Before you call me victim-blaming however, just let me reiterate - I understand the victim stance very well indeed.

The truth is that as women we often intimately understand the complexity of victimhood personally. We either read about, or have actual lived experience of, being caught in boundary-less situations which were NOT so easy to escape from. 

The solution, thus far? As good feminists, pleasure seekers and all round feminine power advocates?

The solution, Sherlock, has been obvious.

Better boundaries.

(Except. Except. I think there is more to it than that. Let me explain.)

I had an episode this Christmas where someone gave me a really good boundary. The thing is - by good - I mean immediate and utterly non-negotiable. 

I had joined a Facebook group, and within two hours I was banned from it. (OK that was a record, even for me.)

So you see I scratched my head about this banishment, I really did. Was it because I used a cussword in my post? (Sorry. But - I don't think I read about cusswords in the guidelines.) Was it because I posted my website in there? (I mean, I hate all the Facebook selling too. But the group host gave an invitation to brag about what we did and who we were in the world, and so that's what I posted about.)

Slightly bemusing then. A little bit hurtful. Ultimately, fairly irrelevant in the greater scheme of things. 

But still, it got me to thinking. it got me to thinking about the woman who banned me so suddenly and drastically. It got me to thinking about her nervous system. It got me to thinking that she was probably even proud of her boundaries. And it also got me to thinking - what kind of life do we live as women if all we have is that? A brick wall? An unrelenting steel barrier?

Honestly, Sherlock? Because where was the relating in that?

And yet the reason we got so determined and rigid about our boundaries as women is totally understandable. Because I'm sure I am not the only woman around here who got used to walking around as an eating and sleeping people-pleasing machine.

Indeed. If you are anything like me, you would have been raised to a state of near constant  hyper-vigilance to ensure you served those around you before yourself. at all times. Raised that even the act of feeling yourself was a dangerous and subversive way to behave. Raised so well to sublimate yourself before the altar of other people, it's like you can literally walk into a room and read the needs of those in it before you even know what you want, or the reason why you came there in the first place.

Sound familiar?

Well, of course the upside to all this is that hyper vigilance to the wants and needs of other people is a type of skill. For example, this kind of hyper vigilance actually made me an excellent coach. My intuition is often so spot on about my clients' inner world for example, and I believe that this is as a result of my female conditioning.

However.....

Then honestly we have entered the danger zone as women.

We are no longer advocating for ourselves. We have no capacity to keep ourselves safe. We override our natural instinct that perhaps that person should not be trusted and we trust them anyway. We betray our own desires and pleasure becomes almost always a performance. We give more of ourselves sexually than we really, truly want to because if we didn't? Well perhaps people would leave us and we would be bereft again in a cruel and lonely world.  We eat when we are not hungry. We spend when we don't have the cashflow. We open the door when we really wanted a night in. We answer WhatsApp messages when really we wanted to resolve a conflict with our partner. We spend all the hours on a work presentation when we know deep down our boss would have respected us more if we'd drawn a line around our capacity to deliver in a more timely and healthy way.

Constant nervous system alert is a norm for a woman like this. Like an underground hum of fear, stress and emptiness all rolled into one.  We itch. We bloat. We crave. We disappear.

And let's face it. Sadly. This type of woman is most women in our society. 

That's why boundaries are such radical an important work. That's why I am not knocking boundaries.

It's just - honestly and truly? I am aiming for the big time for both myself and all the women I teach. I am aiming for the stars when it comes to feminine power and pleasure. I am aiming for the best of it.

And for such an important and lofty goal? 

I believe we need to transcend our boundaries and make them in service of something even better than simply that which we are averse to.

Ok so before we get into the nitty gritty of what that means in real life. What it actually is to get your boundaries in service of something greater - let' s have a look at how we actually get to our boundaries as a resource in the first place.

Because when you think about it, when you think about the time when your boundaries piped up and you became really aware that you were probably a "no" to something. How did you first become aware of that?

I am imagining that your boundaries most probably came to you through your felt sense.

In other words, your capacity to tune into and hear your boundary, was most likely exactly equal to the amount of presence you had within your own body at that given time.

It's not like our boundaries exist outside of ourselves, after all. It's not like we need someone else to tell us how we feel.

In fact, our boundaries bubble up from within like an intuition. Or a tiny, whispering scratch. The small, friendly voice that says .....Er.... Maybe. Maybe not. Actually. Just put a pause on that, will you? 

Little wonder then - that if are carrying trauma or shame, or even if we are just a part of the miseducation that is normal womanhood - that this small, boundaried voice can take some time to excavate.

Little wonder then - that we cling to our boundaries like the lifesavers they are to return our lives to a place of safety and security within our own somatic sense of ourselves.

Little wonder that we use them everywhere. And on everyone. Even poor little unsuspecting facebook group members like yours truly, just because we can.

Lifting the trauma spell of our victimhood then is painful work. 

It can take the fortitude of an ox. 

Those boundaries are hard won. Good job we get to exercise them.

My invitation though, bubbling underneath all of this like a pleasant, mountain river stream..... is to consider for a moment instead - what it is you want to use those boundaries for.

Let me tell you another story.

Because when I got underneath the skin of all that automatic people-pleasing and actually began to allow myself, my body, my feelings and needs into the room, then contrary to what I thought might happen - I began to feel more scared not less.

(By the way, I am not talking about that near constant state of anxiety that you might also be familair with. That not quite rightness that permeated most of my waking hours before I began to reclaim my boundaried self. 

I am talking about a brand new - almost exhilarated - sense of feeling myself to be a "no" to something..

And with those feelings came the good the bad and the ugly too. 'Cos that's what feelings are.)

The first time I remember standing in the room with someone who felt to me like a real and serious threat, and standing still and slowing down and just - allowing myself to feel that moment? Was the first time I allowed my boundaries to become available to me in real time. Because in truth this person was not an actual threat to me physically. I could have knocked that bitch over with a feather lol. But she was certainly a threat to my normal, acclimatised and dissociated self. The self I adopted to survive. The smiling people pleaser. The submissive to every damn narcissist  in the book.

So in this instant? I stood my ground. My entire body was shaking with a quiet type of terror. The intense fear was real. 

But the stand did not falter.

I realised in that moment then, that my boundaries would not have me feeling less. That they would actually have me feeling more. And that perhaps getting intimate with the actual nature of my fear, rather than skirting around it all the time with a numbed out anxiety, was a real key in having healthy boundaries in the first place.

So let's think about what we do want our boundaries to help us create as women then? What do we actually want our boundaries to be in service of?

Do we want our boundaries to serve our aversions, for example? To cut us off from people who otherwise might be able to love us well?

Let's think about that poor Facebook lady for a moment.

Because that woman was driven to use her boundaries to protect her adamantly from someone that she without doubt believed to be an asshole (i.e. me.) That woman had her boundaries build an impenetrable fortress (which, tragically, she no doubt saw as an example of her own personal success as a feminist.)

Imagine for a moment though - if she had used those boundaries in service of receiving healthy and nourishing relationships in her life. Imagine what that might have looked like.

It might have looked like this:

She might have come to me and let me know where I had transgressed a boundary. She might have let me know.

I would have been mortified. I would have apologised. I would have cared about that a great deal and I would have gone about adjusting my behaviour most probably. (Her group. Not mine.)

And the best of that? She might have received my care for her. She might have used her boundaries in service to the experience of a life where the people around her actually gave a shit about what she needed.

Instead. She will never know. Instead. She probably high fived herself for being a boss lady and for having her boundaries down. And I guess that is a sort of success. Sort of.

But I want more for the women I work with.  I want a hell of a lot more for women, fullstop.

So where do boundaries play out in your life currently? Are you using them to build a fortress around that which terrifies you? Or are you using them to invite in what you actually desire?

You see, I happen to believe in the power of women.

I happen to believe that - whilst the battle for freedom from violence and for the emancipation of women is absolutely necessary. That whilst we would feel understandable rage and upset about the way things are and what we face as women in this world.

 I also believe - somewhat controversially - that our capacity to wield pleasure as an influence is quite possibly the most influential and deepest force we have available to us.

And pleasure - unlike a fortress - is really a pretty soft, trusting and receptive state of mind to inhabit. In my experience, at their best and most effective, boundaries feel just like that. In fact, I would argue that good boundaries are inseparable from the state of pleasure. That maybe they are even one and the same thing.

I'll end with a story of when I first discovered that for myself.

I remember the moment clear as day.

My husband and I had done a pleasure practice. . Just 15 minutes. No biggie. Just a connection and a tuning in to the force of nature that lives inside my vulva before the coffee run that morning. As you do. Anyway. That morning I let the full beauty of his attention on me in. That morning - more than any other morning - I received him.

And the effect was truly revolutionary.

As I got up to a Central London school run and  enter once more the complete mindfuck of a life spent trying to make a 5 year old comply with the concept of linear time. As I scrambled together my outfit and headed out to the corner coffeeshop for my first shot of espresso for the day.

I realised - maybe shockingly so - that my body and mind felt.... Open. Warm to the world. Really there was no other way to describe it.

My boundaries were a part of me in that moment - in tact and robust and ready to make my day. But  they also felt permeable. They held me and my capacity to receive the world around me in equal measure.

This moment was so powerful for me that it made me realise what a long way I had come with my boundaries. From that girl with no boundaries who made her friends laugh out loud everytime she went full ninja on a wasp. Or shocked her lover every time she fled the cinema cos the scene was too triggering. Or annoyed her party buddies cos she always needed to be the one to drive so she had an escape route available.

It also made me realise that good, healthy and strong boundaries are permeable actually. They don't resemble a fortress in any way. They do totally lack rigidity. They are not primed to defend at the next inevitable intruder.

Instead - they felt a lot like love itself. 

You see I believe in the power of women to change the world by opening to more pleasure. I believe in the power of women to realise their boundaries as a fluid, permeable and receptive state. I believe in the power of boundaries to serve, facilitate and build a world that is relatable. And connected. And true. 

Not so much isolated. And impenetrable. And safe.

Ultimately, I believe in the power of your boundaries to open your world to greatness.