And I thought to myself, this can't go on anymore.

I sat my whole family down, four kids, my husband, and said, I can't do this anymore.

And they, they said, of course we, we wanna help.

Uh, we love you.

What is it that you do?

Yeah.

And they had absolutely no idea.

'cause I'd never, ever shared the burden with them.

welcome to the World Beyond Resilience Podcast.

I'm Carolyn Gibson.

And I am Angela Philp.

And today we are going to be speaking about a topic that took me a long time to not only explored, but to accept and be with, which is the shift from.

Independence, being able to do it all yourself and using that as the measuring stick for your self-worth and your resilient capacity to the connectivity, the joy and the relaxation of interdependence and interconnected.

Well, this is a topic that's very, very close to my heart and, for those who've listened all the way through to this podcast, it was in in the introduction that I talked about the real aha moment for me around resilience and how damaging this independence narrative was.

And just to repeat my, I was full on stay at home mother.

My husband worked seven days a week and I was used to coping with everything all by myself.

And I could do it and.

I could cope.

To what detriment I was on my own right.

But then I went back to work and I had a very de demanding job and I was really struggling to deal with home and work all the same time.

And I thought to myself, this can't go on anymore.

I sat my whole family down, four kids, my husband, and said, I can't do this anymore.

And they, they said, of course we, we wanna help.

Uh, we love you.

What is it that you do?

Yeah.

And they had absolutely no idea.

'cause I'd never, ever shared the burden with them.

They didn't know how to shop, they didn't know how to clean, they didn't know how to do the laundry.

They didn't know how to arrange their own social lives.

They did nothing and they had no visibility of it.

And, it just occurred to me how, isolated I'd made myself from them because.

They just didn't even share those experiences or that understanding with me, and I'd never let them.

They had to learn it all from scratch at that point in time because I was like, I can't do it anymore.

I, but it was really, really like eye opening, like I've been doing this all by myself all this time and never let them in.

Wow.

You know, when you say that, I get an image of you on an island and them on another island, them together on another island doing their stuff and some little boat.

You coming over in a boat doing whatever needs to be done and then back on your island sort of thing.

And, the, the independence narrative, which, I will give a caveat in a moment about, why a level of independence, there's a particular type of independence that's important, but just how it becomes Achilles heel and in in the shifting from resilience.

Narrative to the beyond resilient world.

We really made need to make that shift the way you did from independence to interdependence, because it's killing us.

It comes at two greater cost.

And, and again, it, I'm just noticing how when you shifted into interdependent how you built connection Yeah.

And you shifted from isolation, isolation to connection, Just to give the caveat that I was talking about before independence has kept us safe in independence, has been a way for us women, to, to, actually to thrive in some ways when we were very much, not financially.

For example, independent.

So as a 54-year-old, year old financially independent woman.

There's a certain sort of independence, uh, that is important.

And I, I remember my wonderful grandmother who was 34 when she had her first child because she decided that she wanted to be an independent.

She was stayed married, but she wanted to be an independent woman with her own, career.

She said A woman must always have her own bank account and we fought hard for that.

You know, so, so.

That's not the independence that we're, we are talking about.

What we are talking about here is what you were just saying.

This needs to not be a burden to anyone else and to hold it all and to do it all by ourselves.

Yeah.

And that was very much the narrative when I was growing up, my dad was always traveling and my mother had to do everything.

She mowed the lawn, she did the shopping, she did the, she, she ran her own business, And, and I remember my dad saying over and again, One of the things I love and value about your mother is that she's so strong and she's so independent.

Right.

But that's the, that's the message.

Right.

And, but she was also, again, he wasn't there.

She was isolated.

And I, I was quite used to that.

I have a relationship with my husband where we're very independent from each other and we go do our own holidays and our own thing all the time.

And for some of that, it's wonderful.

Right?

What a wonderful thing to have that independence, but it has to be a choice.

Hmm.

That's the thing.

And, and I think as you talk about it as being a choice, I think what's important there is recognizing that, it's not an either or.

We can be independent and interdependent, but until we see it as a choice, we can't be.

And part of the interdependence is, recognizing.

So many women I know will not ask their friends for help because they don't want to be a burden.

So we've inherited this idea that we are a burden.

Yeah.

When we, when we ask for help and when we can't do it all by ourselves.

And at the same time that goes with the, the, you know, glorifying the self-made man and glorifying the person who can, rise and not ask for help as well.

So these two parallel stories.

Happening that are heavily ingrained narratives.

And again, they, they keep us stuck in a sacrifice cycle.

They keep us stuck and surviving rather than thriving.

And, and what we really know, I think it was Margaret Meads that said, would it never doubt that a small group of people can, make big changes?

Because indeed it's, that's all that ever has.

But she didn't say one person.

She's a small group of people and, and it's together that we can really, share the load, find creative solutions.

This can even come come back to, I've gotta find an idea by myself and if I haven't found my own original idea than.

Then who am I?

And, and it's just, they're just such harmful narratives when, collective intelligence and, and the joy of co-creating, like, like the river again, the, the river is a collection of many, many interdependent drops and, and, and.

She, she's powerful because of the drops, right?

The, the impact and force and the longevity that she has is dependent not on one individual drop of water, but all of those drops, like working together.

So we, we've really gotta get with.

Stop being the machine that can go on forever and just continually extracting from ourselves and get with the true interdependence of the nature that we are.

Yeah.

So true.

And, it just, it does bring me right back to, when I did relinquish control and allow, much more interdependence.

You know, my sons who were in their early teens then were very, actually really happy to cook dinner at night.

And they loved it.

And they're both really great chefs now because they're happy to just jump in and, and make the food.

And, you know, I, I suggest this to my friends sometimes who say, I'm just so tired, I don't wanna make dinner tonight.

I love the fact that, and I'm so proud of them for being able to get in and do that.

And what a relief it was for me to finish the day and not have to then, To do dinner or whatever, we were all, all adding our creativity and our fun and nobody was feeling a huge burden.

Certainly not me, which was just, even just those little things was just made all the difference.

Yeah.

I love that story, Carolyn.

I really do.

And noticing the creativity that gets to come out of that.

And the, the creativity, the recognition of new strengths and capacities by the others.

We, we often think that, again, it's linear.

If I ask for help, then well, at best.

It's sort of like, well, they won't mind.

Yeah, yeah.

Right.

But we forget, what you've just said, just how much that's an opportunity to, for others, to develop their strengths and then be important in your life.

Well, exactly.

That's the importance.

And them feeling like they're contributing and they're helping and they're supporting their mother or their father or their SI siblings or whatever.

You forget how much joy that gives people.

Yeah.

The ability also to, to take care of someone else.

Exactly.

I love that.

So we encourage you if you are.

That you have to do it all by yourself, or you are back in the mindset that you are the one who has to do all the work and you can't ask for help.

Think again.

I.

I think again, there are people who, who love to give you their attention, who you can see that it would be a chance for them also, like Carolyn was just saying, to contribute to, to develop a strength to find new areas within themselves that they can grow.

And just, just remember that asking for help isn't a, a zero sum gain, or a, a transaction.

It's, an opportunity to develop connection and it's in connection that we thrive.

Absolutely.

Thank you for listening.

We'll see you again soon.

Thank you.

And that brings us to the end of another episode of the World Beyond Resilience Podcast.

If anything you heard today sparked an aha moment or made you think differently about resilience, please tell us about it in the comments.

We'd love to hear from you, and please share it with everyone you know for more episodes, exploring how we can thrive beyond just mounting back, follow our show on your favorite platforms.

And of course we have additional resources and deeper dives into all the topics we discuss on our website, which is world beyond resilience.com.

So we absolutely love this topic and we can see the possibility for this to create really powerful, vibrant, prosperous change in organizations and systems.

So.

If this conversation interests you and you start to feel that spark as well, and you think it would be useful for yourself or within your organization, feel free to get in contact.

So until next time, remember, there's a whole world of possibilities beyond just being resilient.

Take care.

Take care.