Somewhere on your phone there's a message you've read four times and not answered.
Nothing is wrong with it. Nothing is wrong with them.
You just don't want to say yes, and you can't figure out how to say no.
Almost everything written about boundaries has a villain in it.
The manipulative ex. The boss who takes credit. The friend who was never really a friend.
"Hold the line." "Don't over-explain." "Cut the cord."
Feel the sun on your face.
Good advice, for a fairly narrow set of situations. None of them yours.
A walker in London brought the harder version to her opening circle:
"How do you manage interactions with someone who drains you but you don't want to cut them out of your life?"
No villain in that sentence. No exit in it either.
Just a person you want to keep, and a cost you can't keep paying.
Here's the part that took us longest to see.
The ask is tiny. You're not trying to end a friendship. You're trying to skip Sunday brunch.
But somewhere between the thought and your mouth, it stops being a scheduling note. You're standing in a courtroom announcing that this person is Too Much, and that you're the kind of person who withdraws love when somebody becomes inconvenient.
No wonder the sentence weighs forty pounds.
So we say yes and pay for it later.
Or we go quiet and hope they notice, which is the most expensive option available, because now they're hurt and confused and you still have to have the conversation, except now it has a history.
Avoidance isn't the absence of confrontation.
It's confrontation on layaway, with interest.
And that message is still sitting there.
There's a sentence that answers it, further down in this week's Trail Tale.
Let's dive in. 🧡
From our walking villages in 20+ cities around the world:
San Antonio Walk #3, dog included. 🐾
San Francisco out in the open field again. 🧡
Miami’s biggest crowd yet. 🧡
Columbus hit Walk #50, rerouting around mud from last week's flooding and rolling with it anyway. 🚴
(Don’t see your city? We post the photos on Instagram or each Meetup group after the walk. Otherwise this email would be longer than a CVS receipt.)
🏆 Sacramento built a carpool nobody had to organize.
One walker had been taking the bus both ways just to reach the trail. Another walker offered her a ride, then several more joined the rotation.
🏆 One walker took the Saturday ritual across Portugal.
She was hundreds of miles from the people who usually walked beside her. The location changed. The Saturday habit didn't.
🏆 Detroit's circle got bigger than one host could hold alone.
Izzy normally makes time for every person. With twenty walkers, there were simply too many conversations for one host. A wonderful problem to have.
About that message you haven't answered.
When somebody asks you for something and you already know the answer is no, don't say:
"Maybe, let me check and get back to you."
Say:
"I can't make that one. Tell me how it goes."
Delay isn't kindness. It's a no you've made them wait for.
There are three more sentences like it in this week's Trail Tale.
It also has the signs your body files before your mouth does, and what separates the rooms that can hear a no from the ones that hear rejection.
Trail Tales are our longer pieces, free on the site. This one takes about five minutes.
This week on The Board Walks, people brought these topics:
"What did you lose as a child that you'd want again?"
"How do you practice and maintain forgiveness in your life?"
"What's your favorite outdoor experience, and what made it memorable?"
"How do you know what your life calling is?"
"Which Marvel movie or character would you defend forever?"
Screenshot these. Steal with pride. Bring one to your next dinner party to shift the conversation from "meh" to marvelous.
Quick hits:
📣 We're going to Cape Town!
This November, members of our team will travel to Cape Town, South Africa to accept an award and receive funding that will help us extend the movement!
If you know of grants supporting community-building, belonging, loneliness prevention, public health, or grassroots movements, hit reply and send them our way. We'd love to meet more people funding this kind of work.
🚴 Columbus just hit Walk #50.
Fifty walks in, Columbus has officially earned the right to call the trail “the usual spot.”
🌍 We're looking for great hosts in New York City and Los Angeles, and a full-time chapter host in Austin.
Know someone warm, curious, and naturally good at bringing people together? Send them our application. Most chapters begin the same way: one person thinks of the right person and forwards one link.
🤝 We're also looking for co-hosts in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and London.
These chapters are already running. A co-host helps run the opening circle, welcomes first-timers, and can take a Saturday when the lead host needs one off.
What’s alive in The Board:
There's a specific kind of loneliness that comes with growth.
You've built a full life. You're surrounded by good people. And there are still parts of you that don't get to exist in the rooms you're in.
We call it the Hallway Period: trying every door, hoping one opens into something real.
The Board is the room at the end of that hallway.
Monthly themed Salons. Spontaneous conversations between work meetings. A member directory filled with people who would rather ask a real question than make small talk.
Next Salon: September 17. Details coming soon.
At some point this week, a yes may leave your mouth before you decide whether you mean it.
Most of those yeses cost almost nothing.
The expensive ones are the standing yeses. The things you agreed to in March and have been quietly paying for ever since. Those are the ones that become resentments nobody asked for and nobody can see.
Saturday is a low-stakes place to practice something different.
Nobody needs a reason from you.
Come when you can. Miss when you need to. The trail will still be here.
Five miles. No phones. No agenda. Nobody keeping score. Just curious humans asking the questions that are difficult to fit into a group chat.
Have a whimsical week,
Founders of The Board Walks
