Setting Boundaries: Are You a Walnut Tree or an Orchid?

We share why boundaries keep surfacing in our lives and why guilt is often the biggest barrier to setting them. Using plant wisdom, we connect self-protection to resilience and show how healthier limits can support both us and the people we love. 
• noticing two boundary extremes: overgiving vs shutting people out 
• why we set looser limits with people we care about 
• how rescuing others can block their resilience 
• saplings and flexibility as a model for strength 
• calluses and hard shells as protection after injury 
• walnut trees and the risks of overprotection 
• orchids and selective access as a healthy boundary 
• VOCs and plant communication under threat 
• the idea that thriving (not just surviving) requires boundaries

Transcript

New City And A Noisy Studio

Mary 0:00

Hi, and welcome to a mini episode of No Shrinking Violets. So, first, I'm gonna tell you that we are now in our new city. We have been in our new home for about 10 days, and today they are doing work on the street directly outside my studio window. So I'm gonna run this through hopefully quote sanitizing um software, but you might hear some background noise because it's pretty dang loud. Okay, so lots happening, but one of the things that I have heard recently from a lot of people, you know how sometimes there seems to be a topic that comes up more frequently at certain times. I feel like a lot of people, both professionally and personally, have been talking to me about boundaries. And it's certainly something that I think we all, especially as women, we often have to think about. So there are two situations that I think can happen with boundaries. One of them is I think what we more often think about that we need to have more boundaries. So we want to help everyone, we tend to put other people's needs in front of our own. We feel guilty if we try to set boundaries. Um, we may have no problem doing it with strangers. You know, if someone we didn't know did or said a certain thing, we'd be like, no, not okay. But when it's somebody that we care about, we tend to make a different boundary. And what we don't often think about is sometimes when we do that, we actually deprive people that we care about from creating their own internal resilience or accessing their own resources. And we often do this with our children, you know, we want to do everything for them, we want to smooth the path, and in doing so, we don't allow them to have difficulty. And like a plant, you know, when we think about saplings, so a small tree is a sapling, a young tree, and it's very bendy. And the reason it is bendy is because if it was rigid, then during times of wind or storms, it would break. So as it gets older, it certainly becomes more rigid, but it's after having that flexibility to figure out which way is the wind is coming from. Um, how deep do I need to grow my roots to shore myself up, to have that stability. So plants do this naturally. One of the things that I think is interesting with boundaries is sometimes people, and these are typically people that are very tenderhearted. You may know people like this. They seem very hard, very unfriendly or harsh, or they have a very hard outer shell. And sometimes you might be surprised to find that inside they are still very tenderhearted and they've developed this. It's like a callus on a tree. A callus on a tree is like where an injury was and it thickens, the the bark will thicken to protect itself. So sometimes we have people that they try to keep everyone out because they've been so injured. Um, and so this is the equivalent of a walnut tree. So a walnut tree has a chemical called juglone, and that goes into the ground, and it can poison the roots of plants growing around it. Now, I'm gonna say there's different research on this. Some of the early information about this was um narrative. So, for instance, a farmer might have talked about seeing this happen in his fields, or a gardener may have seen evidence of this, but there could have been something else going on. So, but generally we think about a walnut tree as having um a harsh protective chemical coming from it. So you're careful about what you plant near it. So that's sort of the other end of the spectrum. But the point is that all plants create boundaries. There are even plants that are created to only attract and share their pollen or their nectar with specific pollinators, and their flowers are constructed. Orchids are like this. If you really look at certain orchid flowers, they have really amazing architecture, really beautiful, really unusual. And often flowers like that, the colors or the shape of them are designed to keep certain pollinators out. They can't access the flower. That is the equivalent of a boundary. Other times when a pest threatens a plant, so let's say a certain um caterpillar finds a stand or a um an area where there are a lot of a certain kind of plant and they start munching on it. Often those plants send out invisible signals called VOCs, volatile organic compounds. And this is a way to communicate with the plants around them to tell them, hey, you need to step up your own protection. And sometimes that is in the form of chemicals, other chemicals, like certain plants can start to um emit or send certain chemicals into their leaves so that it can hurt or deter pests from eating them. So it depends on the plant. There's just amazing, amazing um adaptations out there. So, bottom line is that plants create boundaries. They don't feel guilty about it, they don't question whether they should. They don't think about does this make me a bad plant because I want to protect my own well-being. And so I write a lot about this in my book. And there I actually have a whole chapter with illustrations, some stories. I talk about one of my clients, Sheila, and which is actually a really a composite of a lot of my clients because so often I have clients that struggle with boundaries. And I talk about my own story, about early on getting certain messages, about creating boundaries. Now, the reason I bring this up is I did a stealth launch. What that means is I have a launch team for my book. And these are people that have been supporting my journey with this for months, and they are on my launch team. And so last week they got a link to purchase my book early. They get to purchase it at cost. Here's the coolest thing for me. My book hit number one new release a few days ago, and it's not even officially launched yet. So I have another week where the book is going to be at the lowest price ever. I would love if you would get early access to my book too. If you find the topics that I talk about related to plants interesting, then you can actually get on my launch team. There's still time. There's a link in the show notes. It's maryrothwell.net forward slash nature knows. The the name of my book is Nature Knows Grow and Thrive Through the Wisdom of Plants. It's actually a beautiful book, which is was really important to me to create something that was not only had a beautiful cover, but had illustrations inside to sort of give you an idea of some of these plants and um different concepts that I'm talking about. So I'm really proud of it. I really love it. Um, I want to share it, and it just amazes me that it's a number one new release before it's officially launched. So I would love if you would join my launch team so that you can get the book. And the most important part of that is that you can review the book for me and post that review to Amazon. That's very important to prepare for my official launch. So if you would love to do that, please sign up. The other thing is I will be having an in-person, really fun, just a lovely way to um welcome in summer. So in a few weeks, I'm gonna do a launch party and I'm gonna have that in central Pennsylvania. So if you are nearby, you will also get information on the in-person launch party, which is gonna be so fun. I may do a virtual one. So um I haven't decided yet because with moving, there's so many moving parts in my life right now, literally, no pun intended. Um, but I would love to have you on my launch team so you can continue this journey with me. And hopefully, this has given you some food for thought. Being able to give yourself permission to set boundaries when you need to, because every living thing has to have boundaries to thrive. We can survive when we allow our boundaries to be permeable, when we serve everyone else. But I think if you've gotten to a certain point in life and you are opposite of the walnut tree, so you don't have that jug loan where you are trying to keep out nearly everyone, if you are someone who tends to really want to take care of everyone, feels guilty if you prioritize yourself, by this time in life, you may start to see even physical effects of that. So know that nature knows, nature knows that we need to set boundaries in order to thrive, and we actually help our entire ecosystem when we do that with compassion, thought, and focusing on our own our own resilience. So, those are my thoughts for today. Hopefully, you're not hearing too much banging in the background because it's pretty dang loud here. So, anyway, those are my thoughts. And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.