The Thing You've Been Carrying
Last month, I spent four weeks writing about slingshot partnerships. The relationships that tell you the truth. The ones built on trust, abundance, and a shared commitment to each other’s growth rather than just proximity or convenience.
The response was more than I expected. A lot of you wrote back. And what struck me about those replies wasn’t the agreement with the concept. It was the specificity of what you shared next.
Almost every woman who responded told me about a thing. A project, a goal, a vision, a transition, a decision she’s been sitting with. The descriptors were different, but the heart was the same. Each of them were some kind of “impact project”. Something that mattered deeply and that she’s been carrying largely on her own. Not because she doesn’t have people around her. Because the people around her aren’t positioned to go where this thing needs to go.
One woman described a business she’s been building in the margins of her executive career for over a year. She hasn’t told most of her professional circle about it because she already knows how the conversation will go. The polite encouragement that doesn’t actually help her think. The well-meaning caution from people who don’t understand what she’s building or why it matters to her.
Another described a leadership role she’s been offered that would require her to completely restructure how she works. She knows what she wants to do. She doesn’t have anyone who can help her think through the strategy at the level the decision demands.
A physician told me she has a vision for changing how her practice delivers care, and she’s been carrying it alone for months because the people around her are either too close to the problem or too far from the specifics to be useful.
Here’s what I’ve noticed about the thing you’re carrying: it’s usually not a mystery. You know what it is. You may not have named it out loud to anyone, but you think about it constantly. It’s the project that wakes you up at 4 AM. The decision that lives in the back of every meeting. The vision you keep refining in your head because you don’t have anyone to refine it with.
And the longer you carry it alone, the heavier it gets. Not because the thing itself is getting harder. Because carrying it without the right people around you costs you speed, clarity, and sometimes the confidence to move at all.
Your why has to carry your what. I believe that deeply. But I’ve also learned that your why needs support, it can’t generate on its own.
This month, I want to shift the conversation from the relationships you need to the work those relationships are for. Because the slingshot partnerships I wrote about in March aren’t just nice to have. They exist to serve the thing you’re carrying. And if you’ve been feeling the weight of carrying it alone…👇
🤏TINY TWEEK Challenge
Name your impact project.
Not for anyone else.
For yourself.
Write down, in one or two sentences, the project, goal, or vision you’ve been carrying. The one you think about most. The one that would move faster if you had the right people around you. You don’t have to share it with anyone yet. But naming it is the first step toward resourcing it.
