Summer has a way of revealing absence.
The days are longer, and there are shifts in weather, temperature (unbearable heat for those of us who live in South Florida), summer camps, BBQs, family traditions, and a change of pace and routine.
Every season asks us to adjust.
If you’ve lost a beloved, then their absence can feel more pronounced, often in subtle ways, compared with Christmas and end-of-year holidays, let’s say. Those tend to be more in your face. But summer brings a quieter kind of grief. (My words, not AI.)
And if you’ve experienced a major life shift (divorce, job loss, relocation, estrangement, loss of health, financial hardship, loss of security…), then the season has a way of bringing those losses to the surface, too.
I’m in beautiful Puerto Rico as I type this. Specifically, in the same town where my late brother, Yosef, and I spent our childhood.
Three decades ago, the kid versions of us rode our bikes through the winding hills of our coastal neighborhood. We climbed the Flamboyán trees and pretended they were our houses.
We’d knock on our neighbors’ unlocked doors to ask if our friends could come outside and play. Sometimes, we’d stand outside watching our dad fly overhead in his ultralight airplane.
There were no smartphones. No social media. No doing it “for the Gram”.
Our connection was to nature, our surroundings, and each other. Pure presence. A perk of being a vintage millennial born in the 1900s.
Decades have passed. We moved to mainland U.S. and built lives there. My brother is no longer physically with us. We lived through the rise of social media, and now AI. And somewhere along the way, practicing presence became a commodified part of the wellness industry.
What came naturally to us has become something we're taught to practice, and often sold back to us.
Reflecting on all of this while staying in the same neighborhood, in the same building where my family, then intact, spent a summer holiday is a trip in every sense.
My mother calls it “collapsing timelines.”
It’s that time-warpy feeling of experiencing both the present and past simultaneously.
While visiting Puerto Rico, I wake each morning to breathtaking Caribbean palms dancing outside my window. I hear the waves crashing in the distance, feel the ocean breeze, and breathe in the salty and humid air. Then I glance to my right and remember my brother and I riding golf carts through this very same complex as teenagers.
Timeline collapse.
The nostalgia is so real.
Not just for the person we lost, but also for the version of life we lived, and the simplicity we assumed would always be there.
Fresh air, quiet, presence, and simplicity have become luxuries. A meaningful connection with nature often requires planning, scheduling, and booking time away from the lives we've built.
I’m noticing how much has shifted and remembering that grief isn't only about who we've lost, but also the version of the world we’ve lost.
I open social media and see devastating wildfires displacing hundreds of thousands of people across France, Spain, and Canada. And we haven’t even hit peak summer yet. There’s even a term for this: eco-grief. Even here, the lush green I remember looks drier than it used to.
The contrast between what was and what is can trigger longing, nostalgia, and an undercurrent of sorrow that leaves us with a sense of unease.
It reminds me of Lana Del Rey’s Summertime Sadness:
A quick search about the meaning of this song, and Google notes:
There's something about that song that captures the strange paradox of carrying melancholy through the brightest season of the year, and the contrast between sunny summer days and a grieving heart.
If you can relate to this, I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
Let’s call this melancholic vibe Summertime Sadness Grief, shall we?
Nearly seven years after losing my brother, what my podcast, writing, speaking, and live gatherings have taught me is to move with these energies and shifts, not against them.
To build on my last Substack essay’s analogy of a ballerina, I envision something akin to the practice of learning to perfect the pirouette by focusing on embracing the spin, while centering yourself amidst the pivots (except not nearly as elegant).
Knowing how to return to that center, whether the change is welcomed or unexpected, is how we begin reclaiming our agency after loss. It's also how resilience and post-traumatic growth begin to take shape.
What surprised me most about this process is that it did not look or feel how I expected. I thought if I did "the work," whatever that meant, I'd eventually arrive at clarity, peace, and certainty.
Instead, it turns out that it looks more like surrender, relinquishing, being with, feeling feelings, reframing narratives, physical movement, intentional time in nature, and the one I want to highlight most today is leaning into life’s questions that may never be resolved.
Again, building on my previous Substack essay, it’s about living into the questions like Rainer Maria Rilke suggests, instead of searching for answers. Paradoxically, doing so centers us in times of uncertainty, grief, and solitude.
The irony of change and uncertainty is that they create space for possibility.
But for someone who thrives in structure, those navigating foundation-shattering loss, or those feeling disconnected from their inner compass, this can feel like an abstract, daunting task.
In her essay, ‘Live the questions now’: Reading Rilke in a time of uncertainty, grief and solitude, Pauline Holdsworth writes about Rilke's understanding of grief. She shares this reflection from scholar Ulrich Baer.
Rilke paid special attention to the transformative power of grief. "He talks about [how] grief pulls you, weirdly enough, out of your everyday routines … but it pulls you very deeply into the world," said Ulrich Baer.
This resonates with me.
One of life's greatest paradoxes is that the very thing capable of breaking us open can also deepen our relationship with life itself.
Loss tears our lives apart. Yet when we lean into grief, we find it has the potential to reassemble us in ways we never could have imagined.
One of those ways is through living the questions.
Perhaps that's why this next collaboration feels so aligned with where I find myself this summer.
For the past several months, my dear friend, author, keynote speaker, podcast host, and grief educator, Lisa Keefauver, and I have been exploring questions around curiosity, creativity, possibility, and what it means to continue meeting life after profound loss.
Those conversations became the foundation for a new three-part live series here on Substack beginning tomorrow, July 29th:
Together, we’ll explore what becomes possible when we embrace curiosity, creativity, and the unexpected.
We’ll gather for thoughtful conversations, reflective writing, and creative practice as we explore what it means to keep living, creating, and meeting life after grief and life’s unexpected pivots.
Each gathering builds on the one before it.
🗓️ Wednesdays
⏰ 1:00–2:00 PM PT / 4:00–5:00 PM ET
📍 Live on Substack
July 29 | Living into the Questions
Theme: Curiosity
Link: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/283110
August 12 | Shifting Our Stories
Theme: Creativity
Link: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/283114
September 9 | Meeting Life Differently
Theme: Possibility
Link: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/283115
This summer, we’re paying attention to what shifts instead of resisting them or rushing to make sense of them.
Grief changes us, as do the seasons. And life will continue to shift whether we welcome it or not.
Our invitation to you is to meet those shifts with heart-centered curiosity, a little more compassion, and more trust in ourselves.
If you're navigating grief, a major life transition, or longing to reconnect with yourself, we'd love to have you join us.
Nina Rodriguez is a Grief-informed guide, podcaster, writer, and speaker helping humans thrive in the “and” of life. Following the unexpected loss of her only sibling, Yosef, she founded Grief and Light™, an award-winning podcast and supportive online community to educate and empower individuals navigating loss and life-altering change. Through her work and collaborative spaces, Nina aims to foster a more grief-fluent, hopeful world. Learn more at: griefandlight.com.
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