Julie Yack

“I see you” is about visibility.
“I see the load you are carrying” is about effort.

It’s the difference between noticing someone is present and understanding what it costs them to be there.

Many of us learned early how to carry that load quietly. To show up capable, composed, and prepared no matter what else was happening. To manage complexity without letting it spill. To be reliable, even when reliability came at a personal cost.

For a long time, I didn’t have language for that. I just knew there were moments in my career when I felt profoundly alone while doing the work well — moments where I was present, professional, and barely holding everything together. And then there were rare moments when someone noticed not just me, but what I was carrying.

One of those moments happened years ago during a new-hire bootcamp I was teaching in Seattle.

While I was standing in front of a room full of students, my hometown of Colorado Springs was burning. Massive fires. Neighborhoods evacuating. People I loved packing up their lives. My husband, my kids, my dogs — all at home — while I was hundreds of miles away. My husband was sending updates, my kids were trying to act brave, and I was standing there teaching someone else’s new hires.”

I did what women in professional spaces often do. I stayed focused. I taught. I smiled. I checked the news only during breaks or while students were working through labs. I told myself I could hold it together for the duration of the class.

At one point, I opened a news site and must have made the smallest facial expression — something I wasn’t even aware of. One of the students noticed. She didn’t interrupt. She didn’t draw attention to it. She didn’t ask for details or explanations. She quietly came up to me and checked in.

She saw the load I was carrying.

So many of us — women, men, parents, caregivers — move through our workdays carrying whole unseen worlds with us.

She didn’t try to fix anything. She didn’t make it about her. She didn’t require me to fall apart to justify her concern. She simply acknowledged what she sensed and made space for it. That moment didn’t erase what was happening back home. But it reminded me that being seen can make even an impossible load feel slightly more shareable.

That moment gave me something I didn’t realize I needed: permission.

Permission to not have it all, all of the time.
Permission to be competent and human in the same room.
Permission to stop pretending that professionalism requires being weightless.

We put enormous pressure on ourselves — and absorb even more from the environments we work in — to be all things to all people. Capable. Available. Composed. Accommodating. Over time, that expectation becomes internalized. We don’t just meet it; we enforce it on ourselves, often at the expense of showing up for ourselves.

Being seen in that moment didn’t remove the load I was carrying. But it made it shareable. And that changed how I understood support.

Since then, I’ve tried to show up differently for other women. Not louder. Not more performative. Just more aware.

Support, I’ve learned, isn’t about grand gestures or stepping in to save the day. It’s situational awareness. It’s noticing who is compensating, who is holding things together quietly, who is carrying more than the room acknowledges — and choosing not to add pressure.

When I see that load now, I don’t rush to fix it. I don’t minimize it. I don’t turn it into advice.

I try to help them see that they can negotiate the finish line.

Every finish line.

Deadlines. Expectations. Roles. Definitions of success we inherited without questioning. Often the pressure isn’t coming from a single person or rule — it’s coming from assumptions that no one has stopped to examine.

Helping someone negotiate the finish line isn’t lowering the bar. It’s restoring agency. It’s recognizing that endurance isn’t the same thing as excellence, and that carrying everything alone isn’t a prerequisite for belonging.

The world doesn’t get lighter all at once. But rooms do. Conversations do. People do.

Sometimes the most empowering thing you can offer another woman isn’t help, or advice, or reassurance.

It’s recognition.

I see the load you are carrying.