Hi there! If you’re new, I’m Jonathan, and I write this newsletter as part of an effort to create conversations around what we experience and how that makes us feel— especially the hard stuff. If you like what you read, please subscribe and share with a friend.
I’ve never felt more aware of boundaries than I did during my dad’s final year on earth. In the time that passed between a disaster-ridden two-day visit in February 2020 to his death 12 months later, a lifetime of crises came to a head. That stretch of time, with his health worsening and him alone in Seattle, pushed me to sharpen my sense of what I was and wasn’t ok with in the context of supporting someone I loved.
Do I have boundaries? Where do they lay? How do I articulate them, to myself and to others? How do they get crossed, and how am I afraid they might be? What, today, stirs up uncomfortable memories of how they were violated in the past? Can I set and uphold boundaries with a person while still showing them compassion?
Making it through was about finding the answers to these questions without letting my, his, and our family’s deep desire for clean resolutions obscure the truth.
There were a few big themes: money, time, and emotional energy.
Giving him money—for groceries, for meds or insurance, for dog food, for dinner tonight—wasn’t always an immediate problem. I could usually afford whatever he was asking for on a given day. But the whole situation didn’t really have a ceiling. Flights back and forth are expensive, as would be a moving truck and a security deposit and a car and whatever else was on the horizon.
There was always more to spend on, so I had to mindfully ask myself: what’s my limit here?
Time-wise, there were lots of logistics to sort out, and he often asked my siblings and me to handle them. I was happy to help, but apartment hunting in preparation for a potential move isn’t a small task, especially for someone with no money or credit and a lot of unique needs. Neither is calling dialysis centers or the transit agency to figure out how he’d get around to the places he’d theoretically need to get around to once he moved.
I had to think about what I could and couldn’t do, and be ok saying no if he was asking for the latter.
Emotional energy was the toughest, unsurprisingly. Beyond his declining health, there was the drain of wondering whether he was actually willing to move, along with his intermittent efforts to keep us from knowing the full picture. On the flip side, when he did want to share, he had very few people he was willing to be completely open with (as it was his whole life), and he’d call me whenever he was feeling the need and just launch into all the heavy stuff in his life: diagnoses, fears, frustrations, spats with neighbors.
I had to think about, and then explain, how taking all of that on was emotional labor. I had to be clear about the difference between me offering support and me being an ever-present sounding board with no needs of my own.
I also had to put up a boundary between myself and an inappropriate sense of responsibility. No, this situation was not my fault, and I couldn’t allow guilt or shame to say otherwise. I was sad, but I was not responsible.
Dad’s life was his own, and only he could move the needle. That was frustrating sometimes. At others, it was devastating. But these are realities that demand acceptance, not necessarily action. There was only a finite amount of change that I could effect.
To not recognize this would have been to risk being swallowed whole.
I’ve heard it said, by Prentis Hemphill via adrienne maree brown, that “boundaries are the distance at which I can love me and you simultaneously.”
Boundaries, more broadly
Lots of people have loved ones who put them to the test. Drawing hard lines can be necessary, but when and how to do that is rarely straightforward or clear.
As I wrote this, I considered zooming out and talking about boundaries in other contexts. Whether it’s with family, or in the workplace, or with our team, or whatever, there are all kinds of forces calling out for our attention and energy, and the question of which parts of ourselves to give versus which to guard—when and how to say yes or no, in other words—is one of life’s ever-present challenges.
But to be honest, boundaries just haven’t been a prominent piece of my thinking since my dad died. Among the most straightforward parts of his transition is that his earthly needs were there one day and gone the next. That his departure gave me space for new growth… and rest, and breathing room… is a blessing amidst the heartache.
It’s possible that setting boundaries will never be harder for me than it was with my dad. I don’t want to jinx myself, but I’d like to think the odds are in my favor there. At the least, if there’s a comparable test, it won’t be my first rodeo.
Lately, I think more about where and how I might overstep other people’s boundaries. What concerns me most is that from what I can tell, we rarely cross the line deliberately; while he did have frustratingly strong methods of not hearing the word “no,” I don’t think my dad inflicted any harm on purpose. Somehow, he didn’t think his asks were unreasonable, let alone harmful. He had a skewed view of our equation. Is there a relationship where I’m doing the same?
At some point soon, I’ll share a follow up to this that gets into how the boundaries theme showed up in my childhood. None of what happened in the year before my dad died was random; it had been building for a while. Understanding those pieces of the puzzle has been helpful in thinking through how I might cause less harm to others in the future.
Read a smart person’s thoughts on getting defensive
I have an old friend who is a few things: the best captain I ever played for, a helicopter pilot and officer in the Navy, and a very considerate, intentional, and kind person.
After I wrote about defensiveness a few months ago–namely the habit of hearing commentary from others as scathing critique and launching a counter attack– he sent me a few notes on how he has worked with the impulse to get defensive during performance evaluations. With his permission, I want to share some of his words. They’re very wise:
Throughout a career in aviation, there is always another qualification to earn or evaluation to undergo. We conduct a debrief after every flight and evaluate our performance against the standard for that event. At some point in my career I decided that I would refrain from explaining myself during a debrief when I was in a student or evaluee role, unless specifically questioned.
I started to notice a similar compulsion to what you described, to defend every negative debrief point by explaining or rationalizing my action or decision. Somehow I concluded that this was pointless, and decided to stop doing it, and instead just listen to the feedback from the instructor. I found that I started to understand their feedback better, simply because I was listening and not planning what I was going to say when they stopped talking. At times this was challenging if I truly disagreed with their point, but I would remind myself to try and believe what they were telling me and to debate the conflict by myself later.
I noticed I stopped feeling like I was compromising my self-worth if I didn't defend myself. Some instructors are notoriously cold or demeaning, and that creates a self-perpetuating cycle as students brace up and defend themselves. But I think I earned points with instructors who expected a hostile debrief, and instead strengthened our relationship.
It can be challenging, and requires deliberate effort. Especially during this tour, where I spent the first year being instructed by pilots junior in rank to me by 3 years. In cases where I know "the book" is on my side, I usually save that point of contention for later, and bring it to them as a follow-up question.
Overall, I think my takeaway is that it doesn't matter what I have to say in defense of myself. The instructor has their list of debrief points that they want to address and their list of lessons that they want to convey. Rarely will the pass/fail status of an event hinge on the balance of one or two points of contention.
Spread the word?
I really want my work to find the people it’s supposed to find. If you want that too, please send this post to your teammates, share on social media, or tell a friend about it.
With this one in particular, I’m hoping it gets appropriately passed along to anyone who is dealing with/has dealt with a parent who asks an awful lot of their child.
P.S. Someone recently told me they were confused as to why the “Subscribe Now” button keeps showing up for them given that they’re already a subscriber. I put that there for non-subscribers in hope that they’ll join in on the fun. Just an FYI.
Be well,
Jonathan