This week I am again confronted with my impatience, my tendency to take on too much, and my difficulty slowing down to talk about what’s going on so that others both know and have the chance to support me. Something in me feels it’s easier if I do it myself, and yet doing it myself brings great tension, and these days the responsibilities I hold are becoming too complex and varied.

A burden carried alone is far heavier than one shared, but to share a burden we must:

1. Acknowledge it is a burden.

2. Decide if it’s worth carrying or letting go.

3. If we choose to carry it, tell others how they can help us in doing so.

Each step may be excruciating in its own ways. There is a terror in disappointing or being disappointed, harming or being harmed, and yet so much freedom when we can honestly acknowledge how we feel. “I hate doing this, and I don’t want to do it anymore.” Or “I hate doing this, but not doing it would be worse.” Or “I love doing this, but it’s still feeling like too much.”

Then we can have an honest conversation with those involved in our burdens. We can put on the table our gifts and limits, our desires and frustrations, and look at them together like a puzzle we need to solve—rather than a series of personal attacks on each other.