For Mother’s Day in 2019 my children gave me a subscription to Storyworth. It is a subscription service that collects your loved one’s favorite stories and memories and preserves them in a beautifully bound book. Each week for 52 weeks, my children selected a question for me to answer about my life, their lives, and our lives together. I relished every Monday when I would get the question of the week to ponder and then respond. Below is a question and response that I want to share. You’ll know why when you read it.

The question posed was, “If you could thank anyone, who would you thank and why?”

Here is my response written in 2020:

Oh my goodness, so many people come to mind! I think the person I’ll thank here is my BFF and business partner, Mary Anne Wampler. We have been in business for 23 years, and she has been a steady, supportive, and challenging person in my life, and I don’t know what I would do without her. We joke, but it’s serious – we say often, “Our relationship is the best relationship we each have in our lives.” It truly has been. Because we started our relationship understanding our Enneagram Types and working on ourselves, we have been able to help and challenge each other to be the best we can be to each other and to our clients. Mary Anne’s courage and ability to hold the space for me and I for her has been the greatest gift. When I am in a difficult place, she is there 100%; when she is in a difficult place, I am there for her. Together we are a great team. Our business has gone through so many ups and downs, and we have weathered them together in solidarity and with strength and courage. When we first started our business, our Enneagram teacher, Helen Palmer, made a statement that has proven to be so true. She said, “You each will do for the other what you can’t or won’t do for yourselves.” We have learned along the way that a great partnership depends on each partner’s willingness to take responsibility for their own growth and development and while supporting the other in theirs as well. A great partnership works best when each partner engages in self-inquiry when reactive, avoids projection of their needs onto the other, listens with an undefended, receptive heart, and speaks their truth even when that truth is difficult to speak. Mary Anne and I have practiced with great intentionality how to be our best and truest selves for and with each other, and for that and so many other reasons, I feel so blessed and thankful for the gift of Mary Anne in my life.

As Transform, Inc. celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, I want to recognize my “other half” for making these last 25 years a priceless journey!

What about you? Are you in a business partnership? Maybe it’s new, a little bumpy right now, or on solid ground but you’d like to take it to the next level? You’re invited to join us for a Business Partners’ Roundtable that will offer partnerships a forum to:

  • strengthen their understanding of each other and the impact each partner has on the partnership
  • share strategies and tactics for building a strong, lasting partnership
  • engage with and learn from other partnerships
    be a sounding board for each other on “live” business and relationship issues and how to solve them.

There are only two prerequisites:

  1. You believe that to be a good leader and partner you must understand yourself and your impact on others, and
  2. If you don’t know your Enneagram Type, you are willing to discover your Type, share it with your partner(s), and actively work on increasing your self-awareness on a day-to-day basis.

If you’re interested, send us an email, and we’ll schedule a time to connect. We’re forming a new group that will start in early April.

We’d love to see you there, and if you know of other business partnerships that might be interested in joining this Roundtable, please forward this information to them. Thank you!

Theresa Gale
PRINCIPAL, TRANSFORM, INC.