Boundaries: The Messy Rewiring of Inherited Patterns in Motherhood

Sharing this reflection on boundaries as a woman in her process. Some of this I’m still learning in real time, writing about it doesn’t mean I’ve mastered it. I’m just in it, devoted and seeing themes that I know extend beyond me. So I’m offering this as a shared experience, in hopes it helps more women see and start to break the cycles we inherited.

I used to be a total wet noodle when it came to boundaries. No capacity to name it, literally didn’t even occur to me. Like my body had a hardwired bypass. And I’m still working on it.

It was hard to even see this dynamic in myself. I had so much pride around being someone who goes with the flow, who makes it easy and convenient for everyone else.

Pride is a shadow PR manager - reframing our trauma coping mechanisms as character attributes and weaving them into our identity. I’m just someone who goes with the flow becomes a mask that hides the deep fear of speaking up and rocking the boat. A fear embedded in the nervous system, often a template passed through generations.

But there’s something deeper. Our cavewoman DNA is shaped by estrogen that has us constantly scanning for tribal threats. Because deep down in our subconscious, if we are “not pleasing” we will not get saved when the tiger enters the cave.

So boundary work isn’t just learning a new habit or making a new rule. It requires a multilayered approach: tending to our biological needs, our nervous system, identifying origin patterns, learning to track your somatic whispers, and rewiring our identity. It starts with identity and letting go of part of who you thought you were.

Who would I be without my pain body? Without the conditioning?

This is the quest of wholeness, being reacquainted again and again with deeper parts of our true essence. A devotional practice that continuously deepens in time.

I have yet to meet anyone who inherited a healthy relationship with boundaries. Most people I know who seemingly are masters have done serious inner work. And they’re still practicing, still noticing, still working through shadow, still navigating the messiness.

Navigating my own boundaries over the past decade has looked like stepping into spaces that scared the shit out of my system.

It’s wild to hold the cognitive knowledge that of course a situation makes logical sense, while my body is still terrified.

For me this has looked like: stepping out of my marriage, filing for a restraining order, taking the stand in court. It’s also looked like leaving Christmas celebrations before a blow-out, recognizing bedtime instead of finishing the movie, speaking up to my father when my heart is hurt, letting a romantic partner know I my body is yes and my heart needs to feel safe first, or just requesting to turn off a light that feels glaring.

For me it has been so hard to work through, because the fear instilled numbness. And from the numbness, it’s so hard to tell what I needed or wanted. Playing with desire still feels like a growth edge.

Not here to claim perfection, just progress and practice.

For so long I thought boundaries were rules that keep us safe - external guidelines I needed to memorize. What I’ve learned is that boundaries were always meant to be rooted in our wholeness. To come from a place where we’re attuned to our body, our hearts, our capacity, and know how worthy we are to tend to them.

Growing up, I thought I needed to push myself to breaking point. If I wasn’t riding the edge of breaking, I hadn’t done enough.

I specifically remember one Christmas where I left early - or just at a reasonable time. My mom always pushes for me to stay longer, out of love, and usually there’s a point where it’s all too much. Driving home, I thought: wow, I can’t believe we didn’t have a blow-out. Maybe I could have stayed longer. I was uncomfortable that I’d left “early.” I’d left with spaciousness.

That’s when I realized: boundaries are about preserving the spaciousness I need to thrive, not constantly analyzing and assessing how close to the edge I can get and how long I can last there.

And how uncomfortable I was with that spaciousness. How accustomed I was to living at the edge of dysregulation.

So much of our relationship with boundaries is inherited from the nervous systems that shaped us. They’re relational. Even when shadow has been integrated, the nervous system still remembers the old way.

Our nervous systems develop through co-regulation. As children, we literally sync our nervous systems to our caregivers’ - our heart rate, stress response, sense of safety all calibrate to theirs. We didn’t just observe our mother’s boundaries. We absorbed her nervous system’s response to needs, to requests, to saying no. Physiologically downloaded a template we didn’t choose.

That space where we change the patterning and choose something new? It’s an experiment. Retraining our nervous system. A recalibration. Allowing our nervous system to update with a new story.

And it’s not perfect. We wobble and stumble our way back to wholeness - to remembering we’re worthy of being loved, treated with care, worthy of asking for it.

We can reshape this together with others awakening to the same nuances.

This is part of my work - rearchitecting motherhood and feminine leadership. Helping women compost the conditioning and rearchitect new stories that serve them living in alignment with their natural design.

When we compost together, it’s powerful.

There’s a nuance to motherhood that can’t be fully explained. The ok-ness with a woman going off-screen to breastfeed and come back. Showing up late because the sitter was late and your toddler had a hard time transitioning. Leaving early because you’re juggling self-care and a meeting right after.

It feels good to be held with other women who get the messiness of motherhood, leadership, and self-development. Extraordinary women showing up not in their perfection, but in their progress. Walking together as they break generational cycles and collectively reweave a new way of being a mother.

Winter circle has been dedicated to boundaries. Because none of us were shown how to embody healthy boundaries.

One woman shared:

“Working with Jenn has been a blessing for my nervous system and sense of community since welcoming my second child.

Her circles make me feel safe, supported, and heard. The women I’ve connected with share my struggles in motherhood, humanhood, and just being alive in this world today.

We’ve unpacked many stories from our own childhood and lineage, and I always have so many a-ha moments after our circles together.

The flexibility of having a virtual circle has been wonderful, especially in the early days of motherhood. More importantly, the support I feel on every call - never judged, always able to show up exactly how I am, held and cherished, gently welcomed to look at my own shadows head-on.

Jenn’s voice memo offering is the perfect accompaniment - unwavering ‘say anything’ support when you need it most. In the school pickup line, the bathroom hiding from your kids, on a walk, whenever you just need to spill. The ability to talk and be heard is priceless and has been life-changing for me.

I highly recommend joining a Raising Wholeness circle for unconditional love, support, growth and healing.”

— Katie, Mother of 2, Entrepreneur

Here’s what we’re excavating together and the common threads I know reach beyond this circle to women everywhere.

1. The Inventory - We began with an honest inventory. What’s alive when you think about boundaries? What stories // beliefs you find when you start poking around? How does your body feel?

   Some themes that emerged -
   The exhaustion and pride of always saying yes.
   How identity gets rolled up into being the go-to for their team, friends, family.

   The guilt that puts their system in freeze before they can even think of saying no.
   The way they need a “good enough” reason // white lies, exaggerations, leaning on postpartum or crisis to justify a boundary.

   We also named pride. The part that says look at me, I can handle this while quietly drowning. The part that reframes overextension as strength, calls exhaustion dedication, mistakes martyrdom for love.

   And underneath it, for almost every woman was the story of I need a legitimate excuse to matter to myself.
   

2. The Mother Template - We always look at origin stories. Not to blame, but to understand what was absorbed. Our nervous systems co-regulate, learn from each other - especially the people we’re closest to growing up.

   We looked at what our mothers modeled around tending to their own needs. What we saw: women who didn’t have hobbies outside the home. Women who were always available. Women who never named what they wanted. Women whose resentment came out sideways - through guilt, passive aggression, quiet suffering - because it had nowhere clean to go.

   And of course that’s going. to live in us. How could it not?

   The question isn’t why am I like this or why can’t I change? Perhaps the question is: whose shape am I still holding? Seeing the pattern is how you start to rewrite it.

3. Resentment Is a Messenger - Resentment almost always points back to a moment of self-abandonment. Not someone else’s failure. Our own collapsed yes.
   And we want to aim that resentment at the person who asked, when the real source is the moment we didn’t listen to ourselves.

   This can be a hard one to sit with. It’s much more comfortable to be angry at someone else than to acknowledge we are playing victim. nAgain just noticing can be enough. The moment you start to see the cycle, you step out of being inside it. You become someone who can witness the pattern rather than just live it.

   The invitation is to get get curious. Ask yourself - what did I say yes to that my body was already saying no to?

4. The Father Template - This layer surprised people. We tend to focus on the mother patterns. But the father template shapes something different and equally profound. The voice of our father shapes whether our needs ever felt safe to have in the first place. And I often see the voice of our father become our inner critic.

   
   And this makes so much sense - The Female Brain is wired for safety and seeking it specifically from the masculine. We are subconsciously sizing up if we are loved//liked enough to be saved when the sabortooth tiger enters the cave. This is just how estrogen shapes the brain. And recognizing the impact fathers have on their daughters wiring is important.

   When we looked at how the masculine presence in our families responded when our mothers had a need. Or when we had a need.

   What emerged in our inquiry was dismissal. Silence. Comparison to other women who managed more//manage better. Just push through. And how often we were praise for being “tough just like him.”

   
   The message absorbed, often without a single word: your needs are inconvenient. Rest is laziness. Asking for help is weakness.

   
   That message becomes the inner critic. The voice that fires guilt the second you try to slow down, rest, or receive. One woman traced her relentless guilt around productivity back to this template. Not a character flaw. An inheritance. Her father’s voice, living in her chest.

   
   Naming it doesn’t fix it overnight. But it changes the relationship. You stop believing the voice is you.
   

We’re rearchitecting motherhood together. There’s so much to unpack and I don’t know anyone who has it all figured out, myself included. That’s why I create these spaces. For the mothers navigating leadership, relationships, and breaking generational cycles one messy, wobbly step at a time.

We have one more session left in Winter Circle. We’re moving into what we actually want to build, the beliefs, the stories, the templates we want to pass on to our kids. What does a healthy relationship with boundaries actually look like? What do we want our kids to inherit from us?

And the practice of feeling our edges and communicating them even when it’s uncomfortable. The practice and experimentation of breathing life into boundaries rooted in wholeness.

If this speaks to you or if you are curious, I invite you to check out my upcoming circles or share with a mom or aspiring mom. So much of the “suffering” in motherhood is bound up in the stories we carry.

Upcoming Spring Circle - Embodied Safety - starts April 10th

1. Brizendine, Dr. Louann. The Female Brain. Broadway Books, 2006.

2. Armstrong, Alison. Understanding Women: Unlock the Mystery. PAX Programs, 2011.

3. Porges, Dr. Stephen. The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-regulation. W.W. Norton & Company, 2011.