No One Tells You What Happens After You Set Boundaries

Everyone talks about boundaries. Set them. Hold them. Honor yourself. Protect your peace. It sounds empowering when you say it like that; clean, clear, almost inspiring. What no one talks about is what happens after…because I set boundaries. I did exactly what everyone said to do. I started stating my needs. I stopped over-explaining. I stopped bending myself into something more palatable for other people’s comfort. I chose myself. And then everything got harder.

No one prepared me for the fallout. No one told me that when you stop playing your role in a system…the system doesn’t just quietly adjust. It reacts. There was pushback. Scrutiny. Whispers that I couldn’t hear directly but could feel everywhere. The kind of energy that follows you into a room before you even walk in.

My mother was angry with me, because I didn’t just take myself out of her life for a time, I took my children as well. She was angry for good reason, but it didn’t make it easy to deal with because boundaries don’t just protect you…they expose dynamics. And I had made the decision to keep my children at a distance while we healed. Not as punishment. Not out of spite. But out of necessity. And that choice? It hurt people. I understood that it would, but I felt that if we were going to have a chance at someday coming to a healing space, complete temporary cut offs from me and the children were the only way forward.

I would come home to gifts on the porch. Easter baskets left without a conversation. Cards in the mail. Facebook notifications; hundreds of likes on pictures that said nothing…but felt like everything. A silent message: Look what you’re doing. Look who you’re hurting. Look what you’ve taken away. And I felt it. Every bit of it. Because choosing yourself doesn’t suddenly make you immune to guilt. If anything, it amplifies it.

I had a grandmother who refused to acknowledge my abuse.

“I’m sorry that your uncle played rough with you,” she would say.

When I corrected her, when I said, “No, he raped me,” and waited for the understanding, I was sorely disappointed.

She just shook her head, “that’s not accurate,” she would retort, and then just switch roles, “we were all abused, you know?”

My insides twisted. I did know, and she just could not and would not acknowledge that the abuse meant we were survivors with the power to stop it and use our voices against it, to claim the pain, and release the guilt. Instead, she victimized, shamed it away, and brushed it under the rug. It was safer for her, and absolutely soul crushing for me.

I had a father I felt slipping further away, creating a version of me in his mind based on stories I wasn’t there to correct.An ex-husband who turned his anger into control—withholding financial support, knowing exactly where it would hurt the most. And I was in full-time school, working a full-time job, and being a full-time mother. Trying to rebuild a life.Balancing unpaid internships and assignments…while raising children on my own…without a support system…at the exact moment I needed one the most. It felt like I had chosen the wrong path. Like I had stepped out of something imperfect…and into something utterly impossible.

And here’s the part that broke me a little: I wasn’t allowed to fall apart publicly. As a rural lawyer, I was isolated in a way that most people don’t understand. I held everyone else’s secrets. I showed up for them. I advocated for them. I carried their pain…while quietly drowning in my own.

The same people who needed me…were the same ones whispering about me. Judging me. Questioning me. I would go to the grocery store and feel eyes on me. Take my kids to the pool and wonder who had heard what. I questioned how I looked. How I was perceived. Whether I appeared “normal enough” to still be taken seriously, because in a small town you don’t just live your life. You live it in front of an audience. And I felt like the virus they were all trying to build a wall against.

I pulled back from social media. I stopped trying to explain myself. The truth was I didn’t even fully understand what I was doing yet. I just knew I couldn’t go back. There were moments I tried to regain control. Called the police when things escalated with my ex. Tried to create structure where there was none. But even that…fell flat.

I pleaded for some sort of isolation to heal away from the scrutiny and pain, and all I received were statements that reinforced no one could hear me cry; I was the crazy one.

“The road is public. He can park there. We can’t intervene in a domestic dispute where there has been no violation of a protection order. He claims that he’s hardly ever in town, so it seems like this is a situation that would go away if you’d just ignore the few times he is there,” they would suggest, allowing the silence to linger until I submitted.

And suddenly, I was the problem. Dramatic. Overreacting. Making something out of nothing. I realized, the very people I depended on in my job to help me right wrongs and find justice were now adding to my pain and frustration. Switching roles from legal advocate to civil party in a divorce case, from supported daughter to independent mother, from defense colleague in the justice system to victim of a controlling and vindictive ex-spouse in a custody case really expanded my empathy for those I used to objectively represent and failed to fully understand.

I wasn’t safe in my own home when I wasn’t there, and this fed my paranoia that I wasn’t safe anywhere. And I wasn’t safe in the community I lived in because I was no longer understood or believed. I was being asked to justify myself and I had no explanation for the fear I felt deep in my bones. I had no support system that reinforced I was going to be okay, and all I was left with were my own anxious and fearful negative beliefs. So, I spiraled. I questioned everything. My decisions. My values. My future.

I went back to law, not because I wanted to, but because I was scared. My sole proprietary business was tanking due to financial losses and lack of long-term infrastructure. The first time I attempted Healing Hearts Haven, I realized big dreams required big teams, and I was a one-man show. After a leak in the main water line destroyed half of my inventory, and I shut the business down, I had to rely on the only solid thing I knew rather than take another risk on myself because stability started to feel more important than truth again, and because maybe everyone else was right. I told myself: maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I should have stayed. Maybe a stable life with the wrong person is better than an uncertain one on my own.

I mean, I could handle being discarded…if it meant my kids were fed, right? I could tolerate not being loved well…if it meant we were secure. That’s how far I fell back into old thinking. I tried to convince myself to run back into my old life and nestle in there protected from the judging eyes and negative beliefs about my own convictions that had seemingly only carried me into isolation and fear. I cursed the powers that be and asked why they would have me leave a secure legal defense position, open a studio, fall into financial ruin, just to be forced to lose half the inventory, and move the remaining contents into my basement in the dead of winter; what had been the point of that? I had promised all these children free t-shirts to promote my business just to be left with nothing to give and too ashamed to tell everyone what had happened. I found myself unable to adhere to a defense attorney schedule in a rural area: court is over an hour away, school doesn’t start until 8:15 a.m., and there was no way I’d be available at 9 am to appear and turn around to leave on time and meet my small children after school.

So, I found myself suddenly overeducated, and looking for a job. I applied for ten jobs a day; work from home positions, cashier positions, English teacher positions, writing positions, tutoring, adjunct professor positions, administrative positions, retail positions; the list goes on and not one person called. I was looking at a dwindling bank account for several months, no influx coming in. No child support. No support system. In fact, as I ran out of money, I couldn’t pay for memberships to communities, and they dropped me because I couldn’t pay membership fees. Loss of community, family resources, and educational insurance for a job forced me to settle and seek stability in the familiar no matter how much I hesitated. I did the only thing I could think of, called on a Judge who had helped me in the past. I wrote a letter and asked if they might know of any legal positions for which I could be recommended, and I was finally given a small break.

After all the final goodbyes to colleagues, explanations to judges, and closing up my rural office to go hang a shingle on a dream that crumbled in a year, I went back to the law, and it was difficult not to feel like I was headed into the slaughterhouse with my tail between my legs and defeat in my bones. I attempted to perceive it as a steppingstone to stability until I got my ducks back in a row; after all, sometimes our timing is not divine timing, but it felt like I was running back to the familiar just because it was safe. It felt like all my fears about not being enough were true and that my dreams were too big to be realized, and I was just a naïve, delusional woman who had convinced herself that she could do the impossible. A huge dose of reality was being forced down my throat, and it tasted terrible.

I realized that I had to humbly suck up my pride and take a job making $40,000 a year; struggle through out of necessity (at least it was a job!), and keep myself from falling into the despair of failure.  I wasn’t good at the latter; I cried nearly every day. How had I made my way back to this place? I had done everything right. I had left the toxic relationship, said no to the abuse, put up boundaries to those that didn’t respect me, left a job that drained me, dared to dream and acted on my instinct…for what?

I struggled not to just convince myself this was just “being realistic.” That this was as good as it would get. And I blamed myself. It must have been my fault. I should’ve saved more. I should’ve waited. I should’ve listened to the advice. Three years of savings before change. That was the rule. And I broke it. So clearly—this was the consequence. Right?

Wrong. I didn’t see at the time that I was being asked to have faith that I would always have enough. Even if enough was just enough. What I was experiencing wasn’t failure. It was restructuring. And restructuring? Feels like everything is going wrong. Because you are no longer supported by the systems that once held you. You are no longer reinforced by the patterns that once defined you. You are standing on your own values without validation, and that’s like standing over the edge of a cliff with clouds hindering your view of the bottom and being asked to jump. Without certainty. Without guarantees. And that is terrifying. But here’s what matters: I didn’t go back even though I was as uncertain as I would ever be in my life.

I wavered. I questioned. I doubted. I argued with myself more times than I can count. But I didn’t abandon the version of me that had finally said, This is not the life I want. I took the job but I kept the bigger vision as the target ahead, and that’s the part people don’t see. They see the decision. They don’t see the endurance. Because choosing change isn’t a moment.It’s a sustained act of courage. Over and over again. When it feels wrong. When it feels bad. When it feels like everything in your life is telling you to go back.

You have to be willing to tolerate the discomfort. And when I say discomfort, I don’t mean inconvenience. I mean full-body, emotional, spiritual, mental exhaustion. I mean crying and still showing up. I mean fear and still moving forward. I mean questioning everything…and choosing your path anyway, and looking crazy while you do it.  When you choose to do everything for you, and not to please anyone else, all the onlookers and their opinions dissipate.

Did I care about how I looked, of course I did. Those two years? They felt like forever. Like an endless loop of uncertainty. Like I was waiting to say, “See? See what I did?” and the opportunity never came, which felt like defeat all over again, but in the scope of my life? Those two years were a fraction. A small, painful, necessary investment…for everything I get to experience now. So, if you are in it, in the middle of the chaos…the doubt…the restructuring…and it feels wrong…bad…conflicted…heavy. . . .

Good. Not because you deserve to suffer. But because you are in the exact place where change is happening. This is where your values are tested. This is where your truth is refined. This is where you decide: do I go back to what’s comfortable…or do I keep moving toward what’s real?

I say this to clients all the time, picture a tiny human in the grocery store, clutching a popsicle like it’s oxygen. The meltdown that came before isn’t really about the popsicle, and we know that. It’s about expectation, about patterns, about the quiet agreement that if they push hard enough, we’ll fold, and we don’t actually want that dynamic. We say we want a new way of relating, but what we don’t want is the scene in aisle five. The looks. The judgment. The internal voice whispering, you should have handled this better by now.

So, we hesitate. We think about doing it differently… and then we don’t. Because we know what it will require. Not one tantrum. Not two. Four, five, maybe more rounds of full-bodied resistance before that child realizes we are steady enough to mean what we say. And somewhere between the second scream and the third set of eyes staring us down, we cave. We hand over the popsicle and call it peace. Then we walk away frustrated, wondering why nothing changes.

And instead of sitting with that truth: that we abandoned ourselves in the moment, we tell a different story. This is just a strong-willed child. They won’t take no for an answer. They’re difficult. It’s easier to label the child than to face the discomfort in ourselves. But it was never about the child. We know that. We just don’t want to stay with the guilt, the doubt, the tension long enough to hold the line.

And that, right there, is where it matters most, because self-abandonment doesn’t just happen in the big moments. It happens in these tiny ones. The micro-decisions where we choose relief over alignment. And if we learned to stay with ourselves there, even just a little longer, everything about the way we relate to others would begin to change.

So, stay. Stay in it. Stay with yourself. Stay with the decision you made when you were clear; not the fear that shows up when things get hard. Because this part? This is where everything is built. And if your voice feels like the only one left in your head, if you feel alone in it, you’re not. Find me. I will sit in that space with you. I will help you hold the line when everything in you wants to fold. I will remind you of those values we uncovered together and reinforce the reasons you are suffering and help you see a brighter outcome, because there? There is where your life actually begins. Book a Free Strategy Session here, and let's walk this path together.

Always Shining.

XO Ashley