The beauty of boundaries & the art of wholeness
“Ecotones are not merely boundaries or edges; rather, they embody zones of active interaction between two or more ecosystems… The intertwining of habitats provides critical space for activities like courtship, nesting, and foraging.” – earth.org
An ecotone is an area where two environments meet and merge: a zone of immense interaction between two ecosystems. A poignant example is our wetlands, the zone between land and sea that houses immense biodiversity. A wetland is an essential transitional area that maintains the health of the communities that dwell in the surrounding environment. If we decide to do away with this essential boundary - as we have done historically with the removal of unseemly swamps and mangroves – we remove a fertile zone of growth and diversity.
Without boundaries we thwart our capacity to heal and grow.
As we are not separate from the natural environment, we are nature, I like to think of our social lives through the frame of ecotone. Especially at this festive time, when we may be socialising more in one month than we do the entire year! It is essential to consider our boundaries, how we meet others and how we merge into other environments. If we do not maintain our own boundaries we not only dilute our unique essence - by doing what we think others expect of us, instead of what is truly in our hearts - but we also weaken our social weave.
Our communities are not meant to be homogenous.
Many of us have learned growing up that we need to be someone other than ourselves in order to be accepted. Our mammalian brain is wired for belonging and our reptilian brain is wired for survival, put these together with our neocortex and we make the obvious choice to mold ourselves into whatever form is most acceptable within the environment we find ourselves in. When our environments have a narrow range of acceptable behaviour, as an environment that lacks diversity, we suffer. We cannot completely relax, we must always manage our words and actions as if we were performing.
When our environments are rich in diversity, we can thrive in our wholeness.
In order to welcome diversity into our environments we must first nurture our boundaries. Nurturing and maintaining healthy boundaries looks like saying ‘no’ to situations, events, expectations and obligations that don’t feel right in our body at the time. It could also be accepting another person’s ‘no’ instead of resenting them with our own expectations. It could be as simple as giving yourself more space and time to pause and consider an invitation before responding. A boundary is simply a promise to yourself that you will take good care of you and therefore you can relax, take off the mask and just be.
By honouring our own boundary we fulfil our wholeness and in doing so, we honour everyone else's wholeness too.
Overstepping a boundary is overriding our nervous system – we become unsafe in our own body. It is somewhat of a paradox that in order for a community to thrive we each need better boundaries, not because it creates distance but precisely because it means that we can be our truest self. We can show up authentically and offer our hearts most precious gifts generously when we are safe to be our whole selves. When we are full of ourselves we are no longer pretending to be someone we are not, nor are we striving for approval, we simply are.
And that is the beauty of boundaries, we become fulfilled as our whole beautiful selves.
With care & camaraderie,
Chantal