What I Learned Mid-Air

On inner boundaries, imperfect loving, and a creek in the woods

The years were raw. Uncertain. Painful.

That's the honest summary of the season of life my friend and I were both moving through when this story takes place. We were hiking partners and companions in the particular way that people become companions when their lives are aligned in a moment of difficulty. In the way lives connect so beautifully when your parallel lives begins to reveal themselves as not quite the whole story. This period in our lives and how we were there for one another without judgment is why I hold this person so dear to this day.

We were often hiking in the redwoods during those years, something we still manage to do on occasion. Moving through the redwood forest together is a kind of medicine, a connective tissue we both needed. On this particular day I was telling her about a recent moment with one of my kids. A meltdown. His, and then honestly, mine. I simply could not understand him — what he needed, what he was feeling, what was driving the intensity of his response. And that inability to understand got in the way of everything. Of patience. Of presence. Of compassion. It left me standing in the gap between us with nothing useful to offer either of us. Just my own disregulated nervous system taking up all the space.

By the time I was telling my friend about it I had moved from frustrated to self-critical, and still clinging to judgment. The story I was telling was becoming evidence against myself and even my child. How could we be so deeply flawed!

We came to a creek. I leapt.

And somewhere between leaving one bank and landing on the other — before my feet touched the ground — she said:

"I guess that's what an inner boundary is."

That sentence and my foot landed simultaneously in a different space than a moment before.

What shifted was this: responsibility.

Not blame. Not shame. Not another item on the long list of ways I was falling short of my own expectations.

Responsibility. Quiet and clarifying.

I needed to take responsibility for my own system. For my expectations. For the gap between what I wanted the situation to be and what it actually was. And for the fact that my frustration with that gap was mine to work with, not his to absorb.

I needed to hold both of us with compassion and tenderness while we both wanted things to be other than what they were.

Which sounds simple. And is, in fact, one of the more complex and ongoing practices of my life.

That particular relationship is still unfolding. All my relationships are. Including the one I have with myself.

So what is an inner boundary, exactly?

Here is the definition I've been working with:

An inner boundary is a healthy, regulated emotional response in the midst of relational or situational distress.

Not a wall between you and someone else. Not a rule you impose. Not a consequence you threaten.

Something that lives inside you. A quality of your own nervous system. The capacity to develop slowly, imperfectly, over time while remaining in contact with yourself even when everything around you is pulling hard in another direction. (To run away, to hide, to lash out, to be right.)

I did not have this capacity reliably on the day I was describing on that trail. I have it more reliably now than I did then. I lose access to it regularly in moments of stress, in moments of discomfort, in moments when someone I care about is suffering and I want to fix it. This kind of boundary is not a destination. It is a practice. Which means it involves repetition, imperfection, and a lot of starting over. What I've learned slowly, through reflection and discomfort is that the inner boundary is only as steady as the self-knowledge underneath it.

And self-knowledge, as far as I can tell, is a neverending process.

The building blocks

The inner boundary doesn't exist in isolation. In the simple version, it sits at the intersection of four things that most of us were never explicitly taught and are therefore figuring out on the fly, usually in the middle of a situation that would benefit enormously from our having figured them out already:

What we believe. About ourselves. About the people we love. About emotions and conflict and what love is supposed to look like in practice. Many of these beliefs were formed before we were old enough to evaluate them. They run quietly in the background of every interaction, shaping what we feel and how we respond before we've even consciously registered what's happening. They are worth examining. Gently, without judgment if possible. With judgment if necessary. Either way they are worth examining.

What we actually feel. Emotions can be disorienting, and when we bump up against big ones, defensiveness is often the first thing that arrives. Here is something I believe with my whole self: if you are acting with honesty and kindness, you are not the cause of another person's feelings, and they are not the cause of yours. Each person is responsible for their own emotional experience. I know that can sound cold at first. It isn't. It is one of the most liberating things I know, because the moment you stop being responsible for someone else's feelings, you can actually be present with them. Hold space for them. Stop taking their experience personally and start witnessing it, alongside them. Liberation from blame in both directions requires this kind of emotional responsibility. And yet it is rarely taught, almost never modeled, and genuinely difficult to accept. Which is probably why so few of us arrive at adulthood having fully worked it out.

What we are actually responsible for. Not everything. Not everyone. Specifically and only: ourselves. Our responses. Our expectations. The gap between what we want and what is, and how we choose to be with that gap. This one is still a daily practice for me. I suspect it always will be.

The language we use. With others and with ourselves. Words create reality. You are too sensitive does something to a nervous system. That sounds really hard does something entirely different. The language we reach for in difficult moments reveals the beliefs underneath. It is worth listening to what we actually say. And ask ourselves whether it's true. Really true?

These four things: beliefs, emotions, responsibility, language are in constant conversation with each other. Shift one and the others begin to move. Let one go unexamined and we default to our unskillful habits that, more often than not, took root when we were very young. That’s who is running the show in those high-drama exchanges in our lives. Our much younger selves. At least the emotional and relational habits of our younger selves is making a lot of the decisions.

Ask me how I know.

This is not just about parenting

Everything I've described here applies to every close relationship you have. It applies to every encounter you have with another person or situation in which you bump into wanting something different to be true in that moment.

The inability to understand someone you love and the way that gap erodes compassion and presence is not specific to parents and children. It happens between partners. Between adult children and aging parents. Between friends navigating different seasons of life. Between you and the version of yourself you expected to be by now.

The inner boundary is not a parenting skill. It is a relational skill. A human skill. The capacity to remain yourself. Grounded, present, not completely swept away in the middle of the inevitable difficulty of being in relationship with other people who are also trying to figure all of this out.

Which is to say: all of us. Always. In every direction.

For anyone reading this who is in the middle of something hard

Use the moment to learn, have faith in yourself. Turn towards your experience with curiosity and kindness. Soften, even if your instinct is to get the knives out.

You are a person with your own history, your own nervous system, your own set of beliefs and emotions and responsibilities that you are working with in real time, under pressure, with imperfect information and enormous love.

The inner boundary is not about becoming less feeling. It is not about emotional distance or detachment or any of the cold things those words might suggest.

It is about developing enough of a relationship with your own inner experience that you can be fully present with someone else's without losing yourself in it. It’s also about having the courage to make choices for yourself based on your values. Sometimes that means not being in a relationship with someone.

These skills are learnable. I know because I am still learning.

And what I've noticed is that when someone begins to develop this quality of inner groundedness, something shifts in the room. Not because anything was said. Because something in the nervous system of the person they love most begins to register:

She is not panicking. This is survivable. I am safe.

You cannot give what you don't yet have for yourself.

Which is not a criticism. It is an invitation.

Back to the creek

My friend and I still walk together sometimes. The years are less raw now. Still uncertain, that seems to be the permanent condition of being alive and paying attention. But the particular acute pain of that season has mostly passed.

I think about that moment on the trail with a bit of awe. One sentence. Mid-air. A decade of working with what it unlocked.

What she gave me wasn't expertise. She wasn't teaching me anything. She was a friend, equally in the middle of her own hard things who happened to name something true at exactly the right moment.

That is how so many of the important lessons happen. Not in classrooms or books or even blog posts — though I hope this one has been worth your time — but in the middle of real life, mid-leap, before your feet have touched the ground.