The Summer of Enough
The margarita is optional. The mindset is not. 🍹
I’ve always been a summer girl.
Maybe it’s because I was born in July (where are my astrologers?) or maybe it’s just because the vibes of summer resonate deep within me.
Growing up in Northern California, I’ve been fortunate to experience great weather most of my life. It’s probably where I learned to love the heat (as long as I can get into water and have air conditioning 😉). Many people don’t know this, but it gets to over 100 degrees inland here.
I used to joke that maybe I should follow summer around the globe- but I have to admit that having come back from a couple of years living in Costa Rica (where the only seasons are dry and rainy), having fall and winter makes me appreciate spring and summer that much more.
The other thing I missed most about California when I lived in Costa Rica was that it was dark all year round by about 6 p.m.
I truly missed my warm summer nights, where it was light until close to 9 p.m.
Summer has always truly been about simple pleasures…
Time spent outside (especially in or around water)
The warmth of the sun
Friends and family get-togethers
Barbecue’s
Long, lazy days
That’s all I need.
And it’s always been enough.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the word enough lately.
Not in the aspirational, self-help kind of way, but as something more ancient, a whisper from the bones, a truth we knew before someone convinced us that more was always better.
In the early morning quiet—the hour where coffee tastes like a “to-be-savored” treat and the world hasn’t started asking anything of me—I’ve started wondering what it would mean to no longer strive for “more” as my default setting. To not just name enough but to trust it.
To live there.
Not forever, maybe.
But long enough to remember who I am without all the noise.
(Side note: here is a great article on less noise from , “The Lost Art of Shutting the F*ck Up.”).
It’s summer, after all. The season of exhale, sweat, slow afternoons, and the blessed forgetting of calendars. It feels like an invitation: to pause, to notice, and to ask—gently, curiously—what would it mean to claim enough not as limitation, but as liberation?
The truth is, many of us were handed a story that confused capacity with worth, mistook ambition for safety, and taught us to measure success by accumulating money, attention, and the right kind of curated lifestyle.
(Not gonna lie, I’m grateful I went through adolescence, my teen years, and early adulthood without social media when we took pictures just to capture memories).
But some part of us always knew: more isn’t a destination. It’s a treadmill. And the finish line keeps moving.
And news flash… we’re not the ones moving it.
This isn’t a manifesto against growth.
I love what’s possible when women earn, build, and expand. But I’m learning—through lived experience and financial psychology—that real power comes not from constant striving but from discernment—the quiet confidence to say, "This is enough for me, for now."
That kind of clarity requires us to slow down long enough to hear ourselves think, to sit with the uncomfortable silence that rushes in when we stop living from a performative place, and to listen for our own definitions of wealth, security, and joy before the algorithm feeds us someone else’s version.
That’s the heart of what I’m calling The Summer of Enough.
Not a season of playing small, but one of radical self-trust.
Where we learn to tell the difference between inner longing and inherited pressure. Where we stop trying to earn our rest. Where enough becomes a sacred threshold, not a consolation prize.
This summer, I’m redefining success by what doesn’t make me clench. I’m spending more time offline and outside. I’m letting quiet days be valuable. I’m investing—not just money, but attention—into things that nourish instead of drain.
I’m watching how everything shifts when I stop asking, "Am I doing enough?" and start asking, "What do I actually need?"
Spoiler: It’s less than I thought. And more beautiful than I imagined.
Here’s where you can find me most summer afternoons 👇🏻 (with loads of sunscreen… if only my 80s appreciated sunscreen the way I do now, lol):
A Woman You Should Know
Cindy Joseph (1951–2018) – Pro-Age Pioneer & Founder of BOOM!
Cindy Joseph didn’t launch her modeling career until she was 49. She didn’t start her beauty company until she was in her 60s. And she didn’t follow a single one of the rules about what women “should” do after 50.
She built BOOM! by Cindy Joseph to challenge the anti-aging industry—not with shame but with celebration. Her products were simple, and her message was bold: aging is a privilege, and beauty isn’t something we lose—it’s something we grow into.
Cindy passed in 2018, but her legacy lives on through her brand, message, and the countless women she inspired to live louder, softer, and more unapologetically themselves.
Money Moves
Summer of Simple Pleasures
This month, instead of doing another financial audit or cutting back on “non-essentials,” let’s do the opposite:
Start noticing what delights you.
Keep a list—on paper, in your Notes app, or in that gorgeous journal you’ve been “saving”—of simple pleasures that bring you joy this summer. No rules. No budgeting. Just presence.
🍓 Is it the first sun-warmed berry of the day?
🎧 A playlist that makes you feel like your younger self is dancing in the mirror again?
🧺 A picnic with someone you adore?
💅 A new lipstick that costs more than you “should” spend—but every time you wear it, you feel electric?
Write it down. Name it. Let yourself enjoy it on purpose.
Money doesn’t have to be practical to be sacred. Spending doesn’t have to be justified to be meaningful. And some of the richest moments won’t cost you a thing.
This is your permission slip to indulge—guilt-free—in what feels like enough.
Resources
Speaking of the sun ☀️
Kinfield Daily Dew SPF 35 – A dewy, reef-safe, non-whitening mineral SPF from a woman-led brand built around joyful time outdoors.
Check out kinfield.com
Book 📕
It is part memoir, part meditation on identity, reinvention, and letting go. It feels like journaling with a wise friend who knows how to name the ache and the possibility.
Check out “You Could Make This Place Beautiful” by Maggie Smith.
Newsletter 📃
of “her fi story” (Fi = financial independence).Subscribe to her fi story here.
Song 🎶
This is a wonderful summer pick-me-up song. I was listening to Michael Franti and Spearhead while working in the yard this weekend when I bumped my phone, and Spotify started playing an incredible list of summer vibes. This will get you going!
Listen to “Joy” by Andy Grammer here.
My Personal Reminder
Earlier this year, I took an “Abundance” course by Dr. Joe Dispenza, and one of the things he had us do was find a symbol that represented abundance to us, and place it everywhere (remember, abundance isn’t just money).
Of course, mine was a sun (with dollar signs in the reflection on the sunglasses, lol). I used some of my old scrapbook supplies, mounted it on orange and yellow cardstock, and cut it out. I have about 8 of these everywhere (even one in the car).
What would your symbol be?
Reply and let me know!
Wherever this summer finds you—lounging poolside, dancing in your kitchen, or savoring the silence of an early morning—I hope you feel the sacredness of enough.
You don’t need to optimize, monetize, or justify it. Just live it. Trust your joy. Tend to your own pace. Let the sun soften what’s been tense. And if you need a sign to rest, celebrate, or start something new just because it feels good... let this be it.
With love & abundance,
Kim
Thanks so much for the shout out! And hey! I also took that same 3 week course. I kind of had two symbols: 1 was a tree and the other was an cup with no top floating in vast ocean. The tree represented this idea of infinite potential, and the open cup in a vast ocean represented this limitless feeling.