Inside scoop (unedited):
This June was a full-blown fabulous month, but even fabulous can wear you out. Just the past week, between Eric and Austin’s wedding, entertaining out-of-town friends, offering a retreat on our Cape Cod property, and then attending a baby shower for our dearest friend/daughter, it all caught up, and my body, my most extraordinary truth teller, gave me a red flag warning to stop with the superwoman efforts and listen.
It happened as I was packing up a day after I finished the retreat to go to Ayla’s baby shower. I was getting my computer from my studio and rolled my ankle as I stepped down onto the deck. I fell and curled inward to handle the crazy pain, called to David, and cried really hard. You know, the first minute of a fall is the most intense, yet once the pain dissipates, the swelling and bruising begin.
I hate to say it, but sometimes this is what it takes for me to listen.
As I write this, six days after the fall, I realize how much worse it could have been. My ankle and foot are healing rapidly, which makes me grateful for the kind messaging my body offered me this time. A bit more than a gentle nudge into awareness, but it caught my attention and has spurred me into realizing I need to practice what I teach.
So with that, I am taking this summer lesson as a way to fill my spiritual savings account, a theme I wrote about in my book, Inside: A Guide to the Resources Within. It’s a concept of visualizing your spirit as a bank account. Your energy is the currency. Every act of rest, joy, and self-care is a deposit. Every stress, obligation, and depletion is a withdrawal.
Most people go through summer — the season that should be restorative — running their spiritual account into overdraft. Vacations that exhaust them. Social calendars that deplete them. “Relaxation,” that’s actually just another form of performing.
I have also decided to slow it all down and do things I do when I have space in my life. This summer, the invitation is simple: make deposits on purpose.
What My Overdraft Looked Like
If I’m honest, the withdrawals had been stacking up long before the ankle gave out. A wedding, however joyful, still asks something of you. A retreat, even one I love facilitating, holds other people’s rest while mine quietly waits its turn. Out-of-town guests, a baby shower — all beautiful, all still withdrawals. None of it was wrong. None of it was something I’d undo. But I was making withdrawal after withdrawal and calling it a full life, without remembering to deposit anything in between.
My body did the math for me. It always does, eventually.
The Deposits I’m Making Now
So here is what filling the account looks like right now, in this slower, foot-propped-up season: sitting on the deck instead of rushing across it, letting David bring me tea instead of making it myself, saying no before my calendar says yes for me, watching the tide instead of the clock.
None of it is dramatic. That’s rather the point. Deposits rarely are.
A Love Letter, Not a Lesson
I don’t share this to teach you anything. I share it because you are the reason I keep showing up here, week after week, season after season — and I’d rather be honest with you than polished.
So here is my truth: I ran myself into overdraft this June, even while doing things I love, surrounded by people I love. And I’m willing to bet some of you have too — showing up fully for everyone and everything on your calendar, and quietly forgetting to deposit anything back into yourself.
If that’s you, I see you. And I’m not asking you to do anything grand about it. Just this — before you fill the rest of your summer with more of the same, ask yourself what I’m asking myself: what are you depositing?
Maybe it’s small — a walk without your phone, a meal you actually taste, silence on purpose, for no reason at all. Whatever it is, let it be yours, and let it be enough.
I’ll be sharing my own deposits with you all summer long, on Instagram and my YouTube channel — the small, unglamorous, real ones. Not because I have it figured out, but because I’d rather walk through this season with you than perform it for you.
Thank you for letting me be honest with you here. It’s the truest deposit I know how to make.
With so much love from my corner by the sea (foot up, tea in hand), Sarah
