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The Summer We Didn't Go Anywhere (And Why That's Okay)
Published 9/7/26
We didn't take a family vacation this summer. Didn't even make it camping. Didn't go hiking. Nothing that would make a good answer to "what did you do this summer?"
I found this out the hard way while making my Monthbook.
I sat there scrolling through three months of photos, waiting to feel that thing Monthbooks are supposed to make you feel. That "wow, my life is actually beautiful" thing. Instead I felt worse the further I scrolled. No trip. No big event. Just... days. Regular days. And I started spiraling into did I even make memories with my kids this summer?
Then my daughter told me she was nervous for school tomorrow. Not because of a teacher or a friend group. Because everyone was going to ask what she did over the summer, and she didn't have a trip or an event to hand them. Just a good summer. A great one, actually. But no easy headline for it.
That one hit different. Because I felt the exact same thing making that book.
I want to be honest about something. Monthbooks are built on the idea that the small stuff matters. That you don't need a trip to Disneyland to have a life worth remembering. I believe that. I've built my career on that. And this round still left me flat on the floor in mom guilt.
Then the next night I was in the car with my mom and my three girls. One of them grabbed the aux and put on Shania Twain, "Any Man of Mine." I turned it all the way up. And all five of us, four year old up to my 73 year old mother, screamed every word at the top of our lungs.
All the heaviness from the night before just melted. Gone. Instantly.
I know how that sounds. Cheesy. I can't always get myself there. But that's the whole thing, isn't it. The heaviest stuff can lighten in seconds. It doesn't take a vacation. It takes a song and the right four people in a car.
There are a million ways to have a good summer. Tomorrow I send my kids back to school and I feel sad. This isn't the summer I pictured in June. But there was good in it. There was so much good in it. It's going to be ok.
And maybe that's what a Monthbook is actually for. Not to prove you had the summer you planned. To catch the stuff you'd forget by September. The car, the song, the four year old who doesn't know all the words yet but screams them anyway. That's not a consolation prize for the trip you didn't take. That's the memory. That was always going to be the memory.