Back in 2017, I moved into a small house in King of Prussia.
It had a narrow backyard boxed in by two fences. One wooden. One chain link. It wasn’t especially private. It wasn’t impressive. But it ended up teaching me more about myself than anything else in my life at that point—more than I even knew I was ready to learn.
I used to sit back there and look at the sky like it might answer me.
Not because I had a question.
Because time behaved differently in that space. It stretched. It softened. It loosened its grip, like it understood I needed room to exhale—so it gave me the room I needed.
That yard saw joy. And grief. And bone-deep exhaustion. And the fragile, flickering kind of hope that shows up before you know whether it’s safe to trust it.
I sat back there and dreamed.
I sat back there and unraveled.
…and then, I kept going anyway.
Some days the yard felt infinite—like if I stayed still long enough, I could hear my life unfolding before it arrived. Other days it felt small and contained, like the fence was the only thing keeping me from painfully splintering apart.
I never knew which version of myself would show up.
Sometimes I was hopeful.
Sometimes I was hollow.
Sometimes I cried quietly because I didn’t have the language yet—only the weight of knowing something inside me was shifting faster than I could name it.
The grass would be damp. The air still. The fence steady. I’d look up at the sky and feel this ache that was half grief, half possibility—like the universe was opening a door to see if I’d walk through it while making me believe it was slipping through my fingers at the very same time.
But no matter what I brought into that space, the yard held it.
And slowly, without realizing it, I was learning how to hold myself too.
I was younger then. Softer. Less certain of who I was allowed to be without permission.
The backyard became my bubble. A small universe where I could hurt without being watched. Think without interruption. Exist without performance.
I didn’t know it then, but I was becoming someone else in that space. Over and over again.
I don’t think I’ve ever been one person for very long.
I think I’ve been many.
Each version shaped by whatever season I was surviving. Whatever I was running from. Whatever I was trying to outgrow.
The yard wasn’t just somewhere I sat.
It was somewhere I worked.
Learned.
Grew.
Evolved.
When I first moved in, the grass was so overgrown my landlord and his dad had to hack it down with machetes just to make it mowable. After that, it became my responsibility more often than not.
And oddly—I was okay with that.
More than okay with that.
It’s not that I particularly loved mowing the lawn.
What I loved was what it demanded of me.
You can’t rush it.
You can’t disappear into your head.
You have to move forward, one deliberate line at a time.
I learned where the fence dipped too low.
Where the mower wouldn’t fit.
Where slowing down mattered more than forcing progress.
I taught myself how to string a weed whacker because the uneven edges bothered me more than the work itself. I learned where snakes hid. Which sections to avoid because of wasps. How low I could drop the blade without sinking into the soft earth left behind by a garden someone abandoned.
I learned responsibility without ever calling it that.
And when the yard was finished—when the lines were clean, the shed trimmed tight, the fence edged as best as it could be—I would stand there and feel a sense of quiet pride.
Not because it was perfect.
But because it was cared for.
That yard held backyard movies projected onto a white shed. Halloween parties that spilled into the night. Quiet mornings. Loud laughter. Friends who stayed. Friends who didn’t.
All of it lived inside the fence—siloed off from the rest of the world, as though the fence were shielding us from the chaos on the opposite side.
The fence mattered more than I realized.
If you were standing in the kitchen looking out the window, you’d see a wooden fence lining the left side of the yard—solid, tall, opaque. On the other side perched a chain-link fence. Transparent. Unforgiving. Always catching the mower and pulling back when I tried to move forward. Forcing me to untangle jagged metal from spinning blades as if it were daring me to keep going.
The thing about fences is that they need to be built right.
They need to be sturdy enough to weather storms.
Strong enough to carry weight.
Reliable enough to do what fences are meant to do.
Over time, the wooden fence stopped standing tall and began to lean. At first, it was tolerable. But the neighbor’s garden pressed against it, adding weight it was never designed to carry.
Eventually, it failed.
It warped.
It leaned.
It demanded attention whether we wanted to give it or not.
If it was your fence, it was your job to fix it.
To reinforce it.
To maintain it.
To decide who could lean on it—and who couldn’t.
What’s hard about not knowing what you don’t know is not knowing which questions to ask.
I had always assumed fences were passive structures. Once built, they’d stand. Endure. Withstand the elements.
This one taught me otherwise.
Fences require upkeep.
They require maintenance.
They require care.They require boundaries.
And what I didn’t know back then was that I was learning exactly that.
After my mom got sick, I fell into a relationship thoughtlessly—one that felt like electricity.
Here’s the part that still makes me laugh:
In my mom’s final weeks, one of the ways I distracted her was by letting her swipe for me on a dating app from her hospital bed. I explained that swiping left meant no and swiping right meant yes.
We came across a guy I thought was very attractive.
She didn’t hesitate.
She said no.
Without thinking, I grabbed the phone back, swiped right anyway, and went on the date.
I ignored her instinct that night.
But as it turns out—she was right.
She always was.
At first, the relationship felt magical. Intoxicating. Like something had finally filled the silence I didn’t yet know how to face—let alone survive.
And then, slowly and quietly, it began to take things from me.
Like tiptoeing through the house at night, stealing pieces of me while I slept.
First my confidence.
Then my clarity.
Then my sense of safety inside my own choices.
My independence became something to manage.
My joy became something suspicious.
I didn’t know how to protect myself because I had never been shown what protection looked like.
Most of the fights were about boundaries—or my lack of them.
So I studied.
I read.
I digested.
I metabolized.
Until the concept of boundaries broke all the way down to bone.
I didn’t study boundaries to keep people out.
I studied them because I was tired of disappearing inside the people I let in.
Setting boundaries felt cruel at first.
Like rejection.
Like abandonment.
Until I realized they weren’t walls meant to isolate me.
They were fences meant to keep what mattered safe.
When I think about boundaries now, I think about that yard.
About knowing where the property line is before you build.
About training yourself—and others—where the line lives.
About maintaining what surrounds you because what’s inside is worth protecting.
You don’t build a fence because you hate the world.
You build it because you finally love the world that’s yours.
And once you understand the value of what you have within those walls, when someone crosses your boundaries—digs where you worked tirelessly to level—tramples what you nurtured and planted with your bare hands—you begin to realize that it isn’t misunderstanding.
It’s information.
Today, my fence looks different.
It’s quieter. Smaller. Four walls instead of a yard. A home turned into a sanctuary. A life built deliberately, piece by piece.
I don’t invite chaos in anymore. I don’t apologize for needing clarity. I don’t confuse access with intimacy.
I didn’t learn boundaries because I wanted to keep people out.
I learned them because I finally realized what I had—and that it was absolutely worth protecting.
Sometimes I think about that yard.
The fence.
The work.
The quiet, earned pride.
And I understand something I couldn’t then:
The fence wasn’t there to limit me. It was there to give my life a shape. To give my grief somewhere to rest.
To give my hope somewhere to grow.
All that time I thought it was holding me back,
it was actually just holding the next version of me together—
long enough for me to see what I couldn’t yet understand.
That, all along, I was worth protecting.
Copyright © 2026 Kimberly Beth Thomas. All rights reserved.
3-Part Series: The Backyard Boundaries – Part 1
Author’s Note:
This was written from a place of recognition; of the spaces that held me, the work that shaped me, and the lessons that arrived unexpectedly, quietly, over time.
Boundaries didn’t enter my life as rigid rules or neatly defined lines. There may have been an ultimatum or two, but ultimatums were never going to teach me anything lasting. They don’t offer insight. They don’t create integration. They don’t leave you with tools you can carry forward as your life continues to evolve.
These were boundaries forged in resilience, shaped by knowledge, and then integrated deliberately to a complex life that otherwise had no limits.
These were boundaries learned through care.
If you’ve ever built something slowly, protected something tender, or realized—later than you’d wished—that what you had was worth keeping, I hope this feels like a place you can rest for a moment.
đź”— Catch up on the series:
👉 Part 2: The Boundary or the Fence: Learning What Came First