Here we are, deep in summer, with the air heavy with heat, gardens overflowing, and long evenings inviting us to linger a little longer.
Summer is one of the two times of year when I feel most nostalgic. The other is Christmas.
Summer takes me back to my grandmother’s house in the mountains. It carries me into the years of raising the girls in the thick of farm life at Pinewood while also running the restaurant.
Those years were beautiful, full, demanding, and often chaotic.
For the past 20 years, I have also been on a healing journey with my body. When digestive ulcerations demanded my immediate attention, I had to learn how to support my system and create greater balance through food.
But lately, I have been reflecting on another essential part of healing: regulating my nervous system.
What I Didn’t Understand Then
During those years at Pinewood, I pushed through long, hard days. I convinced myself that I could, and should, hold everything together.
I thought I was living with the chaos, but in truth, the chaos was consuming me.
My body did not know when the workday had ended. It did not know when it was safe to soften.
I can look back now with compassion for the woman I was. She was doing the best she could with what she knew. She was strong, capable, and deeply devoted.
But she did not yet know that strength could also look like slowing down. She did not know that rest was not something she had to earn. She did not know that listening to her body was not weakness. It was wisdom.
When Grief Entered My Body
I came to understand this even more deeply when Lee was dying.
During that time, I felt as though I lost my nervous system completely. I became a ball of fear, constantly bracing, waiting, and trying to survive something my heart could not comprehend.
After Lee died, my bloodwork showed that my inflammatory markers had spiked. Grief was not only something I felt emotionally. I could see its imprint in my body.
For the past 18 months, I have been intentionally working to bring several important numbers back into balance.
One was my C-reactive protein, or CRP. CRP is a protein made by the liver that rises when inflammation is present. It does not tell us exactly where the inflammation is coming from, but it can help reveal how much inflammatory activity the body may be carrying.
I was also watching my A1C, which had moved into the prediabetic range. A1C gives us a picture of our average blood sugar over the previous two to three months.
And I was working to lower my triglycerides, a type of fat carried in the blood.
Last week, my new bloodwork came back. All three numbers are now in a beautifully healthy range.
I am deeply grateful for those results. They reflect 18 months of listening, learning, and caring for my body differently.
But what feels even better than the numbers is the way I am now managing my nervous system.
The Rituals That Hold Me
Keeping our bodies in balance is about more than what we eat. It is also about how we meet life: the pressure we place on ourselves, the pace we try to maintain, and the way we respond when things feel uncertain or beyond our control.
Regulating the nervous system does not mean remaining calm all the time or never feeling overwhelmed. It means noticing when we are holding our breath, bracing for what might happen next, pushing beyond our limits, or living as though everything is an emergency.
It means recognizing when we have moved into survival mode and gently helping ourselves return to a sense of safety.
I have created daily rituals that help my body remember that it is safe.
I begin each morning with a dreaming meditation. I walk three miles every day, and I attend Pilates as often as I can.
Because I have issues with mast cells, intense aerobic exercise is not always supportive for me. Mast cells are part of the immune system. When activated, they release chemical messengers, including histamine.
In my body, allowing my heart rate to climb too high can increase histamine activity and trigger symptoms. I have had to learn that harder is not always healthier.
So I no longer measure the value of movement by how hard I can push.
Walking, Pilates, meditation, nourishing food, and consistent daily rhythms may appear gentle, but gentle does not mean ineffective. These practices have become some of my most powerful medicine.
They remind me that healing is not about forcing the body into submission. It is about building a relationship with it.
My healthier bloodwork is something to celebrate. But the deeper victory is that I am no longer abandoning myself in order to keep going.
I am learning when to move, when to rest, and when to breathe before reacting. I am learning that regulation is not one grand achievement. It is a series of small, loving choices made throughout the day.
Each one sends a message to the body:
You are safe. You can soften. You do not have to carry everything at once.
The Aquarius Full Moon
The full moon arrives on July 29 at 7:36 a.m. Pacific. It falls in Aquarius, opposite the Leo Sun and close to transformative Pluto.
Aquarius invites us to step back and see our lives from a wider perspective. It asks where we are ready to break an old pattern and choose greater freedom.
Leo brings us home to the heart, to our stories, our identities, and the ways we have learned to define strength.
For me, this full moon illuminates the belief that being strong means pushing through.
It offers us a question:
Who might I become if I no longer lived as though everything were an emergency?
Aquarius reminds us that we are allowed to choose differently. We can interrupt an old pattern. We can create space between what happens and how we respond. We can belong to our families and communities without abandoning ourselves.
This is not about rejecting the person we once were. It is about thanking that version of ourselves for carrying us this far and letting her know she no longer has to do it all alone.
A Full Moon Kitchen Ritual
We do not need an elaborate ceremony to honor this full moon.
The ritual can begin in the kitchen, where caring for ourselves becomes something tangible.
We can slow down, chop the vegetables, notice the fragrance of the herbs, and prepare warm food with intention. Cooking can become more than another task to complete. It can be a way of telling the body:
There is time. I am here. I am worthy of care.
This simple summer meal is built around salmon, colorful cooked vegetables, herbs, olive oil, ginger, and turmeric. It is low in carbohydrates, rich in protein, and filled with a diversity of plants.
