Healthy Boundaries Are Flexible
Photo by Joe Cause [capturingnow] 2024
One of the most interesting and sometimes confusing things for me to remember about healthy boundaries is that they are flexible.
If a boundary is not flexible, is it really healthy? When I first began learning as an adult about Boundaries, I had no idea what they might be. I remember thinking the facilitator of the group I was in must be talking about fences and in some ways I was right but…I had no concept of Boundaries beyond that thought, no actual perceptions for what they could be. I was traumatised by that realisation alone! I spent years devouring everything I could about Boundaries and of course, Life wonderfully provided me with lots of practice and real-time learning too! Eventually I began teaching Boundaries so I could learn it at an even deeper level, and then everything changed and I received the boon of being able to start the learning all over again from a completely different perspective that I once again found myself to have no concept of - more trauma for my ego - which by then I luckily was ready to Parent and support lovingly.
The past few weeks I have been noticing a shift in my perception around Boundaries again as I prepare to start presenting workshops again on this wonderful and rich topic. I am reminded again of the vital rule that Healthy Boundaries are flexible or they are not Healthy Boundaries at all. Yesterday I was considering how Non-Negotiable Boundaries could be flexible and I am choosing to see the flexibility in that as being that Non-Negotiables in anything still need to be revisited from time to tie to ensure their effectiveness, relevance, and usefulness. It is that revisiting that creates a form of flexibility. Nothing should be set in stone if I want to grow and evolve.
Even nature creates flexibility in everything. Mountains may seem immovable but they are not. Rivers and streams erode rock constantly, great dust storms can blow away tiny particles of rock from any surface, and fire can create explosions that dissolve rock too. All of Natures elements can move mountains in some way and so can we, within and without. Healthy Boundaries can guide us to know ‘where that/you/it ends and I begin.’ As I continue learning and growing, I am seeing there will come a time when Boundaries will dissolve and all will merge again as one - that’s Nature too - but for now, as I make my way through this vastness I call Life, I feel content to learn and grow and share, remembering that time so long ago when I had no concept of what a Boundary could possibly be, and seeing all of the people I knew in that moment, had no concept of it either. I share no for them and for me and for you, in the hopes that someone will feel less alone or less afraid or less ‘wrong’ in their own being for just one moment so they might recognise their own light within again and shine that little more brightly in their own way and style.
I hope you have a day and that whatever day you have, is a day of your own conscious choosing.
Much love to you
Gabriella-Grace xx