One midlife woman. Zero filters. All the hormones.

There comes a point in every mother’s life, usually somewhere between packing the 47th school lunch of the year and googling “quick dinners that aren’t emotionally exhausting”, where summer arrives not as a break… but as a threat.

Because let’s be honest, summer holidays are marketed as this dreamy, slow, sun- soaked experience where we reconnect, recharge, travel to exotic places and sip something cold while our children laugh in the background like a yoghurt advert. In reality? It’s just more meals. More people. More laundry. Long queues at the airport. Fights over iPads at the back of the car. And more “Mum, what’s for lunch?” at 10.37 am…

And suddenly, you’ve gone from cooking once a day to running what feels like a low-budget, high-demand restaurant with terrible reviews and no closing time.

And while you’re spending a small fortune on flights that may or may not even take off—because let’s face it, nothing is guaranteed these days—you do have to wonder… are your kids going to remember the holiday or just how stressed you were during it?

So this year, I’ve decided to do something radical. Less. Not “less but still secretly trying to optimise everything”. I mean actually less. I’m bringing back the 80s. You remember the 80s? When we didn’t travel anywhere? When we just sat at home all summer? When children disappeared for hours, came back slightly dusty, possibly with a rock they were very proud of, and no one had a scheduled enrichment activity? That’s the energy. No colour-coded holiday plans. No “let’s make magical memories every second”. No artisanal picnics with seventeen reusable containers. Just… existence. Boredom. Wandering.

Ice cream for dinner on occasion (don’t call social services, call it character building). And here’s the controversial part: your kids don’t need you to curate their summer like it’s a luxury retreat. They need space. They need boredom. They need to figure out what to do when no one is entertaining them. Also, and this might be the real self-care tip, they can make a sandwich. I know. Revolutionary.

Because somewhere along the way, we decided that a “good summer” meant being constantly on the move. Flights, plans, packing, unpacking… Rinse and repeat. But what if we don’t actually need to go anywhere? What if the most exciting thing this summer is… your own backyard? Like not rushing to catch flights. Not dragging suitcases across airports.

Just saying, “I don’t know… go outside.” Because maybe the magic isn’t in the destination. Maybe it’s in finally standing still. The world is intense enough. Everything is faster, louder, more optimised, more productive. Maybe summer isn’t about doing more. Maybe it’s about remembering how to do… nothing.

And if that means your children eat cereal at 3 pm while you watch bad TV with a tub of ice cream? Honestly. That sounds like a perfect summer to me.