What I Learned this Summer

Intention Setting, Casual Hosting, and Holding the Baby Bird

Hi everyone! 👋 Thanks for sticking with me during my summer hiatus — and if you’re new here, welcome! Now that the kids are back in school, I should be back to writing on a ~every other week cadence from now on — until next summer!

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“How was your summer?” 🌞 That’s the question we’re all answering these days.  Me? My summer was busy. Our family traveled to about a dozen places between family trips, work trips, internships, and camps – and I hosted no fewer than three major gatherings: a family reunion, an anniversary party and a college reunion. Ten weeks felt like six months – with life lessons to spare.

Here are some of my key take-aways:

1. Building in Quiet Time is Key to a Good Family Trip

Our family took a European family vacation trip this summer. Yay! And. Being among crowds of sight-seers, visiting with relatives, and spending a week non-stop together as a family – including sharing rooms and meals, sight-seeing, and navigating new cities – is hard.  Family vacations trips are social, because people are everywhere.  To stay happy, you have to build in downtime to recharge.  And if you do, maybe your next family trip will actually be a vacation!

I’ll say it again. On family vacations trips, people are EVERYWHERE.

2. Intention Setting is the Secret to Happiness

Every experience I had this summer could be measured by the clarity of my intentions, and the quality of my follow through (aka planning and execution).  Did I intend to deplete myself on my family vacation trip?  Hell no. It happened because instead of being clear about what I wanted from the vacation (and asking my family to do the same), I fell into the unconscious trap of trying to cram in as much as possible. Classic rookie move. When intentions aren’t clear, we end up with unspoken expectations, which don’t get met.

In contrast, when I hosted a weekend reunion for my college singing group, I started with an intention-setting call.  One of my intentions?  To feel energized, rather than depleted, by the end of the weekend. (Yes, I learned something from my family vacation trip!)  What would that look like?  Moving my body every day.  Starting each morning with meditation. Connecting deeply with everyone feeling equally seen and supported. And that’s what we did. Everyone had a great time – because clarity is kindness, and intention breeds clarity.

As an aside, giving voice to fears is an important part of intention setting.  As they say, you’ve got to name it to tame it.  For our college singing group reunion, someone voiced the fear that she would screw things up because she hadn’t sung in a while.  We reassured her it was okay, and built in lots of vocal warm-ups.  By voicing her fear, she was able to get the help she needed.

Pausing for a photo on a blissful hike with my college singing group

4. You’re Not Responsible for Other People’s Reactions

Sometimes you need to say that difficult thing.  I found this to be the case when I needed to tell my college singing friend that I was scared that if she brought her teenage daughter along, it would take attention away from our rare singing time – and that her daughter might feel left out.  I said it directly, with care.  My friend responded well – her daughter still joined us but happily read and worked on puzzles.  It could have gone another way – she could have taken offense or felt hurt – and if it did, that would have been okay. So often, we don’t say what needs to be said because we’re afraid of hurting the other person’s feelings.  But in reality, clarity is kindness.

5. Ask for Help Before You Need It

As I wrote about here, this summer, I hosted a family reunion to scatter my dad’s ashes. This was a more complex project - logistically and emotionally – than I could ever have anticipated.  As a result, I found myself needing help.  But asking for help in the moment is hard. It makes me feel flustered and self-conscious. Like I’m making my emergency someone else’s problem.  While this can’t be entirely avoided – we’re human and can’t control everything – assigning jobs like “Dinner clean-up on Saturday night” means you won’t find yourself trying to enlist help at the last minute or feeling resentful if people aren’t pitching in – and others won’t be asking what they can do or wondering why you’re mad.  Next time, I’ll delegate ahead of time so everyone can relax. Did I mention that clarity is kindness? 😊

5. You Bring Your Own Experience

One of the highlights of my summer was returning to Chef Scott Peacock’s kitchen in Marion, Alabama, for a Peach Cobbler Experience. His kitchen felt to us like a sacred space, and cooking with him a transcendent experience.   The peaches literally seemed to come alive in his hands – the love and care he puts into his food is so palpable.  And yet, Scott told us that we were unique in the way we were experiencing his kitchen.  That we were bringing the experience.  “Not everyone has this experience,” he opined, somewhat cryptically. “Every Biscuiteer brings their own experience – and you bring the very best!”  This was quite a revelation for me – and reinforced the old adage that you get out what you put in. As in Biscuiteering, so in Life.

A transcendent experience of baking and conversation with the inimitable Scott Peacock

6. Graciousness is Not Ingratiating

Have you ever felt like you were being too gracious? (In Chinese, we say “ke-chi.”)  Guilty as charged. With all my hosting this summer, one of my big breakthroughs was realizing that I tend to over-host.  Over-hosting looks like this: trying to make everything perfect. Not letting anyone help. Taking too much responsibility for everyone’s experience. 

When this happens, graciousness turns ingratiating (and grating). What do I mean?  Graciousness is being freely thoughtful and generous, with no strings attached. Being ingratiating is expecting something in return. In the case of hosting, it’s wanting to be perfect. Wanting to control the guest’s experience. Wanting accolades. Wanting to achieve a multi-billion dollar media empire that eventually lands you in jail (sorry, Martha, I still love you.). Ironically, being ingratiating makes people uncomfortable, because what on the surface appears to be all about them is really all about the host. 

By summer’s end, I’d embraced the concept of casual hosting – lowering my standards, focusing on what is truly important (the quality of the connection!), giving people jobs to do, and even setting the intention to not over-host, and asking my guests to help me.  At my college singing group reunion, this approach worked like a charm!

7. Don’t Crush the Baby Bird

Kids change a lot over a summer. By August, both my sons were taller than me, and one was cooking shakshouka.  One busy day after school, I was rushing them out the door when my chef-son demanded to make beef tacos.  But there was no beef. “MOM!” he shouted at me, a recently-converted pescatarian. “START BUYING BEEF!”  “I’m sorry that the whole world doesn’t revolve around you,” I replied, coldly – then quickly apologized. We found a pack of beef at the back of the fridge, he made his tacos, and we healed the rift by listening to sad songs on our drive (note to parents of teens: Put “Everybody Hurts” or “I Won’t Give Up On You” on the car stereo next time hit a rough patch, and watch what happens.). Turns out, he still needed me to parent him: look out for his needs and schedule events with enough time to eat real food.  I had mistaken his adult-like knife skills for being an adult. 

I recently read a great analogy by Susan Dennard that underscores the lesson. In brief, it’s this:  Relationships / projects / children are like baby birds. Hold them too loosely, and they’ll fly away / flop / fall.  Hold them too closely, and you’ll crush them.  My son needed me to find that balance – and the whole summer was about finding that balance, too.

Our souls are like that baby bird, too. We need space. Freedom from judgement. Support. We need time to rest before we can fly.