Boundaries are an act of generosity. They are an invitation into who we really are. Inviting ourselves. Inviting others. Boundaries are intimacy.
They don’t always start out that way. They are a new concept for us. Something many of us are are learning and seeking. Where we are and what they are, seem to collide into something rough. Like walls, like armor they first appear in our lives in unyielding and protective ways. By trying to keep one piece out, we end up keeping everything out. It must be this way, start this way. We must start this way. Our reality crashing with our potential, it can only be rough at first impact.
It is growth, a new skill. We aren’t good at it yet. So when we make a start, we fumble and miss. But it is just the start, let’s not quit now.
Because somewhere along the way, we will find the generosity in it, in ourselves, in Earth, in everything. Somewhere such gifts will greet us and ask to join us. We are Earth and life after all. We are all our mess, destructive and toxic around us, and also we are full of potential and we learn. There is an abundance of life in this abundance of decay. If we let it in, lessons and truth will find us. Like magnets or magic, we can’t help it.
So let’s make our start. Let’s put the rough and tough boundary out into the world. Let’s ask to learn to soften them. Softer is not less. Kindness takes us closer to truth, to clarity. In kindness, we can stand immovable. Rooted and proud. The shame, fear, anger that fuels the harsh, thos shift beneath us. Unreliable and so no place to stay. Keep on moving in this boundary journey. Maybe in sometime, we will grow our roots, find our home, life will come to us. Crawl along us, nestle and nest in us. Our roots will spread and find generous fungi bringing us nourishment and connection to other great trees. Home. A community to be with us. As we are.
My reader, my sweet reader, I was given the give of potential and time. This is my vision. It is based on what I find myself becoming but not what I am. Time and these moments of truth and connection will do that.
I still clam up when it comes time to lay a boundary or ask for something. Fear and shame and anger greet me, impact me. My invitations are muddy and demanding. I run before I ask. I blame and say I am out of here. Those are my boundaries. Trustless, flimsy, young. Or they have been.
Let’s see, the time before last, when I set, well declared, a big boundary, I hurt someone dear to me. I essentially said “this is what I need but I know you don’t care enough about me to give it to me so I guess I don’t fit and that is fine.” I had never truly asked for what I needed before that moment, never really communicated it to them. I was just passive, maybe passive aggressive at time too. What I needed felt impossible to ask for. I couldn’t let it be true. I denied it was true. While simultaneously and unfairly measuring their care for me by it, an unspoken, unrequested, unacknowledged desire. When I let the truth crash into me, the ground shifted under me as my eyes cleared a little more. As I accepted and even felt love for what I wanted, a want that spoke to who I was, not who I wished to or should have been – I let urgency and certainty take charge. No waiting and getting to know my new truth. No deep breaths and slow moments to settle in my new space. My space was new but I was not. I still carried my shame and fear and anger. I shooed it away from one part of me but didn’t look to see where else it had gone to. Had it left me all together or was it attaching itself to something new. Something it already had its claws into, that would now get its full attention.
The reality is, it takes a long, very long time to see all the fear and shame clouding us, keeping us in shadows. That is a life’s journey.
Yet I still find gratitude for that time burned in my brain. I had separated myself from the group, in a foreign city in a foreign country. I was the foreigner. It was night and I found a new piece of myself. I accepted a piece of myself with tenderness and love, limited as that kindness was. I spoke with clear voice about my truth. I was me, my patterns still cascaded out before me – blame and run – I as I truly was could never be wanted. It takes a long time, a very long time to unlearn and replace behaviors such as these. But I was not me of years ago, I was me now, brushing away the shadows. I remained kind in my delivery, grateful in the love that had been shared with me. Imperfect, misguided but my love was still there.
I hurt someone I care greatly for yet I smile months later as I write this. I didn’t fail. That hurt I felt and shared, I didn’t create it, dream it up and spew it out into this world. I inherited this hurt, those behaviors. Earth held them before me. Beings far back and all around me ache with them. Right now, right here, I feel no shame towards them. I only delight at how I also find myself full of potential to heal. This pain, it is ours, and if we are very luck, it is ours to heal. Just a piece of it, just a little. Because healing is joyful work, lifegiving work and cowering is not.
Pursue your boundaries with me, my dear reader. Hold them gently, learn them slowly.
-El An Gilman-