Happy Star Wars Day. May the 4th be with you, and all that.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I want to talk about Leia.
Not the Leia of the merchandise. Not the gold bikini. Not the cinnamon buns. I want to talk about the Leia whose story we keep breezing past like it’s prologue, when it is, in fact, the whole point.
From Princess to General… Where is that movie?
Here’s what we actually know about Leia Organa’s arc:
She starts as a princess and ends as a general. In between, she loses her entire home planet, watches her world disappear while held captive on the ship that fired the shot. She spends decades building a rebellion against a fascist empire with no resources, holding fractured alliances together through sheer will, and fighting for a galaxy that will largely forget her name when the history books get written.
Oh, and she did all of this while being a Jedi.
Let that land for a second.
Leia Organa is Force-sensitive. She has the same bloodline as Luke Skywalker. She has the same potential. Where were her mentors? Where is her time to learn? No Yoda. No cave on Dagobah. No lightsaber training montage. No dramatic duel where she faces her darkness and comes out the other side redeemed. She had the Force and she used it, quietly, intuitively, without anyone ever guiding her through the process..
Luke got three movies about becoming who he was meant to be. Leia got to be the competent one in the background while that happened.
The Weight She Actually Carried
Let’s talk about what Leia’s life actually contained, because we tend to gloss over it in favor of the fun parts.
Her father was Darth Vader.
She didn’t know that as a young adult. What she did know was that Darth Vader was her captor. Someone to be feared. Someone that destroyed her home planet. She never interacted with him as his daughter. No reconciliation. No closure. Luke got a deathbed moment of grace. Leia got the knowledge, arriving too late to mean anything.
And then there’s her son.
Ben Solo, who became Kylo Ren, murdered his father. Leia felt it happen through the Force. She felt her child commit that act, and she had to keep going. She had to keep leading, keep showing up, keep being General Organa for everyone around her, because that’s what generals do.
We spent approximately thirty seconds of screen time on it before the plot moved on.
This Is What We Do to Women in Leadership
There are days where we all feel like Leia.
Carrying more than our share. Leading through things that the org chart doesn’t have a box for. Using a Force that nobody officially trained us to use, because we just figured it out, because we had to.
Women in leadership positions routinely carry more. More emotional labor. More institutional memory. More invisible work that holds organizations together while other people get celebrated for the visible stuff. They lead the rebellion and then present the medals of accomplishment to others.
(And Chewie deserved a medal!!!)
They have the Force. They’ve always had it. They figured out how to use it without a master, without a training arc, without anyone asking if they needed support. They lead through things, show up anyway, and keep the whole operation running.
And then we talk about someone else’s leadership journey.
The Leias in your organization are not supporting characters. They are the story. The fact that we haven’t made the movie about them yet says everything about us and nothing about them.
So on this May 4th, I’m not just celebrating Star Wars. I’m celebrating the women who use twice the Force and get a fourth of the credit.
I’m celebrating the generals who never got a training montage. The Jedis who figured it out anyway. The leaders who held the rebellion together while everyone else got the hero’s journey.
May the 4th be with you. Especially if you’ve been carrying more than your share.
Winzig Consulting works with leaders who are ready to be seen, not just for what they deliver, but for who they are.