So I read a book about leadership recently. It was written by a white woman who’s worked for huge companies like Google and Apple. The book is called Radical Candor by Kim Scott and I really enjoyed it.

The premise is basically this: for leaders, there is an axis of caring personally and challenging directly. You want high levels of both to run an effective team.

Let’s break the axis down…

I did notice that I kept feeling behind this year. I do think some of that is a function of coming into the late part of my early career and I think some of it is more systemic than will ever be something that I can take responsibility for or action about.

But some of it is also that I am surrounded by people who are further along than I am.

I’ve been no contact with my step mother since I was 15 and sent to live with my uncle. I’ve been no contact with my mother since 2019. Since the day I sent the no contact email, I’ve been torn.

A part of me, the same part that loves a traditional holiday set up, has longed to find a way to “get over it”. I want very little more than to wake up and realize that I was wrong, I was seeing and understanding it all wrong and there is a salvageable relationship with this person who means so much to me. That I could follow through on the self abandonment that served to get me through my childhood and adolescence (just barely) and it would mean that I finally get a hug from my mom.

But alas, even if I found a way to do that, I would bleed out from the wounds she inflicted. She’s a Knife Person, she cannot actually hug me without her sharp edges catching on my self worth and tearing it to shreds. To love her is to betray myself, all my little parts that most need my big self to care for and protect them.

I’ve had to figure out boundaries the hard way. I grew up in a very un-boundaried house. It was unstable, unkind, and unpredictable. The expectations of the adults in my life were a mystery to me (and often to each other and even themselves). My own needs were viewed as “too much”, overwhelming, dramatic. Emotional exploration and processing were not the name of the game.

This became a big problem as I got older and picked friends that mirrored my home life. I was never comfortable directly expressing or acting on my needs until my system just couldn’t take it anymore. I found friends who didn’t care for themselves well and took it out on me.

It took me years of feeling unmoored, questioning myself and my ability to be loved, before I would figure out that the key to the healthy, stable relationships I craved was in fact boundaries.

I recently went on two big trips though I’ve been traveling all my life. I first flew unaccompanied minor at 13 and before that my mother and I made frequent trips to visit family several states away.

Similarly to being a lifelong traveler, I’m also a lifelong fatty and my mother has been fat my whole life as well. We have been fat travelers as long as I can remember. But it’s only been in my recent travels, alone, as an adult that I’ve really felt the brunt of fat traveling.