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Karla: Hello and welcome to Conversation Changes, the podcast where we hear from women who are changing the conversation, guests who inspire experts in their field, and those who are doing things just a little bit differently. Each week, I ask a guest to share the lessons they've learned, their experiences, challenges and insights. We have conversations which I hope spark thoughts and discussions long after you finish listening. I'm your host, Karla Liddle-White, and I began the podcast with an aim to amplify women's voices, challenge perceptions and change the conversation.

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I love it when I come away from a conversation viewing a part of my life very differently, and this happened when I spoke to relationship coach Linda Lazzaroni this week. There are so many insights packed into this episode, so I really hope you listen to the end, because it's an episode peppered with hints and tips for improving your relationships across the board, whether that's in romantic relationships or relationships with friends and family and we also delve into work relationships. Just so many moments throughout where I realized I really am not intentional in my relationships very much. I very much go with the flow, and this episode was very eye opening for me. I want to be far more intentional in all aspects of my life. So this conversation was very much a highlight for me. This season is all about change, and Linda and I talk about the changes that happen throughout relationships and the changes you can make to your relationships to improve them. I asked Linda to choose three changes to talk about, and we speak on changes to romantic relationships, changes that take place in relationships when someone passes away, and how grief affects us, and different kinds of grief, actually. And we also talk about what happens in relationships when you change your environment. For example, we talk about moving country and moving away from friends and family and how that affects us very deeply. It was incredibly varied conversation, and I began by asking Linda about herself and her journey to becoming a relationship coach.

Hi, Linda. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Why don't you start off by telling us a bit about yourself?

Linda: Sure. And thank you very much for having me here and for helping to get my voice heard. So I am a relationship coach. I live in Switzerland with my husband. I've been living in Switzerland for a year. Well, I'm originally from Ireland. I was born in Ireland and I grew up in London, and I moved to Luxembourg when I met my partner. And then since then, we've moved to Switzerland. So I've been living outside of the UK for five years now.

Karla: Five years? Oh, wow. That's such a long time. How are you finding that?

Linda:  Yeah, it's a mixture of things. It's fun, it's challenging, it's life changing, for sure. In many ways, the question of who am I? Has come up more in the last five years than in my entire life. And I think that's really connected to being in a different environment and what that can bring up for people.

Karla: Oh, definitely, yeah. I feel like I've grown as a person more in this tiny amount of time than I have living in the UK, because I think you're just pushed against all your boundaries in a way.

Linda:: Yeah, you have to confront things. There aren't any kind of places to hide in some ways. Or distract, I think, is probably a better word, growing up in London. London is an amazing city and I love it and I miss it, but it's also a great place to be distracted. There's so much on offer, there's so much that you can do to not be alone with your thoughts, whereas actually, both Luxembourg and Switzerland are much quieter. And I have then found that that's given me a lot more head space because there is a lot to do, but there isn't as much pushing you to do.

Karla: Were you a relationship coach before you moved, or was that after you moved?

Linda:: Yeah, so that was after I moved. So, yeah, that's one of my big changes, was changing my career. So my background is in public relations and communications. So when I worked in London, I worked at Transport for London in the press office and also at the Metropolitan Police in the press office at Scotland Yard was my first full time job after university. So, yeah, that's going back quite some years. But my last job before leaving London was at Transport for London. And then when I first moved to Luxembourg, I worked in the International School of Luxembourg in their communications team. And it was really then and living in Luxembourg and seeing how many people start businesses in Luxembourg, that I started to get quite inspired myself to do my own thing.

Linda: I'd already set up a mini project with my husband, which was a small filming company. But what I'd realized from that is, although it was a great idea, I wasn't passionate about it and neither was he. And we could see it was something that was needed, we could see it had a lot of potential, but we weren't connected to it. And that's when I realized, okay, I like this entrepreneurial spirit, doing something that's your own, but I need to be connected to it. And then I went on a journey, actually, through training as a counselor, volunteering as a counselor for children, and then came round to training as a coach, because while I really love and value counseling, I found that I do quite like goal setting and achievement and celebration, and there's a place for both therapy and coaching.

Linda: I found that I was moving more towards coaching, so I changed as a coach and then I wanted to specialize. And something that's really important to me is relationships. I'd say they're very much the foundation of my life. And also due to my personal experiences, I really thought, wow, okay, more needs to be done about being intentional in relationships. I noticed how unintentional I was and how often we are in society going with the flow, which is nothing wrong with it. Overall, it's great to be spontaneous as well, but I think there are some things that it would be good to consider more carefully and be a bit more intentional about. And that can even be how you have fun. Doesn't have to be heavy topics.

Karla: Can you go into that more deeply about the goal setting?

Linda:  So, really good question. So therapy I would say is about psychological change and it can quite often be about your past or past experiences. So your past self, past experiences that can then support you in your present state. So it might be looking back at your family history, it might be looking at traumas that you've had. And therapy doesn't have to have a goal. It can be a place to speak and be heard and that can be very soothing and therapeutic in itself.

Whereas coaching, I would say, is concerned with behavior change and it is very much goal orientated. I mean, there are many different types of coaching, but generally speaking, most of the coaching training that people receive does evolve around helping people to set goals, to identify blocks, to achieve those goals and celebrate those goals. So yeah, I would say the main difference is psychological change for counseling and therapy and behavior change for coaching.

But they are intertwined and coaching is the cousin of therapy. Therapy came first, so they're very closely linked. And then with relationship coaching more specifically, it's really in its simplest form, it's having that niche of it being about relationships. So the goal will be in connection to a relationship, the blocks will be in connection to a relationship, and the achievement and celebration will be achieving and celebrating within that relationship.

Karla: Okay, that makes a lot of sense now. So who do you work with?

Linda: : There are three areas. So I work with individuals, I work with couples, and I also work with businesses. So with individuals, they could be coming for coaching to look at a relationship they have with themselves, which I would highly recommend because that helps all relationships. And you will always be in a relationship with yourself. You might not always be in other relationships, but you will always be in a relationship with yourself. So that is a really incredible starting point. 

So I have people that come and we look at a relationship they have with themselves. That could be how they spend time with themselves, what their boundaries are, how they look after themselves, their life plans, their goals. They could also be coming as an individual, but wanting to work on a relationship with a partner or family member, that's absolutely fine. 

Everybody doesn't have to be present in relationship coaching and there's benefits to that as well. Or maybe they want to look at relationships with friends or coworkers and that could even be making friends. It doesn't have to be friendships they already have. And then in terms of couples, that could be about communication, it could be about connection, could be about building life plans and goals together. It could also be about the culture of their relationship and looking at that a bit more closely if they want to make changes. Or it might be very specific and be about the stages of relationships. So for example, moving house, moving in together, moving countries, having children, changing jobs and how that's impacting the relationship and all of that being very intentional about those things. So coming to coaching to say okay, we're about to move in together, we'd like to set a goal for that and then have some support on that journey because that's actually a really huge step in many ways going from living individually or with others to living with somebody that is your partner.

And then businesses, it can be team relationships, it could be relationships between employees and it could also be personal relationship coaching. So if companies and employers are open minded then I would be happy to coach their employees personally because I think any good employer knows that when people's personal relationships are healthy and they feel happy, that benefits everybody. So it could also be about having personal coaching at work. My mission is to normalize investing in relationships and to normalize the fact that we do all have challenges.

Karla: So do people come to you with a goal in mind or do they come to you with a problem and then you goal set? How does that work?

 Linda: It is normally, I would say 9,10 times out of ten, they are coming with something that they are not so happy with or that they know they need to work on, but they don't quite know where to start or how. So we start with having a chemistry session and that's a session I don't charge for and we just meet and we see how we get on together because they are going to be sharing very personal things with me. It's important that they trust me, they feel comfortable with me.

So in that session we will talk about what brought them to me. And quite often I'll have individual people that say I'd like to meet somebody. And then during that chemistry session, the more that we talk and we look at their life and I ask questions about them, it can often come back round to actually I'd like to start on the relationship with myself. And again that supports them in finding a relationship that will hopefully really work for them.

So they can come with something and that can evolve and change, that could even evolve and change. In session three, it might not necessarily evolve in the beginning. It's because we are on a journey together and I'm asking a lot of questions that are opening a lot of other doors or avenues or boxes. And so often the person might then say, actually it's this. And similarly with a couple, they might come and they might be bickering. And then I might ask them questions about what's positive in their relationship and what they like about their partner and then they might start to find that, oh, actually we'd like to start looking at how we can have more fun together.

And that focus might shift from daily problems to having more fun. And that fun might help to then ease the small issues at home. You can start to maybe find a bit more connection and let things go a little bit more easily. So yeah, it's very diverse because I.

 Karla: Was reading in the New York Times because I was researching relationship coaching. More people are turning to it and I was wondering why that? Why you think that might be? Because I was wondering whether it was because of the pandemic and people being thrust together and not being able to go about their daily lives or whether there's something in a shift in the generations. I don't know what your thoughts are on that.

Linda: I think it's both. And obviously I'm making assumptions rather than being informed by any kind of research. But I have lots of friends and family around me and I've seen that shift personally a lot in my personal relationships, in my circles of friends and family. And I think you're right. I think it is a generational thing where for the first time we, I think, have more space and time. I know we, you know, I know people are working long hours and all that kind of thing, but in a way, because of the conveniences we have in life, down to household appliances, putting things in a washing machine rather than having to hand wash everything, we are finding time savings and then looking at, okay, what else needs to improve? Then we've mastered this or we've got that in place and we're more aware.

Psychologically, I think psychology has always been there, I mean, almost since time began. But I think there's now a thirst for it that there wasn't before. And we're moving away from looking at things, looking at difficulties through a lens of shame and hiding to looking at them through a lens of learning, evolving, growing, changing, knowing that it's actually healthy. And so I think that narrative in society is changing.

And then I think you're right. I think with the Pandemic, our relationships were under the microscope and lots happened and lots changed as well. I remember reading articles that were saying during the pandemic, random things popping up. You might not find your partner as attractive at the moment and find it difficult to be intimate because you just see them all the time, and you're both in your pajamas all day long, and you see their work self at home now, and maybe that's not as attractive as you imagined they would be at work.

And so it's coming out of that as well now. We're coming out of that. It's like it's almost, I find, in my relationship. How do we create space again? Because we need that space to bring some attraction back. Of course it's there, but I noticed my partner's been away this weekend, and we're being very nice to each other because we're not with each other, and we did get into that habit of spending an awful lot of time together, and it becomes comfortable. So, yeah, I think there's huge changes, and I just think it's such a positive thing because when I first started training as a counselor a few years ago, this wasn't what I could see coming. And I actually felt like, I really want to do this. But it's a huge educational piece.

It's not something that people are familiar with. And so first I'll really have to educate to then be able to coach people. Whereas actually that is happening now. And I think definitely since the pandemic, so people are understanding more and more that relationship coaching is available and the differences between therapy and coaching and that both are okay and you might need one before the other or you might need one and not the other.

Karla: Which is why I wanted to talk to you, because I've heard of it, but I didn't know the nuances of it, like what you're saying now. And so I'm like, oh, it's an avenue that I hadn't thought of, because sometimes I'm like therapy in a relationship, we don't need therapy, we're fine, but maybe we just need a little bit of coaxing to get to the next stage in a relationship.

 Linda: Yes. So I use an example of a car. So you have a car, you take it for an MOT test, where you do in the UK and anywhere else in the world, some kind of vehicle maintenance check when there isn't anything going wrong. And it's to check, it's road worthy. It's to check. It's going to be safe. You're not going to hurt anybody on the road, you're not going to hurt yourself. That's done before something goes wrong. It's preventative, and that's really normal.

And we do that every year, and I just think we don't do that with our relationships. Or I didn't I don't want to speak for everybody, but I didn't. And I just found it crazy. I was building up to getting married, and I just suddenly thought, how can we invest so much more time in things like car maintenance rather than looking at our relationships and looking at prevention rather than cure? And my husband thought, oh, you're just going into such a panic, you're ruining a very lovely moment of our lives by worrying.

And there definitely was some fear there. I'm sure there's fear there. It's a big commitment, but that's the point. It's a big commitment. Why are we just going with the flow and hoping for the best? I mean, I'd like a life jacket. So at the time I contacted some therapists in Luxembourg and I said, I'm getting married. I'm starting to feel quite nervous about the commitment that we're making and also just wanting to really check in on our relationship, on who we are as people and check that we're aligned.

It looked like we were, but we didn't have very in-depth conversations and actually quite a few of the therapists were fully booked. But what they did come back and say was, oh, congratulations, you're the first person that's come to me before you've had a problem. And often people are coming here around 20 years mark or ten years mark. Of course, there's nothing wrong with that, it's good to go, you will still benefit.

But again, it's why not have that life jacket in the beginning that might help. And so we did find somebody in the end and we went and even she was quite surprised and sort of like, what's the problem? And I was like, well, there isn't a big problem. I mean, I'm here because we're making a big commitment and I'm looking at as getting to know each other on a deeper level and having some kind of facilitated conversation because it's great if you have good communication in a couple, but sometimes there are communication challenges, you can fall into patterns. And I really felt like a third person would help us to just dig a little bit deeper without it feeling personal.

And that's exactly what happened. We spent quite a few of those sessions looking at our cultural differences and things that I was struggling with, our cultural differences, and that was connected to communication as well as language. And then I felt reassured for that time, but then I thought, there's so much more to this. There's so many more conversations that we're not having around our family history, what we'd like to take from our families and bring into our new relationship, what we'd like to change or leave behind or do differently.

Our communication styles, our attachment styles, which for anybody that doesn't know is there's some psychology behind it, that there's different types of attachment style and how you will form an attachment to a partner or friend or a colleague is often based on your early childhood. That's so the theory says. And one of the attachment styles is secure. Some of them can be avoidant or anxious. And actually my attachment style is anxious, so I can tend to need a bit more reassurance than others.

So that kind of data was really helpful for me personally to know, okay, I'm not an anxious person, but I can become anxious in relationships and for my partner to know, okay, she's not trying to constantly bother me or get attention. She does need a bit more reassurance than other people. And it helped massively to kind of see those things. Before we came on here together, I thought of a list because I know you were thinking about asking me how I'd been intentional.

And I mentioned that we looked at our family histories, we looked at our personality types and it happens that my husband is an architect and I'm an entertainer and they are on complete opposite ends of the scale. There are 16 personality types. He is here, I am here. There are all the others in between us. There are no similarities in our personality. There are none. When you look at the styles, the types, that's beautiful because we are bringing skills and knowledge that the other doesn't have. But that is also very challenging for both of us.

But again, that insight helped to depersonalize that and go, okay, it is your personality type. Or we're looking at families, okay, is how you've been socialized in your family, doesn't mean we can't work to change that. But I know you're not doing this intentionally. This is something you've always done and that's where it comes from. We looked at our personal values and our shared values and we looked at the differences and similarities there.

We looked at our languages of love which for anyone that doesn't know, there's a book by Gary Chapman called Languages of Love and there's five different styles and our languages of love are actually the same. But we both find it hard to communicate in that language of love, which is words of appreciation. So we are people that like to hear words of appreciation, whether that's a thank you, whether that's somebody noticing something about you that's very specific to you, just small words of appreciation.

So we tried to get into the habit more of sharing them and saw a huge difference actually in how we related to each other and felt connected. We looked at our belief systems and where those beliefs had come from and whether they were still valid and our differences in beliefs and had some interesting, sometimes heated conversations about them. We looked at our communication preferences and talked a lot about psychological safety, which for me is very much about feeling comfortable about speaking to somebody. So what do you need to feel psychologically safe, to open up, to be vulnerable, to be yourself, to not feel that you need to come to somebody in a defensive way or without the real issue, being comfortable, getting to the deeper level, what's underneath, which can be hard and sometimes feel quite exposing. But if you've got somebody that is providing that safety, that you're not going to be judged, that they know what you find difficult, and that might be that you find it difficult to speak, to share your feelings. And if they're there to support you in that and not taking that as a criticism or feeling defensive themselves, it can make the world of difference.

And we also looked at roles and responsibilities. So what we're both doing within the couple and tried to align them to skills and preferences, but they'll be subject to change. And one thing I really want to say after running through that whole list is our relationship is perfectly imperfect and it took a long time to do all of that, and you can do it much quicker if you have a relationship coach that was over a series of couple of years.

But what I would like to do is combine all of that learning and all of those exercises into workshops for people so they can come to some really fun couples away day, couples retreat kind of workshops where we can go through some of those things again in a facilitated way and probably get a lot of that work done much quicker than I did with my partner, because we didn't have somewhere like that to go.

Karla: So you led on going to a relationship coach was hesitant. Was he okay with that? How did he perceive it?

Linda: So actually, I didn't know about relationship coaching then, and I think it's become more popular. So it was a therapist. And so he was very hesitant and in his mind and definitely culturally, he saw going to a therapist as when you have a problem and when something's really wrong and you need help, you need help almost urgently, almost like dialing for emergency services. That's where he positioned that.

He didn't have a stigma attached to it, but it was like, that's the end of the road. So why are we going to the end of the road when we're getting married and it should be the beginning? So I had to kind of talk to him about that and say, I don't see it like that. But what was difficult was that each therapist I was emailing was saying, wow, okay, this is new, thank you, congratulations to you. So I was like, okay, I've got my partner who's hesitant, and therapist that's saying, okay, you're doing something different to everybody else.

I was like, okay, well, these people are coming back and saying that they're surprised I'm doing it. And he was saying exactly that. See? See what I mean? Is it really necessary? And I was like, no, but they are congratulating me and I'd still like to go. And so I think we had four or five sessions and there were points where the therapist was saying, okay, so what we here for today. And it felt like there was a bit of, okay, what is it?

I needed guidance, I needed that conversation to be facilitated. But of course, as I said, with therapy, it can be about psychological change and it can be about the past. And actually it was more for me about our present and our future, which is coaching. So again, counseling and therapy is often related to the past, not always, whereas coaching is very much the present and the future. And so I was trying to make something fit somewhere that actually it didn't. And I hadn't discovered relationship coaching. So, yeah, that was how our journey with it started.

And then actually, when I did look into coaching more and speak to my husband about coaching, he was far more comfortable with that and said, okay, I feel that's more tangible. We set a goal, it sounds more positive. So he was more comfortable with that. And in a way, I hope that will help couples and individuals too, that I see it very much. One of the other things that frustrated me was I'd done a lot of this stuff at work.

I'd done personality types to check how I would work with colleagues. I had been on team away days, team building days. I had objectives and goals to reach. I had mid and end of year reviews. I had weekly meetings with my manager, with my team, to check in to understand what was going on, if anybody needed help, if there was problems we could foresee coming. And I just thought, why don't we do this in our relationships?

Why don't we have relationship away days? Why don't we have an end of year review and a mid year review that's fun and celebrate everything we've done and everything we've overcome, and we're doing so much work in our personal relationships, and that's not documented and celebrated. That was really what I wanted to do, to say, let's balance the emphasis. Let's do both, and let's actually, I would say one key piece of advice for people is to look at what you like at work and what's worked really well, whether that's in previous jobs, even maybe at university or college, what worked really well with how you were learning, how you were interacting, what tools were used.

You can apply them to your relationships, but the best thing is you can make them really fun and really specific to you. So as a couple, if you love going hiking, do some of those things during the hike, bring some of that stuff there. If you always have a morning coffee on Sunday, have that as a celebration of what you've done that week together as a couple, individually, you can add all of these things into your daily life. They don't have to be extra work.

They don't have to feel like heavy tasks. If you're not in the habit of doing it, it could be helpful to start with a coach to kind of kick start that. But if coaching is not something that you're in a position to be able to do or that you want to do right now, you can absolutely look at things that you really like from your work environment and apply them at home. Having regular meetings and checking in with each other.

 Karla: Such a good point, because at my work, we do a once a week meeting and we have tensions, so we can bring any tension that's like any blocker to our work or something we're not happy with that someone's doing. And it's not impersonal, but because you're bringing it as attention, the emphasis is on the tension and not your relationship with that person. It really helps. It just gets resolved and you move on. It's a lot easier. And also we have like weekly wins. Like what did you win on this week?

 Linda: I never do that. Why don't you have that pinned on your fridge? Weekly wins and you write them down and at the end of the week you celebrate in whatever way you want to, whatever that might be for you.

I love the tensions idea because that's exactly it. And again, that's coming back to coaching. It's about looking at I am just facilitating a process with individuals or people, and they are on a team together and we're looking at the problem. I'm not ever looking at, okay, so you did this behavior and it's had a negative impact. Those words won't come out in that way. It's more about, okay, so what is the problem with what's happening with that behavior?

Maybe trying to help the other person to see that and then working on improving it. But it's not about you said this, they said that, that kind of thing. No, that doesn't work. I've tried that. Yeah, I've been there. That's why I'm here.

Karla: So I wanted to touch on something that was close to me because my husband and I are coming up for twelve years together saying out loud I'm like, well, thank you, but I was wondering, I would like to touch on the different seasons of a relationship and how they change over time and what your thoughts are on that. Because if we hadn't changed together, I don't know if we would be where we are now, if you see what I mean. You both have to sort of be on that journey together. And I was wondering what your thoughts are on that.

Linda: Yeah, it's so interesting because you are on that journey together and you are also on individual journeys and there's so much outside of the two of you that is impacting that as well and bringing changes.

 Even if you're in a new work environment and that company has a different culture to the one before, you might actually start to really lean on that and enjoy that culture and bring some of that home. And so that's a change. But yeah, I mean, relationships are really a series of beginnings and endings and deaths and rebirths. And I've seen that so much. I am not the same person I was when I met my husband, and I won't be in the next year. And I think that we let go or we evolve from one stage and it allows us to move to the next stage. And I really see it almost linked to the life cycle through life, how we change from a child into a teenager, into somebody that's now studying or working, becoming more independent and having to let go of each of those stages and evolve in each of those stages as well.

 C: So to me it's very natural. And when we talk about the seasons, I see as there being all kinds of weather in relationships. There is sunshine, there are storms, there is everything in between, there are moments of happiness, there are moments of doubt, and that's really normal. And I would say one of the models that I like again, which I found in work was the norming no, the, the forming storming norming and performing.

And they've added a journey in a forming stage, when you're in a new work environment, you are bringing your best self, you're the new employee. People are also bringing their best self. They're being very kind with you, very considerate, knowing that you don't know everything, you don't know everyone's name. Things are really quite calm and comfortable ideally. And then you're going into the storming stage once you've settled in a bit more and you start to say, okay, actually, I wouldn't do this piece of work like that, or I don't understand why we have to do this like that. And there could be some conflict there. You might be bringing new ideas that the team are not used to and they might have things that you're not used to and there can be some conflict.

Then hopefully if you can work through that, you get to the norming stage where you start to feel more comfortable with each other, you know, each other's personality types, each other's quirks, how to work together, what things might be challenging and you can anticipate them. And then you can get to the performing stage doing that really great work because you have that closeness, you have that psychological safety, you have that understanding.

And then the adjoining is very much about celebrating that. But anything, I would relate that to personal relationships because I think that the forming stage is the best self that can even be making a new friend. You turn up for the first coffee together, you are trying to be your best self, you want to make a good impression, hopefully you'd like to have a new friend and they're probably doing the same.

And then you get into the storming stage of that intimate relationship or friendship where you start to see, okay, everything behind the best self and there's nothing wrong with what's behind there. We all have all manner of things behind there. Our quirks, our boundaries, our differences, our likes, our dislikes. And then again, hopefully you get out of that stage, you get to the norming stage where in the friendship. You become really close. You understand each other, you know what each other likes and dislikes, you know what each other's boundaries are. And you can perform great in the friendship. You can become very close together, you can support each other, you can spend some great times together and have those celebrating moments.

So I would see it very much like that. But this is happening all the time. So if you have a new pet in your couple, that brings you back to the forming stage because suddenly everything's changed. There's now somebody else to look after. They are behaving in a different way in your environment together. The two of you are interacting with this pet differently to each other, probably because you have different styles.

And then maybe you're going to have some conflict about that. Well, you're doing this and I'm trying to teach the pet that. Or I prefer that we looked after the pet like this. So that can happen for anything. It could be a new baby, it could be one of you having a new job. It could be moving, it could be grief and loss. It could be biological changes that we have as humans. Our bodies change, we go through different cycles in life.

So all of those things could bring you back to the forming stage or the storming stage. And to me, it's really helpful to look at it like that and see that there are these seasons that you go through and that's okay. And it's about maybe understanding, okay, what stage are we in? This does feel a bit stormy. Why does it feel stormy? How can we make it feel like the morning after the storm? What do we need to bring that calm back? What changes have happened? Because sometimes if we're not being very conscious, we might not even realize, okay, that has had an impact. That change of job or that change of house has had an impact.

Karla: It's almost like awareness is a huge tool to be using. This week I had two deaths in the family and I couldn't work out why I couldn't concentrate at work. And it just like light bulb. Like, of course I'm affected, like awareness of that suddenly then changed my whole perspective.

 Linda: It really is that's the fundamental beginning, exactly like you said, is the awareness. Awareness of what's happening, awareness of how you feel, your perspectives. All of that stuff I shared at the beginning, having the awareness of all of that kind of background stuff helps. And also that compassion. You were compassionate with yourself. You stopped and said, and again, that's a relationship with yourself. You're looking after yourself and saying, okay, what's happening?

Linda: And you're saying, okay, what do I need? And that's exactly what you did. You said, okay, I'm not going to give myself a hard time. I'm going through grief and loss. It's natural that I can't concentrate. I think it's a topic that's not spoken about enough. And again, it impacts our lives. We go through grief and loss all of the time. Actually, when I worked at the International School in Luxembourg, there was a lot of grief and loss that I hadn't appreciated happened.

So a teacher might pass away, a child might lose a parent. Teachers leave and go to another school and teach somewhere else. So suddenly a child's favorite teacher is gone, new teachers come, children are anxious about how they're going to interact with a new teacher. And it's difficult to go from the change of maybe having a favorite teacher to a new teacher that's not your favorite teacher anymore. It doesn't mean they're a bad teacher. They're different.

And there's that change. And so the school actually invited a woman in who I'll send you the details that you can potentially put somewhere if you'd like to. But she specialized in grief and she specialized in grief because she looked at the losses that she'd experienced in her life and felt that, again, a bit similarly to me with relationship coaching. Well, where is this service? Where can I go? Who can I talk to?

And so she was talking to us about grief actually being connected to any loss that you have. So, for example, moving house, you will grieve for that property if you had any kind of attachment to it. You have memories there. And she talked about ways to process grief and loss. And that led me to look a bit more closely into grief. And also the children I was counseling at the time as a volunteer counselor online, were often sharing stories of grief or loss.

And I discovered a book called The Grief Recovery Method. And in that book, they talk a lot about the different types of loss. Things like divorce, even things like having a parent that's not present in your life, which could be that they live with you, but they have alcoholism, so they're not present. So that is a loss and you're grieving the parent that you don't have. So there's so many different ways of understanding and appreciating grief and loss and that that's happening to us all the time.

And so I added it as a change because with all of the changes I've experienced, there has been grief and loss. Changing from working in public relations to counseling to then coaching and becoming a relationship coach. There was grief and loss. I was strongly attached to my identity as a public relations officer, a project manager, senior press officer, all these titles that we get given. And it was difficult to let go of them and it was difficult to put my new title out there. And so there was that grief and loss and change.

So yeah, to me it was something that I really wanted to talk about and again, normalize that this happens throughout life. And yeah, I would really recommend that book. I didn't work through the whole thing. I read quite a bit of it. But the beginning is, I think, both of the authors, one of them was divorced, had gone through a divorce, and one of them had lost a child, and they came together in that grief.

: So again, it's just showing the difference of their circumstances, but actually how there was a shared journey of grief and again, a different journey for both of them.

Karla: Yeah, I'd never thought of that because I left a job, because of the stresses of the job, not for any other reason. And my leaving due, everybody came. It was like the best party. I went home and I sobbed and I was like, what have I done? And my husband was like, what's going on? It's a job. Why are you sobbing? And I was sobbing like I've lost someone. It was really heartfelt. And it's only now, just talking to you, I'm like, I was grieving because it was one of the best workplaces I'd ever worked in. And the people yeah, it was just the the stress just took its toll. I couldn't do it anymore. Yeah, but I did miss it. And I miss it. I've missed it for years. But now you're saying that I'm like I've accepted that it was grief, because you always think of grief as losing a person or a pet. Grieving a loss of a situation is not something I'd thought about before.

Linda: Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, again, just normalizing that. And you might choose to separate from your partner and you will still grieve even if you were the person that wanted that separation, because there is a loss, there is a loss of that relationship. It might not be working. You might want different things now, but you had a relationship together, you have memories, you had a connection. That connection will now change.

It might still be there if you share children or responsibilities, but it will change. So you can be grieving, that change and that loss. But then there is, as with the cycle of life, with death and rebirth, there is a rebirth. You go to another job, it won't be the same, it will be different. But that, to me, is very much the kind of cycle that we go through.

Karla: I wanted to touch on your third change, which is moving countries, because it's such a big life change. And I wanted to talk about how your relationships changed because it's seemingly a big change, moving country. But then you have, like, these millions of tiny changes that happen, and I wonder what your reflections are on that change or changes.

Linda: When I reflected on this, I thought, well, my relationship with my partner changed. We went from being in a long distance relationship to living together and long distance. There were lots of different dynamics there where we would try to have really fun weekends together. We would try to have difficult conversations on the phone. So that when we had that time together in person, it was really quality time.

And then we went from that and time that was carefully planned and considered, or actually intentional, to living together, where it's seeing each other all the time, getting into each other's routine, getting into our own routines. That was a big change.

Karla: Your family or friends in the UK, how was that separation?

 Linda: Tthat separation was very hard because I hadn't appreciated how much of a support system I had without even knowing it. And that even when I think back to having really close relationships with colleagues at work, I had colleagues that became friends, that if I was having a personal problem, I could bump into them in the kitchen and say this is going on, I'm feeling really bad, or can we go for five minutes in the breakout area?

And they would support me and help me and I would do the same for them and then that would ease that challenge, even if it was a personal challenge. But I could talk to people at work in that way. So I found myself alone, or felt alone, because you're not alone, you can reach out to people and people are always interested in making friends. But again, you're starting from the beginning. That relationship, that close relationship isn't there.

: You're building that you're in the forming stage and you're not in the norming stage. And when you're going through that change and lots of difficult and uncomfortable feelings, it would be great to have somebody that you're already in the norming stage with rather than forming. So that was challenging. But also what I did notice about my relationships with my family and my friends was that actually we developed a deeper level of closeness.

I had to share more than I might when I was at home because I had the comforts of my environment and the distractions of London. I may not have always shared deeply how I felt or what was going on for me, but I had to reach out, I had to be vulnerable. I cried on the phone. I before been the friend in my friendship group that wasn't the one that was crying very much or would cry. I then became that person and that was okay and that was amazing.

That was really welcomed by my friends. But it is life changing in a really good way. But with big life changes comes challenges. And I guess sometimes it's also how we view them. It is about getting a support network in place, but it's how we view them. And I notice when I'm working on my mindset and thinking more closely about gratitude, I can see the funny side to things, I can enjoy things, I can laugh at myself getting something wrong, I can give other people permission to laugh at me and we connect over that.

 But if I'm having a difficult time, it can feel very difficult to interact with people or understand people and that kind of thing and find my place here. But, again, as soon as I'm having that season, if you like, as soon as I'm coming out of that storm and it's the morning after the storm, I'm going, oh, it is a beautiful place. Oh, people are friendly, people are helping me, people want to help me: I'm making new friends. I'm having all these different experiences I never would have had. I feel so fortunate. So it's very seasonal as well, living abroad or living away from home.

Karla: Exactly. Thank you so much. We have touched on so much. So what's on the horizon for you now? How can people reach out to you if they were looking at relationship coaching?

Linda: So I am developing my website at the moment, it's quite blank, but it will be full hopefully soon. So that is Humankind Lu and people can contact me through the website. There's a contact form there. You can also look me up on LinkedIn. I'm hoping to post a lot more on LinkedIn. So I'm on LinkedIn as Linda Lazaroni, and the handle for that is LinkedIn in Lindahumankind. Humankind is the name of my company.

I'm always happy to hear from people if they want to set up a chemistry call and see if this could be something for them. As I said, I don't have a fee for that. It's really about us seeing if we can work together and sometimes it might be that I'm not the right person and I may know another coach that I can refer them to. It may be that therapy might be a better option. We can talk about that. So I'm always open to having those sessions with people to really get to know what they need and learn more about them and, yeah, that's me.

Karla: Thanks so much.

Linda: Thank you so much for having me. It's been incredible to feel like it's been a whirlwind journey. We've covered so much and I hope other people find it helpful.

Karla: There you have it. I am still buzzing from this conversation and I've brought a lot of what we spoke about into relationships, into my relationship since talking to Linda, and I hope it's given you lots to think about. See you next time.