Heart-Centred Doesn’t Mean Boundaryless
On the morning of 5 August 2025, I pulled a Lenormand card for the day.
My question, the one I ask most mornings, was simple: what is my energy and focus for today?
The card I pulled was the Heart.
I had barely finished recording my answer when I got into a brief altercation with my mother.
I am a primary caregiver.
I have been for nine years.
My mother is where my boundaries, which I maintain well in most areas of my life, begin to get porous. Where the careful architecture of my self-care starts to feel less certain.
Where the question of what I am allowed to need becomes genuinely complicated.
That morning I needed space to finish my thoughts. I said so, firmly. And she heard it as something harder than I intended, or perhaps exactly as hard as it needed to be. I am still not entirely sure which.
What I am sure about is what happened next.
I turned back to my deck and I put myself on trial.
The trial
The charge was this: had I contradicted the Heart card?
I had pulled an intention of love, warmth, emotional openness. And then, within minutes, I had been sharp with my mother. Unyielding. I had refused to absorb what was happening and find a way through it gracefully. I had failed to laugh it off.
I sat with the shame of that for a moment. Not just the shame of the altercation. The deeper shame underneath it: for having limits at all. For not knowing how to be more expansive. For not being more enough.
Nine years of caregiving teaches you many things. One of the things it teaches you, quietly and persistently, is that your needs are the negotiable ones. That your comfort is what gets adjusted when something has to give. That the most loving thing you can do is to make yourself smaller, more patient, more absorptive.
And so when I failed to do that — when I said, firmly, “I need space” — some part of me immediately reached for the familiar verdict: “You should have managed that better.”
But then I thought harder.
What heart-centred actually means
The Heart card isn’t about being soft. It isn’t about having no edges. It’s about being true.
I sat with that distinction for a long time that morning.
What I had said to my mother wasn’t unkind. It wasn’t dishonest. It was necessary. I had needed that space at that moment and I had said so. The delivery may not have been perfect. But the truth behind it was exactly what the Heart card had asked me to lead with: emotional honesty. Alignment with what was actually true for me, not performance of what I thought a heart-centred woman was supposed to look like.
Here is what I came to understand that morning, in the ninth year of being someone’s primary caregiver:
A boundary that comes from the heart isn’t a contradiction of love. It’s an expression of it.
Not love as performance. Not love as self-erasure. Love as the clear, honest understanding of what you actually need in order to remain present, functional, and genuinely caring — rather than depleted and resentful and quietly disappearing from yourself.
The Heart card had asked me to let emotional truth guide my choices. I had done exactly that. It just hadn’t looked the way that I had been taught heart-centred living was supposed to look.
Where the confusion comes from
Most women I know have a version of the trial I put myself through that morning. The moment after they say no, or ask for space, or refuse to absorb something — the immediate second-guessing. The reaching for a verdict.
It usually sounds like some version of: “You should have managed that better. You should be more patient. You should be able to handle this without making it a thing.”
What is underneath that voice, almost always, is a set of values that have never been examined. Values that were given to you rather than chosen. That were drilled in, not discovered.
In my case, some of those values came from a childhood where love and visibility felt conditional. Where not meeting a benchmark meant disappearing. Where the message, spoken or unspoken, was that you needed to be more, do better, find a way to be enough.
That belief doesn’t stay in childhood. It follows you into your caregiving. Into your relationships. Into the morning where you pull a Heart card and immediately wonder if you’re doing love wrong.
Identifying your core values, your actual values, not the ones you inherited, requires you to sit with exactly this kind of moment. Not to analyse it to death, but to ask one honest question: “Does this belief belong to me, or was it given to me?”
The question the Heart card was actually asking
By the time I finished thinking it through that morning, the verdict was different from the one I had first reached for.
I hadn’t contradicted the Heart card. I had lived it.
My boundary was heart-centred. Not because it was soft or gentle or managed beautifully. Because it came from emotional truth, not from performance or fear. Because I knew, clearly, what I needed and I said so. Because protecting my capacity to keep caring, for nine years, across thousands of ordinary difficult mornings, sometimes sounds like: “I need a moment.” And that is enough.
This is what Pillar 1 of my Elevate + Thrive™ framework is built on. Clarity of core values isn’t a one-time exercise. It’s the ongoing, honest practice of asking yourself: “What do I actually believe, and where did that belief come from?”, “Is this mine, or was it handed to me?”, “Is this true, or is it just familiar?”
The values that belong to you, (mine are beauty, creativity, elevation, abundance) are the ones that feel like relief when you finally name them. Not obligation. Not performance. Relief.
That morning, the relief came when I stopped reaching for the old verdict and let the new one land instead.
I had needed space. I had said so. And that was enough.
One question
When you last felt shame or doubt after asserting a need, after saying no, asking for space, refusing to absorb something, whose voice was delivering the verdict?
Yours? Or someone else’s, speaking in your accent after enough years of practice?
That is where your values work begins. Not with a list of aspirational qualities. With the honest examination of the voice that tells you when you have fallen short.
Find that voice. Ask it where it came from.
Then decide, consciously, whether it gets to stay.
If you want a place to begin this work, My “Self-Confidence Blueprint” is a free resource I created for exactly this: returning to what you actually value, in your own words, at your own pace. It’s a quiet starting point, and it’s absolutely free.
The Self-Confidence Blueprint — a free resource for building self-trust and identifying your core values.
And if you find yourself wanting to go deeper, to sit with someone and speak your truth aloud until you can hear what is actually yours, click here to learn more about working with me privately.
Pillar 1: Core Values
Start with the voice that appears after you assert a need. After you say no, ask for space, or refuse to absorb something. Notice whose verdict that voice is delivering. Is it yours, or is it a voice that was given to you early enough that it has learned to speak in your accent? That moment of examination, sitting with a specific situation and asking honestly whether the belief underneath it belongs to you, is where values work actually begins. Not with a list of aspirational qualities. With the truth of what you have been carrying, and the question of whether it is yours to keep.
Core values are the beliefs and principles that genuinely belong to you, as distinct from the values that were handed to you by family, culture, or survival. For many women, especially those navigating caregiving, high performance, or long periods of putting others first, the values being lived are inherited ones, not chosen ones. Pillar 1 of the Elevate + Thrive™ framework — Clarity of Core Values — begins with an honest examination of that difference. When you can name what you actually value (beauty, creativity, elevation, abundance), rather than what you were told to value, the relief is immediate. It feels like recognition, not obligation.
Heart-centred living means allowing emotional truth, not emotional performance, to guide your choices. It means knowing what you genuinely value and letting those values inform how you show up, including when that means asking for space, saying no, or refusing to absorb what isn’t yours to carry. A boundary that comes from an honest understanding of your needs isn’t a contradiction of love. It’s an expression of it.
A Threshold Session is a private, one-time intensive with Sarina Nicole for women who want to sit with someone and speak their truth aloud until they can hear what is actually theirs. It is for women doing active values work, navigating inner transition, or standing at a moment of change and needing the space to think clearly. It is available by enquiry.
Elevate + Thrive™ is a six-pillar framework created by Sarina Nicole Bland to help women build lives aligned with their actual values rather than inherited ones. The six pillars are: Clarity of Core Values, The Art of Beauty, Creative Flow, Aligned Wellness, Abundant Living, and Elegant Confidence. Pillar 1, Clarity of Core Values, is the foundation the others build on: it is the practice of returning, consistently and honestly, to what you believe, where that belief came from, and whether it belongs to you.
