Jeanine Becker On Purpose Together

Mary Oliver asks:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

This question is often read as a call to freedom.
Or creativity.
Or bold personal expression.

But from where I sit with leaders, founders, funders, executives holding real responsibility it lands differently.

Not as permission to abandon what you carry.
But as an invitation to tell the truth about how you’re carrying it.

For the leaders I work with, “wild” doesn’t mean reckless.
It means the part of you that is still alive beneath competence.
The part that remembers why this mattered in the first place.
The part that hasn’t been fully absorbed into roles, expectations, or institutional gravity.

And “precious” doesn’t mean delicate.

It means finite.
Your time.
Your energy.
Your attention.
This particular season of leadership.

So the question becomes sharper:
What happens when a capable, responsible leader
builds a life that no longer makes room for what’s wild?

What happens when the work keeps going but the aliveness goes quiet?

I don’t see this as a personal failure.

I see it as a systemic pattern.
We reward leaders for endurance.
For over-functioning.
For carrying more than is sustainable
as long as the results keep coming.

But something else gets traded away in that bargain.

Vision narrows.
Desire becomes inconvenient.
And leadership slowly shifts from creative stewardship to obligation management.

Mary Oliver’s question isn’t asking you to choose between impact and aliveness.

It’s asking something far more challenging:
Can your leadership still belong to you?
Can the life you’re building 
with all its responsibility, consequence, and reach
still feel like a life you recognize as your own?

Not optimized.
Not defended.
Not justified.
Fully lived.

Mary Oliver’s question isn’t asking you to choose between impact and aliveness.

It’s asking whether the way you’re leading
honors your desire, your aliveness, the nudges of knowing deeper than what must get done.

May 2026 be the year of 
Your wild and precious life.

For a long time, leadership has been framed like a puzzle you’re meant to solve.

You’re given a box — a vision, a mandate, a problem to fix — and told that if you’re skilled enough, strategic enough, diligent enough, you’ll figure out how the pieces fit.

Many of the leaders I work with are very good at puzzles. That’s how you got here.

But at a certain scale — when the puzzle gets larger, when the pieces keep changing shape, when some of them belong to other people, other systems, other histories —you can no longer see the full picture from where you’re sitting.

Not because you’ve lost clarity — but because no single vantage point holds the whole.

This is the moment many leaders misread as failure.

But what’s actually happening is that the puzzle has become collective.
Some of the most essential pieces are not on your table.
And no amount of individual brilliance will make them appear.

This is where leadership shifts.
From solving to convening.
From holding the whole picture yourself to creating the conditions
where the picture can emerge between people.

This is why I created The Collective Counsel — a room where leaders bring the pieces they’re holding, lay them on the table together, and discover what becomes possible when no one has to pretend they see the whole thing alone.

If the puzzle you’re holding feels bigger than what one leader or one team can solve — you’re not behind.

You’re at the threshold where collective intelligence becomes the strategy.

Last weekend I turned another year older.
And earlier this week, a piece of writing I poured myself into was released into the world.

Both feel like milestones. Both feel tender. Both feel quietly celebratory.

Not because everything is easy or resolved — but because I’m here. Present. In it.

What I keep coming back to, again and again, is how much this moment asks of us.
The world feels unbearably beautiful some days. And unbearably heavy on others.

There is so much grief moving through the systems we’re part of.
And also so much creativity, courage, and longing to build what comes next.

This is the paradox I live inside.
And it’s the center of my work.

The pause.
The moment of connection.
The choice to be fully here — with each other — rather than rushing past what matters most.

I know, in my bones, that I’m meant to be gathering people in this moment.
Funders.
Founders.
Leaders.

People forging what comes next — not from certainty, but from presence.
Not by going faster, but by listening more deeply.
Not alone, but together.

To sit at the fire.
To tell the truth.
To celebrate what’s alive.
To grieve what we’re losing.
And to remember that this is how humans have always found their way forward.

So today, I’m marking the joy.
The writing.
The people.
The gathering.
And I’m deeply grateful — to be alive in this moment, to be doing this work,
and to be in it with you.

On Purpose Together.

Still landing. 💗

Two pieces in The Legendarium this month — my essay “Mama, Bring Back the Sun” and an interview by Juliet Trnka.

This line from the interview keeps reverberating:
“The work you’re inspired to do isn’t just needed in the world. It’s here to evolve you.”

🔥 Link in bio.