I heard someone say something the other day that got me thinking. I listened to a woman talking about her life and how she struggled with anxiety, so she had decided to seek help from a therapist to unpack some of the things that she was feeling.
Through talking with her therapist, she came to understand was that she was living her life to meet the expectation of everyone around her: to be the mother other people thought she should be, the wife she was expected to be, the role model she was expected to be. But since she didn’t have boundaries for herself, she had lost her own identity in her efforts to be who everyone else thought she needed to be. She knew she was made for more but didn’t feel like she could do what she needed to do without disappointing others. She came to understand that this was the source of her anxiety.
It was like listening to the old me from years ago talk about my life.
As I listened, I was transported back to that place and time in my mind, and I just felt so sad.
I didn’t feel sad for myself. I felt sad because I know that this woman and I are not the only women in the world that have experienced this.
I know many women in the world experience these exact feelings. I know women are reading this blog right now that are in the middle of this exact experience. I know what that feels like. I know what it feels like to want more, to be more. I know what it feels like to make decisions every single day based on what is best for everyone in your life that you love so much, without ever considering what’s best for yourself. I know what it’s like to feel like you cannot advocate for change in your own life. I have experienced what it feels like to speak up for yourself, but when you get a negative response, you retreat to safety because you don’t want to be the source of someone else’s unhappiness. I know what it means to continually make concessions while recognizing that you are the only one sacrificing. I know what it feels like to have dreams for your life that you feel like you won’t ever be able to achieve without disappointing other people, and then deciding to give up those dreams and trying to accept that life just gave you a different path than the one you imagined.
I also know the result of continuing to live a life without boundaries. I know what it means to lose your own identity in the roles you play for other people.
But, I also know there is a way to change it, and that change begins with boundaries.
The dictionary defines a boundary as a line that marks the limits of an area, a dividing line, or a limit of a subject or sphere of activity.
When applied to your life, what that means is creating limits for yourself and others’ behavior and activities.
We all have boundaries, whether we recognize them or not.
The question is, are you creating healthy boundaries in your life? That’s the key, healthy boundaries. Boundaries that allow you the space you need to pursue the things that are important to you, outside of the roles you play in other people’s lives.
I feel like this is a good place to stop for a disclaimer because I don’t want anyone to think having boundaries means you want to change those roles.
I love being a mom! From the time I was a tiny little girl, creating a hospital baby nursery in my mom’s kitchen using the tv trays, and then spending all day long, dressed in my nurse hat and apron my mom made for me, I dreamed of growing up, getting married, and having all the babies. I loved babies! And I couldn’t wait to have my very own baby.
I fulfilled my dream of getting married and having babies. I would never change that. Believing there are other things I need to accomplish in my life does not detract from how much I love being a mother or how much I love my kids.
I hope what you take away from this is that having healthy boundaries creates the necessary space and time to care for yourself to better fulfill those roles.
This is true for everyone. In every role. On every path. I use examples of motherhood and being a wife because those are my life experiences, but creating healthy boundaries can be applied to anyone’s life.
When I look back at my life as a stay-at-home mom and wife, it is not difficult to see the mistakes I made for myself and how I allowed the roles I filled to dominate my existence completely.
I fully dedicated myself to my children and my husband. Even when I would spend time with my friends, it was time with all three of my children. There were full years of my life that I never did anything without my kids. Not one date night, no outings on my own, no time away from the role of mommy.
That pattern I set early on became an expectation later…that eventually led to my emotional undoing.
My entire existence morphed into an existence for others, and when I finally broke, it became wildly apparent to me that even though I was in a situation of my own making, it could not continue.
I had lost myself.
It is very difficult for me to talk about my marriage. Out of respect for my children and his family, I try very hard to gauge my words, so they don’t cause them further pain. The people I love have suffered enough, and I don’t ever want to be a source of their pain.
My truth is not pretty, and I always share things with you from a place of openness and honesty.
It would be really easy for me to sit here and tell you that my marriage was great and all of my struggles were mine and mine alone. But that wouldn’t be honest, and it wouldn’t be fair to other people who are struggling in their marriage that desperately want to fix it.
I won’t be the person that makes you feel more isolated and alone.
I loved Jason, and in many ways, we had a great life together. He was a good person, and I know he loved me. He wasn’t malicious or cruel. But the truth is that I did not receive the support I desperately needed from him with our children, as a life partner, and in my personal life. It’s a hard truth.
I was a young mother with special needs children. I needed a partner that would help me care for our three children. I needed a partner that would help care for our home. I needed a partner that would talk to me about how I was feeling, check in with me about how I was coping, all the treatments I was researching, and the things I wanted to try. I needed a partner who engaged in our life. I needed to have time to myself to recharge, contemplate, dream, and care for myself.
I did not have that. Any of it.
I relied on my friends, mom, and sisters to bounce ideas off and share my struggles. I created a life that didn’t require me to do things without my kids. And when I needed to work because we simply couldn’t afford to live on one income, I fed the children before I left, made sure everyone’s pajamas were laid out, and cleaned the house. Nothing was left amiss, so I didn’t unnecessarily inconvenience him.
On top of caring for the house and the children alone, I also took care of the finances, the cars, and shortly after we moved to Missouri, I took up all of the yard work, the house repairs and even started putting up the Christmas lights alone.
I had no boundaries for myself; I just did everything that needed to be done because no one else would do it.
I valued peace in my marriage, so I didn’t put up a fight as more and more responsibility was put on my plate.
I filled the holes in my relationship with projects and learning new things. Eventually, I filled the holes by going back to school. I was able to do that because I was able to make it work on my own. I figured out how to pay for it, and I figured out how to take care of all the things I was responsible for and still do school.
And then we moved to Colorado. Because of the steep increase in the cost of living, our financial difficulties went from bad to worse. So I went to work full time, and the nature of my job required that I work overtime.
For the first time, I simply could not take care of everything at home on my own.
I attempted to shift some of the responsibility to other people. The kids were all old enough to start doing their own laundry, and everyone had a night that they were responsible for dinner.
I asked nothing from Jason except that he took care of dinner one night a week, and it was not well received. So again, I retreated. I would stop and pick up takeout on his night, and I continued to try and make everything work without inconveniencing him.
On mother’s day of 2017, Jason was deployed to the Middle East. Anyone who has lived through a deployment knows how much stress this places on a family. And our family was already under significant stress before the deployment. This deployment was especially stressful because of the job that Jason was doing. But on this particular day, in the middle of this very stressful time, I discovered that my credit cards had been stolen and used repeatedly by a child in my home. That same child had snuck out of a bedroom window earlier in the day and disappeared. I had no idea where they were. This was just the cherry on top of several years of struggles with this child…and the final piece of the perfect storm. The deployment, working full time, two teenagers and a middle schooler to care for on my own, nineteen years of carrying way more than my fair share of responsibility for our life, loneliness, isolation, financial struggles, and now, the ultimate betrayal of trust from someone I had sacrificed everything for.
As I was gathering all of the paperwork from the desk in the living room to secure all of our financial information in my room, my mother called…and I lost it. I cried and cried as almost two decades of frustration and unhappiness came pouring out of my mouth.
My mom was the safest place in the world in that moment, and when I heard her voice on the other end of the line that night, I finally just let go of the cliff I had been clinging to by my fingernails for so long and went into a freefall of emotions. Regret, despair, sadness, and anger…lots of anger. Anger with the situation, anger at my spouse, anger at my child, but mostly, anger with myself.
All because I had not set and maintained healthy boundaries that would have provided a foundation of stability to support me through the struggles I was facing at that moment.
I cried myself to sleep that night. Hot, bitter, and angry tears streamed down my face.
When I woke up the next morning, I had clarity as I had never had before, and I altered course. I could clearly see the mistakes I had made, and I decided to make some important changes. Over the next couple of months, I began to create boundaries for myself. I changed my perspective on my role in my children’s lives and my husband’s life. This wasn’t some self-actualized brave step in a healthy direction; it was self-preservation. It was either change my approach or end up in a hospital. I had given all that I had to give. But, despite my explanations and pouring out my heart about what I needed and why, these boundaries were not well received by Jason, but this time, I did not retreat.
There is no way to go back and see if my marriage would have survived the necessary boundaries from the beginning. I tried early on, and I tried many times throughout our marriage. But every time, I was met with rebuke, silence, or an emotional overreaction, so I retreated to the safety of solitude that made him comfortable, and I maintained the peace.
Knowing what I know about Jason and our relationship, I can honestly say there is a strong likelihood that our marriage would not have survived if I had persisted and demanded.
Knowing what I know now, I wonder if the mental health issues Jason was hiding would have come to the surface earlier, and I would have gotten more than the sneak peeks I had a few times…so fleeting I didn’t really know what I saw because I had never seen it before. I didn’t know anything about mental illness or what it looked like. Would I have been able to get help for him then, or would it just have resulted in tragedy sooner? These are questions I cannot answer; I’m not sure anyone can.
Even though I still get caught in a vicious cycle of questioning and survivor’s guilt from time to time, I do know that I was not wrong to set boundaries and ask for the support I needed and deserved.
I have wondered many times what I would do differently if I could go back. But this is a fruitless venture. Through therapy and time, I have shifted my focus onto more positive things that help me move forward, the things I have learned.
I have learned that someone else’s reaction to your boundaries does not make your boundaries wrong.
Their reaction is their responsibility.
Your responsibility is to create boundaries for yourself that allow you to protect your own mental health, create space for you to pursue your dreams, and not only maintain but enhance your personal identity, so you can grow into the very best version of yourself and reach your potential.
I have also learned that the example I am setting for my children today is an example I can be proud of. The example I was setting for them before is something I will regret my whole life.
Unknowingly, I taught my daughters that it is their job to wait hand and foot on all the people that live in their homes. It is their job to take care of all the responsibilities while their partner does not contribute anything but a paycheck. I taught them to be a doormat…and that kills me. Because that is not who I am…but that is what I did.
Unknowingly, I taught my son that as a husband and father, he would not be expected to contribute to the care of his home or his children. I taught him that a woman would love him unconditionally and be kind and accepting of him while he disengaged and his wife carried all the responsibility. I taught him a lie. That is not reality. That is complete and total dysfunction in a marriage, and I taught him through my behavior that it was normal and ok.
You get to choose the example you set for your children and what lessons you teach them.
Do you want your children to learn how to set boundaries for themselves? That means you need to set the example of how to set boundaries.
Do you want your daughters to have the freedom to pursue their dreams and live life to its fullest? That means you need to set boundaries that allow you the space to pursue your dreams and live life to its fullest.
Do you want your son to see the example of a strong woman with clear boundaries for herself who plays a loving and caring role in his life? Then you need to be a strong woman with clear boundaries who loves and cares for him.
I truly believed I was doing everything I was supposed to do. I was the wife I was supposed to be. I was the mother I was supposed to be. I believed I was living in a way that was what everyone else thought I was supposed to. I was fulfilling what I perceived as everyone else’s expectations. The problem was that no one else knew what that actually looked like for me.
And when the world tells you what you should be doing in the roles you play, they have zero ideas of what that actually looks like for you!
Only you know what life is like inside the walls of your home and the relationship you have with your partner. And only you know what boundaries you need to create for yourself because only you know what you need.
Do not let anyone tell you what or how you should be. Do not let anyone keep you from pursuing your best self and your best life!
Yes, you have responsibilities and commitments, and you should honor those. But you don’t have to give up your dreams for your life in the process.
You may have to wait for a couple of years. You may not be able to run full steam ahead towards your goals just yet. But you are not required to lose yourself in the roles you play along the way.
Do not let anyone else’s discomfort with who you are and what you want for your life stand in the way of your journey to reach your full potential.
To begin to set healthy boundaries for yourself, here are some things you can begin to do today:
Name your boundaries.
You can’t set boundaries if you are unsure of where they are needed, like building a fence on your property. You need to know where the property line is before you start digging the post holes.
I highly recommend you sit down with a paper and a pencil, think about the goals you have for yourself and write down what boundaries are necessary to create the space you need to achieve those goals.
Give yourself permission.
You deserve to have healthy boundaries in your life. So permit yourself to pursue what you deserve. Accepting permission to set boundaries for yourself helps you release yourself from the responsibility for other people’s reactions to these changes. Whether it’s your mother, your coworkers, your sister, friends, or your partner. You have a right to set your own boundaries. How they respond to those boundaries is their responsibility, not yours. So give yourself permission to take care of yourself.
Be direct.
When you create a boundary with someone, tell them how you feel and the boundary you need. You don’t need to go down a list of all the things they have done wrong in the process. This isn’t about them. It’s about you. This is how I feel; this is the boundary I need.
Start small.
If you don’t wait until you are at your breaking point, you will be able to make changes slowly, growing into the practice of boundaries. You won’t need massive change all at once. You can make changes one at a time, easing into a healthier and more balanced life.
Waiting until your angry and in an argument is a terrible time to announce at the top of your lungs that, “This is going to stop, there will be changes!!” Intentionally deciding what boundaries are needed and then making those changes in incremental, well-thought-out steps is more likely to achieve the result you are looking for in a kind and respectful way.
Having a conversation with your partner about a timeline, as uncomfortable as it may be, will be very helpful in setting expectations about what changes need to be made and how that will look.
Be assertive, but understanding.
If you are taking positive steps in your life and making changes, that gets really uncomfortable for the people around you. That doesn’t mean you should stop. But recognizing that your lack of boundaries was probably very comfortable for the people around you, and boundaries will make them uncomfortable, will help you as you interact with their emotions and reaction to the changes taking place.
Be assertive in standing your ground, but be empathetic to their feelings, like Love and Logic parenting. Showing empathy and respect for their feelings, but standing your ground.
Seek support from your partner, friends, a group, or even a therapist or counselor.
You need to have a sounding board and someone who will applaud your efforts. Change isn’t easy. You will face obstacles; finding someone you can reach out to for support and encouragement is important.
Make self-care a priority.
I cannot emphasize this enough. You cannot take care of everyone around you if you are not taking care of yourself. This makes you better equipped to show up in meaningful ways for yourself and other people if you have taken the time to care for and replenish yourself.
As you begin to create healthy boundaries and mark out the space you need, I hope you will see the change you are looking for in your own life and you will begin to understand that you are not trapped. You have the power to create the life you want, but it all starts with creating the boundaries needed to be able to work for what you want.
So, what will you do today to start creating healthy boundaries in your own life?
Drop me a comment below to let me know!
Hugs~ Lavena
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