Mindful Mama | Inspiration To Thrive Not Just Survive

School ends soon and summer will officially begin around here. In the past, this triggered anxiety for me. What would we do all day? How do we get through the long days of summer? This is the same feeling that leads many to put their kids into camp after camp, activity after activity. Downtime is like an enemy to be conquered. In my house, we aren’t worried about hearing “I’m bored” anymore. In fact, I don’t hear it very often because my girls are so used to having unstructured time to follow their own imagination. Now, I’m not afraid of “I’m bored,” but I used to be. My anxiety over my daughter’s outbursts and volatile emotions used to make me really worry about the long days of summer. My fear led me to follow my habitual reaction of trying to control things more. I needed to shape and structure the day so that I could keep my anxiety at bay. It was a struggle. Do we suffer from our circumstances, or from wanting it to be otherwise? The Buddha taught that most of our suffering is caused by grasping at thing