Please note: For what they are worth, these comments represent Debbie’s opinions and perceptions based upon her own experiences and must be understood as such. Thank you.

Dear Reader:

You’ve heard of making amends.  Sometimes in person, sometimes long-distance.  Here is an example.

Dear C:

I am writing this letter to you, in absentia, as a part of my therapy and as part of my AA step work.  I have no intention of actually sending it. I do not know where you are now, or even if you are still alive. And I do not know if it would harm you if you received it. But I must write it for my own healing and to find some closure for old wounds.  My purpose is to lay this whole thing to rest.

I started another letter about 2 weeks ago, but I got stuck in the process. I realized, while writing, that that letter brought a bunch of unforeseen things to the surface, issues I hadn’t even considered. It is my hope that these old things might bring me to a place of acceptance and peace.

I remember that you and I met in Mrs. J’s first grade class in 1964.  We went all through the first 8 grades together as best friends.  The last day of the 8^th grade we parted company. It was 1972.  I had just turned 14 and knew that I was going off to an expensive and exclusive boarding school in the fall.  I had just begun to understand that many local people had a deeply negative attitude toward that fancy private school and the people who went there.  It had a 100-year history and generations of resentments for its exclusivity.  But I remember that you and I vowed to stick together forever after.  We didn’t.

I think the exact time of our “break-up” was that summer, shortly after our 8^th grade year.  You and your friend, S, road your ponies over to my house to spend the night that Friday night, and play the next day. But that Saturday morning Daddy put all three of us to work repairing a fence out back behind the barn where we fed the cattle.

I remember that you and S were perturbed at being commanded to do that work, and shortly you and S got on your ponies and road back to your home.  You never came back. I never saw you again.

David L. Avery, M3D Photography

I still feel the pain over losing you from my life.  I am pretty sure Daddy engineered the whole thing to sabotage our friendship. And it seems to have worked.  At this point I have not seen you, my dearest friend, in 46 years.  The old wound has not gone away. Daddy was good at anything he chose to do, and sabotage was one of his areas of expertise.

For some time, I felt resentment toward you for abandoning me.  I thought for a while that it was my fault.  Then the memory surfaced: that Saturday morning Daddy was trying to take advantage of free labor. It all began to make sense. He ran you off and out of my life.  Daddy was the one who killed our friendship.

Daddy was a master of manipulating others in painful and punitive ways.  I was not the only victim; Mama frequently caught the brunt of his maneuvers.  It was how he controlled people.  C, I have long wanted to apologize for my father and what he did.  I am so sorry! And I still love you to this day in a way I’ve never loved anyone else.

I had begun to realize just how different my family was from every other family I knew.  I was unusually fearful of the parents of other kids, especially their fathers.  I began to discover that my family was somehow really warped in comparison.  I didn’t know it at the time, but I think my father was holding my mother, my sisters and me hostage.

I know you did not particularly like your own step-father, but I think you must have realized that my father was something entirely different.  As I think about it now, I think my mother ran interference so you and I could have time together. Daddy was usually off running some kind of errand for one of his many projects.

I suspect that your parents probably had a hand in ending our friendship. I could hardly blame them. I would want to keep my son out of harm’s way too.

By then, my family’s relationships in the community had begun to unravel.  We no longer went to church.  There were no more gatherings or dinner parties.  I suppose the festering isolation was fueled by Daddy’s alcoholism, but I am convinced that Daddy had mental health issues that preceded his decline into alcoholic madness.

Back in those days none of us had any idea of what alcohol does to a family, and we certainly had no idea about what we could do about it.  We all sort of went into a kind of bunker to ride out the unpredictable storms. 

My world included life at the boarding school and life on the farm. You had gone into the world of the public high school.  Our worlds were completely separate.  It was as if you had died, or perhaps you had erased me from your life.  At lease that was the way I interpreted it at the time.

After I learned to drive, I rarely went anywhere but school. For a long time, I was afraid to leave home. When I was at home, Daddy had me with him nearly all the time.  It felt like he wanted to keep his eye on me.  Going places on my own was discouraged and I also felt that I had to stay close to home for the next unpredictable crisis—to save Mama and the girls.  Come to think of it, I have lived most of my life close to home and in fear.

There are patterns here. There is so much more below the surface.  I can hardly articulate what I want to say.  I am shaking as I write this.  Fortunately, I have two avenues of help, so I don’t have to do this alone.  I have an understanding therapist and I have the fellowship of AA to help me on my journey through the darkness.

I guess this is a good place to end this letter for now. I still love you and I am sorry for what happened.  There is so much shame! I have begun to see how many relationships were poisoned and destroyed during those years.  I have only now begun to revisit all the feelings of shame I felt because of my family.  I am looking for better ways of dealing with that.  I would like to move on to a healthier life now. 

Today must begin another day of letting go and healing.

Thank you, C., for hearing me.

Please note: For what they are worth, these comments represent Debbie’s opinions and perceptions based upon her own experiences and must be understood as such. Thank you.

Boundaries vs. Barriers.  How do you know?

I mean, how do you know if you are doing it right?  We all need boundaries, but we do not want to establish barriers. Or do we?  And what is the difference between boundaries and barriers?

Well, let’s start with definitions. Boundaries are what you do to keep a relationship healthy. Barriers are what you do to shut down a relationship.

If you have healthy boundaries, you have a clear distinction between who you are and who someone else is. Boundaries enable you to know yourself, what you stand for, your place in the world.  For example, you recognize that your place is different than that of your children.  You know that your purpose is different; for example, your purpose is to teach them to be competent adults, their job is to learn as much as they can about the world.  There is a boundary between friendship and intimate romance. There is a boundary between what you say and do at work, and what you say and do at home with your family.  It is when you cross the boundaries in these realms that things go awry.  Often times these problems occur when you get too involved in someone’s life, when you fail to distinguish what is their issue and what is your own. (Co-dependency, anyone?)

What about barriers?

Barriers are things, circumstances or forces that prevent access or passage. They impede or prevent rather than encourage.  For example, there may be a language barrier. Or prejudice may be a barrier to getting to know someone.

Barriers can be a problem when they occur without careful thought. But they can be a resource when you put them in place to prevent contact with someone who is hurtful and destructive to you.

So, a phone can be used to contact someone. You can implement boundaries by letting the person with whom you are talking know something about what hours of the day it is convenient for you to talk, or the subjects you are willing to discuss.  But when someone abuses you or the content of the call is hurtful to you and you cannot seem to educate the person about your preferences (I.E., your boundaries) you may consider erecting a barrier. You might say, “If you call more than once per day, or if you call after 10 pm, I will not answer.”  Or, if you cannot get them to follow this rule, you may block their calls altogether.

Healthy people have boundaries and are aware of them. They communicate about them freely to others and, while boundaries evolve over time, they are “open information” which represent one’s values, choices, beliefs, etc.  Barriers are what healthy people put in place to protect themselves from people or things that risk injuring them.

To be balanced and functional human beings, we need to have both boundaries and barriers.

The thoughts that I have articulated above are rather simple, or even simplistic. If you have been thinking of issues in relationships, often barriers and boundaries are at issue. If this is true in your case, you might consider talking them through with a counselor. Often clarity can bring relief from anxiety, depression or stress….dhc