The Art Of Sharing The Load

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

As women, we’re constantly inundated with messages about how much stuff we have to do. We see memes and posts and reels that depict us frazzled and exhausted, wearing more hats than any head can or should hold. 

And while these messages are meant to invoke feelings of solidarity, inspiring us to rise up against societal pressure, sometimes they just leave us feeling more burdened and overwhelmed. Because at the end of the day, we do have a lot to do; we have careers to pursue and marriages to better and tiny humans to feed; we have homes to maintain and friendships to keep and grocery shopping to do. 

While the memes may make us laugh and nod our heads and feel a little less alone for a moment, they don’t take away the to-do list. And if I’m being honest, the common “self-care” solution to take a long bubble bath and use a fancy face mask just doesn’t do it for me. It feels like we can do better.

In fact, I think the solution might be less about self care, and more about other care. That, in caring about and for the other women in our lives, and allowing them to return the favor, we can create more margin to ease the tension and finally exhale. 

“The solution might be less about self care, and more about other care.”

Because as great as we are at sharing our struggles with the load we carry, it turns out that we aren’t so great at sharing the load itself. But by sharing our demanding loads of life with others, we might find that our burdens grow lighter when we aren’t the only ones holding them.

The beautiful thing about sharing the load is that the “how”  will differ and change based on your season of life, your community and the opportunities both present. But here are three simple ways to get started.

01 | Share your stuff.

I’m convinced that our general feelings of overwhelm are often rooted in the number of things we own and, therefore, have to manage. It’s true that physical clutter leads to mental clutter; when we’re constantly having to devote time and thoughts to containing our stuff, it just adds to the mental load. 

Some of this clutter could be avoided if we realized that, just because we have a valid need for a thing, that doesn’t mean we have to purchase and own that thing. There are so many items in our homes that get used only occasionally; maybe we use them for a season, or once a month, and then they’re stored away in a cabinet or closet (my waffle maker comes to mind). 

What if, instead of a culture where we’re all just expected to buy all of these things ourselves, we shared them? What if we held our items with a looser grip, and normalized borrowing, exchanging, and trading so that we have access to more, without having to increase our own clutter?

“What if… we shared them?”

Sounds wonderful – but how do we do this, practically speaking? We simply make our things available in the everyday, normal moments of life. When friends are in the market for some new serving dishes for a party they’re hosting, rather than sending a link to our favorites for them to purchase, we offer to loan them the ones sitting in our own cabinets. When we’re commiserating with another mom about how our kids are constantly complaining of boredom, we organize a temporary toy swap. 

Recently, my sister-in-law and I were talking about how we wished we owned a carpet and upholstery cleaner (hello, adulthood), but they were too expensive to justify the cost. So, we decided to purchase one together. Now, it travels back and forth between our houses and we share the load of caring for, storing, and paying for it.

This is how we start to create a truer community. And the beauty of it is that this way of sharing the load requires almost no planning. But it does require us to shift our mindset; to lay aside a purchase-first mentality for one that views our things as tools for connection.

02 | Share your meals.

One of the constant loads we carry is that of feeding ourselves and the other people in our homes. It’s a thing that has to happen every single day, and if you have little people in your home, lots of times a day (so much snacking). 

We make a plan, buy the groceries, prep the food, cook the meals – wash, rinse, repeat. And even if you’re like me and you love to cook, the daily nature of it all can make it feel like a lot. But it’s this same never-ending, always-present nature of meals that make it a perfect area to look for ways to share the load.

The most obvious way to do this is to make and deliver a meal for someone who could use a break from the feeding frenzy: the new mom, the sick neighbor, the friend in the middle of a busy season at work – the list is endless. I love taking meals to new moms on their first day back to work; no woman should have to cook after that emotional roller coaster!

The bottom line is just to look for a need and to fill it with something hot and delicious. And when it comes to what to cook, don’t overthink it. Simple is perfectly acceptable; we’re not going for magazine-worthy food here. The goal is to fill bellies and ease stress, so stick with what you know.

“The bottom line is just to look for a need and to fill it with something hot and delicious.”

Making food for an overwhelmed friend isn’t the only way to share the load of daily meals. Get creative and think outside the box – maybe you and a friend take turns planning meals for the week, so that you both get a break from having to think of what to make. Or you get together with a friend and, as a team, batch cook a couple of freezer meals that can be pulled out and reheated whenever they’re needed.

A few weeks ago, my sister-in-law (the same one with whom I have joint custody in the upholstery cleaner) had one of her best ideas ever: a weekly dinner swap. Each week, we both choose a different day to just double the meal we’re already planning to make, and we share it with each other. As a result, one night a week, we’re both off the hook for dinner.

And it’s been amazing – I’m not kidding; on the nights when my family receives a dinner swap meal, I wake up that morning feeling excited about the fact that, that very evening, something delicious will just appear in my kitchen without any effort on my part. It’s one of my favorite things and it’s a beautiful illustration of how sharing the load injects joy into our lives in some profoundly simple ways.

03 | Share your genius.

From time to time, we all have little moments of genius. We suddenly discover a better, faster way to complete a daily task. We uncover a life-changing gadget, or develop a new system or method that makes a part of life easier, or we find that we are just exceptionally good at one thing or another. 

When that happens, let’s not keep it to ourselves! Let’s share our simple, everyday strokes of genius so that others can reap their benefits, too. I think we’re hesitant to share ideas and advice because we don’t want our friends to feel as though they’re doing it wrong – we don’t want to be the know-it-all, or the one who seems like she’s got it all together. But when we hoard our own genius, we miss out on opportunities to lighten others’ loads by simply offering a new perspective.

So often, it seems as though our female friendships are built around conversations about all the hard stuff – the busyness and the weight of it all. But when we share our genius, we go beyond the commiserating and take steps toward building relationships based on actually lifting each other’s burdens. And that is a more authentic, joy-filled way to forge connections.

In short…

The thing about sharing the load is that it feels uncomfortable. It requires us to go beyond the text conversations and occasional coffee dates; it’s a real boots-on-the-ground effort that pushes us beyond the typical adult friendship model and makes us open ourselves up to a life more focused on giving.

But when we find the courage to adopt this perspective, we find that generosity is a cornerstone of building a community that goes beyond the niceties that so often feel superficial. When we find practical, simple ways to give of ourselves and – just as importantly – to receive the gifts of others, we mesh our lives with those with whom we share.

We are really good at sharing life’s big moments together – the birthdays, weddings, job promotions, and graduations. But it’s when we share the mundane – the most normal, everyday things of life – that our loads become lighter. Not because the burdens of life magically go away, but because we give others permission to shoulder them with us. Here’s to joining forces and finding a better way to fight the overwhelm. Here’s to the art of sharing the load!