Hi, this is NPR's Life Kit, and I'm Julia Frelon, and today we're talking about a thing that

honestly makes me stressed just to think about. We're talking about how to create and maintain

boundaries with the people in your life that you're closest to, and who often confound you more than

anyone, your family. And just like family can mean a wide array of things between chosen family

and biological family, so can boundaries. They can be as momentary as saying, hey, please,

no spoilers about Bridgerton because I haven't seen it yet, or as monumental as ending an entire

relationship. But let's start at the moment, a synapse flashes and a boundary goes from an idea

to something that you actually put into practice. Clearly, I am not a brain expert, but that's

probably how it works. I'd say about three years ago, there was just a hard line point where

I felt myself get so angry to a point where I had never been before. Sayla Kerr is an artist who

lives in California, and she's been working hard on making and maintaining some really important

boundaries in her family, in particular with a man in the family who has a habit of raising his

voice. I made the hard line boundary of, if you raise your voice at me, if you start screaming,

if you start yelling, or even like getting towards and doing the things I know where this is going,

I'm leaving the room or I'm hanging up the phone. This, my friends, is a boundary. If her relative

does X, sayla will do Y. And I don't know if you've also had this kind of interaction with somebody

in your life, but I can tell you that as a Latinx woman, it has taken me years of practice to get

even a little bit close to the clarity that Sayla has. And for you, maybe it's not a family

member yelling, maybe it's somebody critiquing your weight or your gender presentation, or even

a grandparent wanting to give your kid a toy or a piece of candy at 8 p.m. Whether it's a momentary

thing or something life-shifting, learning how to articulate and establish boundaries is vital to

having more honest relationships with the people in your life.

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