The Small Fence: Care and Boundaries

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The Small Fence I Built Around What Was Fragile

When Thinking Hurts

Care and boundaries – Saturday morning, I woke up with an overwhelming urge to do something physical and creative. To focus on one thing. To allow myself to absorb it fully, and step away from my world of the last few weeks. At least for a day. 

I would love to say I started drawing, or painting, or creating some piece of art. Sadly, I have felt terribly uninspired to make art lately. For some time, in fact. So instead, I decided to build a fence. As you do.

From scratch. Using only what I could find behind the shed.

Thankfully, we had recently trimmed the unruly branches from the trees in the garden. It was a long overdue task, but the leftover branches were perfect for my slightly ridiculous idea: a cottage garden, hobbit-inspired fence around a small patch of ferns.

Each year, after the cherry tree above them bursts into pink blossom, the fern garden planted by the previous owners begins to unroll its deep green, fragile-looking leaves.

I love this small part of the garden.

Almost as much as my rabbits do.

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I did not want to think. I just needed to do.

Gregg the Artivist

Every year, I watch the rabbits wait until the ferns reach a certain size, then launch their annual attack. It becomes this almost comical race. Me, throwing temporary stakes and garden wire mesh around the patch. The rabbits, close by, inspecting my every move as if they are helping, looking for the weak spots, treating the whole thing like their personal spring challenge.

The mesh usually lasts part of the season. However, the rabbits ultimately win.

So, with the sun out and the weather about to turn, I thought: let’s do this before they chalk up another win.

But there was another reason I needed to build something.

Simply, I did not want to think.

I woke up with brain fog. Even the thought of trying to think actually hurt. I kid you not.

I just needed to do.

You could call these last few weeks many things. I explained to a friend the other evening it has been full, messy, draining and unexpected.

There has been so much movement: going to Serbia, on to Spain and back to the Netherlands. Changing landscapes, long days, a busy mind and inspiring conversations. Farewell to a close friend. Tours. Events. And there were moments that reminded me there is still so much good in the world, which I needed more than I realised.

But there has also been the constant background noise. Geopolitics. News cycles. Financial decisions. Raising baby pigeons, then saying that strange bittersweet goodbye once my part was done. Supporting friends in need. Trying to stay present while feeling quietly stretched in too many directions.

I am exhausted, if I am honest.

What People Are Carrying

I have also found myself worrying about people around me.

This last few weeks, I have witnessed a lot of people struggling. In various ways. For various reasons. And there are moments when I sense something deeper is at play beneath the surface. I wonder how much of this is because the world we are living through is asking more of people than we can carry.

As I listen, my brain starts pulling together all this recognition of their words, their actions, but not as an expert. But from having lived through a long and painful burnout of my own. From knowing what it is to appear functional while something deeper is struggling to hold.

“

Other people’s distress does not always stay with them. Sometimes it enters the room and wakes up your own.

Gregg the Artivist

I have also begun to notice my own behaviour in these situations. Sometimes, when I witness someone else unravel a little, I can stay calm in the moment. Or at least calm enough. I try to steady the situation. But afterwards, I notice something in me stirs too.

Old fears, old memories and old pain.

The experience does not just ask something of me in the situation, here and now. It has a sneaky ability of reaching back.

I guess one of the hardest parts is that other people’s distress does not always stay with them. Sometimes it enters the room and wakes up your own. You help where you can. You stay steady. You do what is needed. And only later do you realise your own body has remembered something too.

Building Boundaries

As I was cutting the branches to size, I caught myself laughing out loud at the irony.

Of course I was building a fence. Of course I was making a boundary.

And I do not mean out of harshness, or for separation, or as a way to shut everything out. But to create something new. Something that helps fragility to survive. Or to be able to hold on at the very least.

For the past weeks, caring for the little fallen pigeons, I had been doing something similar. Building safety around them. Incubators. Nests. Small houses. Each one larger than the last, changing as their needs changed, keeping them safe until their independence.

I was thinking maybe that is what care often is.

“

Of course I was building a fence. Of course I was making a boundary.

Gregg the Artivist

Not the ability to hold on to everything forever. And maybe not trying to protect every vulnerable thing from the whole world. Which is often my default. But also not absorbing every shock because someone else is struggling. This is harder for me.

But to create enough safety for something fragile to keep growing.

I realised I cannot hold everyone I love together. Nor can I protect them at their most vulnerable. And I certainly cannot stop what is happening inside them, or around them, or between them and the wider world.

But here I am, building small fences.

And not just around them. But also around me and around the relationships I want to protect.

Care With Edges

As I screwed each branch into place, I realised I was not only trying to protect the ferns from the rabbits.

I was back to thinking about care again. If you missed my previous article on care, click here. I reflected about my experience of the messiness of care, yet I find myself still trying to understand something more about care, and how I interact with it.

About the kind of care that does not burn out trying to be available to everything. Care that knows how to balance tenderness and structure. And care that says: this matters, so I am going to protect it.

“

Building fences around hope, sanity and the small green ferns still trying to unroll themselves.

Gregg the Artivist

Care around people I love who are carrying more than they can say. Around myself, because I know what happens when I keep absorbing everyone else’s distress as if my own body has no limit.

Lived experiences teaching lessons kind of stuff. 

More Questions Than Answers about Care and Boundaries

I guess maybe that is where I am this week.

Building fences around hope, sanity and the small green ferns still trying to unroll themselves under the watchful eye of the rabbits.

More questions than answers. And not even with much energy to think.

I’m just here with a pile of branches, a handful of screws, some stubborn rabbits (who are already chewing on the wooden branches) thinking: maybe these boundaries do not mean I care less. I think they are a way for me to care without disappearing.

FAQ's - Care and boundaries

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A note on process and AI assistance: This week's article is based on my own lived experience, reflections and original draft. I used AI to check spelling, test grammar in two sentences, and primarily for technical webpage optimisation. The final idea, words, structure and editorial choices are my own.

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