top of page
.png){kind=small}
"It took me almost two thousand miles in the woods to see I had to do some hard work that wasn't simply walking-that I needed to begin respecting my own body's boundaries. I had to draw clear lines. Ones that were sound in my mind and therefore impermeable, and would always, no matter where I walked, protect me. Moving forward, I wanted rules.First-when I felt unsafe I'd leave, immediately. The first time, not the tenth time. Not after a hundred red flags smacked in wind violently, clear as trail signs pointing the way to SNAKES. Not after I'd been bitten-the violation. If I wasn't interested, I would reject the man blatantly."
Standard
Customized
More
"We violated each other's boundaries with verbal missiles of anger disguised in the pretense of 'just kidding."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I'll share my life with you. But, not my doughnuts."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Don't get me wrong, she was an attractive girl, but the last thing she needed was to get mixed up with me."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Don't lower your standards to keep anyone, if they're not making you happy, it's time to find someone who does."
Author Name
Personal Development
"We should have the right to have someone leave when we want, to only allow those in who we want in. But the truth is, people can force their way into your life whenever they choose. If they want to remind you forevermore that they exist, they will. They can reappear in a card or call or a 'chance' meeting, they can remember your birthday or the day you met with some innocuous small note. No matter how little they matter in your new life, they can insist on being seen and recognized and remembered."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Move away from Machiavellian hearts. Manipulative people can frame you up even if you have a humble, simple and generous heart. Question their motive."
Author Name
Personal Development
"When you decide to be the best you can be, don't be surprised if the circle of people you want to spend your time with becomes smaller."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Recognize the signs, these perpetual question and need to control. Never be a part of someone else's obsession. Let them carry it alone, with their snakeskin smile. These are the people that hold their hand out and it's as cold as their heart."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Don't you ever let another put their hands on something that's already yours, because you might end up breaking your own heart."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Preserve me from such cordiality! It is like handling briar - roses and may - blossoms - bright enough to the eye, and outwardly soft to the touch, but you know there are thorns beneath, and every now and then you feel them too; and perhaps resent the injury by crushing them in till you have destroyed their power, though somewhat to the detriment of your own fingers."
Author Name
Personal Development
More
"Already, this little-walked gigantic trail through my country's Western wilderness held in my mind the promise of escape from myself, the liberation only a huge transformation could grant me. This walk would be my salvation. It had to be."
Transformation
"Absolutely devout in her complete care of my body, she had only taught me to be weak and voiceless. But I had unlearned that lesson. Our enmeshment no longer felt to me like proof of love. I was no longer willing to permit this silencing. Helplessness didn't have to be my identity, I wasn't condemned to it. I was willing-able-to change. Our enmeshment had been enabled by my belief that I needed her to help me, to take care of things for me-and to save me-but, back in the home where I'd learned this helplessness, I found I no longer felt that I was trapped in it."
Empowerment
"But the truth was stranger than an aimless road, it always was."
Truth
"I was able to pitch a tent and carry a backpack twenty-five miles a day through mountains-I'd mastered a thousand amazing physical feats-physically I'd become undeniably confident and capable-but physical weakness had never been the problem that I had. My true problem had been passivity, the lifelong-conditioned submission that became my nature."
Transformation
"If I could mark clearly, convincingly and consistently what was good for me and also what was bad-if I could say yes and also no, as if it were the law-it would become my law."
Self-Control
"I felt like I belonged to an ancient tradition of all young people given this same task of finding their own ways through to the futures they wanted for themselves."
Tradition
"I saw for the first time that I could stop giving people the power to make me feel disrespected. In my anger I began to see the absurdity of allowing this boy to shame me."
Empowerment
"I wrote through darkness, vividly seeing: my passivity was not a crime; my desire to trust was not a flaw."
Healing
"I'd have to be impolite, an inconvenience, and sometimes awkward. But if I could commit, all that discomfort would add up to zap predatory threads like a Taser gun. I'd stun them. They'd bow to me. I'd let my no echo against the mountains.And better to feel bad for a moment saying no-and stop it-than to get harmed.I would take better care.That small word, no. I'd see its deity."
Boundaries
"My relationship with my mother trapped me in the identity of a child."
Identity
bottom of page