Maybe I’m odd that I find comfort when I acknowledge and accept that “life is messy”. Not the kind of mess that can be tidied away with a vacuum cleaner or resolved with a well-organized calendar, but the inherent, unavoidable chaos that comes with being human. This messiness manifests in the gaps between our intentions and actions, the choices we make or avoid, and in the constant tension between our authentic self and role self.*
* See https://towardwellth.substack.com/p/be-your-true-self for the prior discussion of role self/true self.
The Dance of Boundaries in a Boundless World
This post came to insight with the impending holiday season, that annual tempest of expectations and traditions. Family gatherings become a stressful test of boundary management, where the pressure to conform to others' expectations collides with our need for self-preservation. For those that are living sober, this is the toughest season of wanting to find an escape from some of those stresses. We struggle to balance how to show love while maintaining distance, how to participate while protecting our peace, how to honor tradition while respecting our limits.
The challenge intensifies when family members, sometimes with good intentions, make decisions that ripple through our mental landscape like stones dropped in still water. A parent's well-meaning but probing questions about our life choices, a sibling's casual dismissal of something we value, or a relative's triggering of old (or recent) wounds – these moments require us to stand firm in our boundaries while maintaining connection. It's messy because there's rarely a clean solution, no clear line between too much and too little distance.
Add in a splash of a super messy political climate and you have yourself a nice Molotov cocktail of boundary tests.
The Weight of Unshared Transformations
Your own transformation is rarely a linear journey - and it’s subject to change, even year to year. Sometimes, we carry realizations, decisions, or evolving identities that we're not yet ready to share with the world. These private metamorphoses create a special kind of mess: the tension of living in the space between who we were and who we're becoming, while others continue to see us only as our former selves (perhaps as a prior role self, as we become more our true self).
Being kind to yourself, you need to remember this selective sharing isn't about deception but about protection – protecting yourself and others as you navigate your evolution. Transformations require a privacy boundary. The messiness comes in managing the overlap between our private growth and our wider public personas, in choosing when to reveal and when to hold back, in discerning who can handle our truth and who might unintentionally damage parts of the transformation that are still fragile.
The Art of Authentic Discontent
When family behaviors frustrate us, when colleagues cross lines, or when friends unknowingly hurt us, we face the delicate task of voicing our truth without severing bonds. This requires a peculiar balance of honesty with compassion — being firm to respect your needs yet flexible to have space for compromise— or another way to think of it is ‘clarity with kindness’.
The mess here lies that words fail.
Words come out wrong, delivered at the wrong time, and even the most thoughtfully crafted (and rehearsed?) message can be received as not intended. Yet, a positive mindset can view this messiness as precisely what makes authentic communication valuable – it's real, it's human, and it acknowledges that perfect understanding is a journey rather than a destination.
The Mirror of Self-Imposed Standards
Perhaps the messiest territory is our own relationship with ourselves, particularly when we fail to meet our own expectations, and the Inner Critic enters the conversation. We set intentions (perhaps annually, with the Wheel of Life?) with the best versions of ourselves in mind – to exercise more, to work more efficiently, to be more patient with loved ones – only to find ourselves falling short time and again. It’s really hard to appreciate that achieving even a few of your goals is success. The mess here is emotional: disappointment, self-judgment, and the struggle to extend to ourselves the same compassion we'd offer a friend.
This can spill into external relationships — when we're harsh with ourselves, we might withdraw from others, project our frustrations, or build walls to hide our perceived failures.
Embracing the Beautiful Mess
Messiness isn't a bug – it's a feature.
In chaos that we find resilience; in confusion we discover wisdom; in imperfection we connect deeply with others; in acceptance of messiness we open ourselves to authentic experiences.
This doesn't mean you stop trying to develop or evolve. Rather, it means you can lean into growth with gentler hands and/or a more open mindset to other perspectives.
Appreciating the tangled threads of family dynamics, personal boundaries, private transformations, and self-acceptance affords a deeper human experience.
It's okay to be a work in progress, to sometimes have more questions than answers, to occasionally let the dishes pile up (physical messiness!) while we attend to our emotional needs. Life is messy - and isn't always “Instagram-worthy”; healing isn't always linear; and love – especially self-love – sometimes means embracing the chaos rather than trying to control it.