What happens when the boundaries you’ve spent your life crossing become the very things that teach you how to protect yourself?
Across three essays, I trace the lessons that began in an ordinary backyard, followed me through childhood, relationships, and adulthood, and eventually changed the way I understood my own limits. From a leaning wooden fence and a weedwhacker to the invisible property line my dad taught us to respect, these stories explore how we learn, test, neglect, and maintain boundaries. And how sometimes the first sign someone has crossed a line is a feeling you haven’t yet learned to explain.
Because somewhere along the way, I realized I’d spent so much time learning how to accommodate other people that I’d almost forgotten to ask what I was allowing them to take from me. And by the time I finally understood what boundaries were protecting, I’d built a life I wasn’t willing to let anyone walk through without permission.
What a Backyard, a Weedwhacker, and Two Fences Taught Me About Boundaries
A reflective essay on grief, growth, and boundary-setting, told through the quiet lessons of a backyard, two fences, and the slow work of learning what’s worth protecting.
January 16, 2026
The Boundary or the Fence: Learning What Came First
An essay about invisible boundaries, childhood memory, and the moment your body knows to stop—long before your mind can explain why.
January 23, 2026
Backyards and Fences and Boundaries, Oh My!
In the third and final installment of the Backyard Boundaries series, this essay explores emotional boundaries, nervous system awareness, and self-worth through lived experience and the metaphor of backyards and fences.
January 25, 2026