Anne Katherine - Where to Draw the Line: How to Set Healthy Boundaries Every Day

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To the loved ones who rest in my heart:

Sherry Ascher

Frances West

Barbara Blackburn

Jill Shea

Shirley Averett

&

The Antique Buddies

Abe (Ann Briel Weston)

Cassie (Cassandra Major)

Dusty (Karen Riggs Selby)

Jabber (Judy Burns)

And to those who form the fabric of my beloved community:

The Admirals Cove Bridge and Liverpool Society Comfort Zone

In our era, the road to holiness necessarily

passes through the world of action .

D AG H AMMARSKJLD

I give thanks:

To the Creator for blessing me with life;

To my loved ones for believing in what I could not see for myself;

To my family, who, despite various trials, showed up in time, especially Mamaw, and Papaw, Uncle Bud, and Aunt Marji;

To my community for steeping me in joy and fun;

To my clients for calling for the best from me;

For the sacred places of the earth, particularly Camp Koch, Northern Hills, Hollyhock, Delphi, and the Island;

To my teachers, especially Dr. Jean Houston, Marge Felder, MA, and Cody Sontag, MS, for lighting passages to vivid, soul-expanding places;

To Scott Edelstein, my honorable, boundaried agent, a mensch;

To Caroline Sutton, my delightful editor, who uses brush-strokes to move mountains;

To Christine Lockhart, who does the incredible, puzzling job of keeping me in order;

To Rabbitt Boyer, Computer Guru Extraordinaire, whoat midnightrescued my printer from convulsive fits, and who says, no matter how terrifying the problem, This isnt serious. We can fix it.

And to Laura Blankenship and Roxy Etherton, whotwo weeks before my deadline when my house became uninhabitablereached out with their abundant kindness and generosity to provide shelter and a spirit of possibility.

As you deal with most people of good nature, setting boundaries will improve not only your life, but theirs as well. But there are some people who are dangerous, or who love their power or control so much that a clear verbal boundary is seen as a challenge to be defeated.

If someone has given you reason to fear them, be careful about how you set a boundary with them. Before deciding on what boundaries to set, first assess your own risk. If you, your children, your home, or your possessions would be endangered by setting verbal boundaries, create a physical boundary through distance, or by relocating. If you live with or work for a person who could threaten you if you set a boundary, talk to a third person for counsel as to the best course for you to follow. As necessary, use lots of help from other good, trustworthy people to ensure your safety and security.

Pause a moment. Stand on the earth and sense the spiral of your life. You have not come to this place by chance. All your choices have brought you here.

You created this life by the people you let in and the people you shut out, by giving your time to the quests that matter and by letting hours trickle toward lesser goals, through the pursuits to which you gave your energy, by the pressures to which you gave heed.

Every decision youve ever made, step by step, brought you to this pass. In short, your boundariesor your defensescreated a corridor through which your life moved.

What is a boundary? A boundary is a limit that promotes integrity. At the most elemental level, your skin marks your physical limits. If it is ripped, the integrity of your body is threatened. Your cells hold their shape because a membrane contains them. Your nerves are sheathed. Your brain is protected by blood and bone.

Thousands of other boundaries might also be yours, protecting every treasured aspect of your lifeyour relationships, your time, your home, the way you do things, your children, your priorities, your health, and your money. These boundaries are unseen, held in place by your decisions and actions.

A boundary is a limit. By the limits you set, you protect the integrity of your day, your energy and spirit, the health of your relationships, the pursuits of your heart. Each day is shaped by your choices. When you violate your own boundaries or let another violate them, stuffing spills out of your life.

A boundary is like a membrane that keeps an organism intact. It lets positive things through. It keeps harmful things out. In this way it operates quite differently from a defense, which indiscriminately keeps things out.

Boundaries provide a clear moral compass. They keep us on track. They protect the important, tender parts of ourselves.

Look at the parts of your life that work, that have integrity. This wholeness comes from the limits you have set to protect them.

Any part of your life that is not working can be improved by boundaries. Whether the organism is you, your body, your health, a friendship, your marriage, your work, or your energy, its integrity can be strengthened by boundaries.

This book is a boundary handbook. It can help you discover the walls that are missing as well as rules or customs that confine you to one place, preventing you from occupying the wider spaces. It will also expose defenses that you may have erected in place of healthy boundariesdefenses that may do a lot of harm to you and your relationships.

We all make constant decisions about how to use this minute and that minute, whether to say yes or no to that request, whether to respond to a friends need or rest a bit. Its the little decisions that can use up our lives, that can either support or sabotage our larger mission.

This book is about how to handle the daily demands of life in a way that protects your time and energy for the things that matter. It can help you to be clearer about what to include and what to leave out, so that you can fill the spaces of your life with the people, activities, and pursuits that are truly yours.

You are the only one who can change your life.

Sarah had set the day aside to pack the kitchen. Her house had been sold and she had five days before moving day. This was the last big project. She had just this day for it because, starting tomorrow, only her evenings would be free for the last bits of organizing.

She was having trouble getting started. The kitchen was the last room to be packed before the move, and it symbolized the end of a period of her life. Her divorce would soon be final. She was leaving a house she had loved. Throughout the kitchen were reminders of past happinessthe bulb vase she and her husband bought on a wild Sunday shopping spree, the plates theyd chosen their first year together, a stack of old Christmas cards stuck at the back of a junk drawer.