Building Boundaries As an Adult Saved My Writing

Over the past year and a half or so, I’ve been focused on building boundaries as an adult. This has not only given me more time to work on my writing, but it has saved my mental health.

This blog has been around for a while now, and even longer when you think about all the old content that was deleted ages ago. One thing that runs through everything I’ve written here is the desire for creative space and to be left alone to do what I want to do.

I’ve finally figured out how to make that happen because I’m building boundaries as an adult.

I won’t bore you with too much backstory, but I will say this: I learned from a very young age that the worst thing a woman could do was to be high maintenance-that is, have any sort of emotion/preference/opinion, and that it was my responsibility to make sure everyone around me was happy.

It wasn’t stated in those terms, but those were the behaviors that were socialized into me.

As you can imagine, that turned me into a people pleaser that never told anyone how I felt lest it make them feel I was too much trouble. I had a lot of really unfulfilling friendships because of this. My romantic relationships usually involved me building up so much resentment of the other person because they couldn’t see how much I was doing for them…