Hold On
Why we endure — and who learns from watching
I want to start in a chapel.
Not because it’s where I spend a lot of my life… though between airports, hospitals, and hotel rooms, a century-old chapel on a Sunday morning feels like borrowed grace.
Because that’s where I was on Sunday afternoon when my sixteen-year-old daughter walked to the front of her school’s chorale, stood alone, and reminded me why any of this matters.
Her name is Reese. And she was about to sing a solo from the musical The Secret Garden. A song called “Hold On.”
I sat in the audience the way every parent does before their kid performs: equal parts pride and low-grade panic. Hoping she nails it. Hoping no one coughs during the quiet part. Hoping the energy I feel whenever I’m on a stage is the same intoxicating energy she’s feeling stepping up to her mic.
And then she started singing.
Her voice filled the chapel — clear, strong, unwavering. Five lines in it had stopped being about whether she’d hit the notes. It was already clear she owned them.
It was about what she began making everyone FEEL:
“Hold on, hold on to someone standing by. Hold on. Don’t even ask how long or why! Child, hold on to what you know is true, Hold on ’til you get through. Child, oh child! Hold on!”
I know I felt it. And based on the silence of the room followed by the eruption of applause, it was obvious everyone else in that chapel felt it too.
The Song and the Singer
Before Reese started rehearsing her solo I didn’t even know there was a musical version of The Secret Garden. But when Reese told me she was singing “Hold On” as her solo, I looked up the context.
The show is based on Frances Hodgson Burnett‘s 1911 novel about Mary Lennox, an orphaned girl sent to live with her uncle in England after her parents’ deaths. Her uncle is a recluse still grieving the loss of his wife Lily and the estate is cold, lonely, and haunted by the past.
But Mary discovers something: a locked garden. Lily’s garden. Abandoned after her death, overgrown and forgotten.
So Mary decides to bring it back to life.
“Hold On” is sung by Martha, a servant at the manor, to Mary during a moment when everything feels impossible. The lyrics are simple. Direct. Powerful.
But the lyrics are only half the story, because the story they tell isn’t about winning.
It’s a song about enduring.
And watching Reese sing it — with emotion filling her voice, and her voice filling that chapel — I realized something:
She wasn’t just performing a song about holding on. She was showing us what it looks like.
Playbook
Over the last month I’ve written about moments with all three of my children. Stories about soccer and running, winning and losing, effort and energy. Today I realized something I hadn’t yet fully put together until now:
They’ve got this.
Not because we’ve done everything right. That’s an impossible standard for any parent. Not because I’ve been there for every moment. I can’t be.
But because they’ve watched us hold on when it was hard. When the outcome was unclear. When we were tired and quitting seemed rational, and we held on anyway.
And now, when someday I can’t hold on anymore, when I inevitably fall, they’ll know how to pick it up and keep going.
Here’s what I know right now: many days I find myself at Mile 17, in some in-between space unsure of where I’ve been or where I’m going. And my daughter stood up in a chapel and sang: “Hold on. Don’t even ask how long or why.”
She wasn’t just performing. She was reminding me.
Getting through isn’t just about making it to MY finish line. It’s about holding on long enough for THEM to learn how.
That’s the real lesson of perseverance. Not that we never fall. But that someone is watching us hold on… and learning what it looks like to stay in when it’s hard.
Your Turn
Someone is watching you hold on right now.
A colleague. A teammate. A kid. A friend.
Someone is taking notes without you knowing.
Someone is learning (whether you intend to teach them or not) how to carry themselves when no one’s clapping.
You don’t have to be perfect.
You just have to hold on.
Because the people watching you? They’re learning what it looks like to endure through the storm. To stay in when it would be easier to walk away. To keep showing up at Mile 17.
And one day — when you can’t hold on anymore — they’ll remember how you did it.
And they’ll hold on too.
So take five minutes this morning before you get wrapped up in another busy day and ask yourself: who’s watching me, and what I am teaching them?
The Perseverance Playbook™ is a weekly newsletter about the middle miles, where purpose is forged and leadership is born. Written from airports, sidelines, and the spaces in between by Dr. Chris DeRienzo.
Want these delivered to your inbox? Subscribe on LinkedIn
Know someone at Mile 17? Forward this to them.