Latest / Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell / The Connected Goodbye

Transcript

The Connected Goodbye · Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate, a podcast covering all things relationships, separation and divorce.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: How to create healthy, happy, fulfilling relationships without sacrificing any part of yourself.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Supporting anyone feeling challenged in their relationship or marriage.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: These are confidential conversations for you if you're navigating separation, divorce or reorganising life afterwards.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Decide whether to stay or leave a relationship or marriage, divorce with less drama, and consciously choose what's next for you.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is recorded, the Warrentry people of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I acknowledge them as the original storytellers of this land.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to this week's episode of Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: All about the Connected Goodbye.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And this episode was sparked by my reading of an article in the New York Times recently about what Priya Parker, who's a conflict resolution facilitator, calls the connected goodbye.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's an intentional alternative to just fading away, ghosting, or unceremoniously ending a relationship or a group or even just a phase of life.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: And before I'd even heard of Parker and her connected goodbye, it's something that we actually did when we left our last home.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And this wasn't the home we'd shared with my kids' dad, it was the home we three moved to after the divorce.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it was incredibly meaningful, a really very special place where we healed, we connected as a family of three, where my kids grew from little children into teenagers.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: This place, this home, this space was sometimes you know quiet and reflective, sometimes loud, filled with friends and family.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: There was a pool, a big rambling bushblock.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: We created and stepped into really a wonderful, welcoming community that we're still connected with.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: We had amazing neighbours who became pseudo-parents to me and spare grandparents to the kids.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was a really special place for the three of us, an incredibly warm, healing home.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was also a really special physical space, a beautiful home.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, it was also where I stood solo, fully solo for the first time in a really long time, maybe the first time ever, really.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I parented solo.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: I parented with no one to catch me, no backup.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: I really grew into myself as a woman, a single woman, and I consciously chose and created a really rich, full life that I loved for myself, but also for the three of us, for the kids and I.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that that house, that home really held us as we did all of that.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the day we were leaving, one of my kids said, This is the place I remember feeling safest.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he wasn't just talking about, he wasn't talking about physical safety.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: He even at that as a young teenager, he understood that feeling of being safely held in this home that we created.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then it it really was time for us to leave.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: We knew it was time, yes, but there were parts of each of us that were not ready.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: We really did not want to say goodbye to that space.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so I guided us, I helped, I helped them, all of us.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: We created a ritual.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: We went room by room, um, together, the three of us, just the three of us, um, through the empty house, sharing a story or a memory of each room, of each other in those rooms.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: We stood on the back deck, arms around one another.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually getting tears in my eyes thinking about it.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we looked out down the block across the trees, and we breathed deeply the air of that special, special place.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we walked and then we walked the backyard and we each collected a rock from the many that littered the the block, just like the ones that the house had been built with.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: The house is a stone home.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we collected a rock, we chose one that felt right, that felt meaningful to each of us, and we took those rocks with us to our next home.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: So this was a house, yes, a building, yes.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you will have heard me speak about letting go of the family home in divorce if it's the right decision, and doing that strategic strategically, objectively, not just emotionally, if it's the right decision.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is still also true, right?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: This house and maybe your house too held us through summers and winters, through good times and the harder moments, the challenges of family and life.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: It held our stories, our challenges, our laughter, our tears.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: It had a much deeper meaning for us than just a house, just that stone building.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was our safe place, it was our haven, our home, and we left parts of ourselves there, lots of our love, and then we gathered up all our love and all our stories and all our hope for what was coming next.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: We squeezed our memories into those rocks as we held them in our hands and we said our goodbyes.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: We said our goodbyes to that house.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: We said thank you and we said our goodbyes.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, going back to Parker and her version of the connected goodbye, she breaks it into three components, and I'll just walk you through all three.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I want you to think about or I'm gonna do it for you twice.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Once for a house, once for a person, because I think most of you listening are either in the middle of leaving or thinking about leaving, one or the other, or both right now.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the shape of this, the shape of the goodbye doesn't change much, regardless of which one it is.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the first component is to acknowledge the ending.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds almost too simplistic to say out loud, but you have to actually name that it's over.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And Parker's point is that the ambivalence is what drains you, what drains everyone.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's not actually the ending itself.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I've talked about this a lot on the podcast and written about it a lot on social media, right?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the ending itself, it's the inability or the refusal to call it one.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: The half-leaving, the one foot in, one foot out, the maybe we're done.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the part that really costs you because you're paying emotionally for something that you haven't let yourself let go of.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: You're paying an emotional tax on an ending that you haven't let yourself actually acknowledge or have yet.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: With a house that can look like the walkthrough, the photo, standing in the kitchen saying out loud to whoever's in that room with you, this is the last time, this is the last meal we'll cook in this room, this is the last time we'll sleep in this bedroom, whatever it is, and not waiting until the removalist van's there full of all your stuff three weeks later.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: With a person, it's harder, right?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's no settlement date, there's no removalist van coming, there's no one moment, usually, sometimes there is, right?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's no one moment where that sentence comes out of your mouth.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's the conversation you have, or the one you keep almost having, or you have on loop, and you come back to it and come back to it before you actually go.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And and the slow fade isn't actually always the kindest way, it just shifts everything downstream a little bit, it shifts the cost out, it blows it out.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: You still pay that cost, you pay it later, often alone instead of together now.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: So acknowledging the ending is the first part.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Name it out loud to someone, whether it's to the other person in the relationship, whether it's to someone else, that's the whole first move.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Just naming it.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: The second move is taking stock, and this isn't about justifying anything, it's not staying, it's not leaving, not the years in between, it's about putting what the place or the person actually gave you, maybe took from you, on the record before you walk away from it, before you close it all up, right?
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: For a house that's easy to pick that's easy to picture, it's easy to do.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: I just told you how we did it for our house, the pool, the bushblock, the people next door who became more family than just neighbours.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's the stock taking.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's saying this held something real and I want to note it before we go.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: I want to acknowledge it.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take stock of it and acknowledge what it was and what it meant for all of us.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: For relationship, again, it's a bit harder because we tend to do one of two things when something ends badly.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: We either burn the whole thing down in our memory and it's all bad, or we sort of varnish over it until it's unrecognizable.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: We look back with rose-coloured glasses.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I've I've said before on the podcast, for years I had a folder on my computer which was labelled not all bad, and it was photos of my our marriage, our relationship, our family across time when we were happy, when things were good.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Just as a reminder, as I moved through the separation, the divorce, the negotiation, parenting afterwards, just as a reminder that we did share something really significant.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: We did love each other once upon a time, and that relationship was not all bad because I had a tendency to want to burn it all down, blow it all up, and I still had to parent with this guy.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, still have to, right?
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Taking stock is not that binary, it's not it was all good, and it's not it was all wasted, terrible, it was all bad.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's asking, what did this actually give me?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: What did this teach me?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: What did this actually let me become that perhaps I couldn't have become anywhere else?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Not who were they to me, it's who did I get to be there in that relationship or in that house, right?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Who did I become?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Who was I in that space?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a harder question than it sounds.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: So this is an invitation to sit with it before you just answer it off the top of your head.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Really sit with it.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Who did I get to be there that perhaps I couldn't have been anywhere else?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: What did it show me about myself?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: What it did it teach me about myself, who did I become?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the third part, which is the saying goodbye, the ritual.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: If what I'm sharing about in this episode or any episode is speaking to you and you would like to explore working more closely with me, there is an opportunity to book a free intro call with me in the show notes.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to support you through your own reflect, reclaim, and liberate coaching experience.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Parker's really clear that it doesn't need to be dramatic.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: It can be a last dinner, a final game, a walk through the empty rooms like we did, um, a photograph or photographs.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: We had ours for the house, and you can create your own, whether that's for a house or a person.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And for a person, this is the one that I want to be really clear about because it's one that most often just doesn't happen.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not every relationship ending gets a ritual.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you might be divorcing and you'll finally get that certificate, that piece of not paper, but that that thing that marks the ending.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: But before that, some of you might be grieving someone right now with no last conversation, last dinner, nothing to really mark it by, just an absence where that person used to be, good, bad, or otherwise, right?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: There is still an absence, and I think that it's really powerful to name that as its own kind of loss and grief.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Again, whether it was good, bad, indifferent, whether it blew up, whether it faded away, that relationship was significant, or you wouldn't be here listening to this.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that significance really deserves some kind of honouring, some kind of ritual, but you might just have to build that ritual for and by yourself.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: You might not necessarily get it with the other person.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: If it's a more collaborative and kind, compassionate kind of uncoupling, you can absolutely do this together.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: If not, then it's on you to find and create your own kind of ritual.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: So wherever you are right now, maybe you're leaving a house, you're about to hand the keys back on a house, or you're circling around the ending of a relationship.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna leave you with the same three questions.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is you're leaving, a house, a relationship, a job even.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that you're leaving right now that you haven't actually said goodbye to?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: So name the thing.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if you did, if you did the walkthrough, the photos, the last dinner, whatever it was, what would you need to say out loud standing in that room or across the table?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: What is it that you want to say out loud?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the really hard one, not who were they to you, but who did this place or this person, this relationship allow you to become?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: What version of you got built here, lived here, grew here, learned here?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: What version of you got built here that could not have been built anywhere else?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they're questions that you don't necessarily have to ask or answer immediately, but it's really important to ask them, and that's the practice, asking them, sitting with them, allowing them to allowing your own answers to come up, and then maybe creating that ritual for yourself.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: I want to finish by saying a connected goodbye doesn't make everything better.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make leaving, whether it's a house, a home, a relationship, easy, painless.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say better, I think it does make it better, but it doesn't make it easy or painless.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: It just means that you take back some of your control, power.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: It means that you get to be the one to define what this looks like and what this means.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: You close the door and you walk away instead of it being sort of slammed in your face.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Even if leaving this relationship is or was something you wanted and something you chose, you can still create this ritualistic connected goodbye.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And circling back to our old home, of course, that house isn't gone, it's just somebody else's now, with new stories, new chapters being written in those same rooms, and that sense of safety my son spoke about, like I said to him that day, that's inside of you.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: You created it here, and it gets to come with you wherever you go next.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: You get to take that with you.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we drove away from that house without rocks, feeling almost ready to start writing our own next chapter.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Almost ready, and I think that's the key.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be ready to say goodbye, you just have to be almost ready, ready to create a new version of you of you, a new story for yourself, a new version of home.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: As always, thank you for being here.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And if you know someone who you think would like, benefit from, feel supported by listening to this episode, please share it with them.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hard things are done more easily when we do them in community, even if part of that community is or one aspect of that community is a podcast community.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for being here.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Until next week, bye for now.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Sally Ann Hartnell, divorce coach and strategist, and you've been listening to Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: You can follow me on Instagram at Reflect Coaching, and if you can think of anyone who would love or benefit from listening to this episode, please share it with them.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'd also be so grateful if you would follow and review the podcast so we can get it in the ears of a whole lot more people just like you who are ready to reclaim and liberate themselves in life and love.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll join me next week for another episode of Reflect, Reclaim and Liberate.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Until then.