I am a boundary

An excerpt from my upcoming collection of essays "A Little Book of Feminine Quality"

I feel changes are coming to this space. I recently had the thought strike me - “Into the Liminal must die”. I started this Substack in 2021 to help me explore my desire for writing. It allowed me to explore my identity as a writer, practice expression and creativity, get the first real experience of having an audience and receive feedback on my writing. I feel much more connected to my identity, my style and topics I want to express myself about now and with that there is a desire to create a new space where I can host my creations. One of them will be the collection of essays I am writing, “A Little Book of Feminine Quality”. I am also in the process of dreaming up a new website with online courses, a podcast and resources. I will announce it here as more form comes through. For now, I am sharing an excerpt from the book and officially starting the slow process of winding down this space. Making some progress on the topic of boundaries has been one of the most exciting developments of my wintering time and it felt good to give it some words.

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What are boundaries?

I have struggled with this question for a good, long while.

From social media, it’s easy to get an impression that there are people who are bad at boundaries and those who are good at them.

Because I did not feel good at them, I assumed I was bad at them.

In the absence of more wholesome narratives, my mind produced some more versions of “I am bad at boundaries” to label myself with like -

I don’t know what is good for me

I can’t protect myself from negative influences

I care too much and sacrifice my needs for others

As I reflect on it now, I must have been drawn to label myself in such ways in order to find motivation to work on boundaries.

In practice, however, living in those stories further eroded my self-esteem and self-trust.

Things changed when I started to spend more time with my body than with social media.

When I slowed down enough to hear myself in interactions with people, I noticed that I experienced boundaries internally, but was not often sure how to express them.

When I leaned into my anger, I found a clear somatic marker of a “no” or “enough”.

When I sat in meditation for an hour, I noticed I can set boundaries with certain thoughts that cause tensions in my body.

I realized that boundaries is not just something I need to set with others, but also with my unhelpful patterns of being.

It seems that I was not “bad at boundaries” but rather that I was not giving myself enough time with my own experience to be able to notice that they are arising and not having enough sense of permission to express them.

Realizing this made the boundary work much easier.

Above all, this narrative did not make me feel broken or insufficient in any way.

I can do it! I have the machinery necessary to protect myself when I need to and to remain open otherwise!

This felt much better than protecting myself by default because it makes sense in a world where I think I am bad at boundaries.

It suddenly felt like I had more tools in my toolbox.

It became possible to ask for more time in my interactions - both with myself and with others - so I can make space for these subtle signals and understand the patterns of my boundaries.

Having statements like “I am available for…”, “I am not available for…” did a lot of the work too. Like “Right now I feel available for cuddling, but not available for stimulating conversations about existential ideas.”

Then I realized I can go even more meta on my boundaries and say “I notice there is a boundary I have here but I am afraid to name it.”

This one would often invite others to co-think with me and I found out most people want to help me set my boundaries.

And the most exciting discovery was arriving at a mantra “I am a boundary”.

In the week following the emergence of this phrase I found myself setting boundaries in places where I previously struggled the most.

Like boundaries with my partner around the level of care and attention I am able to offer him or boundaries in situations where my mind wants to keep going but my body is exhausted.

This mantra unlocked a level of boundaries in places where I can sense one is needed, but I don’t know where exactly and what it is about. In those moments just saying “I am a boundary” reminded me that I don’t need to know - I can just be it.

I can just feel my body and feel how I am separate and whole from the world, another person or a problem I am trying to solve.

Now it’s important to say that if you are a person like me, who naturally enjoys blending the boundary of you and the world and others, you might benefit from this reflection.

But you might be someone who needs the other kind of boundary work - making them looser, more allowing of the world to touch you and move you.

In the end it seems to come down to discernment - being able to choose where it’s wholesome to open and where it’s wholesome to close.

And sometimes it’s necessary to close by default and that is ok too - especially if we have been hurt in ways that we don’t fully understand yet.

So I am again coming back to the question - what are boundaries?

The idea I am drawn to now is that my body - my sense of myself in space, my skin, my awareness - is the baseline experience of boundaries.

If I can play in that space and get comfortable here, I get more able to produce some bodily postures and finally words in connection with another that end up looking like “setting boundaries”.

But really, it’s more like the boundary is already here and I need to notice and assert it.

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Photo credit Zehra K