By Penny Power – Business Author & Human-Centred Speaker
Many of us are experiencing relationships that transform- sometimes unexpectedly; sometimes, we have known for years that life will change.
This is my Pondering, for this week. Whether you are looking at close personal relationships or business ones, I feel this is a good time to share this with you. I am especially thinking a lot about all the parents who are seeing their children off to University.
Preparing for a change in their family home and the dynamic of communication. If you read this with an open heart and mind, you can consider many relationships in your life that have transformed, are transforming, or might transform.
How do we maintain Significant Relationships when lives transform? Thomas and I have experienced this massively over the past 2 years. From a family of 5 and 4 homes in Farnham, with all our adult children having their own businesses and choosing to return from London and live in Farnham, to now, with Ross in Bali, Hannah in New York, and Tj in Georgia, and our Granddaughter Skyla in Australia. – “One family – 4 Continents”.
I cannot say it has been an emotionally easy transition, and as a result, I have spent the past 18 months developing my understanding of Significant Relationships and how we ensure people that matter to us know they matter, and also how to adapt to changes.
We have a saying in our family, ‘Bad is Good’, and while seeing their lives evolve and grow is good, it has tested me and at times has felt bad for me as a mum. It’s been painful letting go of what was, and accepting what is. As a result of this, a good result- a new way to articulate what has always been important to me has emerged, and I have created a new Keynote Speech, and I am writing my next book.
We live in an age where we are all so tested and stretched around how to keep people that matter to us close, whether a Loved One, a Friend, a Client, a Supplier, an employee, or a team member.
Since delivering my keynote and researching for my book, I have discovered so many aspects and complications of deep, lasting relationships in the modern age of tech, fast comms, tasks, phones, and the subconscious or perhaps conscious need for quantity over quality.
I find it so interesting that the word ‘Churn’ is a key metric in business and acceptably built into Board Numbers. In fact, there are so many ways we accept relationships leaving us, and I think that is the route of loneliness, the pain of feeling we don’t matter to the people that we want to matter to.
I can think of this in so many relationship types, and some I accept and know this is okay. I am on a different path to them, and the season or reason they are in my life is lovely, but maybe not a lifetime.
I can think of transactional relationships, from the ‘basista’ who makes me feel seen to the Bank, Utility, or SaaS platform where I feel very unseen, and therefore my loyalty and commitment are low.
Then there are the relationships that really do matter to me, that I am not giving enough time to. Am I taking them for granted? Do I not see them as vulnerable, and if they transform, can we transform together?
Then there are the relationships that have had a level of dependency, and for me, that has been my children. As a mum, you cannot be dependent on their presence, and that has been my most recent learning.
I imagine I am not alone. That quiet creep from their dependence on us as mums to the slow letting go. I started to read ‘Letting Go’ by David Hawkins. While walking around a small town in NSW, Australia, with my wee granddaughter in front of me.
I picked up this book in a second-hand bookshop. It’s weird how the right thing can appear at the right time. I want to leave you with these words that I have already drawn from reading it, my interpretation from my own experience, and words that an empty nester could read that might help to reset their emotions.
As relationships deepen and mature, they are transforming. We can begin to release some of the fear, expectation, resentment, guilt, and dependency that we may have unconsciously attached to them. We might not realise it, but we were requiring the other person to behave in a particular way in order for us to feel secure, loved, or significant to them.
This transformation does not mean caring less. In many ways, it allows us to love more.
The challenge we face is that when we depend upon another person for our sense of worth or significance, we can unknowingly place conditions around the relationship. I need you to need me. I need you to call me. I need you to include me. I need you to behave as you once did
Because we relied on some of these ‘agreements’ to reassure us that we still matter.
None of these transforming needs make us bad or weak. They are deeply human. When they remain unexamined, love can slowly become conditional and hold expectations. Once understood, we can find the desired space and the right type of love to evolve together, growing separately and together, and find a new way to create significance with one another.
My deep look at how to manage a transforming, strong, loving relationship has been the greatest awakening for me, and I want to finish this Ponderings with so much gratitude to my kids, who have helped me to navigate this extraordinary time and reassure them that I am okay, and I believe so much in their life decisions. I am excited about their futures and feel safe within my own.
I wrote this with love to all people experiencing transformations, and my prayer is that you discover the beauty of a new form of significant relationship, one that sustains and nourishes, and lets go of fear and sadness. Please do share your own experiences, there is great healing for all of us when we can listen and learn from other people.
With love,
Penny x
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