Family Isn’t Always Safe: Setting Boundaries During Summer Visits

The first time one of my clients — let’s call her Maya — decided not to attend her family’s annual reunion, she shared with me how anxious and conflicted she felt leading up to it. She barely slept the night before, her stomach in knots, guilt tangled with dread. She kept hearing her mother’s voice in her head: “You know how much this means to your grandmother.” But what was never spoken in her family was how emotionally exhausting these gatherings had become for her — the subtle jabs about her body, the persistent questioning about why she was still single, the way the room would go silent whenever she spoke up about something “too political.” She told me that each year, she left feeling smaller than when she arrived. That summer, for the first time, she chose herself.