This is the 6th post in the Parents in Recovery series.
Summer is a favorite season for so many of us. It is often viewed as a time to slow down, vacation, spend time outdoors, and recharge. For parents, however, summer can also mean disrupted routines, increased childcare demands, family travel, social events, and financial pressure. This season can also increase social media-induced FOMO; everyone else is somehow relaxing or vacationing more successfully.
For parents in recovery, this season can hold both opportunity and risk. Longer days, time outside, and a break from the usual pace. At the same time, vacations, barbecues, beach days, family gatherings, and looser structure can also bring exposure to alcohol, overstimulation, and social fatigue.
This is why self-care is not optional
An important distinction is that self-care in recovery is not about spa days, massages, or temporary relief. Those activities may be enjoyable, but recovery-based self-care needs to go deeper. It involves learning how to care for one’s physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, social, and environmental needs in ways that support long-term physical and emotional sobriety. Audre Lorde wrote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.” That statement captures the stakes for many people in recovery. Self-care is not a luxury; it is lifesaving.
When substances used to be “self-care”
Many people with substance use disorders have used alcohol or drugs to change the way they feel. Substances may have been used to calm anxiety, numb depression, escape grief, tolerate boredom, celebrate, sleep, socialize, and reward hard work. Dr. Edward Khantzian’s self-medication hypothesis helps explain this pattern. His work describes how people may gravitate toward particular substances because they appear to provide short-term relief. Over time, the substance becomes part of the suffering rather than a solution.
This has special meaning for parents in recovery, as children need care regardless of whether a parent is tired, stressed, grieving, anxious, overstimulated, lonely, or depleted. For some parents, alcohol or substances became the only “off switch” they knew.
Several parents whom I interviewed for my book “Parents in Recovery” described this painful realization, stating, “I thought my self-care back then was staying high so I wouldn’t have to feel depressed and anxious.” Another admitted, “Drinking was my ‘self-care,’ my ‘me time.’” The irony is that many of these parents viewed substance use as part of their self-care; however, it was a band-aid as well as a toxic way to care for themselves.
The summer self-care paradox
Summer can make self-care sound easy—sunlight, outdoor options, vacations, and socializing! But for many parents, this season also removes the very structure that helped them stay balanced. School schedules may change, children may be home more often, work routines may shift, and vacations may involve extended family, alcohol-centered gatherings, disrupted sleep, travel stress, and less access to recovery routines.
Many parents feel pressure to make summer “special” for their children. This can lead to over-scheduling, over-functioning, and guilt when parents need time for themselves. For parents who already carry shame about their addiction history, taking recovery time can feel complicated. One parent expressed that “the guilt around our addiction taking us away from family, then our sobriety does the same thing.”
Another parent poignantly described that, “I always feel like my addiction wants me last. It wants me to be wrung out, exhausted, on edge, overwhelmed, and stressed.” This quote demonstrated the ability to detach and observe their addiction and to make choices to counter it.
Here are some self-care tips for the summer.
Physical and behavioral self-care
- Schedule recovery and self-care into the family calendar before the week fills up.
- Protect sleep as much as possible, especially during travel, vacations, or busy weekends.
- Move your body in ways that feel restorative rather than punitive, such as walking, swimming, hiking, yoga, biking, stretching, or beach walks.
- Build in quiet recovery time after high-stimulation family events, travel days, beach days, amusement parks, or extended family gatherings.
- Be careful not to over-schedule children’s activities, travel, camps, social plans, and family obligations.
- Say no to optional summer events that leave you depleted.
Psychological and emotional self-care
- Notice whether “fun” plans are creating stress, resentment, exhaustion, or emotional overload.
- Journal before or after vacations, family visits, or major summer transitions.
- Identify what you need before you reach the point of irritability, shutdown, or emotional depletion.
- Remember that rest may feel uncomfortable at first if your nervous system is used to crisis, busyness, or over-functioning.
Environmental self-care
- Spend time outside daily when possible.
- Create a small, quiet space where you can reset, even during travel or busy family time, such as a bedroom, porch, car, beach chair, walking path, or outdoor spot.
- Choose travel plans that support recovery rather than overload the family system.
- Be honest with yourself and others about whether having alcohol or substances in the home, vacation rental, hotel room, cooler, or shared family space feels safe.
- Avoid environments that are primarily substance-centered, especially if they create emotional or relapse risk.
While some days will be child-centered, there are other days that will require more recovery focus. Some weeks will be messy, and other vacations will not feel relaxing. Self-care does not mean controlling every variable. It means staying mindful and in tune so that there is space for self-correction and regaining equilibrium.
