Richard Bran­son

?More than 25 years ago, I heard you tell the sto­ry about how as a child your moth­er dropped you off miles from home and had you find your way back. It has been with me ever since.

I am now a moth­er my­self, and my ques­tion is this: How can I help my son Jules, who went to school for busi­ness, mar­ket­ing and man­age­ment, leave our fam­i­ly re­al es­tate busi­ness? It's a very prof­itable en­ter­prise, but I know that his heart is not in hav­ing a ca­reer here. I want Jules to be hap­py. He wants to move away to a large city to pur­sue his dreams, but it is dif­fi­cult for him. His fear of sep­a­ra­tion, and mine as well, is keep­ing him close to home. How does a par­ent let go?

–Lori Loesch

As a fa­ther, I know how hard it can be to let chil­dren go off on their own and make crit­i­cal life de­ci­sions. But you must re­alise that let­ting go is not about sep­a­ra­tion; it's about in­de­pen­dence.

Through all her 90 years, my moth­er, Eve, has main­tained a great sense of ad­ven­ture, and she has al­ways recog­nised the im­por­tance of in­de­pen­dence. She con­tin­u­ous­ly set new chal­lenges be­fore me when I was grow­ing up so that I (and she) could learn to trust in my abil­i­ty to make good de­ci­sions.

The sto­ry you re­fer to goes like this: When I was a small child, Mum stopped the car in the mid­dle of nowhere about three miles from our home, let me out and told me to find my own way back. I made it home safe and sound, but that wasn't the on­ly time Mum put me to the test.

When I was 12, she had me cy­cle 50 miles to a rel­a­tive's house all by my­self. Al­so, en­cour­aged by Mum, I once jumped in­to a riv­er in or­der to win a bet (this was be­fore I had learned how to swim!). Go­ing through with these feats was any­thing but easy, but it forced me to ex­pe­ri­ence the world on my own. Look­ing back, child­hood was a rather elab­o­rate triathlon!

When it comes down to it, let­ting go is about trust­ing your son to make the right de­ci­sions for him­self. It sounds like you have raised a fine young man; now it's time to push him to go out on his own and give him the free­dom to live the life he de­sires.