When the Season Everyone Loves Wears You Out

Why can't I just enjoy summer like everyone else?

That's the question I hear most often. Not "summer is hard for me," but "what's wrong with me that I can't handle it?"

And that question does more damage than the tiredness itself ever could. You can be exhausted and still know you're okay. It's a different thing entirely to be exhausted and certain it's your own fault. Women get brushed aside so often by doctors and the people closest to them, that after a while we start doing it to ourselves. It then becomes the thing we don't talk about because we already know how that conversation tends to go.

Every once in a while, I find myself thinking about a friend of mine from college.

I was just starting out in medicine, full of confidence and not actually much use to anyone yet. Her mother had been unwell for years. Exhausted, dizzy, going from one doctor to the next and always hearing the same thing, that nothing was wrong. Somewhere along the way, the people around her started treating her like she was just being difficult. That tends to be the word that gets tossed around when no one has the time, or all the pieces, to figure out what is really going on. My friend grew up watching it happen, half afraid of becoming her.

We're in our fifties now, and where I live in New Mexico, the heat runs most of the year. A while back she started telling me what those months do to her. She wakes at the same time every night with her heart pounding and the sheets soaked through, with no clue why. She snaps at her kids and then hates herself for it. Some days she can't even get through something as simple as vacuuming the living room. "I feel like garbage half the year, and honestly, what's the point of saying anything anymore," she told me.

And here's the thing. My friend wasn't being difficult, and neither was her mother. They were two women whose bodies were actually going through something during a part of the year that made all of it worse. The same thing that happened to her mother years ago was happening to her now. And no one in between had ever connected the two.

What it actually looks like

It shows up a little differently in every woman, but it follows a pattern I've seen play out for years.

Heat you used to be able to handle, and suddenly can't. You wake at the same time every night, soaked through, then lie there shivering as the sheets turn cold against you. A real meal leaves you feeling worse afterward instead of better. The same email gets read four times before it finally clicks. By the middle of the afternoon, the brain fog gets so heavy it feels less like tiredness and more like a sedative kicking in. You lose patience for things that never used to get to you. Cravings show up for food you weren't even hungry for. And the guilt you feel when you would rather sit in the car with the AC blasting than go to one more backyard party.

Most of the women who tell me these things aren't slacking off. They've followed the plans, tracked everything, pushed harder than anyone around them knows, and watched their bodies go the wrong way anyway. Their bloodwork tests came back normal, so they were told it was probably just stress or anxiety, and that they needed to lose some weight. After years of going through the same thing, what else are you supposed to think? That the problem must be you. When you're carrying all of that, "just enjoy summer" doesn't come across as encouragement. It just feels like one more thing you are failing at.

What your body is actually doing

When it's hot out, our body's doing a lot more work than we realize. It's keeping us cool, holding our blood sugar steady, and trying to get us real sleep, all at the same time, and all of it runs on the same energy. For a lot of women, one of those jobs, usually blood sugar, is already taking more than its share, even if it has never come up at a doctor's visit or shown up on a standard blood test. So when the heat gets added on top of that, your body is pulling from a tank that was already low.

Once you see it that way, the rest stops looking random. The waking at the same hour every night, the afternoon crash, the cravings out of nowhere often come back to the same system running short, just showing up in different places. It is also why trying to push through it so rarely works. When your body is already running short, demanding more from it doesn't put anything back. It just empties the tank faster. What it needs is the opposite. Less pulling from it, and more of what fills it back up.

Before you try to change anything

You didn't imagine any of this, and your body isn't broken. It has been doing its job under conditions that asked too much of it for too long.

So ease up on yourself. Stop measuring yourself against the woman you were ten or twenty years ago. She was younger, in a different body, with different demands on her, and it was never a fair comparison. Rest when your body asks you to, even when it's summer and everyone around you seems to be loving it. Say no to the things you don't have it in you for, and don't feel like you owe anyone an explanation.

And if you want one thing to actually do, start paying attention. When you feel your worst, notice what's around it. The heat. The night before. The kind of week you are having. You're not trying to fix anything yet. You're just starting to see the pattern, because you can't change what you were never able to look at clearly.

When the heat wears you down like this, it's easy to believe it says something about your character. The truth is, it says something about your body and about how long you carried this without anyone helping you see it. This week, the only thing I want you to set down is the heaviest one: the belief that any of this was your fault.

Disclaimer & A Note from a Caring Practitioner:

My goal is to translate complex wellness concepts into relatable ideas to support your journey. The explanations I provide are simplified models intended for general education and motivation, based on both clinical patterns and established wellness principles. They are not complete medical explanations, diagnoses, or personal advice.

Every person's body is unique. Your individual health needs, experiences, and underlying conditions must be evaluated by your own healthcare provider. This information is educational only and is never a substitute for professional medical consultation, diagnosis, or treatment. Always partner with your personal healthcare provider before making changes to your health regimen.