“Mending Wall”

 This is the title of one of my favorite poems by Robert Frost. There are two seemingly contradictory lines in it that I love. The first: “Good fences make good neighbors,” and the second: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall — that wants it down.” The title itself can be read two ways: Mending (or fixing) a wall or that walls can mend (heal).

This paradox is evident in all of our lives, but especially in the lives of women. It’s a continual balancing act — the desire for intimacy vs. the need for boundaries. As girls, we’re raised to value relationships and to value intimacy in those relationships. When we open ourselves to intimacy, we make ourselves vulnerable, which opens us to hurt, which causes us to erect walls, which because we value intimacy makes us want to tear down. How exhausting!!

I know that in all my important relationships I sometimes am unclear about where I end and others begin. For example, in the case of my mother, who died from cancer at her age 46 and my age 21, I carried her in my head for years, her opinions becoming mine. In the case of my daughters, if I was cold, I made them wear a sweater (literally and metaphorically). Keep this up, and before long, you feel responsible for the whole world and only too willing to shoulder the blame when something or someone is not working.

So, how to balance the need for intimacy and boundaries. Erecting walls and tearing them down are both good things to do as long as we’re conscious of what we’re walling out and what we’re allowing in. Again, Frost said it better — “Before I built a wall, I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out.”

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