Holding boundaries

By Bill Pearse on February 28, 2026 • ( 1 )

Four years ago Russia invaded Ukraine while we vacationed at Laguna Beach over mid-winter break. I was two months into my no-weed sobriety and a year without alcohol. Going to a place as beautiful as Laguna Beach seemed cause enough to relapse. Something about travel can make you think you’re exempt from life’s boundaries. Anything can.

I calculated the ages our kids were, two girls about three years apart, well into the Covid years and both struggling with school. All that feels like a bad dream now. The surreal nature of the news reports from Ukraine as we lounged in our bungalow snacking on sushi. The feeling in Southern California that even in February winter has no sway.

There is the idea of rock bottom in the arc of recovery and our oldest daughter was about to hit hers. It’s funny looking back on scenes like that, knowing what comes next. But the bottom is often the beginning of the healing process.

Her struggles had been piling up and bottomed out that spring, and we made the difficult decision to enroll her in a wilderness therapy program where she’d be away for three months literally living outside. It was an intervention and just what she needed.

But the stigma with these programs is the kids often get “gooned” (taken away in the middle of the night by transport services) which alone can be traumatizing. We didn’t want to do that. We wanted her to agree to it instead.

It was a trip up Tiger Mountain with the two of us where she decided. It was March but cold enough to snow, we didn’t expect it would, and the storm came as a surprise as we neared the top. That’s when she announced she liked the idea, she’d made her decision. Climbing the mountain was a metaphor for the climb she had ahead. I wonder in hindsight if she was doing it for me, being a pleaser, but it doesn’t matter because in the end she did it for herself.

So Tiger holds that memory for me, the one time we climbed it together and how we then had to say goodbye to her for a while. Now maybe we can go back together and she can join me for a meeting they do near the top on Sunday mornings.

Yesterday I tried to access a trail from a different side of the mountain but there were signs warning private property, security cameras in use, and so on. There was a time I would say screw those signs and do it anyway. Now I’m more steady-minded about rules. I looked more closely at the map and saw that part of the trail was marked as private land. I accessed it instead from the main trailhead by the former homeless camp. The light in the late afternoon was pink-gold and there was a soft wind coming through the trees.

We’re never exempt from life’s boundaries though we can pretend we are. Defying the rules made me feel young and free for a time. But we actually need boundaries, kids especially. Boundaries make us feel safe, they make us feel held. Maybe being held is more about feeling anchored than confined, or loved.