Boundaries 1: Strawberry Jam

Since I began this blog I’ve wanted to write about boundaries, not only because I myself am trying to develop better ones, but also because it seems to me boundaries are a large part of what’s broken in our culture.

We’re all aware of headlines from all over the world about human rights, ethnic and racial struggle, politics, sexual identity, religion and war. It seems to me boundaries are a core piece in each headline; an enormously complex piece of human function and dysfunction. How do we define, understand and effectively manage boundaries — both our own and those of others? How do we manage people who consistently violate our boundaries?

Trying to organize my thoughts about this is like trying to herd cats. That being said, I can choose a starting point, so I’m going to start there and see if the subject organizes itself as I write.

I approach most subjects with a definition and curiosity about what others are saying about it. A Google search for “boundary” tells me it’s a “dividing line.”

I’ve read two articles recently about boundaries. One is written from an emotional intelligence perspective and one is about human rights, kind of a sidewise look at boundaries through the idea of respect. Both have contributed to my mental soup on this subject.

My experience is that any piece of human function or dysfunction begins with myself. Self-reflection and self-inquiry are powerful tools for me, even though I occasionally wince at what I find!

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

So, let’s play a game. Open your refrigerator, or your pantry, or your cupboard. Look at a shelf where you keep food. Everything is in a container. The container around the food is a boundary. If none of that food had boundaries around it — well, that would just be a mess.

As we start thinking about boundaries from ourselves outward, let’s take a jar of strawberry jam. It’s a glass jar with a screw top lid and it’s clearly labeled strawberry jam. Effective boundaries, it seems to me, begin with a correct identification of what’s being contained. We have to know who we are before we can create healthy boundaries, because our boundaries won’t look like someone else’s. They’re not one size fits all. You can’t keep strawberry jam in an eggshell. You don’t want raw eggs in a jar labeled strawberry jam. A can with the label torn off could still be food, but it’s hard to use it effectively.

Mislabeling happens in two directions. There are those externally who tell us who we will, should or must be (or who we will, should or must NOT be), and there are our own internal expectations of who we are and what we need. If something goes wrong right here, at the first step of boundary work, we’ve got problems.

This takes us directly back to several dynamics I’ve posted about — expectations, stories, saying yes and no, and pleasing people among them. My experience in my own western middle-class culture has been painful pressure to be who I’m expected to be, not who I really am. If this can happen to me, a straight, white, average-looking, average-sized, able-bodied, unambiguous female, then I know hundreds of thousands of people out there are being systematically emotionally and spiritually maimed in ways I can’t begin to fathom.

This opposition to knowing and being ourselves is everywhere. Capitalism is based on the idea you’re not okay as you are, but you will be if you buy…whatever it is.

Photo by Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash

I’m strawberry jam. I’m not grape jelly, even though it’s more valuable. I’m not blackberry jam, even though it’s more attractive. I’m not raspberry jam, even though it’s more popular. Go ahead, glue a label on me that says “currant jelly.” I’m still going to be strawberry jam, and my true boundaries are a glass jar with a screw top lid and a label that says strawberry jam.

As cruel as it is, the external pressure we feel to be other than we are is not the most damaging thing. The most damaging piece is what we do internally to ourselves. I can spend my whole life with my fingers in my ears and my eyes squinched shut saying I’m peanut butter, but I’ll always be strawberry jam. Other people will know it. I’ll know it. Nothing will ever work for me because I’m in the world trying to be something I’m not. I won’t find my people. I won’t find my place. I won’t figure out and make my contribution. I won’t have effective boundaries. I won’t be happy.

Not only that, but my inability to manage and maintain effective boundaries affects everyone around me. If my jar is cracked or broken, strawberry jam is going to ooze out onto the shelf. It’ll make a mess. It’ll attract pests and predators. It’ll be wasted and it will impoverish the peanut butter, the toast, the butter and whatever else might have connected with me as strawberry jam.

Photo by Jonathan Pielmayer on Unsplash

In order to have healthy boundaries we have to know what we need. In order to know what we need we have to know who we are. Finding out who we are can be a terrifying prospect, especially if we’re captive to what other people, media, our culture, and most of all ourselves tell us we MUST be in order to get loved and find happiness, meaning and purpose.

I have made up my mind I will build better boundaries. I will figure this out. If anybody out there will walk beside me, I’ll be very pleased. I know I’m not the only one struggling with this. In fact, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have trouble with some piece of it.

My starting point is right here, with myself. I’m strawberry jam and my boundaries are a glass jar and a screw top lid. My label says strawberry jam. I’ve no interest in forcing, persuading or coercing anyone else to be strawberry jam. I just know what I am. It might be that strawberry jam is outlawed, shunned, shamed, beheaded, tortured, raped, imprisoned, damned to Hell, unsaved, unenlightened, unlovable, unwanted, unworthy or lined up against a stone wall and shot under a hot sun. I’ll still be strawberry jam. I’m not confused and I’m not going to feel ashamed about it.

Peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich, anyone?

All content on this site ©2016
Jennifer Rose
except where otherwise noted

The Limits Of Our Power

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I recently had a discussion with a young friend who’s going through a hard time.

I listened and asked questions, and did my best to enter into her experience. My agenda wasn’t to rescue, fix, or advise, just to let her know I cared and help her think about options.

My intentions were good, but I walked away feeling as though I’d only irritated her and made things worse. Ever since, I’ve been questioning what I said and how I handled this interaction. Was I patronizing? Condescending? Obnoxiously optimistic? Aggressively parental? Didn’t I listen well?

Or maybe my questions were the problem, not because they were bad questions but because they were good questions. I’m reminded of people in my life who have approached my distress with the kinds of questions that made me want to hang up the phone or slap their face. Their questions challenged me to break out of the shrinking cage I was in. They challenged me to take control, take responsibility, face my fear or think outside my usual box.

I’m not sure why, but when I’m good and miserable, or at panic stations, or swept up in powerlessness, I want someone to agree with me. It’s hopeless. I’m helpless. It will never get better. I made mistakes, bad choices, stupid decisions and now I’m paying a price I deserve to pay. I’ve dug a hole so deep I can’t get out without some kind of divine intervention. I have to wait for someone to rescue me.

Sitting here writing this it sounds silly, but it’s not silly when I’m in it. We’ve all had times like this. What I know is that my best friends in crisis are the ones who metaphorically kick me in the butt. They won’t walk down the pity path with me. They won’t agree that it’s all over because I screwed up or made bad choices. They don’t admit the past was apocalyptic and the future will be catastrophic.

These people keep redirecting me back to what I can do right now to help myself, and away from everything else, and sometimes they’re not gentle about it.

This is tricky because it’s counterintuitive, at least to me. When I’m faced with a problem, I want to square right up to it, obsess, throw myself at it, beat my head against it and leave the rest of my life unoccupied. It’s either an all-out wrestling match or I eat ice cream out of the carton (a big carton!), stop taking showers, binge watch ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ all night and sleep all day.

Neither of these approaches has worked for me. The only thing that has ever worked is to identify where my power is right now and let the rest go. I don’t know why that works. I don’t know how it works, but I know it does.

When I was a low-income single mom, what this meant was realizing summer was ending and the boys would need new winter coats I couldn’t afford, and we would need groceries a lot sooner than that, but I had no money. And yes, I was working. At one point I worked two jobs and attended school.

Photo by Mitchell Orr on Unsplash

Anyway, I developed a habit of shaping the day around what I could do instead of what I couldn’t do. I tried not to think about the next day, the next week, the next winter. I figured out what we’d eat that day from what we had, and I did what I could do — all the things that can be done without money. Like playing with Legos on the living room floor, or taking a walk, or reading aloud to the boys, or doing laundry, or working in the garden, or scrubbing the kitchen floor.

Some days were so hard I just lived five minutes at a time. It was all I could handle.

My kids are in their twenties now. All those five minutes, all those one-day-at-a-times passed and we weren’t homeless, we weren’t without food and we always managed winter coats, thanks to Goodwill. I have no idea how it all worked. I didn’t know then and I don’t know now.

Now, it’s true I found jobs, got trained and educated, did without things like cell phones and cable TV. I did what I could to help myself through those years, and I had a lot of outside help, too. But my point is I tried not to get stalled with my nose touching a brick wall. I tried to look in another direction — in a direction where I could make choices. Doing that didn’t make the brick wall disappear, but somehow it allowed me to move past it.

Getting back to my friend, I tried to ask questions about where she did have power, but she felt powerless in every direction and the questions only reinforced the feeling instead of helping her reconsider her situation. I left the conversation feeling upset and frustrated and decided I needed to take a step back, give my friend space and let it all unfold.

Interestingly, in the time between that conversation and this minute, my friend got what she needed from someone else, made some hard choices and now sees her way ahead, at least for a few steps.

What I’ve learned from this is that no matter how much I love and care for someone, no matter how much I want to share what I’ve learned in life, sometimes I just can’t be useful or effective. That doesn’t mean, however, that my loved one won’t get what they need from someone else. I’m trying hard to persuade myself this doesn’t make me a failure, but it’s uphill work. Additionally, I have a sneaking suspicion that part of what I feel is nothing more than injured pride. As long as I’m confessing, there might be jealousy in there, too.

I’ve also relearned the thing I wanted to teach. It was clear to me I couldn’t be an effective support to my friend, I couldn’t make her feel better, I had nothing to offer she could use. However, two cords of wood were sitting in our driveway, so my partner turned on music and we stacked it in the barn. He and I cleaned out a closet and I got my fall/winter clothes handy. I was scheduled to work on Labor Day weekend and the day after, so I showed up for work and did my best. I wrote a few pages of my current book and I wrote this post. Today I swim. It was in the middle of all this that my friend came to me with the beginnings of her own solutions to her own problems.

Maybe my love and concern were only an added pressure for my friend. Maybe the most helpful thing I did was step back and live my own life. That, after all, is where my power is.

I just wish it didn’t feel so inadequate.

Photo by Jan Phoenix on Unsplash

All content on this site ©2016
Jennifer Rose
except where otherwise noted

Ready For a Change?

A year and a half ago I left everything I knew and traveled halfway across the continent in a U-Haul to start a new life in Maine. I’d never even bought a plane ticket for myself before. I’d never taken a road trip. I’d never lived anywhere but Colorado. I’d never been to Maine. I rented my little house, which I’d never intended to leave, and I’d never been a landlady before. I had very little money, and in fact had to borrow money to accomplish the transition (which I’ve since paid back).

I was 51 years old.

As you can probably imagine, this decision was not met with enthusiastic support from all sides.

How this impacted my relationships will be a subject for future posts. Today I want to answer the question no one quite asked, but everyone wanted to:

WTF?

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It’s complicated, of course. It always is. The short version is that I slowly realized I was living a life that didn’t feel like my own. Nothing fit right. It was as though I’d been wearing clothes and shoes from someone else’s closet. My life was a tiny room that got a centimeter smaller every day. I lost a relationship, the neighborhood diner and my dearest companion. I woke every morning knowing I would fail, no matter how hard I worked at…everything. I felt like a character in a play someone else had written and I began to drop my lines.

The most remarkable thing about that time wasn’t that I was having an unusual experience. I’m certain many of you reading this can relate to my experience. No, what’s remarkable is that few people knew how it really was with me, which was exactly how I wanted it.

Photo by Hailey Kean on Unsplash

I had a beautiful little house that everyone loved. I had friends. I had a garden. I lived in a lovely place that had been home for nearly twenty years. I was financially independent — as long as nothing unexpected happened. I had my music, my movies, my books, my early morning walks, my comfortable bed, my dance group, my small luxuries. I had a good life, and I wasn’t happy. I was deeply ashamed. I was also unbelievably, unbearably, terminally lonely.

I began to write more, not with any plan or hope, but because I had to. Because it was the only thing I really enjoyed. It was the only time I felt real. For various reasons I felt unable to seek support for my writing locally, so I went online and connected with other writers. One of the writers I connected with was a life coach who teaches emotional intelligence.

I decided to work with him, and that’s when it all began to change.

I’m not going to try to sell you on life coaching. You’re online right now — research for yourself. There are lots of articles and sites to look at. I’ll let the coaches sell themselves. What I want to do is give you reasons not to do it, because if you hire a well-trained, certified, experienced coach and you’re serious about the work your life is going to transform, and an exhausting, bloody, terrifying experience it is. Creating new life is damned hard work. Ask any mother.

So here we go. Don’t do life coaching if:

  • You don’t want things to change, both internally and externally (good luck with not wanting things to change, by the way!).
  • You’re not really willing to invest time and money in yourself.
  • You’re looking for a therapist or prescription medications, or you’re struggling with serious mental illness.
  • You don’t want to take responsibility for your power, life and choices.
  • You don’t want to deal with your feelings.
  • You’re perfectly happy with your current role of victim, martyr, addict, people pleaser, passive aggressive, etc. (But in that case you might recommend life coaching to someone you’re in relationship with. Perhaps they could use it!)
  • You don’t want your creative life to blossom.
  • You don’t want to be honest.
  • You don’t want to learn new language, strategies, coping mechanisms and communication skills.
  • You don’t want your relationships at work, in your family and with your friends to become healthier, more honest and more effective.
  • You don’t want to become a more effective and loving parent.
  • You don’t want to cut out of your life the habits, relationships, behaviors and beliefs that are holding you back.

And so how, you ask, has it worked out so far? The coaching, the move, the new life?

Guess what? It’s not perfect. I miss parts of my old life. But I live with meaning, learning, creativity, humor, curiosity, joy, love and companionship. I recognize myself. I like myself. I feel useful and successful. I’m learning to be more honest.

The coaching, the move, the new life?

Best thing I ever did.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

All content on this site ©2016
Jennifer Rose
except where otherwise noted