I have a weird, almost uncanny talent for finding things on Facebook Marketplace.

When I moved in April, I needed a LOT of furniture at one time, and did NOT have ‘buying furniture at retail prices’ amounts of money. What I DID have was Facebook Marketplace and a wicked ability to haggle.

My new house is outfitted with absolutely gorgeous furniture, most of which I found on Marketplace for a steal.

These days, though, if you were to look at my marketplace searches, you might assume I am either running an underground 1980s daycare or having a weird Gen-X midlife crisis.

Through a mix of my my excellent Marketplace skills, thrift shopping, and a truly wonderful Christmas present from my family, I have managed to acquire a red-haired, green-eyed Cabbage Patch doll, a small army of Beanie Babies, two vintage My Little Ponies, a Fisher-Price record player, and the holy grail: the My Little Pony Cloud Shower. I even tracked down a specific vintage Tupperware iced tea pitcher and a set of Butterfly Gold Corelle dishes/Pyrex. I’m still hunting for Windy, Firefly, and Majesty the ponies, and a set of Smurfs glasses, but my inventory is nearly complete.

It looks like nostalgia.

It looks like a quirky mid-life crisis.

But if we are being completely honest—and a blog post about spirituality requires nothing less—it is actually an act of forensic restoration.

I am buying back the pieces of a childhood that were systematically destroyed.

The Tupperware pitcher is a strange thing to be attached to, but it represents the earliest baseline of my reality.

I was a little kid. I spilled some tea.

It was a completely normal, developmentally appropriate accident. In response, my father flew into a fury, screamed that I was always spilling things, and smashed the full pitcher into pieces. Then, he made me clean it up.

That was the blueprint.

Forgetting to wash the dishes—even after being reminded—or whining and crying out of pure frustration over homework I didn’t understand wasn’t viewed as childhood growth; it was viewed as intentional and obnoxious.

I learned to walk on eggshells, adopting a psychological and facial flat-line.

I trained myself to show absolutely no emotion—even good news was met with a blank stare—because any visible reaction was a gambling chip I couldn’t afford to lose.

When my reactions weren’t to his liking, things that were important to me paid the price.

My Cloud Shower was smashed with a hammer on the kitchen stove because my handwriting wasn’t perfect.

My ponies were sliced open with kitchen knives because of a D in gym class.

My Cabbage Patch doll was effectively Anne Boleyn-ed because I tried to explain a logistical mismatch between a chore he wanted done and something my mother had already finished. He said I was arguing with him.

The record player took a flying leap across the living room into a wall because I didn’t run to the dinner table fast enough when he called.

Then I became a teenager, and the physics of his anger shifted.

He stopped destroying the objects and started destroying me.

The record player was replaced by me being pinned against a wall, hit so hard my ear bled; I have permanent hearing loss in that ear to this day.

The hammer on the Cloud Shower became a leather belt with a sculpted pewter buckle slamming into my back, butt, and legs until sitting down caused me to visibly wince.

The kitchen knives through the plastic ponies became words designed to eviscerate my self-confidence. I was stupid, ugly, a failure, and the reason he had no life anymore.

When I was about 14, living in the middle of that mess, I made some promises to myself.

First, I promised I would get out of that house and never look back, which I did at 6 am the morning after I graduated high school.

Second, I promised that I would never allow myself to be verbally or physically abused ever again.

If I found myself in an abusive situation—romantic, platonic, professional, or otherwise—I would leave immediately. No just putting up with it. No trial periods for cruelty.

I can proudly say that I have kept those promises to myself.

But here is the sticky, unglamorous truth about surviving trauma: making a promise to yourself as a teenager is an act of revolutionary fire. Enforcing that promise as an adult can be an exhausting shit ton of emotional labor.

We talk a lot in spiritual and self-help circles about “setting boundaries.”

We treat them like beautiful, serene picket fences we paint around our souls.

We write affirmations about them.

But we rarely talk about the enforcement phase, which behaves less like a serene fence and more like a high-stakes zoning dispute with an HOA.

My zero-tolerance policy for abuse is my strictest boundary.

I know exactly where the line is. But enforcing it—especially with people I love, or people who genuinely do not see, understand, or accept that they have crossed a line—can be incredibly difficult.

People do not like to be held accountable.

When you hold up a mirror to someone’s harmful behavior, their instinct isn’t going to be to immediately apologize; their instinct is usually to break the mirror. Accountability looks like tense, gut-wrenching conversations.

It leads to defensiveness.

And sometimes, it leads to the end of relationships.

That moment, that idea of a relationship ending boundary….. that is the exact point where a lot of people would rather quietly lower their boundaries and swallow the poison instead of respecting themselves by holding true to their values.

You find yourself standing at a crossroads, asking the heavy questions: Is holding this boundary worth the risk of losing this person? Is it worth losing this job I mostly enjoy? Is it worth the discomfort of the fallout? Is this boundary worth it?

Sometimes it isn’t worth it, and that’s okay, depending on the boundary. But sometimes, it IS. And that’s where it gets really hard.

Enforcing boundaries can be painful.

It can leave you feeling lonely, misunderstood, and grieving relationships that had to end so that you could survive.

It sucks.

There is no enlightened, spiritual way to sugarcoat that.

But boundaries are not about controlling other people’s behavior; they are about defining what you will tolerate in your own space.

They are the practical application of the UU principle that affirms the inherent worth and dignity of every person and keeps love at the center of every interaction—and that includes the person looking back at you in the mirror.

Especially when that person looking back at you is a scared fourteen-year-old who is still waiting to see if the adult in charge is going to protect them this time.

When I look in the mirror now, I am not just looking at a forty-six-year-old person who knows how to navigate Facebook Marketplace haggling.

I am looking at the guardian of that kid.

Every time I enforce a hard boundary, every time I refuse to minimize someone’s cruel words, every time I walk away from a situation that feels like walking on eggshells, I am telling that little girl: You matter. You are worth protecting. You are worth healing.

I cannot go back and catch the record player before it hits the wall.

I cannot un-slice the ponies.

I cannot rewrite the history of the people who were supposed to love me but chose to break me instead.

But I can refuse to participate in my own ongoing diminishment and the diminishment of those I love.

Practicing self-love and self-respect isn’t always a soft, gentle meditation.

Sometimes it looks like a fierce, unyielding “no.”

Sometimes it looks like letting a relationship go because the cost of entry is too high.

And sometimes, quite literally, it looks like healing your inner child one vintage, red-haired Cabbage Patch kid and one plastic cloud shower at a time.

It might look a little weird to the outside world, but that Pony, Care Bear, and Smurf loving kid who still lives inside me is worth every single penny.

Still looking for Windy, Firefly, & Majesty the My Little Ponies, Funshine Bear the Care Bear, and those Smurfs glasses. If you see them on Marketplace, let me know— or text me if you find them at a thrift store so I can Venmo you money for them.