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The Making of Summer Nostalgia:
- Susan Poznyansky
- Jul 4
- 9 min read
Updated: Jul 6
An invitation to cultivate wholehearted connection—with Self, each other, and the natural world.
By Susan Poznyansky, LICSW, Founder, Heart of Caldera IFS & Wellness
Recently published in Tracing the Fjord Summer 2025 Edition, pages 66-68.
Full version here.
It is the end of April on Hood Canal. I’ve been watching the warming temperature slowly tease its way up… 60 degrees, 65. We reached the first 70-degree day on April 24, and I hustled to Division 1 Park with my swim friend for the first "summer" swim of 2025. At first, the water was a bit numbing, so I just sat in two inches of it to see if I could acclimate. Eventually I scooted myself further in and finally took the plunge to swim, officially making it to the 2025 Swims list. The summer goal, once again: 20 swims. Already, my mouth waters for handfuls of blueberries and spoonfuls of watermelon.
As summer makes its way to me, I’m surprised to notice sadness coming with it. I’m already anxious the time will go by too fast, that I won’t soak up enough of it. It’s not like it was when I was a kid, when two months felt like a year.
For me, summers are anchored in both time well spent alone in nature and memories made during rambunctious weekend BBQs filled with close family and visiting friends.
These are the moments—then and now—that imprint on our souls, shape who we are, and offer us a way back to ourselves.
There is a restorative impact in attuning to nature, in being with nature, in remembering that we are nature.
There is a rhythm to the natural world that calls to something innately primal in me—something animal, something softly confident and free. As I separate from the buzz of productivity and performance, I come back to a pace that is more authentic and embodied.
When I was a kid, I had the privilege of escaping the oppressive dense humidity of summers in Brooklyn by heading to the Borscht Belt, also known as the Catskill Mountains. My multigenerational Ukrainian family pitched in and together bought and renovated our very own dacha in America.
At the time, I remember feeling a little ungrateful. I had to leave my urban school friends, and because the dacha was already a cost, I didn’t get to go to summer camp with my Catskill buddies. So, during those long summer days, I was often alone. I wandered through the woods, finding snakes, frogs, and salamanders. I rode my bike to turtle-filled, lily pad-drenched ponds and checked the wild raspberries for ripeness. I’d take solo rowing trips in still water, lie back in the boat, and just drift, pretending to be Huckleberry Finn.
Even on a crowded weekend day at the lake, floating in water brought the deepest peace. Lying on my back, splayed like a starfish, the water filling my ears with a particular muffled silence, the sky stretched wide above me. Everything could stop, and I could just be—a floating starfish on a spinning blue marble floating in space.
Solo time in nature gave me a taste of independence and began a long love affair with the natural world. As I explored under rocks and climbed trees, I got to know myself. In those spaces of solitude and communion, I learned to follow what interests me. With no one else to negotiate with, I got to sit on a rock and take in the air for as long as I wanted, to linger by a bridge and watch trees sway, to roll up my pants and put my feet in the water where I wanted to. I got to follow my own curiosity. I learned that something brightens in me when I see a hawk glide or a trout ripple the water. Something sparks and awakens when I hear the song of nighttime crickets and frogs. Now these stirrings bring me back from stressful workdays into embodied well-being.
Do you remember the last time you got to meander with interest? Do you remember what this urge of interest feels like in your body? Is it a pang in your gut, a spark in your eyes, a jump in your heart?
This summer, I invite you to take some time to just follow yourself and see where you lead. Take a little more time to notice the delicate variety of blue in the evening sky, kissed with pink and purple; to wake up early and drink your coffee to the cacophony of morning bird song, just a little bit longer. To notice that precise moment when the frogs begin to sing. And to remember that you are nature and allow yourself to notice what those moments of sinking in, of remembrance, do for your body, mind, and soul.
Awaken to these precious summer moments. Allow them to imprint deeply, bask in their presence, and fill yourself with their warmth, peace, calm, and tenderness.
On the Importance of Afternoon Naps in the Summer
My maternal dedushka (grandfather) wasn’t a man who shared many words or hugs with me. As a first-generation immigrant, his love language was expressed through hard work and the stability he provided to give me a better life. On summer weekends, I’d often find him reading or napping on the musty couch in the screened veranda. I’d run out the wooden framed screen door, get five feet away, and wince as I remembered I’d let it slam shut again. “Sorry!” I’d yell in Russian, just in case I woke him.
Those days I was usually on the move, only occasionally napping in a hammock or chaise lounge on the lawn. Now, my grandfather has been gone nearly 20 years, and still, every time I take a summer afternoon nap, I think of him. In those summer glimpses, he taught me the importance of slowing down, of lounging, of resting. If he could stop and "do nothing," surely that must be ok.
This summer, I encourage you to take midday naps in fresh breezes. You are worthy to be held in a summer's day embrace. Model this for your own children.
Connection with Each Other...in these summer moments of togetherness, we all found a piece of respite.
Without others around, my relationship with the expansive natural world became woven into my being—from the gentle lapping of water against the rowboat, to the rhythm of my breaths in the space between bird calls. And while this relationship is irreplaceable, I remember always feeling a soft ache, a longing for connection and companionship.
The daily demands of surviving life can break us and our connections. As a nuclear unit, my family was cash-poor and financially stressed. As Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, their generational trauma showed up in aggressive and sometimes physical arguments, emotional distance, and difficulty managing stress. None of this was obvious to them then, they lived in each moment and did the best that they could, even if at times it wasn't enough. But in these summer moments of togetherness, we all found a piece of respite.
My father, a hardworking blue-collar man, spent as much time with me as he could. On summer weekends, he’d drive up from the city on Friday nights. I’d wait for him on the porch with the light off to avoid attracting mosquitoes. Then I’d wave goodbye from that same spot on Sunday afternoons. That day and a half in between was precious, and I’d tag along with him as much as I could.
I think of fishing trips with my dad and paternal dedushka: the way the boat rocked with my grandfather’s aging weight—how once he almost tipped us over. How I’d ask my dad to bait my hook and he’d grimace, insisting that if I complained to join, then I at least had to bait it myself. We laughed, and it stuck with me: this mix of joy, fragility, and the slow shift of generations.
My maternal babushka was a refugee during WWII. As a one-year-old, she was sent on a packed train with her mother from Ukraine to Uzbekistan, until age 4, when she returned to a devastated and war-ravaged Kiev. At 14, her mother died at the factory where she worked, and she herself was forced to go to work and to move in with a “difficult” uncle. She spoke of being so poor that dinner was often a piece of bread rubbed with onion. My grandmother learned to be quiet, to hide her emotions, and to work hard for her own survival from a very young age. Even today, when someone is showing emotion, I can see my babushka’s face pale with a tinge of fear. This is the message she passed to my mother.
My young mother immigrated to the US at 17, married at 19, and had me at 20. She completed college while I attended grade school and promptly started working as an accountant. The strains of full-time work often left my mother tired and empty in the evenings, decompressing and shutting down with the television. She didn’t learn from my grandmother to understand how she was feeling, to communicate it, or to ask for help and support. And so, she was often prone to emotional outbursts and difficulties calming down. This put a strain on our relationship, attachment, and connection.
"Finally, a time to be together and collectively calm our nervous systems."
But on summer weekends, we were all together in nature, a place to decompress, to rejuvenate, to breathe deeply the fresh air. Finally, a time to be together and collectively calm our nervous systems.
The three of us would go for long walks by the ponds and pick wild raspberries and blackberries by the road, later gathering wild blueberries by the bucket full. The blueberries were my favorite, I’d smush as many as I could in my mouth at once–I felt rich. I was always amazed by the filled buckets of berries my mother and grandmother brought home. They’d make blueberry blintzes and Kompot–a boiled fruit drink, and the house would smell sweet.
This summer, I invite you to pause and look around. Take in the closeness, the joy. Let it warm you. Let your people know this. Say it aloud. "I like being here with you, this moment is special to me."
My mother and I also shared a love for swimming. She’d swim laps in the lake, and I’d watch and think, "One day, I’ll be that adult." Today I am. This summer, pause and consider the parts of you, your gifts, that you are passing along to the next generation. Be proud, smile, you are threading connection.
In the summers at the lake, I got to know my family away from their daily stress—to see them laugh, eat, lounge, and enjoy life. Everything they did, everything they worked for, was for these moments. And in those moments, I felt safe and joyful.
We escaped city tensions, arguments, chaos. Nature was our balm, our refuge. Mental health quietly returned in the form of sun-warmed skin, blueberry-stained fingertips, and the taste of burnt BBQ sauce on chicken drumsticks.
As an adult, returning to this is like coming home. I have a part of me that is forever craving the endless summer.
And when I turn toward that desperate longing, I realize it is for the escape from responsibility, the space to wander, the refuge of leaving some troubles behind.
Summer also meant large, extended family and friends for barbecues—huge, loud, loving messes of food, voices, and stories. Extended family–cousins of grandparents, people they lived with in Kiev that also immigrated, and those they met along the journey to the US, summer time neighbors– probably 70 people, collected boisterously for card games and dominoes, and taranka– air-dried salted lake fish.
The making of summer nostalgia doesn’t happen all at once. It builds in small, vivid moments: scraped knees, grumpy grownups, bug bites—and the realization that all of it—the mess and the magic—is part of the music of summer.
I want to reclaim this rhythm. Count the number of snakes I see in a season. Track how many swims I manage, how many fish find their way into my boat. I want to be able to say: I was there. I paid attention.
The making of summer nostalgia is, truly, the making of presence. And presence is the gift we give our future selves—a gift of memory, rich with color, scent, sound, and soul.
~
Are you feeling the pull to
tend to your own longing and heartache?
Join us
this October for a retreat of restoration, nature connection, and internal exploration. Learn more at https://www.ifswellness.com/ifs-retreats.
About the Author
Susan Poznyansky, LCSW, is the founder of Heart of Caldera, a social enterprise devoted to supporting individuals in cultivating self-compassion and courage as they move toward living more fully and authentically. A second-generation Ukrainian Jewish American from Brooklyn, Susan grew up with a deep love for nature, sparked by summers in the Borscht Belt. They now reside on the Olympic Peninsula, ancestral land of the Skokomish people, where they spend their time fishing, writing, foraging mushrooms, and indulging in their favorite pastime: hurkle-durkling (a cozy state of lounging).
Susan is a proud member of Jewish Voices for Peace.
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