As humans, we all need both connection and autonomy. Balancing our needs for both is a lifelong practice. The challenge is like a tide that rises and falls.

The typical wrestling to achieve balance and the resulting lean in the direction of connection over autonomy or vice versa is distinguishable from having an extreme emphasis on either connection or autonomy. The later can leave us lonely or living a life in chaos. To avoid life at either extreme, we can engage in the daily practice of setting boundaries.

What is meant by Personal Boundaries?

Personal boundaries are the limits and rules we set for ourselves with others.

Unhealthy Boundaries are personal boundaries that are too rigid or too porous.

Rigid or Porous Boundaries

A symptom of overly porous boundaries is codependency. Codependency involves the loss of self and caring and doing for others even at the expense of self. The other boundary extreme is to have rigid boundaries, which is to be self-isolating and a...

During and right after divorce, feelings of loneliness and emptiness surround. The emptiness is the result of The Barely Noticeable Erosion of Sense of Self that occurs when we have been the codependent partner in a marriage.

Divorce tries to convince us that we are alone and trapped in a darkness that will never lift. We need to speak back, "You are wrong."

We can connect with ourselves and with others going through a similar experience and begin our healing journey.

Emerging from the marriage, we are left looking for the moment when all of this withering away of self started.  We sense that knowing when all of this began will allow us to travel back in time, recoup, and move forward again; this time whole. 

I do not believe pin pointing that exact moment is necessary.  It is this moment, the one we are in right now, that holds the answers we are looking for.

If we can stand tall, right in this moment, as much as we may wish to lie down and never get up, we can discove...