Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Boundaries are so important. I think I'm going through an interesting transitional period - trying to figure myself out, re-construct myself in terms of what I thought about my childhood and family and what the reality *seems* to be. I understand that not all families are dysfunctional but all families do have problems. It's hard to know what is "normal" though. I suppose "healthy" might be a better term than "normal." "I have an idea that "healthy" is more easily qualified than "normal." But, I have been gathering that boundaries are pretty important to this "healthy functioning," as well as appropriate nurturing. Hell, I have been experiencing that this is the case first hand. My biggest issue is not with myself or how I was raised exactly, but how do I raise my children to not perpetuate dysfunction as much as possible? Also, how do I change and grow while integrating a new sense of self with my larger family while keeping in mind that they may or may not change for the better?

Mending Wall
Robert Frost

SOMETHING there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:	5
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,	10
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.	15
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.	20
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
He is all pine and I am apple-orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.	25
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.	30
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down!" I could say "Elves" to him,	35
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,	40
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."