Dancing Through the Lightning Strikes
When honoring no creates agency, trust, and choice
Opalite - Taylor Swift
What if the problem isn’t that we don’t know how to set boundaries—but that we don’t agree on what no actually means, or whether we’re allowed to retrace our steps?
During an interview for a sales role, I once remarked that my favorite word was maybe.
“Why is that?” the interviewer asked.
“Because a maybe means yes—but give me more of a reason,” I said. “‘No’ is hard and fast.”
That’s the thing—for me at least, and maybe for many, no has always felt hard and fast. But despite being one of the shortest words in the English language, no carries many interpretations. And maybe that’s where the work lies: recognizing those differences and finding ways to bridge the understanding.
Like most siblings, John and Ali fight, their arguments often escalating quickly. It usually starts simply—as these things tend to do. John asks for something, Ali says no, and then boom. Screams, tears, raised voices, and two children exiled to their respective rooms. I never thought much of it until my mom pointed it out during a holiday visit.
“They fight a lot,” she remarked.
“All kids do,” I shot back, annoyed. It felt like a commentary on my parenting.
“Not like this,” she replied.
I stared at her. Not like she’s one to talk. This was nothing compared to the knockout arguments my brother and I had growing up. It was a running joke in my family—one Christmas, we were gifted boxing gloves and told to duke it out. But our sparring wasn’t physical so much as verbal. It often started with a joke that hit me the wrong way.
“Shut up,” I’d say.
He’d keep going.
“Mom, he—”
“Just ignore him.”
But I couldn’t ignore it. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. So I’d fight back, hitting below the belt where I knew it would hurt. “You’re stupid,” I’d say, certain that would end it. It never did.
“You’re fat and ugly,” he’d spit back.
Round and round it went—until it dissolved into yelling, crying, punishment, and silence. Unlike physical blows that leave marks and eventually heal, verbal ones don’t. Words, seemingly careless and often used as shields, burn deep into the somatic layers and rarely—if ever—fully heal.
For the most part, John and Ali have been getting along better lately. Early on, though, there was an undercurrent of jealousy that rippled through their relationship, beginning the day we brought Ali home from the hospital. I placed her carefully in John’s arms. He cradled her, staring quizzically.
“It’s your sister,” I told him.
After I lifted her away, he walked off without looking back. For the next year and a half, he remained detached and uninterested. I assumed things would shift as she got older—especially once they both started playing soccer. But they didn’t. If anything, the divide widened. Despite being two years younger, Ali took to school and soccer more easily than John. Though we were careful never to compare them, he noticed others did.
“Ali’s so lucky she’s on the top team,” he’d say again and again.
I reminded him that girls’ soccer is structured differently, that we’d moved her clubs earlier once we felt the commute was worth it. Eventually, as John found his own footing—academically and on the field—the gap began to close. Unexpectedly, what helped most was Roblox. Together they sit in Ali’s room, devices in hand, playing alongside my brother’s daughters who live out of state.
The other day, while they were playing, an argument broke out. John asked Ali to play something. She said no. What began quietly escalated quickly, Justin and I stepping in to mediate.
“He just asked her a simple request,” Justin said. “She needs to stop reacting like this.”
I paused. Does she?
I went into Ali’s room. Tears streaked her cheeks as she angrily kneaded her slime.
“What happened?” I asked gently.
“I told John no and he kept asking me,” she shouted. “And then you and Dad always side with him. I have no one that backs me. I’m always alone.”
That stopped me cold. Suddenly I was ten again, crying in the backseat of my parents’ car, telling them my brother was picking on me. Being told to ignore it. Even when well-meaning, that language left long-term scars.
Agency, autonomy, and boundaries weren’t part of our secular vocabulary back then. Even now, saying those words can earn you a look like you’re speaking Pig Latin—or worse, like you’re a quiet-quitting Gen Zer. Maybe that’s not a coincidence. Maybe that’s what happens when people learn that no isn’t safe to say—and that changing your mind isn’t allowed either.
But what if that’s been the issue all along? Not that we don’t know how to say no, but that we all carry different interpretations of what no is allowed to mean. What if no doesn’t have to be immutable, but can soften or shift as safety, context, and choice change?
That flexibility, I’ve come to realize, only works if no is fully honored first. Without that, there is no safety—only pressure.
Once tensions cooled, I gathered the family.
“We have a new rule,” I said. “No means stop. If someone says no—whether it’s Ali, John, Dad, or me—we honor it. No pushing back.”
The kids nodded. Justin looked skeptical but agreed. Later, I pulled him aside.
“I think this teaches both kids agency,” I said. “That when they say no, people listen. Our goal is for our kids not to shrink, right?”
“I agree,” he said. “But she can’t be shrieking and getting out of hand.”
I thought about my childhood. About now. About how often my own no gets questioned—until I either erupt or suppress it, both paths leading to resentment.
“It will get better,” I said. “We just have to move through the messiness.”
We agreed to let Ali retreat to her room when overwhelmed and return when regulated. She added squishies and slime to her growing collection of fidgets. Things felt calmer for a few days.
Then one night, Justin knocked on her door. Dinner was ready. He’d cooked chicken and didn’t want it to go cold.
“Wait,” she called from her Roblox game.
Two seconds later, he knocked again.
“Wait!”
This went on for several minutes. Even I felt frustrated. Eventually, it ended the way these moments often do—Ali screaming, consequences issued. Justin stayed calm.
“That’s the problem,” I said. “She asked for time. You kept asking. You overrode her no.”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “But her chicken was going to get cold.”
“And that’s exactly it,” I said. “It’s like when you ask if I want to eat. I say no, and you keep asking.”
“I’m not being manipulative,” he said. “I just want you to eat and be happy. And I don’t want the food to taste bad.”
That’s when it clicked—how differently we interpret no. How we can hear the same word and mean entirely different things. For some, no is a boundary: a pin dropped firmly in the present moment. For others, it’s fluid, responsive to timing, care, and circumstance.
A changed mind doesn’t come from being asked again. It comes from being given space.
Maybe the growth—for me at least—is noticing that no doesn’t have to be permanent. That it can mean stop now, while still leaving room for choice later. On our own terms. By our own volition. A maybe—but for now, a no. And when someone tells us no, we don’t argue, persuade, or correct. We honor it as final until the person who said it chooses otherwise.
The more I think about it, the more I believe this is how we teach our daughters and sons real boundaries, agency, and autonomy—not by forcing rigidity, but by helping them trust the signals in their bodies. To recognize a clear yes or a clear no. To respond even when it conflicts with others’ expectations. And to understand that it’s okay to change course when new information, or new data points, emerge.
When we teach this, kids don’t have to erupt in anger or disappear into suppression. They learn how to honor themselves without hardening. Because both eruption and suppression lead to the same place eventually: a slow accumulation of resentment, and a quiet drift out of alignment.
Perhaps the real win is noticing that no doesn’t have to lock us in place. That we’re allowed to pause, listen, and retrace our steps when the path changes. Maybe that’s how we learn to dance through the lightning strikes.