The Space Between How Life Looks and How It Feels
On alignment, inner architecture, and building from what’s true
There’s a space many people eventually encounter in their lives and leadership. It lives between how things look on the outside and how they actually feel on the inside.
We often try to name that space with words like alignment. It’s clean. Aspirational. Easy to agree with. And yet, when people talk about wanting more alignment, what they’re often naming isn’t a goal, it’s a quiet discomfort. A sense that the way they’re living or leading no longer fully matches what they know about themselves.
This past year, alignment has been less of a concept for me and more of a lived practice. As I prepare to officially launch SOMA, I’ve found myself sitting with the same questions I ask my clients to consider:
What am I building? What does it actually require of me? And where am I slightly out of sync with what I say I value?
Alignment Begins with Noticing
Most people don’t set out looking for alignment. What they experience instead is a quiet sense that something isn’t quite as it should be.
A low-grade discomfort that’s hard to name and even harder to locate. Life still works. Careers still advance. Families still function. Goals still get met. Momentum continues. But the cost shows up quietly; as irritability, fatigue, overthinking, or the sense that you’re constantly managing yourself rather than inhabiting your life.
Most people don’t avoid this feeling because they believe alignment requires dramatic change or pulling back. They avoid it because they don’t know where to start, and because slowing down long enough to notice can feel disorienting.
Alignment begins when we’re willing to notice what we’ve learned to ignore. It isn’t a strategy or a solution. It’s an act of attention.
The Work Beneath SOMA
SOMA was born out of noticing that gap, in myself and in the people I work with. For years, my work has lived at the intersection of therapy, coaching, and leadership development. I’ve sat with executives, teams, and women who are deeply capable, thoughtful, and successful, yet increasingly aware that the strategies that once worked now require too much energy.
Alignment became the through-line. Not alignment as a personality test result or a neatly articulated purpose statement, but alignment as an ongoing relationship with self. SOMA exists to support that relationship.
At its core, SOMA is about helping people understand their inner architecture: the patterns, protective strategies, and adaptive strengths they bring into their work, relationships, and leadership. When those inner systems are understood and supported, people don’t just feel better. They lead more clearly. Communicate more directly. Make decisions with less internal friction.
My Own Process of Realignment
Launching SOMA has required me to practice what I teach. It has meant slowing down enough to ask harder questions; about clarity, structure, and voice. It has meant letting go of work that was good, even meaningful, but no longer aligned with where my energy is most effective. And it has meant trusting that coherence matters more than scale.
Alignment, I’ve learned, isn’t a one-time arrival. It’s a series of honest check-ins:
Does this still reflect who I am now?
Am I building from integration or from momentum?
Where am I overriding my own signals in the name of productivity?
Those questions shaped SOMA more than any business plan ever could.
What Alignment Makes Possible
When people are aligned, something subtle but powerful shifts. They stop overexplaining. They recover more quickly from stress. They lead with greater steadiness. They make decisions that feel grounded rather than reactive. Alignment doesn’t eliminate challenge. But it changes how challenge is metabolized.
That is the work SOMA is here to do.
As SOMA officially comes into the world, my hope is that it becomes a space, through individual work, organizations, circles, and retreats, where alignment is treated not as an abstract ideal, but as a skill that can be cultivated. Because when your inner life and outer life begin to move in the same direction, everything becomes more sustainable. And more true.
In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more about the work unfolding through SOMA, and what it looks like to build lives, leadership, and cultures from a place of true alignment.
Reflection
If this piece stirred something, consider sitting with these questions:
Where in my life or leadership does what looks good no longer fully match what feels true?
What am I currently maintaining out of habit, momentum, or expectation rather than intention?
What have I been sensing but not fully naming?
What signals from myself have I been overriding in the name of productivity or responsibility?
If I trusted coherence over scale, what might I choose differently right now?
You don’t need immediate answers. Alignment often begins simply by noticing the space.
