04/07/2026
One of the ways I’ve gone against myself is by staying too long in places I no longer needed to be.
Sometimes that looked like staying later at someone’s house because the conversation was good.
Because I was helping with a project.
Because it felt awkward to leave.
Because some part of me thought staying longer helped maintain the relationship.
You know, the classic Minnesota long goodbye.
And sometimes none of that was bad in itself.
The conversation might have been meaningful.
The helping might have been real and generous.
But I still wasn’t honoring myself in the process.
I knew I needed to get home.
To make a healthy dinner.
To reset.
To do the basic things that help me feel grounded and be a better version of myself.
And when I didn’t speak up, it affected more than just that one evening.
Sometimes it meant I lost the time I needed to unwind.
Sometimes the kids went to bed too late.
Sometimes I felt it the next day, or even into the next week.
That’s one of the things I’ve learned about boundaries:
Sometimes the issue isn’t that you’re doing something bad.
It’s that you’re not paying attention to the cost of abandoning yourself while you’re doing something good.
That’s a much more real kind of boundary work.
If this resonates, my free guide might be helpful:
10 Boundary Patterns That May Be Draining Your Energy
Download it here:
https://loom.ly/lBKsvCY
