With the news of new parents Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stepping back from the royal family last week, we wanted to take some time to discuss how hard it can be as parents to make decisions about your lives without disappointing family members.
At times you might find as parents you will need to make decisions about your family that perhaps your in-laws, your own parents or other family members disagree with. Sometimes these decisions can unfortunately result in you reducing or ceasing contact entirely with some people in your family, in order to live the life you want to live.
Doing this can be extremely hard for most people whose lives are out of the public eye. For those like Harry and Meghan whose lives are openly played out on the world's stage, we can understand how hard this must be.
Making it official
The announcement was made openly by the couple last week both via Instagram and their website, where the royal couple explained their plan of action. However, shortly after this announcement Buckingham Palace released a statement which stated something a little different.
"Discussions with The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are at an early stage. We understand their desire to take a different approach, but these are complicated issues that will take time to work through."
This obvious conflict between the couple and the Palace really enforced the overall message and belief that if you’re feeling trapped in a relationship, even one so public, it doesn’t have to stay that way.
Considering the life you want
Interestingly distance between families isn’t that uncommon and in the UK, it affects at least 1 out of 5 families. It can be quite common for adult children to have little to no contact with relatives and this might not be for any specific reason, it might just be that they choose to live their lives in a different location or way, that doesn’t fit with their original families.
In our current world, it is more and more common for careers and the want for new experiences to drive people outside of the area they were born in. Whether this is a new city, county or even entirely new country. Once you leave, you might find that you feel more at home somewhere else, you might meet someone from a different place and want to build your life somewhere away from your original family, and this is okay.
With the case of Harry and Meghan, they have made it clear that spending time away from the UK is important to them, and the way that they want to raise baby Archie.
As parents you have to live in a way that supports your own happiness. Living your life based on others, will only cause resentment later down the line. Families where parents are happy tend to thrive, and if moving their lives away from the UK makes the Royal couple happy, then they should be free to build a life wherever in the world, without issue.
Family members will always be disappointed, especially with grandparents who may think that moving overseas will be the end of their relationships with your little ones. However, with new technologies and the world being a lot smaller than it used to be, it isn’t the end of the road and sometimes the relationships can be even stronger with the quality of conversations and time spent together.
Distance can make the heart grow fonder.
Meghan and Harry are trying to form their own path including their families and this new part of their lives really shows us that if they, as public figures can be in control of how/where they want to live their lives, then there is no excuse as parents to live how we want to live and decide how closely we want to be connected to our families without guilt or judgement.
