What’s Your Well-being Boundary?
I lay in our guest room bed thinking I had COVID. I was exhausted, my muscles ached, and I had an upset stomach. I had already disinfected the house, then disappeared to protect my family, ready for whatever was to come.
The next day, I took a COVID test. In ten minutes, I found out it was negative, just a stomach virus.
But the experience was unnerving. If the stomach bug had crossed my own personal no-fly zone, clearly, a COVID germ could have too. The rush to my adrenal glands, to say nothing of my real fatigue and aches, took the oomph out of me.
Something strange seems to happen in my brain when I get sick. I have a really tough time accepting my own limitations especially when they are different from what they once were. I get impatient and “judgey” with myself.
Even after the illness had come and gone, I still felt so tired. I found myself asking, why couldn’t I do simple tasks that used to be so easy? Why weren’t my limits what I thought they should be?
All of this has gotten me thinking a lot about boundaries. Navigating our own and others’ seems to be as much about curiosity—figuring out what our boundaries really are—as it is about respecting them. What is and isn’t in our best interest changes all the time, depending on the situation and our frame of mind. It can be tough to keep up.
My latest theory is that anytime anything isn’t going well in our lives, it’s likely some boundary has been crossed. When we say yes to something that makes us feel separated from our true selves and integrity, or is not in our highest good, things often go awry.
The truth is, life is messy and constantly changing. Self-awareness seems to be the key. When we don’t live a life where honest self-reflection and evaluation are part of what we do, it is far more likely that we are crossing our own or others’ boundaries by default, without even being aware of it.
This week, I’m taking a good hard look at my own boundaries and commitments, everything from how well I follow through on my promises to myself (like taking vitamins and exercising), how triggered I allow myself to get about things I have no control over, and how well I take care of my own highest good when making choices that are in my control, like how I spend my time.
I hope you are staying healthy, and your own journey around what is and isn’t healthy for you is a peaceful one.
(P.S. This past weekend, my husband and I celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary. We woke up before the sun and took a long walk on a nearby beach, where we discovered this cool tree stump in today’s photo (although I just realized this photo itself tells the story of a boundary crossed). Boundaries are as much about what we say YES to as they are about saying NO. For me, moments in nature with someone I deeply love is a great big YES!)
Photo credit: Laurie Smith, 2020.
