorgeous time to let them lead for a while. Not in a forced, planned, overly curated way. Just join them. Play tag. Draw with chalk. Build something ridiculous. Get your feet wet. Let them explain the rules of a game that makes absolutely no sense, and follow along anyway.

There is a particular kind of healing that happens when adults stop standing on the edge of play and actually enter it.

And if there are no children in your life right now, that does not leave you out of this invitation. Let yourself be the child. Call the friend who makes you laugh too loud. Buy the bubbles. Get the crayons. Put on the song that makes your hips move before your brain has time to argue. Go outside and be a little ridiculous.

You do not need a child nearby to reclaim your own capacity for delight.

Five Simple Ways to Play This Season

You do not have to make play complicated. In fact, the more complicated we make it, the easier it becomes to avoid. Play does not need to be expensive, impressive, photographed, posted, or turned into another performance.

You can literally go outside and play with the kids in your life. Let them decide what the game is. Let yourself laugh. Let yourself be bad at it. Let yourself be fully present instead of trying to supervise every second from a distance.

You can grab crayons, markers, construction paper, glue, or whatever art supplies you have nearby and make something with no big intention. Not for sale. Not for content. Not because it has to become a project. Make something because color feels good.

You can put on music that makes your body want to move and dance. It does not have to be graceful. It does not have to be choreographed. Let your body remember that movement can be celebration, not punishment.

You can find water. A swimming hole, a lake, a pool, a sprinkler, a riverbank, or even just a place to dip your feet. Water has a way of pulling us back into our senses. It cools the body, softens the mind, and brings us into the moment.

And, of course, you can play with bubbles. There is something wildly underrated about bubbles. They are temporary, beautiful, silly, and impossible to control. You blow them into the air, watch them catch the light, and for a few seconds, everyone nearby becomes a little more enchanted.

That is spiritual practice if you ask me.

Let the Sun Ask You This

As the summer solstice arrives, let it be more than a date on the calendar. Let it be an invitation. Let the longest day of the year remind you that light is not only something we observe. It is something we participate in.

Joy is not frivolous. Play is not childish. Laughter is not a distraction from healing. Sometimes play is the way healing finds us when we have become too tired to chase it directly.

So before the sun sets, ask yourself this:

What kind of play did I love before the world taught me to be so serious?

Then choose one small way to answer. Blow the bubbles. Dance in the kitchen. Call the friend. Color outside the lines. Run through the sprinkler. Sit in the grass. Laugh with the kids. Laugh without the kids. Let yourself be warmed by the light you have been working so hard to deserve.

You are alive, after all.

And being alive was never meant to be all work.

Jen Romanowski, a.k.a. Sunshine Witchski, The Pink-haired Sober Witch, has been practicing witchcraft and spiritual healing for over 25 years. She is a spiritual advisor, recovery mentor, and founder of The Sober Witch Life movement. Visit soberwitch.life or text 313-595-4148 for guidance in your recovery. Or check out Amazon for her newly published book: Sober Witch Life: A Magickal Guide to Recovery.

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