It has officially been five weeks since I started my internship with Heartland Alliance and I could not be more grateful for this opportunity. From my first day in the office I have been overwhelmed with an incredible sense of community and in awe of the amazing work which my coworkers do on a daily basis. It has caused me to do a lot of thinking. While I have learned so much at this internship already, most of which I can’t disclose, for the purpose of this blog post I want to focus on one theme in particular which has been on my mind since starting in May–that is, the idea of community and boundaries.

Throughout my time at Valpo I have heard the idea of work and home life boundaries expressed in both the classroom and colloquially–to varying degrees. Many of the individuals I look to frequently uplift the importance of this separation–whilst also going above and beyond for their students, thus often sacrificing it for themselves. As a result, I find that I began this internship believing in a strict separation between the two–like church and state.

What surprised me starting day one at the office however, is that my coworkers approach their job and a sense of community differently. To begin with, Heartland Alliance is adamant that we call the people we serve participants and not clients–it emphasizes that we work together–as equals–not apart. This theme carries through in every aspect of the work which they do. Moreover, my coworkers spend their personal time interacting with participants doing crafts, gardening, and sometimes–years later–talking on the phone as friends. While they are distinct, there is a strong sense of community between coworkers as well as coworkers and participants. Additionally, as I began working with participants myself I found it difficult to process what was going on around me, or show up fully, without allowing for some spillover between my personal and professional life.

This has caused me to reflect a lot on the way I understand boundaries. Specifically, I have been wondering more about what the purpose behind keeping personal and professional lives separate is. I am finding that when I approach participants with the intent to foster community, as my coworkers model, it feels as though I am better able to honor both their humanity, as well as my own.

In my spare time this summer I have been doing a fair share of reading–one author I read recently, Nadia Bolz Weber, discussed the idea of being fully integrated and its centrality to human flourishing. She mentioned that, as she engages with the members of her congregation, she wants them each to be able to feel fully integrated emotionally, physically, spiritually, socially and so on so forth–no discontinuity at all.

So I am beginning to wonder: what are the implications of this for my work/personal life boundaries? On the one hand if we can integrate so fully in work and home life that there appear to be no boundaries we risk our mental well being and personal privacy as well as the privacy of those we serve. However, on the other hand, if we separate the two drastically we risk making it impossible to cross that divide and do a discredit to ourselves by forcing a divide between professional and unprofessional aspects of ourselves. In thinking more about the balance between these two I am realizing that I want to be in community with those I serve. While I also believe it is necessary to have boundaries between my work and home life, I think that aspiring to live in community with those I serve is the best way to inspire me each day to work and lead from a place of love. As a result, now that I am more comfortable in my role, I find it inspiring to aspire to this and am trying to adapt these ideas into my own life so as to live more integrated.

So what do you think? Perhaps this all sounds a bit too much like I am applying to be an RA, but I am curious what your thoughts are. How do you practice living integrated while also uplifting personal and professional boundaries? Most importantly, how do you believe we can cultivate boundaries without fracturing ourselves and allowing ourselves to lead from a place of love both professionally, and personally?

At this point in time, I by no means feel like I have any answers for these questions–but I am curious to learn more and am, as we speak, taking time to observe the ways that community and boundaries are appearing in my life, and the lives of those around me.

– Katharina Depenthal, Heartland Alliance Health