Developing, implementing and maintaining healthy boundaries, is not easy. It feels weird, especially when you are someone who has always had soft boundaries.

I talk a lot about emotional boundaries, because I know they are vital in not being harmed anymore. They also help people control their emotional reactions and responses. I’ve had to learn boundaries and not get upset and react immediately at someone being hurtful, or toxic. I’ve spent a lot of energy learning self control, and I am consistently better at this.

Toxic/unhealthy people, will demand your boundaries are harmful. Of course they will, they don’t want you to implement something that stops them trampling over you emotionally. It will bug the shit out of toxic people, that they are no longer able to upset you, or they can’t do and say what they want. And in their entitled selfish minds, they should be allowed to do…

“This is what it means to be included.”

The mother’s words jumped out at me from the radio.

Included.

Two year old Tatum Bakker had never been able to swing on a playground swing set until they visited Brooklyn’s Playground on their way through Pocatello, Idaho. It’s a playground designed for children who are physically able and for those who are less able to play on together, named for the little girl who started it all, Brooklyn Fisher.

Photo: http://brooklynsplayground.org/

Kids with conditions like spina bifida usually can’t take part in playground games and activities, kids like seven year old Brooklyn and two year old Tatum, but in Pocatello they can. As Tatum’s mother explained:

And I put Tatum in a swing and kind of sat back and absorbed it all, and looked up and saw an older child, maybe 10 or 12 – a little girl – in a…