I have a couple of these people in my life. They are the ones who leave me feeling off balance after I’ve spent time with them. I find my relationship with them is quite a bit like trying to dance on freshly polished ice without a blade; without tread. It’s a clumsy dance and it’s always emotionally exhausting. I am grateful to them for their beings have taught me. What doesn’t work is at least as important a lesson as what does. What doesn’t work, when I chose to learn from it, helps me to evolve.
Now, I am the first to admit that in a mix with other people, my crazy makers come across as solid, dependable people. In other words, I realize my being is part of that crazy making synergy and I’m always working on that now. I’m firming up my boundaries, noticing when they slip and repairing them. I can empathize with all sides of a matter. Its a gift and a weakness. In making sure that my boundaries honour and protect my being, I can better ensure that my gift of empathy can serve others in a right manner.
Boundaries do not ebb and flow, but neither are they thunderous. They allow others to know me. They solve the invisibility problem. They solve the Gumby problem; being flexible doesn’t mean being able to do everything, they solve the depletion problem. Boundaries are my best health provider.
I was raised to be a pleaser, a giver, a provider. I did not fully grasp that I was as important a being as every other being until recently. Loving someone had always meant being beneath them in value somehow. Their needs came first. It was difficult for me to even name what my needs were beyond the basic. I was a worker, a learner, a striver, a prover, and yet, I never quite felt worthy enough. A focus on creating my own healthy boundaries changed that.
How did I do it? With help. I can not overemphasis the need for seeking help from a trained psychologist for this work. It was the most difficult learning of my life. It required a take down of what I knew to be true before rebuilding from the foundation up. The process involved a keen search and openness beyond what I thought I was capable of. It was an act of personal evolution.
And now, now there is no going back. I matter. I have given myself value and I have found calm and peace in a deep and all encompassing inner love. If you mess with my inner peace, if you mess with the love I have for myself and everything else that exists, I say be gone, you!
My art, flows from that light within. I welcome it as often as possible because it feeds my soul. I believe that in childhood I knew the power of creative practice, that knowledge, unfortunately was over shadowed by the dreams others had for me. Unboundaried, their dreams became mine. And that’s not terrible. It enriched my life with spoken and unspoken experiences, safety nets, love that I may not have otherwise known. Those dreams provided me my opportunity to breakdown and wake up. For that I will always be grateful.
Sherri Jean McCulloch 