Suzann member for 33 weeks 6 days Send a message

My goal is to be aware of my personal limits, boundaries, and needs, and make sure they are honored - before I allow someone to violate them. At this point I feel like my life depends on this.

I'm not talking about selfishness, or putting myself before others, or not having active compassion. I'm simply talking about ... self care.

We all know the routine on the plane, where you're supposed to put your own oxygen mask on first and then put your child's on. The logic behind this is not that we are selfish, it's that we can't help the child if we're dead.

I can't be a good mother, grandmother, significant other, friend, or pet mom, if I don't get control of my own life first. And for me, getting control means seriously defining my boundaries, writing them down, and figuring out in each instance what might need to be done to honor them.

There's a book out there called No Is A Complete Sentence by Megan LeBoutillier. I totally recommend it to anyone with boundary issues. Whether it's demands on your time, dating or issues with men, or your own personal need to reach out and help others to the point where your own life falls to piece - this book is a good place to start.

Here's my current, huge, stare-at-the-ceiling-for-hours, boundary issue. It's not what you might think - I got the male-female stuff out of the way pretty fast. This one runs deeper.

I started www.MyMakeupMirror.com, as a fluffy, colorful fun website. But the more I researched and studied the various products, the more I was brought into the animal testing world. I couldn't stand what I learned about animal cruelty in the name of cosmetics testing. So I changed my site completely, got rid of the fluff, and now it's based entirely around non-animal tested, and vegan makeup. In fact the site revolves around the front page, which is a giant list of companies that do not test on animals and / or are vegan.

But they started to club the baby seals to death again in Canada, and always that poor Polar Bear standing on a scrap of ice in the TV commercials, and I decided to add an action page to my site. This page would keep people informed about this stuff and tell them how to get in touch with government representatives and which animal rights groups were helping which cause.

The process of researching this and then writing about it made me so sad, so depressed, so hopeless, I ended up in bed again, unable to do anything. I tried bringing home as many stray animals I could on a local level, and I love my alley cats, but boy I was on the verge.

I realized. I can help the animals, but if I don't "know myself," and practice "self care," then I won't be able to help any animal because I'll be drooling and patting imaginary rescue animals in some nut house.

My problem is that I actually feel the pain the lab animals feel. I feel the heartbreak of the exploited elephants. It's more than I can handle.

In a re-org attempt to pull my life back together, so I could keep helping where I was needed and in ways that I could actually help, I had to let go of my site's Action Pages - it was killing me.

Instead, I send what money I can to PETA and the National Resource Defense Council's BioGems program. Oh and I have this elephant sanctuary in Tennessee that I send money to. (God, I love elephants. Has anyone seen that video of the elephant painting a picture?)

Anyway, self care for me meant re-assessing what I can and can't handle, how much I can do for my causes, and not going so far that I push myself over the edge and become useless.

So now I have my page of non-animal tested and vegan makeup, and I keep that totally up to date, and I can do that. I always adopt rescue animals. I can give money (even a small amount) to my animal sanctuaries and programs. But you know what? I can't do any more. I had to admit that to myself.

I'm not doing as much as I could, I suppose, but I'm at least sane and functional and able to do something.

Does anyone else have boundary issues they want to discuss?