You Don't Need a Team. You Need a Crew.
On belonging, rowing, and what the moon mission teaches us about humanity.
There's a word that's been sitting with me lately: Crew.
I've been rowing a lot this year — spending hours on the water, in the boat, with six others. And what I've discovered surprised me. Not in the athletic sense. In the human sense. It’s that I felt part of a crew.
A team works toward an outcome. You're assigned roles. You contribute your piece. When the project is done, it's done. There's value in that — don't get me wrong. But a crew is something different. A crew has your back whether you're rowing your best or barely holding it together. A crew feels the absence of you when you're gone. Not because you failed a task, but because you are part of the equation.
I didn't grow up playing team sports, but being part of a crew has always been an important part of my life. As a flight attendant, during bike tours when I always love to spend my ‘rest days’ being part of the crew supporting the other riders, and in rowing.
This kind of belonging feels so right, because it is universal.
Earlier this month, NASA astronaut Christina Koch returned to Earth after ten days in space aboard the Artemis II mission — the first crewed lunar voyage in more than fifty years. Standing on stage in Houston, still processing the weight of what she had just lived, she said something that stopped me completely.
She described watching Earth grow small through the window of the Orion spacecraft — a fragile sphere surrounded by nothing but blackness in every direction. And in that vastness, she said, something clarified.
"A crew is a group that is in it all the time, no matter what — that is stroking together every minute with the same purpose, that is willing to sacrifice silently for each other, that gives grace, that holds accountable, inescapably, beautifully, dutifully linked."
And then: "Planet Earth — you are a crew."
If you want to hear her say it herself, watch the moment here. It's worth every second.
I've been sitting with those words ever since. Because she wasn't speaking from a metaphor. She was speaking from 200,000 miles away, looking back at all of us — and she was present to something most of us never get to see that clearly.
I notice it in my own life too, and in my work as a coach.
The women who come to me are often doing so much. Showing up in so many roles — for their families, their clients, their communities. And somewhere in all of that doing, they've lost the thread back to themselves. They're participating. But they're not always present.
There's a difference.
Being present doesn't mean slowing everything down or stepping away from what matters to you. It means you're actually in it — in the moment, in your body, in the experience — rather than managing it from a distance. Koch was present to something profound because the conditions stripped everything else away. Most of us have to choose that kind of presence deliberately.
When I'm on the water with my crew, I am present. There is no room to be anywhere else. The rhythm of the oars, the weight of the boat, the breath of the person(s) behind me — it all asks me to be here. And in that presence, something settles.
I think that's what we're all looking for, really. Not less to do, but something that asks us to show up fully. Something that says: you matter here. Not your output. You.
There's a distinction Koch drew that I keep returning to: on a team, if you step away, the project adjusts. On a crew, if you step away, it's felt. The whole equation shifts. That kind of belonging is a non-negotiable for me now.
I didn't always have language for it. I knew I craved it — that sense of being held while also contributing, of being seen without needing to explain myself. I found it in rowing. I found it in certain friendships. I find it, honestly, in the relationships I build with my clients — the ones where we slow down together, get honest, and find the thread of what's true.
That's the work I'm most interested in. Not just moving forward. But moving forward together, present, clear, and genuinely connected.
Koch came back from the moon with something she didn't bring with her: a new understanding of what it means to belong to something bigger than herself. I think many of us are quietly looking for that same thing — not a project to join, but a crew to be part of.
So I'm curious: in your life right now, are you on a team — or do you have a crew? And if you're not sure, maybe that's worth exploring.
