The Transformative Power of Chelle Summer

With Thanksgiving just a few days away, which also means the reflection that I find myself doing for the end of the year, I’m reminded how much creating Chelle Summer has inspired my life. Of course, one might say the inspiration created Chelle Summer, but as the ideas continue to come (several new ones very recently), I find the more I immerse myself into Chelle Summer, the more inspired I am.

But when I take a step back, I also can see the rearview mirror and how much my past has influenced so many things about it. I think of the prints and colors of my childhood, the creativity that was encouraged (and the sewing experiments!) to creating my own style in junior high and high school. Then moving to Albuquerque and my friend Bonnie (who died nearly twenty years ago) and all she taught me about sewing and putting colors and prints together. My first husband worked in credit card processing and most of his customers in the beginning of our marriage were artists so we were often at markets and shows checking on satellite terminals (this was when cell phones were just starting to become mainstream). The list is endless.

Some of it’s about prayer, about asking what I’m supposed to do. Or buying estate sale items and not being quite sure what to do with them until some time passes. Five years ago I couldn’t have imagined I’d have known how to turn so many vintage and tossed -aside items into things like aprons and handbags. I love the joy of taking something that might have been discarded (while also having been stuck in a garage or at the back of a cabinet/closet for years) and transforming it into something someone can use and enjoy. The new life.

There has been a lot of loss in my life and a lot of it came early for me. But I have always tried to use it to turn it into something else, just like I do with the objects and fabrics I find. Chelle Summer has given me a place to do that on a larger scale to share it with more people.

Chelle Summer isn’t just a brand. And it’s not just a lifestyle either. Chelle Summer is where I have found my hope and inspiration to continue to create and share with the world. It's one of many things I’m grateful for this Thanksgiving.

May you have a peaceful and hopeful one

Because God has Bigger Ideas

There isn’t an idea shortage in my head.

That might be the most challenging thing I face– because there are a limited number of hours in the day and I never get to do as much as I would like (at least without getting tired).

But when there are a great many things I’ve been working at that seemingly go nowhere, or don’t go where I want them to go, it’s made me wonder where I’m going wrong. That’s when it occurred to me that maybe there are other things I’m supposed to do.

Are you hearing this? Me, I, me, my idea, this is what I want to do. I see it in my head clear as day, I can feel it, I can touch it. And yet, it doesn’t happen. That’s because God has bigger ideas than I do.

Has this ever happened to you? You don’t just think, you know, you believe, you have bigger ideas. And yet you hold onto too tight to them and they don’t come to fruition. Or they fizzle out.

Try giving it up to God, to ask, to say, “I want to do bigger things. I know you have something bigger in store for me than I can ever imagine.”

That’s when you find out that it’s true, God does have bigger plans for you. Ah, it might not be easy and it might mean you have to step your foot out of that bubble you’ve been standing in too long, but it will be well worth it. And it will be more meaningful because it came from God. There’s a satisfaction in knowing that a greater power brought it to you. Life wasn’t meant to be easy. To grow means to forge forward, to step in places we never thought we would or could.

Be ready. You don’t want to miss the message.

Path to the Future is through the Past

Something always starts to happen this time of year for me.

I know we all would think, because I’m such a summer person, that summer would be the time when things happen for me. However, after the sort of October lull, I’m starting feel the conveyor belt of life underneath me gain speed and things start to move.

And it’s been that way every year as long as I can remember although I usually don’t realize it until I’m already into the thick of it.

This year in particular, I have found myself spending a lot of time contemplating how I got where I am today. While it all started when I asked the question, Where are dreams born?, for my Route 66 Dreams book, I’ve found myself reflecting on that same question for me. I believe it comes from a combination of turning an new decade, the world changing much too quickly (and not always for the better), plus many deaths of people close to me in recent years.

It has all taken me back to spinning around the events, thoughts, clothes, inspirations, and everything else that has led me to where I am today. And where I want to go.

As we get closer to Christmas, to Advent which is a season of anticipation, and my December birthday, it all starts to spin faster and may not come together in obvious ways, but there is much forward movement during the time we’re about to embark on.

While the photo here was taken a few years ago, when I look at it, I see the person I want to be, the person I’ve worked hard to be, the person that I know well (because I’ve taken the time to know myself). The hardest part now is letting go what hasn’t happened– and isn’t going to– and holding onto the dreams I still have, while also continuing to take steps forward to make them happen.

In November and December though, I also take a step back not just from the past year but all the years of my life and see how far I’ve come, where those dreams started, and make continued plans for where I want to go.

Sometimes They Teach Us More in Death

Some things in the world don’t work as I would like them to and I find myself not just having to accept them, but figuring out how to lessen the pain inside me that I can’t have what I want.

I have had a lot of loss. And I’ve had quite a few losses where I wasn’t in close contact with people at the time they died. They were people important to me in some way, but for whatever reason we weren’t in contact when they died. Or they were people who were important to me in some way during one point in my life, but maybe not now. Sometimes I have found out they died when I’ve read the obituaries in the newspaper or when an invitation to a party is returned in the mail.

Those times especially have left me feeling sad that I didn’t get to say goodbye. One particular death had me praying for a period of time, trying to figure out a “place” to put it.

That’s when I realized that sometimes people teach us more after they have died than they did when they were here with us. Don’t get me wrong, I wish they were all here, but, as I said, I don’t get what I want very often. Through what felt like endless questioning and prayer, I finally realized that there is still some way they can be a positive influence in my life. It’s usually with my writing– like maybe the idea for this blog– or something in my fiction.

The key is to keep asking, to stay open, and to keep believing. I do believe everything is for a reason, but we also must be open to that reason. While we don’t always get what we believe we want, there are many other ways that life can fulfill us. Keeping our deceased loved ones close and connected is one of those ways.

Seeking Balance

While I’m usually writing about my challenges with letting go, I’d say keeping a balanced life takes a close second. I’m very aware of it and that’s probably made it easier to spot how much of the world that enmeshes me is also out of balance.

The pandemic threw so much into the mess, a cauldron that was already brewing, and I really, truly believed that the opportunity to pull things back to the middle would happen. Yes, the joke was on me and I wish I were laughing. It’s like the freight trains that were running out of control, suddenly switched paths and started to run out of control. The other way.

While there is much we can’t control around us, we can control our reactions to everything and that’s part of what set off this imbalance that runs the other way. Embracing change is hard, especially when it’s taking beloved aspects out of your life. I know because I’ve lost a lot of them over the past few years. While Ash and I were running this morning, I was thinking about how right before the pandemic I was so excited because things were running in such a good direction. I very much felt like things were where I wanted them to be and I were going where I wanted them to go.

Then, Bam!, it was all gone. I’ve spent over two years looking for the pieces that were swept up in the tornado, some not to be found again and others were so torn up and twisted they weren’t usable and had to thrown out. A new journey had to be started.

But when there is a new journey, it’s hard to find the footing, the pace, the rhythm. That’s where we are now– we’re trying to find where to go on a road that doesn’t exist. That’s thrown the balance out the window because we don’t know what it looks like so it’s gone back a different way, one that doesn’t make sense or feel right.

My hope, although I admit some days have been much harder than others to be hopeful so I try to stay in bubble where at least my creativity and my dogs keep me happy, is that we find our way back to the middle. The world won’t survive if we don’t.

Letting Go = Trusting God

I fully admit that I’m a bit slow when it comes to connecting the spiritual dots.

And I fully admit that letting go is one of my struggles.

There is a sign in an office window at the gym where I swim that says, “Work hard. Pray often. Trust God.” I was thinking about it after I passed last week and I wondered: What would I add to this sign? Did I think it needed something more or was that the message it should be?

That’s when I added, in my head, let go.

But several hours after, I realized that letting go and trusting God are the same. All these years I have struggled to let go and I partly believe it’s because letting go always felt like something I could never accomplish. I mean, really, we talk about letting go all the time but how does one actually do it? I needed an action step for it and I’d never been able to find one.

Now that I know it’s really about trusting God, that actually feels easier for me. Maybe because it’s also a more positive way of putting it. Trusting God is the same as having faith, of being hopeful, of believing.

I can do that. From now on I’m going to remind myself not to use let go, but instead to say, trust, have faith.

That I can do.

A hopeful moon

My head is cluttered with stuff I wish weren’t there. I continue to forge forward because I’m not going to let anything get me down. Yet there is a sadness of a number of recent deaths of people important to me, the continued changes in our world, reaching a new decade in my life and all this change at the same time…the list goes on.

I pray often that I stay in my lane (a track term) and worry about myself, not about what others are doing or the way they have treated me. And I pray for the hope to find my forward even when it feels like so much is stacked against me– some aspects of the world I counted on are not there now nor are some of the people who I enjoyed sharing conversations and experiences with.

This morning I went out to run the dogs and saw the moon bright in the sky. But it was at the pool where I truly saw the moon (it’s much easier to look up in the pool than when I’m running and might possibly run into something or someone). Swimming back and forth,I could see it had a light layer of cloud cover, like a gauzy fabric, but it was close enough and bright enough that I felt as if it were lighting up my travels across the water and back to the other side.

Hopeful moon.

It was there that I was reminded that despite all the sadness, the changes, the things I’m not sure how to weather, that there is always hope somewhere. Often, we just need to be reminded to get out of our heads. Nature is perfect for that.

Persistence

I am on a long, slow road to where I want to be.

I’m well aware of this although I admit some days I get frustrated that things aren’t moving as speedily along as I might like. However, I also know that you keep throwing things out to the world and you keep working at it, chiseling away because one day, well, it has to move forward.

There are days where I don’t feel like I’m moving forward, other days where I feel like I’ve made a huge leap forward, and yet other days where I wonder how I ended up going backward.

I can see now the many lessons life has taught me- often with the help of people along the way– to keep moving, to keep working, to keep chiseling.

In reflection, the biggest lessons came from running cross country and track. As a seventh grader, it was where I learned the art of accomplishing goals without really understanding what I was doing, more it was about learning to run a mile without walking (mailbox to tree to mailbox to the stop sign to the next intersection). That led to learning to run faster, to running a mile in a shorter time.

Those were the lessons I parlayed into the rest of my life and everything I have accomplished. All these years later, I still call on them when I feel like things have plateaued and I’m not getting enough movement forward. I remind myself it’s about not giving up.

After all, we never know where we’ll end up if we keep walking forward.

Where Stories Are Told

I remember standing in the counselors’ offices at my high school just a few days after my sister died, a place they had opened up (there was no school that day because of parent-teacher conferences) if anyone wanted to go talk. I was there because Denise and I had shared the same counselor and I believe she had asked me to stop by.

There were no students there and through a discussion I don’t remember with the other counselors who were there, I remember one saying, “That’s what no one talks about after someone dies- the little things that are important in everyday life.”

She was referring to the fact that I had just said I wasn’t sure who would cut my hair as Denise had been doing it (and giving me perms but that’s another story).

I have always thought about this– we forget how much of life occurs in the routine of everyday life. Someone I know also once said, as the Catholic church ventured into Ordinary Time after Advent one year, how extraordinary things happen during Ordinary Time.

We often believe that the greatest events in our lives happen in the biggest events, but if we take a step back, we see that our stories are told in the routine of our daily lives. This was the case of how I wrote my book, Route 66 Dreams. While, yes, the Danielson family is on vacation, the story is really about those quiet moments on the trip of the changing landscape, lounging by the pool, and going to the laundromat.

I received an email some months ago from a man I don’t know. He said he was a 72-year-old grandfather and had picked up my book to read and thought he would hate it. He said, “You made what could have been a very mundane story very interesting and touching.”

Our stories are being told as we travel through each day because the opportunities, the moments, everything is right there with us. The question is, are we aware of what’s around us to know the story we could tell when we get far enough down the road to look back in the rearview mirror and see it, feel it, sense it?

As a little side note to this, someone else believes I’ve accomplished this, too, as Route 66 Dreams was named a finalist in the New Mexico historical fiction category in the New Mexico book awards contest. Please keep your fingers crossed that the book wins so that in the routine of an ordinary day in the next two weeks, I experience that moment that tells the story of finding out that I won the contest.

The Words to Continue Forward

"In the midst of our rapidly changing and frequently troubled world, her calm and dignified presence has given us confidence to face the future as she did with courage and hope" – Dean of Windsor at Queen Elizabeth II's committal service.

It would be easy to get caught up in the many distractions we face in our world, especially given how challenging it feels most recent days. My glass is usually half full, but there are days I find it’s extra work to keep my focus and combat the distractions around me. The world is changing so much– some were bound to happen, others I didn’t see coming.

Yet we need to continue to forge forward, to find our place in it, and to find our peace. What that looks like for each of us will be different, but it’s there. Somewhere.

Queen Elizabeth II was a steady presence and lived a long life, enduring much we will never understand. The words of the Dean of Windsor echoed through me and her funeral was a celebration of her life and what she leaves behind.

We go on and we do it looking forward just as she did.

National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month

Where the Past Meets the Future

It would be easy to look at what I create with Chelle Summer and to think it’s not much more (if you know my age) than a reflection of the colors and prints of my childhood.

But it’s much more than that.

While my sister Denise died by suicide nearly 30 years ago and I have spent a large chunk of the time since then writing and speaking about suicide and suicide grief, the road has taken a turn into another sort of motivation.

Chelle summer is an outgrowth of our childhood together. The photo above was inspired by the Coppertone suntan lotion (as we called it then) bottles. That color combination with the stripes brings back the smell (how ever that’s possible!) in my mind. We loved our time in Holiday Inn and other motel swimming pools; my fibrella lounge chairs take me back to those motels, too.

But it also was about home and Mom who not only shopped carefully for the items to brighten up the house. There wasn’t much money but she made sure we had colors that weren’t dead (her word as in, “The colors in that store were dead.”). My childhood was filled with lots of yellow and green, my Barbies had an ample supply of colors with bright patterns and colors. And this means that Denise had all those things, too.

I surround myself with those colors and prints, plus the versions that stay in my head, ready to be recreated. And having Chelle Summer as a place to put them has brought much joy to my life. It keeps me connected to my parents and my sister in a way I know I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Reflection

My forays to estate sales have reminded me of something– how little time we spend in reflection now because we’re too caught up in our phones and other devices. This probably has something also to do with my having reached a certain age where I’m more aware of the past than I used to be, or maybe because life really has changed that much.

There are two aspects of houses (where people have lived a long time) that remind me how these changes- needlepoints and garage organization.

In the past, men spent a whole more time in their garages– working on their cars, fixing lawn mowers (rather than buying new ones) or fixing a variety of other kitchen appliances (again, rather than buying new ones). They also rewound hoses just right and kept things organized using various leftover kitchen jars (Miracle Whip, baby food, and sometimes even orange juice concentrate containers). The radio might be playing a baseball or football game, but mostly this was all done with the sounds of other lawn mowers running in the background.

Step inside and you might find walls with filled with some sort of needlework or pillows accenting a couch with that same needlework. Bedroom closets might have more kits, some never opened, but with good intentions.

I used to do a lot of cross stitch especially while I watched television. There wasn’t a phone to scroll and seeing these unfinished kits (and buying them!) has made me realize how little time we spend in our thoughts. We’re too busy looking for what’s next on the phone or the internet rather than thinking about a variety of things. And while rumination can be a bad thing, there is a balance of reflection without letting it fester or get the best of us.

One of my goals, especially as the evenings cool and there is less outdoor time, is to scroll less (and I don’t scroll a whole lot as it is) and create more, finish more of these kits, and read more.

I never thought the internet or phone were a bad thing; more that we need to bring them into balance in our lives rather than letting them take over.

Change, change, and more change

Life is about change. I get it. I might not always like it, but I’ve always tried to embrace it because it’s about learning to close doors and open new ones. Each season we travel through offers us likes and dislikes, just as the weather seasons might bring us some things we like and other things we don’t like.

I noticed late afternoon yesterday as I was swimming how the light is beginning to change. The sun feels more golden, the days a bit shorter (how quickly we lose that hour of light we had gained by the start of summer), and the air just a little cooler in the mornings.

While I embrace a bit cooler, I’m already dreading how quickly fall might really come because we never know year to year when it will arrive. It’s like waiting for someone who is driving to visit- you don’t quite know how fast they drive, how much traffic they encountered, or if they had to travel through any construction.

And there has been so much other change in our big collective world that has dripped down into our own worlds. I find myself wondering if there has been that much change or if I’m just old enough to see my younger days as a little big more nostalgic. I really do miss the landline among other things. The simplicity that my parents always talked about, the simplicity of their youth that they didn’t see in what look like our much more complicated lives as I grew up, now feels simple compared to what I see today.

There are good things– there are always good things, things I’m grateful have changed. And yet I still find myself feeling sad for things that have been lost and wondering what I do with the memories that I don’t want to lose.

I always say we have opportunities no matter what’s happening to us and this is no exception. The hard part is being open to those opportunities that might not make sense, at least when they come to us. And finding comfort in the discomfort of change we don’t want to see.

Yet change has always come, at least four times a year as we spin around on our axis. We’ve always been prepared for it. Now we need to use those lessons we’ve been taught our entire lives.

The Inspiration Runs Deep

My parents had a walk-in closet and when you entered it, my mom’s things were on the left. The first items hanging that I remember were a macramé plant holder (I’m not sure what happened– somehow she never had a spot to hang it in the house nor did we have many house plants although the gardens outside were expansive).

But on that same hanger was a bucket bag– Mom’s pool/beach bag. It had offi-white trim and was blue with sort of an ocean print on it. I remember things like anchors in the print. That bag is what inspired the bucket bags that started Chelle Summer.

I don’t know what happened to Mom’s bucket bag, I’m sure at some point she either threw it away because it was torn or she donated it. But I do know that it has remained in the back of my mind for many years and that, because I’ve never seen anything like it, I knew that I had to recreate something similar to fulfill that memory.

It took me a while to figure out how to get the measurements right on the bags and then I made other changes (like figuring out a base I was happy with) and finally moving to vinyl for the base and top trim. The bags now resemble, as much as possible, Mom’s pool bag.

In the same vein, the floral print on the bucket bag in the photo reminds me of my Grandma Zurawski. I can feel the red heavy carpet under my feet and the sound the floors made as you walked down the hall. I can smell the linen closet on the left and that floral terrycloth fabric reminds me of the towels she had. I have another bag I made to sell and women always stop and say it reminds me then of their grandmas.

“In a good way,” one said.

We don’t often realize what inspires us is somehow rooted in our past, in our memories. As I talked about last week, about the motels keeping me connected to my family members who had died, so do the objects I remember and those that I find to repurpose. The inspiration was born from living life, from the things around me.

They are what inspire me to make new items to be used and enjoyed. And tell new stories.

The Motel Connection

My sister Karen and I have lamented many times how we regret that there are no photos of at least us kids standing by one of the old Holiday Inn signs. Those remain my happiest family memories– notably when we’d be in the family station wagon and watching the billboards for the motel location that Dad had selected that night. From there, it became who could spot the sign first. We often put in so many miles in a day that it wasn’t unusual if the sign was already lit up when we arrived at the motel.

But in those 1970s days, one didn’t have a phone to take photos and there was usually only one camera within a family. For us, it was Mom’s little Kodak and Dad’s Super 8 film camera where he filmed a lot of scenery, something I now understand given how much landscapes have changed.

We were taught to have an appreciation for the motel. I remember one time we showed up at a Holiday Inn to find out it was something like eight stories high– Dad only booked ones that were two stories– and he canceled the reservation. It was in one of the Carolinas and we landed at a one-story motel that made Mom very happy, especially given it had a claw-foot bathtub in the bathroom. I was disappointed it didn’t at least have a swimming pool.

Because Mom, Dad, and my younger sister Denise have all died, I have come to realize how much I connect with them through these memories and the motels. It’s why Greg will tell you that I’m happiest if you plant me at a motel with a swimming pool in a parking lot.

The motel in the photo is in Paso Robles, California. I just checked the photos online and it’s undergone a significant upgrade since we stayed there in 2015 (it’s never a bad thing when the carpet is replaced by some sort of wood laminate) but the pool remains the same– in the parking lot, under the sign. As it should be.

The motel, of the retro sort, fascination has been with me most of my life although it wasn’t something I talked about much. Before social media, you shared with the people in your immediate circle of life and, for me, I added these pieces to the stories I have told, many in the form of unfinished novels.

But now as I continue to trek forward, to build Chelle Summer, to write more, to share these aspects of my life and turn them into something either within my writing or Chelle Summer, I see they are also a way to continue to be connected to the family members who are no longer with me.

Or, perhaps, they are guiding me, they being the ones to make this connection happen, knowing how well I will keep the connection with them this way. And keep my hope alive.

Waxing Nostalgic

Seven years. Seven years of Chelle Summer.

It’s hard to believe. On days where I feel frustrated that things aren’t moving fast enough, i should spend a few extra minutes looking at how far I come, how much I have created in the past seven years, and how I’ve made my sewing and designing skills even better.

This photo remains one of my favorites– taken in 2016 at Bolsa Chica State Park just north of Huntington Beach. I don’t know how many bags, dresses, swimsuits, and coverups Greg and I have schlepped from the car across the sand to an open spot on the beach. We’ve done it everywhere, more now than before, and we’ll continue to do it to make Chelle Summer what I want it to be, and what I know it can be.

It started with a bucket bag made from a vintage dress and morphed into much more than that. It started because I decided to start creating what I wanted and didn’t see in the stores. Now there’s very little you’ll find me shopping for (mostly shoes and sunglasses) because I can make so much of it.

Chelle Summer isn’t just a clothing brand, it never really was, because I have too many baskets of eggs I’m working on. Chelle Summer isa a lifestyle, it’s about being true to yourself and what makes you happy, what inspires you.

My hope is that each year, while maybe the climb is taking longer than I thought, that I do continue this journey forward. There is still much to share and much to create.

Thank you for coming along for the ride.

July Inspiration

It’s supposed to be July inspiration about avoiding distractions, some new handbags I made, and recent vintage fabric I bought….but I think it’s really about videobombing Lilly and her new partner Goose.

Peace in the Water

I don’t know what it is, but I’ve become aware of it recently more than ever– when I step into the pool to for a swim, it’s like everything that worries me falls away.

While I don’t profess to be any great swimmer (I never could get the breathing right no matter how many times I tried), I just love to be in the water. Maybe it’s because there’s something about taking the stress off my feet and legs that get tired of holding me up.

Or maybe the water is filled with hope.

I have written and talked before how family vacations were the happiest times for me and all about the Holiday Inn or other motel swimming pool. My husband Greg will say that you just need to give me a motel with a pool in the parking lot and I’m set. But I also spent summers with my friends at a swimming pool that had once been a quarry in my hometown of Naperville, IL. Or maybe it’s just because we’re taught that to have a swimming pool, is status, it’s prestige.

It’s more than that. My pool guy will say that no one uses a pool more than I do. Sure, I like to look out the window and see it but I really like to be in it. That’s what makes not being able to surf so frustrating– I miss laying on my board as the waves lapped below me. It was a connection to the water that I don’t get to experience right now because of my arm injury. I connect via swimming but I still miss that ocean connection the surfboard.

We all have places we find peace and hope. While I didn’t really understand it, I learned mine early, hung on it, and integrated it into my daily life. And that’s partly what helps keep me going even when life tries to distract me and hold me back.

Hearing God

I will be the first to tell you that going to mass at 4:00 pm on Saturday drives me up a wall.

It feels like smack in the middle of the afternoon and on Saturday it was 100 degrees outside when I left my house. But there’s a reason I do it and this weekend I had quite the reminder of what that reason was.

When I go to church, I’m forced away from the many distractions at my house– there are always a million things I want and need to do. But at church, I’m a captive audience except for maybe my overflowing brain activity.

Four years ago, my friend Ann gave me the journal in the photo for my birthday because she knew I had been writing homily quotes on the weekly church bulletins. She thought this way I could keep them in once place and she was right. But that book has morphed into more than homily quotes. What you don’t see in the photo– because I took the photo first– is that I filled two pages with ideas. Part of it was the idea for this blog and the lines I didn’t want to forget. There also was a caption for a photo that I wanted to post.

And sometimes there are color ideas– even the order and colors of a women’s shirt stripes some weeks ago.

I remember sitting in my hometown church, Sts. Pete and Paul, some years ago. It was a hot afternoon and I was the only person in the church. It was so quiet and I felt like I could stay there forever, to write sitting there, to hear God so well.

But what I realized later was that we have to venture into the world because part of our task is to learn to hear God with all the distractions around us. Life isn’t meant to be a cake walk (why would we be here if we had nothing to learn?) and I see part of my path is to learn to hear God even when the voices and distractions surround me.

By the time I leave mass on Saturdays, I feel as though I’ve had a reward because so many ideas have come to me. It’s as if God is saying, “I know you were trying to listen all week, but this is what I think you missed.”