Having healthy boundaries is a reality practice, an acceptance practice. It is a practice of knowing your worth, acknowledging your desires, and honoring your capacity. Healthy boundaries are the holy combination of these three things, they do not discount one to favor the other.
I am a lifelong people pleaser. I grew up in an abusive home where it was extremely important for me to monitor my surroundings and to be as pleasing as possible in order to keep myself safe. As a child, I was treated cruelly and unfairly by the people who were supposed to keep me safe. In the face of this cruel and unfair treatment, I pleased. I pleased until I could not please anymore and then one day, I said WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS SUCH A BITCH TO ME to my mom, AKA the exact wrong person. The exact wrong person said I Hate You and Your Existence Has Ruined My Life. I said I Don’t Care, and I both did and I did not care. Sometimes there really are little lies and little truths in each sentence. I did not care because I could not care. What would I have done if I cared that my mom hated me and if I cared that I ruined her life? At age 9? 10? 11? 12?
I did not truly learn the meaning of boundaries until I was 36 years old. Through a series of unfortunate events, I found myself alone with no sense of who I was and what I liked. To put it simply, I wanted to die. There was no one to please and no one to tether to, and what I found there was that I was living in a profoundly spiritually unsafe place. I have always wanted to live more than I want to die, which has consistently saved my ass. When we do not know who we are and there’s no one else to focus on, we must do a little leg work in order to stay alive.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to I love love, anything is possible to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.