Editor's Letter #9: Glennon Doyle, boundaries and The Decision Tree
What #glennongate can teach us about protecting our peace, plus your invite to join this week's author event with KC Davis AND a pop-up Untamed book club
[PF: It’s a May bank holiday in England and so no event tonight, but TOMORROW - Tuesday 6th May - we’ll be joined by BOTM author and superstar therapist, KC Davis, to launch our read-along of Who Deserves Your Love. Joining link at the end of this email].
Hello everybody,
Today: how far would you go to protect your peace?
Would you:
Turn off all notifications?
Mute - or leave - group WhatsApp chats?
Stay away from the news?
Avoid gossip (and gossipy people)?
Stay in hotels at family gatherings?
‘Forget’ to reply to friends who love to say ‘we have to meet up’ or ‘let me know when’s good?’ but never suggest any times/dates/plans.
Let people you love know when they have p!ssed you off?
Say no to big money business opportunities because they don’t support your business/life goals?
Go sober for a year?
Walk away from a 15-year career?
Not invite your dad to your wedding?
Kiss goodbye to a ready-made 6-figure community and million+ dollar income on Substack?
The above are all examples of boundaries. Only one of them is NOT an example from my own life (surprisingly for a late self-help bloomer I have demonstrated some highly advanced boundary setting in my life!).
You can probably guess that the last example on this list is from writer, Glennon Doyle.
This wasn't the intro I thought I’d be writing to promote our new BOTM, Who Deserves Your Love, and its core themes of boundaries and relationships.
But the whole point of us reading all these books and learning all this self-help theory is to then apply that theory to our real lives to make actual change.
#glennongate has infiltrated my heart/head as well as my Substack Feed this past week or so.
And while the story of ‘best-selling self-help writer and thought leader joins Substack, gains 00000s of subscribers overnight, receives so much pushback she decides to leave and refund all subscribers within days’ might not be real ‘real life’ to most of us, it’s definitely a real time BRILLIANT example of somebody who has done ‘The Work’, who knows herself, and who chooses to do whatever is needed to protect her peace and her mental health.
Which is exactly what boundaries are all about.
(If you want more context for #glennongate then you can read this article supporting Glennon joining SS and this article against).
There are many of definitions of ‘boundaries’ to be found, not all of them helpful. But I like this simple one from Google:
Boundaries are the rules or guidelines that individuals establish to protect their personal space, emotions, and well-being within a relationship. They define what one is comfortable with and what they are not, helping to create a sense of security and autonomy.
And our BOTM author, therapist (and TikToker), KC Davis, simplifies it for us even further, telling us: “Boundaries are behaviours, feelings and beliefs, but always my own.”
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KC is EXCELLENT at simplifying life lessons.
She calls her kind of self-help ‘struggle care’ aka learning how to care for yourself—and being kind to yourself—whatever your struggle.
And she shares advice with hundreds of thousands of ‘self-help rejects’ (her words! 😆) on how to take better care of ourselves via her social media, her podcast, her courses and in her books.
In her latest book (and our new BOTM), Who Deserves Your Love, she teaches us how we can create and use boundaries to ‘start, strengthen or end any relationship’ using plenty of case studies, handy lists, diagrams and FLOW CHARTS (this in capitals for my charts fans out there, you know who you are 😉).
Boundaries are not always about saying ‘no’ or leaving a person/situation behind, they are about taking responsibility for taking care of ourselves in relationships with others.
And yes, they can be gnarly, uncomfortable and sometimes confronting to set, but - and anyone who has intentionally set a boundary will know this blessed feeling - once they are in place the RELIEF you will feel at taking control of a situation will soon drown out any kind of ick.
“You have answers. You just need someone to give you the right questions.”
KC Davis on The Decision Tree
Tomorrow night, KC will introduce us to The Decision Tree.
The Decision Tree is a simplified ‘on paper’ version of the process that she, as a therapist, will walk a client through to help them make choices in a relationship.
Whether that’s to stay and work on it, or to take steps to actively disengage (NB both options will require some kind of boundaries).
Watch the video above to see KC talking viewers through The Decision Tree process, and consider how you might apply it to any situation/s in your life where someone else’s behaviour is causing you harm or unhappiness.
In Glennon Doyle’s situation I can imagine she may have gotten to her version of Question 4 (Q: Does Staying in this Relationship Violate my Values? A: Yes.) before deciding to eject from Substack.
If I was working through The Decision Tree when thinking about inviting my (usually drunk and obnoxious) dad to my wedding almost 18 years ago I would’ve gotten to Question 2 (Q: Is this Person Willing to Work Towards Collaborative Solutions that Mitigate Pain? A: Ha ha ha ha ha! No.) before landing on Option One: Give Yourself Permission to Disengage from this Relationship Temporarily or Permanently.
(NB I did disengage pretty much permanently from this relationship, and even after his death I still have zero regrets about that decision).
KC goes into great detail about the possibilities - and complexities - of deciding whether to disengage or stay engaged (but in different ways) in the book.
And - if you’re feeling brave - there’ll be opportunity to workshop some of your own examples with her in our members event tomorrow (Tuesday) night.
I’d love to see you there…
Toni 💛
PS If #glennongate has gotten in to your heart/head too I’m hosting a pop-up Untamed book club with support from as a way to connect those of us who love Glennon’s writing and would’ve liked to have seen more of it here.
Starting this WEDNESDAY, we’ll be reading for a month (I’ll share weekly reading targets and journal prompts every Wednesday morning and Claire and I will host a couple of end of month Zooms to discuss w/c 2nd June). It’s FREE and all are welcome, but you’ll need to sign up to this separate publication to get involved in the pop-up…
