Seeking Balance with Chelle Summer

I have considered myself an extraverted person for most of my life. I don’t know that I needed to be with people so much as I enjoyed being with people. However, I have also begun to understand that there are two sides of me and that I need to balance them.

I’ve always been a writer, pretty much since I was six years old, but when I reflect back, my need for being with people always seemed to outweigh the need to be alone. Unless I was running, then I have mostly always wanted to be alone for that.

However, since the pandemic there was shift in me. I won’t say that I have become more introverted because of the pandemic because my life always was shifting at that time. The two events just happened to coincide. My research job was ending just as the pandemic was beginning, but this had been in the works for a year.

The pandemic gave me more time to sew, something that I was working toward. I already had my writing in a good place– what I do almost first thing after I sit down at my desk in the early mornings. But the sewing is sort of the second half of my day after my “desk work” has been finished.

My life ebbs and flows with appointments and things to do like look for textiles at estate sales. Some days I’m home all day, others it’s in and out, the dogs watching me as I leave and celebrating when I return.

We just completed our fifth trip since February, four to California and one to Arizona. this weekend we’ll head back to Palm Springs for one last vintage market until the fall. After spending hours and days alone creating, suddenly all my work is there for everyone to see and enjoy. There’s a lot that doesn’t occur to me. I create what I enjoy, I put everything of myself into that I can, and then I throw it out to the world. These events, more than social media ever could since you can’t actually touch anything, have allowed me to see how much people appreciate my work. And me.

Then we return home and I’m ready to create again. There’s a bit of a low-grade grief as I go from being out with everyone to being alone again (usually lasts one day and it’s in the background of the excitement of new items to make). I have begun to understand, especially because I used to be a public speaker about suicide and suicide grief, that this is part of that public and private life and how they must exist side by side.

I need the private, quiet life to create. And I need the public life to share. Giving them a balance of both allows me to be who I’m supposed to be in this world.

The Not Model Model

I’m not someone who posts photos of myself because I like to look at myself. I have long struggled with body image- often saying that the mirror is a fun house mirror to me, what you see isn’t what I see.

For reasons I’m not sure I can explain other than I learned early that style is an expression of myself, clothes are important to me. I was taught to look nice, that there are certain things you don’t wear in public, and never show off your bra straps. Grandma Zurawski lectured me when my yellow Forenza sweater fell below the bottom of my shorts. Handbags weren’t really my thing– I bought one on clearance in the spring and then one in the fall at Foley’s (before it was bought by Macys).

Somewhere nearing forty though, after years of fun style lying dormant in my life, I began to take a different interest on how I dressed and the handbags I carried. I spent a lot of time searching for just the right items and when I was staying with a friend in Hawaii for a speaking engagement, a woman in Whole Foods complimented me on the dress I wore.

“You must hear that a lot,” my friend said.

I began to realize others appreciated my style, too, as this started to happen periodically.

When Chelle Summer was born, I knew that I would have to be my own model. People have to see you carrying handbags not just in person but online, too. They need to see the dresses and swimsuits on a person. And not just any person, someone who looks….real.

I always wear a style of dress I make and sell when I’m at markets. At the last Palm Springs Vintage Market I received so many compliments about being a great model. I take the compliment, but I know the 100 photos it takes for us to get the right one, the one where I’m halfway happy with it, to post.

I only make items I want to wear and carry. I always try to use them before I make them to sell, to know that they work, that they are comfortable, and swimsuits won’t do things like fall off when you jump into a pool.

Part of Chelle Summer has been forcing myself to stretch in ways I don’t always want to but are necessary for people (and you know I really mean women!), to see that what I make is for them, too. That means being my own model, swimsuit and all. After all, there would be no point of all of this if it wasn’t real.

In this week's video...Chelle Summer t-shirts!

"Keep our candles lit"

When Greg and I climbed into the car Sunday to go to Easter Sunday mass, I announced I didn’t want to go.

For the past twelve or so years, I’ve been a mostly regular church goer, most of it fueled by challenges in my life, me looking for help finding ways forward. But the pandemic uprooted that routine– Greg and I had been using Saturday evening as our date night starting with mass and then dinner out– it became harder to get used to going back to church.

That has been compounded by a lot of recent traveling for Chelle Summer. All is well and moving forward and not going to church doesn’t mean God isn’t in my life. But Lent for me this year was pretty absent as many of my Saturdays were in the car and Sundays at a market.

We had been in LA last weekend and next weekend we’re off Palm Springs so I really wanted to stay home Sunday. It feel luxurious to have a day where I don’t have to be anywhere and can get lost in my creative bubble. My life is a balance of being with people and giving myself the quiet time to create, too.

There is a woman at church who plays the piano before the 8:00 am Sunday mass. Greg really likes to listen to her play so we went early enough for that. When she began to play “On Eagle’s Wings,” one of Mom’s favorite songs (that was played at both Denise’s and Mom’s funerals), I began to have the sense that I was supposed to be there.

And then when we were asked to bring up the gifts for communion, to me sort of an extra spiritual blessing at mass, yes, I knew I was meant to be there.

As Greg says, I always feel better after mass. But this was especially true on Easter when Fr. Rob gave such an excellent homily on light and hope. I would have been sorry to have missed it. Even when life is going fairly well, we should never forget God is with us and be grateful for what we have. And when we’re busy and can’t make it to spend a little time in a spiritual space with our spiritual community, there are always good reminders around us.

As Fr. Rob said, “We should promise our Lord we’ll keep our candles lit.”

And so I am.

A Gift from Mom

Seeking Light and Color in March

It’s Monday, March 18, as I write this. Today Denise has been gone 31 years.

While it’s hard to believe 31 years have gone by, there is a piece of her death that I always feel needs repeating each year.

She died in March.

March is the month of the year when we have the highest number of suicides. Most people believe it’s December because many people find the holidays very challenging. However, during the holidays we are often physically closer and more in touch with people. March, though, brings spring. And springs brings light, green, and flowers.

For some people, seeing this rebirth of life is hard and they can’t rejoice in it.

Spring also seems to be coming sooner each year as the climate changes. There is a tree in my backyard neighbors’ yard that hangs a bit over my pool equipment and I can see it from my laundry room window. It’s budding out and I don’t recall it ever looking so green before spring officially started.

I also remember the days after Denise killed herself in 1993– the Midwestern darkness, the brown of the grass; the naked trees and how their branches were empty and bare.

But the day after her funeral, the sun came out and I still remember how different everything felt. Her funeral was over and it was time to move forward. I won’t say move on because we never moved on from her– Denise is still with us. Instead, it was about seeking color and light in March instead of the darkness she got caught in.

While it’s color and light that keep me hopeful, Denise and many other people couldn’t do that.

This photo is from 2019, taken on the University of New Mexico campus. I remember it was a warm day which is why I asked Greg to go to campus with me to take photos in this dress I had made. But when I look at them, and the barren, still winter, of the landscape, my dress and bag stick out like sore thumbs. And then I look closer and I see the trees have buds, just a bit of green, enough that spring is coming and soon my color and light will be part of the landscape again.

I can’t change Denise’s decision 31 years ago to end her life, but I can continue to find color and light in my life. And include her in that journey.

New Vintage Textile Take Everywhere Bags

The Continued Bond, Even Thirty Years Later

In just a few weeks, it will be thirty-one years since my sister Denise ended her life. I don’t mention this because I want anyone to feel sympathetic toward me. Instead, it’s a reflection of how I’ve continued to have a bond with her and my parents (Mom will be gone ten years this month).

After a hiatus of several months, I’ve resumed taking Chelle Summer to markets, all of them now out of state, including two in Palm Springs in the last nine days and in three weeks, to Los Angeles. I’ve been sewing away alone at home. Now that I’m taking all these items I created out in the world, when people compliment my work and admire my creativity, it also reminds me that this is a significant way I keep connected to Denise (and Mom, too, but I have other reflections I’ll share about that soon).

I have often noted how we sewed Barbie clothes and how Mom let us pick remnants on her many trips to the fabric store where we tagged along. We used patterns, but we also designed our own dresses. We were always given Barbie clothes for Christmas and found packages of the plastic hangers in our stockings.

This was just one piece of our colorful and creative childhood (encouraged by Mom) and it’s how Chelle Summer came to be. After speaking and writing about suicide, grief, and sibling loss for some years, I knew it was time for me to do other things. I didn’t know that I would create a lifestyle brand, but as Chelle Summer began to morph into something and people asked about my inspiration, I began to understand it’s a way that I keep connected to Denise and the childhood that we shared.

Each piece I create is rooted into seeds that were planted in that childhood and even over thirty years later, she remains with me helping me to continue to be inspired. When one man walked by and noted how bright my booth, with all the colors and patterns is, he said, “You bring your own sunshine.” And in that sunshine is the hope and inspiration to keep me going.

Vintage cookbook placemats and prepping for two weekends in Palm Springs

Sharing a Meal

For much of my younger years, before my mom went back to work when I was in high school, we gathered at the dinner table as a family nearly every night. But, as I have written before, there also were extended family gatherings on holidays and to celebrate milestones like birthdays and graduations.

Gathering around the table for a meal, breaking bread as it is often said, is so important in many cultures. It’s a way to bring people to not just gather, but to get to know each other, share thoughts and ideas, with food as the centerpiece.

Dinner parties, if only for just a few people, have been part of much of my adult life. My first ones were high school cross country team dinners when I was coaching, learning the art of feeding a crowd of teens vast amounts of spaghetti. After marrying the first time, I was lucky to have multiple couples in my life who were often game for meals whether at our house or theirs.

That continued into my second marriage and last week, as I took the photo that I’ve posted above, with everyone serving themselves and each other, I realized how lucky I am.

I put a lot of thought into the meal– first into what I was going to serve. And then into what I was going to serve it on. The white plates were given to me from my friend Bonnie before she died; the butter dish, the carved wood plate the bread sits on, and the large glass pitcher belonged to my mom; and the rest of the items are mixed between vintage and wedding gifts (both the first and second time).

Life is about these moments that we share and sharing them over a homemade meal makes elevates their honor and meaning in our lives.

Lots of Goose and reflections after a high school presentation on suicide

One More Day

I had a meeting on the University of New Mexico campus last week. It had been a rainy morning and the sun was trying to peek through in the afternoon (although the wind was wreaking havoc with it warming up). Campus doesn’t look its best in the winter but I have several places I make sure to walk by, places that remind me of my graduate school days, particularly the first round when I biked from one end of the campus to the other.

I love this fountain and some years it’s not running, other years it is (or so it seems). And then there’s that view of the mountains, on this day the snow giving them a brighter reflection than usual.

This scene gives me inspiration, motivation. This is the sort of thing I try to remind myself of on a bad day, the days when things that I am working toward feel so far away or each thing I seem to pick up drops back on the floor. Yes, those days.

But this scene takes me back to moving here to New Mexico and starting a new life, one with mountains and desert and all the things that were foreign to a Midwestern girl. It makes me happy to see.

When we’re having a bad day, week, or month, one of the hardest parts of it is to think past those clouds in the sky, to see the sun shining on the snowy mountains. It’s the hope that’s covered up. Somehow we have to remind ourselves that even when we can’t see it, hope and sunshine are there.

We need to hold on for another day. While it feels like bad times last forever, they can’t. We might feel hopeless because we’re tired of being hopeless, too. A little rest in the darkness can also make the morning light brighter.

There is always another day ahead.

Introducing something new for Chelle Summer!

Telling Stories

The funny thing about Chelle Summer is that it didn’t come from just anywhere.

When one looks at so many brands, there doesn’t always seem to be a story behind what’s created and the continued creative process. Mostly, it’s people who wake up one day and want to make things.

There is much more depth to my story because it goes back to my childhood, the one with my sister Denise who died by suicide nearly 31 years ago. We never had a chance to experience an adult sibling relationship because she died just two weeks from her eighteenth birthday, when I was 21.

Instead, I spent many of the past 30 years speaking about suicide, about loss specifically about suicide loss, about how to move forward, about how to prevention suicide, about how to find hope after the trauma and devastation of suicide.

But in that time, I also continued to create as she and I had in our childhood. When we were young, Mom set us loose with sewing scraps and her mother’s Singer sewing machine making Barbie clothes. After Denise died, thanks to a neighbor across the street, I ventured into quilt making and mostly home decor.

Life got busy with other things and the weekends for sewing became fewer and farther between. At one time I came close to giving away Mom’s Bernina sewing machine that she had given me. I really didn’t think I would sew again.

I know, the joke was on me, right?

I had no idea that when I began to make bucket bags and created Chelle Summer, first collecting vintage dresses from estate sales, and then thinking that would never work, that it was going to be too difficult to get enough vintage clothes together to do that (another joke on me!), I would end up where I’m at.

While I use a mix of vintage and new materials, there are stories to tell in each item I make. It might be a bedspread from an estate sale or a piece of wallpaper I found stored in a garage. Or my favorite– the underside of vintage patio umbrella that no longer works. Items have passed through my hands because I wasn’t sure how to use them at the time.

Each item tells a story and it’s about the story I continue to tell, the story that was inspired by the childhood Denise and I shared, the adult life she didn’t experience. That story is what fuels Chelle Summer.

That story gives everything I make more meaning and love. And hope.

Fun with scarves, a vintage sweater, and the TaB bag

Mantras

For me, one of my biggest challenges has always been letting go of my worries.

At some point I realized I had to find a way to let go and I started to use rosary beads with a mantra.

All is well.

All is well.

All is well.

When I was stressed or worried– or felt like things weren’t as hopeful as I wanted them to be– I picked up the rosary and used each bead and said the mantra. It usually took about four beads and somehow the anxiety was eased and I moved on with my day.

Somewhere recently I saw something that said, “opportunities are around the bend” and that has become my new mantra as I continue to work hard in these winter months when things aren’t as busy as other times of the year. I’m pretty good about propelling myself forward, but sometimes we need a little extra help to keep us going when we aren’t sure we can get up again and keep walking.

And other times it’s about taking small steps, even throwing a float into the pool while wearing a vintage dress and your grandmother’s fur stole. Every step forward, no matter the size, is still movement forward.

Meet the Hostess and Take Everywhere Bags in this week's video

Closing Doors, Opening New Doors

It’s so easy to keep doors open, believing that what we want will eventually come through them. And yet we also wonder if it’s time to close them because we’re keeping other doors from opening. I believe this is also more challenging when we’ve been working hard and don’t feel that we’ve created enough momentum to close the door and take a chance that something will happen.

With the change of the calendar, I might be more aware of this than usual. I’ve had several things I’ve been trying to make happen– usually involving other people which always seems to be the reason they don’t happen and why I’m always hesitant to take on projects that involve others– and no matter how much I try, they aren’t moving forward.

Yet I don’t want to close the doors because I’ve invested not just time and money, but some of myself into these projects as well. I’m also sensing that it’s better to let go, that maybe I’m keeping other doors from opening. I’ve started to make steps to closing the doors– not outright announcing they are shut, but putting things away that are related to those projects and, quite honestly, putting them out of my mind.

Sometimes with a “soft close”– letting go– things do come back. And if they don’t, one day I’ll run across something relating to them and see it’s time to shut those doors for good because I’ll be too busy with something new, something that came along because I let those doors shut so new ones could open.

A New Sweater Dress, My Books, and Dogs Antics

Looking for Light in the Darkness

January is the longest, darkest month for me every year. I’m grateful that so far it’s gone fast (although I struggle with how fast time seems to be going) because February is short and then March appears.

The good news is that by the end of January, we gain over thirty minutes of daylight back.

I realize that there are many people for whom it’s not just January that is a struggle, but the feeling of constant darkness is all the time. It could be the longest day of the year and for them it still feels dark.

That said, I do believe that all of us need to go through some darkness. I’m not wishing anything bad on any of us, more that to move forward, we have to experience darkness. It’s only then that we have a greater appreciation of the light. In the same way, as much as I hate winter the cold months, I believe that plants need to die and hibernate to come back stronger in the spring. Winter should be a time of rest for all of us.

If we are experiencing darkness, then it’s up to us to find a way to not just endure that time, but make the most of it. I think of January as a good time to clean out closets, organize things I haven’t had a chance to in the previous year, and tackle projects that keep us indoors (a good time to make a quilt! or two).

Everything looks different in the dark. I know that well- when I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t stop thinking about whatever I’m worried about, often what bothers me then looks different once the sun goes up.

Make use of this time. After all, as someone once told me, the sun has to come up eventually. Winter has to give way to spring. And cold has to be replaced with warmth.