Summer as a Planting Season; Finding Growth in the Gentle Pace of Practice

There is something about summer that quietly changes the rhythm of our practice... when allowed space.

For many mental health providers, calendars begin to shift during the summer months. Families leave for vacations. College students return home. Children trade classrooms for camps, swimming pools, bike rides, and long afternoons outdoors. Parents' schedules look different. The pace of the community changes, and often, so does the pace of our mental health and wellness practices.

For some clinicians, this means a noticeable slowing in referrals or client attendance. For others, it creates an entirely different kind of consistency. Many clients who spend the school year juggling endless responsibilities suddenly have room to breathe. Without the constant demands of academics, extracurricular activities, and the social complexities that accompany the school year, they often have greater emotional bandwidth to engage in their healing. Children who tend tostruggle with the structure and demands of school may experience a season of relief, while others find that camps and summer activities provide meaningful support and connection. Summers are quite free for our family. I call them '80skids' summers. We do not do many camps, if any. We bike ride, hop local for a meal to make the same day, enjoy the lovely presence of community options like free libraries, and summer reading programs at the public library. These are for adults and children... I am still enjoying my evening magnesium drink from the Salt Lake City Library mug I earned a few summers back for meeting my reading goals.

Whatever the reason, summer often brings change.

As providers, we have some opportunities in how we receive that change and flow within our private practices and as providers and be intentional.

It can be easy to look at a lighter calendar and feel anxious. I remember this in my initial years both working at a private practice for many years and then close to a decade ago when I opened my own practice. I recall finding myself wondering if I should be doing more, marketing more, networking more, or worrying about what the fall will bring. My nature as an anxious individual and planner lent to the absence of mindful presence in many instances... of the steady exploration of productivity. In a profession built around caring for others, it is not uncommon to measure our productivity by how full our schedules are.

But what if we looked at this season differently?

What if summer wasn't simply a slower season?

What if it was our planting season?

I have long believed in the planting, nurturing, and harvest or blooming season of life, people, and time. This symbolism is what our practice is named after, Planted Healing...

Nature reminds us that growth has never depended on every season looking the same. In fact, my two favorite blooms are Cherry Blossoms and Tulip Tree Blossoms. After many beautiful years in the Washington, D.C., area, I grew to love, appreciate, and notice the cherry blossom phenomenon. When we bought our modest 1940 bungalow many years back, it was the first tree I planted in our front yard just a few feet from our living room window. The Cherry Blossom has Growth Stages, Bud Formation, Blooming, between March and April, depending on the climate. The blossoms reach their peak for about a week to ten days, creating a breathtaking display. It is breathtaking. It is my favorite pink; it captures the beauty of spring! After this brief peak bloom, petals fall... The tree lives as a beautiful green leaf tree throughout the summer, sheds all its leaves in the fall and winter, and then repeats the process again. There is a time for blossoms, a time for abundance, a time for harvest, and a time when growth is happening quietly beneath the surface.

The strongest trees do not spend every moment producing fruit or blossoms. They spend seasons deepening their roots, strengthening their trunks, and preparing for what comes next.

Perhaps our professional lives are meant to follow a similar rhythm. Who and what could we be if we fully embrace this both as people, with our moods, with our energy, with our productivity, sleep cycles, and our permissions for relationships even.

Maybe the quieter moments of summer are not interruptions to our work. Maybe they are an essential part of it.

Rather than filling every open space, perhaps this is the season to plant, nourish, or water.

To plant into ourselves.

To plant into our practices.

To plant into our creativity.

To plant into our development.

To plant into the future clinician we are still becoming.

Summer offers a rare invitation to pause long enough to notice the places that have quietly been asking for our attention.

Perhaps this is the season to return to your own therapy or seek consultation that helps you think differently about your work. Maybe it is finally time to read the books stacked beside your bed, attend the training you've bookmarked for months, or explore a new clinical modality that has sparked your curiosity. Every investment you make in your own growth eventually becomes something your clients receive. Leaning into what we offer others and continuing to cultivate this within ourselves.

It may also be the season to tend to your practice itself. Are there new systems that would enhance the flow and feel for clients as they share time and space with you in the spaces and places you have curated? If you run a private practice, do your providers need more supports or warmth poured into them? The small things are meaningful...

During busier months we often spend our days responding to immediate needs, moving from session to session with little margin between them. For established and well-running practices, these times are the norm and are present the majority of the year.

Leaning into allowing summer to create space to work on your practice as a provider instead of always working in it. A few additional planting ideas for practice owners... have you peeked at your website, organized your therapeutic resources, updated paperwork, refined policies, strengthened referral relationships, or simply created systems that allow your future self to breathe a little easier?

These quiet investments often become the things we are most grateful for when life inevitably becomes busy again.

Summer can also become a season for the projects that have patiently waited in the background as individuals.

Many of us carry ideas that quietly whisper, Someday.

The book you've always wanted to write.

The intervention you've been developing in your mind.

The therapy group you've imagined offering.

The workshop your community could benefit from.

The research article waiting for your voice.

The podcast, blog, artwork, or creative endeavor that reflects who you are beyond your role as a clinician.

Not every project needs to become a polished product or another accomplishment to add to your résumé. Some projects exist simply to reconnect us with our creativity, our curiosity, and the joy that first drew us into this work.

Sometimes creating something beautiful is enough.

The beginning can be simple... quiet... slow...

It may simply look like opening a notebook.

Writing one page.

Sketching one idea.

Making one phone call.

Registering for one course.

Taking one afternoon to imagine what has been living quietly in your heart.

Seeds are never judged for how quickly they become trees.

They are simply given the conditions to grow.

Perhaps we deserve to offer ourselves that same grace.

Summer is also a beautiful season to reconnect with community.

Private practice and small group practice can become surprisingly isolating. We spend our days deeply connected to clients, and even if passing our colleagues in the hallways for a coffee refresh, we can unintentionally become disconnected from one another. A slower season offers opportunities to meet another therapist for coffee, attend consultation groups, collaborate across disciplines, mentor someone newer to the field, or simply remember that we were never meant to carry this work alone.

And then there is perhaps the most important invitation of all.

Rest.

Many providers and those of us who were designed to work in the helping professions struggle with rest. Somewhere along the way, some of us have learned to associate our impact and successes with constant productivity. I was so deeply grateful to release so much of this a decade or so ago.

Empty spaces might make you a bit uncomfortable initially, but wow, are they powerful for creativity, human design windows, and balancing our nervous systems. Resist the innate desire to reach to fill them.

Every healthy ecosystem reminds us that rest is not the absence of growth.

It is part of growth.

Rest allows our nervous systems to regulate.

It restores creativity.

It deepens compassion.

It strengthens relationships.

It reminds us that before we are therapists, we are people.

The people we serve do not simply benefit from our knowledge or our clinical skills. They benefit from our presence. They benefit from providers who have learned how to care for themselves with the same compassion they extend to others.

As summer gradually gives way to fall, calendars will begin filling again. Schools will reopen. Families will settle back into routines and schedules. Referrals will likely increase and steady, and the familiar pace of practice will return. You will also realize that this two-month period each year could be nature's gift.

When it does, we can carry forward more than a well-managed schedule.

We can carry deeper roots.

We can carry and flow with fresh ideas.

We can carry restored energy.

As a Private Practice Financial Tip: I recognize it can take time and require sacrifice to bring yourself into this pacing. Planning through the year financially is important and typically critical to balance out your ebb and flow for your personal needs. As a measure, that could be an entire in-depth share in itself. An approach could be to assess your slower planting seasons and the time they usually occur. Two months, perhaps? Take a portion of your 10-month harvest seasons and plant it somewhere thoughtful, ideally an open-ended, high-interest holding space. While you are in harvest season, those blossoms are preparing and will be ready to provide for your planting season.

My hope for you... I hope we carry the confidence that comes from knowing we used this season well—not because we stayed busy, but because we found intention. The strongest trees are not built in a single season.

Both are shaped by countless quiet moments of tending, nurturing, waiting, and trusting that growth is happening long before it becomes visible and when it is least visible.

May this summer or whenever your slower moments present themselves, be your planting season or an opportunity to plant the ideas of how to explore the year to come to prepare for the next season.

Sending you love, light in the sunny days, and stillness to see the beauty in all of it.

Melanie DeLynne Davis, CMHC