Episode 36: Boundaries

This week, AJ and AJ are talking boundaries: setting them, holding them, and dealing with the people who suddenly become very confused about what a boundary is the second it applies to them.

"A" opens up about the trauma she experienced growing up and the long process of coming to terms with the reality of her childhood. After cutting family out of her life, she eventually tried to forgive her abuser—only to discover that when she started setting actual boundaries, they somehow became the victim. During this difficult season, "A" found comfort in the movie Boyhood. Watching another family navigate messy, complicated dynamics helped her process her own and made her appreciate her husband and the family they’ve built together even more, especially when protecting that family meant making some really hard choices.

"J" talks about moving to a new town and working in after-school programming with middle schoolers, where she became friends with the teachers whose classrooms she worked in. Soon they were hanging out regularly and became her “Friday Night Lights” crew—a chosen family at exactly the moment she needed one. Meanwhile, "J" was navigating the extremely chill and not-at-all emotionally loaded task of deciding which of her siblings would be invited to her wedding. She leaned on her fiancé and this new community to get her through it.

It’s an episode about family, chosen family, protecting your peace, and the deeply inconvenient reality that sometimes setting a healthy boundary makes other people extremely mad.