Boundary Setting Without Making Yourself Small

The Power of Boundaries After Abuse

When you’ve experienced abuse, from a friend, family member, colleague, or partner, reclaiming your space and peace becomes essential. Yet the healing journey often gets complicated when the abuser still moves in shared spaces: at family events, mutual friendships, or professional circles.

Worse still, some people choose to remain neutral, claiming they "don't want to get involved." But neutrality is not neutral when abuse has occurred. Silence and indifference become another layer of harm.

Setting boundaries is non-negotiable, but doing so doesn’t mean making yourself small, apologetic, or invisible. It’s about protecting your emotional wellbeing while remaining expansive, courageous, and dignified.

I Refused to Shrink, So I Create

For me, one of the most powerful ways I’ve stayed visible, without confrontation, without fear, was through creative expression.

I poured the facts and feelings into paintings, into poems, and into vocal expression. I used art to name what others refused to acknowledge. I used colour and metaphor when truth felt too dangerous to say out loud.

Art gave me back my voice, not just for me, but for others who were still silent.

• I painted boundaries unabashedly with bold brush strokes.
• I wrote poetry that stood tall where I could not always speak. 
• I used my voice, raw, sometimes shaking to sing, speak, and reclaim the spaces that tried to reduce me.
  
  Art made me impossible to erase.

Creative expression is not just healing, it’s agency. It’s a form of resistance. It’s a visible refusal to disappear.

Why "Neutrality" Harms the Target of Abuse

1. It Invalidates the Victim's Experience:

When someone refuses to take a stand, it sends the message that the harm wasn’t serious, or worse, that the survivor’s pain is up for debate.

2. It Strengthens the Abuser's Social Power:

By remaining connected to the abuser, people unknowingly help them maintain normalcy and legitimacy, making it harder for the target to seek justice or healing.

3. It Forces the Survivor into Isolation:

Choosing "neutrality" often forces the person who was harmed to withdraw from shared spaces, once again losing community because of someone else's wrongdoing.

Why Boundaries Without Shrinking Yourself Matter

1. You Honour Your Own Worth

Setting clear boundaries without guilt reinforces the truth: your well-being matters and you are intentionally preserving your freedom.

2. You Model Self-Respect to Others:

While rage can be a necessary and valid response, a fire that fuels truth and action, there is also profound power in remaining calm. Each time you set a boundary with clarity and composure, you show others, including the indifferent, that abuse has real consequences. Calm is not weakness; it’s a quiet force that affirms dignity, asserts truth, and refuses to make yourself small.

3. You Create Space for Transformation:

When you stop shrinking to make others comfortable, you reclaim the energy needed for your own healing, growth, and even new, healthier connections.

Navigating Boundaries When Children Are Caught in the Middle

When children are involved, boundaries can become even more layered. It’s one thing to protect your peace from a harmful person; it’s another when that person is your child’s other parent, and the harm is invisible to them.
From my lived experience, I know how deeply uncomfortable it can feel when your children can’t, or don’t want to, see the harm that’s been done. You may feel the pull to over-explain, to prove your truth, or to soften your boundaries to avoid conflict.
But here’s what I’ve learned:
Your boundaries are still valid, even if your children don’t fully understand them right now.
Your role is to model healthy boundaries, not force recognition. Over time, your calm consistency can become the lesson.
The S.S.C.S. Framework holds here, too:
Support: Find safe adults and spaces to process the emotional weight so you don’t carry it alone.
Self-Love: Remind yourself that protecting your well-being is also protecting your capacity to show up for your children.
Spirituality: Trust that truth has its own way of surfacing over time, even if you can’t control the timeline.
Security: Maintain boundaries that preserve your safety—emotional and practical—without severing your dignity.
Boundaries in this context aren’t about punishing or alienating anyone. They’re about creating safe, consistent parameters for your own emotional health so you can parent from a place of groundedness rather than depletion.
You can remain visible, expansive, and present for your children without erasing your own reality. You don’t have to shrink to make them comfortable; you can stand in your truth and love them fully at the same time.

Creative Expression is a Form of Boundary-Setting

In a world that often tries to silence survivors, creating is resistance. Art becomes a mirror, a protest, a sanctuary. When I paint, I take up space and let my chosen canvas tell a story. When I perform, I take up air and use the power of breath to resonate. When I write, I leave a trail that says I was here and I am not ashamed. Art gives form to boundaries many in the world don’t always understand.

You Are Not Small. You Are Sovereign.

Keeping your distance isn’t avoidance. It’s a declaration. A declaration that your peace is non-negotiable. That you will not be erased. That you will not apologise for needing safety.

You get to take up space.
With your voice.
With your brush.
With your grace.

And with every boundary you honour,
you become your own sanctuary.

🌿 Ready to Set Boundaries Without Making Yourself Small?

Start with the S.S.C.S. Free 1-Pager Guide—your gentle, grounding introduction to the 4 Pillars of Support, Self-Love, Spirituality, and Security.

This beautifully designed one-sheet will help you:

• Reflect on where your boundaries need reinforcement
• Anchor your healing in practical, soulful steps
• Reclaim space without apology

🕊️ Download it now and begin your reclamation with clarity and care.

What does setting boundaries look like for you?
Have you ever had to protect your peace without shrinking yourself?

Share your reflections in the comments below, your story might be the mirror someone else needs.

Remember, your boundaries are not walls, they are invitations to meet yourself more truthfully.

You don’t have to shrink to be safe.
You don’t have to vanish to be free.
You are allowed to take up space, in full colour and full voice.

Let your becoming be visible.

With love and light, Infinitely,
Amja 

Let Art Be Your Becoming