writing our way whole: 47 boundarying well

[If you want to share these activities in a group, please also credit my work and my copyright. Be Kind and Show Respect to your companions. Please support my work and training by gifting a donation via Paypal. Or plant trees in my grove at the Trees for Life rewilding project at Dundrennan in Scotland.]

I don’t know whether you have noticed, but my blog titles sometimes shift from being writing our way whole: at home to just simply writing our way whole (which is the copyright title of my practice, now also shared locally face-to-face or remotely over Zoom).

I made that shift consciously, to reflect my own emergence from the inside, enclosing world of home (even, perhaps, a claustrophobic world, like it was right at the beginning of Lockdown, when I first published posts like this).

A shift into the Outside World, which in my own experience has involved a lot of Brave Behaviour (UK English spelling) and much gentle kindliness, both towards myself (and that can be hard) and towards others whose definitions and practice of ‘safety’ differ from my own (even harder).

(Like the unmasked young woman who nearly charged into me while crossing Academy Street in Inverness last week, when I was on a Bravery Day to the dentist. Cue: thoughts of ‘if you can smell their perfume, you’re too close’…)

In short, I have been engaged, particularly over the last eighteen months (years…) , with noticing my boundary-keeping behaviours: whether they are wise, neurotic, frightened, respectful, risky, risk-averse, or generous.

Over the years I have been aware of my relationship with boundaries changing, first gradually and then – lately – radically.

It’s been a case of the boundaries that first provide shelter can later become a prison, if we buy into that. Not because of their nature per se, but from the qualities that we attribute to them, and how fixed our view becomes about them.

Here I want to introduce an imaginative exercise, rather than delve deep into Boundary Psychology today (yet you may be interested in ‘Boundary Boss‘ by Terri Cole, although I haven’t managed to read it yet).

Today’s exercise is purely for fun, but may provide some insight into how we can tend to limit our perspective about the nature of Boundaries and their roles.

Introducing SoulStorm

Below in Golden Threadwork are some prompts for further writing,derived from the ideas offered above.

Why not review your own SoulStorm words/phrases, and see what Golden Threadworks they suggest to you, either to share, or to spare, or to forswear, snare, pass on the stair….

That way you may release Golden Threads that are especially resonant with your current and recent experiences.

If you are working in a group, you may want to stop and share, to widen the options available to each of you.

Affirmation

In an earlier episode of this long-running series, we briefly visited the power of affirmation. I invite you to complete the affirmation below, again and again and again, as many times as you like, in your Thoughtbook. Then make a date in your diary or on your calendar, to read through your affirmation list in two or three days’ time and/or a week’s time.

I approach my boundaries with …

On the read-through, I suggest that you select the most helpful or positive or ‘heart-opening’ affirmations, and write them out again, to post somewhere where you will see them in your daily life.

Or write them on a postcard and mail them back to yourself with a slow-rate stamp.