Let Them: A Manifesto for Space-Holders Reclaiming Their Emotional Boundaries

When honoring your emotional boundaries feels like a threat to others, choose yourself anyway. This piece was written in a moment when I needed space—and was met with resistance, guilt, and reactivity for taking it.

If you’ve ever been punished for setting boundaries… If you’ve ever felt like you needed a justifiable reason to rest… If you’ve ever feared being misunderstood, left, or labeled as “too much” for honoring your emotional boundaries—this is for you.

A raw reminder for the space-holders, the givers, the ones who lead with love and often forget to offer it to themselves:

Let them. And come back home to you. Keep reading—this might be the permission slip your nervous system has been waiting for ↓

Walk with those who honor your emotional boundaries the way you honor theirs.

There’s a deep ache that comes when you’re met with blame in moments you most need understanding.

I recently had to cancel a session due to a family health emergency. It wasn’t a decision I took lightly. I value consistency. I show up for my clients. I care. But in that moment, someone I love needed me—and I had to choose them.

What followed shook me. Asking for my own attention—my own space—was met with a reaction that reminded me how uncomfortable some people are with others tending to their own needs. When someone can’t see beyond their own immediate expectations, they often react. And that reaction can land hard, especially when we’re already carrying so much.

It cut deep, not because I fear being left, but because it mirrored a wound I’ve carried most of my life:

The belief that I must abandon myself in order to be loved.

That I have to earn my right to rest. That I have to prove I’m sick enough, busy enough, broken enough to justify saying no. That I have to be everything for everyone, all the time.

But here’s what I’m learning: If someone needs you to be at your breaking point to justify taking space, let them go. If someone can’t hold the smallest inconvenience without punishing you, let them go.

If someone needs to guilt, push, or threaten you in order to feel seen—let them.

Let them walk. Let them misunderstand. Let them reveal who they are.

And while they go, you—you stay with yourself.

This is the work. Especially for the space-holders. The caregivers. The healers. The counselors. The Manifestors. The ones who lead, who initiate, who move with inner fire and fierce love.

It is not your job to keep everyone comfortable at the cost of your own peace.

You do not have to contort yourself into constant availability to be worthy. You do not have to bleed out to prove your heart. You do not have to justify your no.

I’m tired of the invisible emotional labor that comes with taking space.

I’m tired of feeling like I need a dramatic explanation just to rest or say no.

I’m tired of softening the edges of my emotional boundaries so others won’t abandon me.

And I’m done apologizing for the care I offer myself.

So today, I remind myself—and maybe you need to hear it too:

Let them. Let them go if they can’t meet you with the same care you offer them. Let them be mad. Let them misunderstand. Let them leave.

The ones who get it—who value the depth you bring, the humanness you lead with, the fire you carry—they won’t need an explanation. They’ll just say, “Take care of your family. We’ll be here.”

Those are your people. Choose them. And most of all—

Choose you.