I’m endlessly curious about why we do what we do, how we become who we are, and what it takes to create a life that feels like our own.

As the month closes, I’m rearranging my calendar. A new practitioner training starts in under two weeks, which means my schedule is shifting to make room for intensive learning and client work. Over the past few weeks, I’ve pretty much dialed in most of the practical details: finding a realistic split between working from home and co-working, integrating recovery practices like PEMF and red light therapy, and restructuring my social media marketing efforts by moving exclusively to Instagram stories instead of maintaining a grid.

Practically speaking, I have a roadmap. Yet I still find myself in a type of liminal space.

The word liminal comes from the Latin limen, meaning “threshold.” In anthropology, rites of passage have traditionally been understood in three phases: separating from what came before, crossing the threshold, and then integrating into what comes next.

More casually, we tend to think of liminality as feeling completely lost or having an identity crisis. But as someone who’s been in and out of liminal spaces over the years, I’ve learned that being between chapters doesn’t automatically mean being lost. Sometimes it’s just the open stretch of time between making a decision and stepping into the execution of it. You’ve chosen the door, but you haven’t stepped into the room yet. The immediate pressure of the doing falls away, leaving you with an open, unstructured pocket of time.

It helps to think of it like an airport terminal.

Right now, I’m in a structured transition period. I’m sitting at the gate with a boarding pass in hand. I know my flight, my departure time, and my destination. The only thing I have to do is sit in the waiting area, let things settle, and wait for boarding to begin.

The Reflex to Over-Function

Even with a ticket in hand, that open space often feels uncomfortable. When one chapter ends and the next hasn’t fully begun, our most competent, hyper-productive parts start to panic a little. Those parts are conditioned to plan, organize, and solve problems. Left with an unscheduled afternoon or an unstructured week, our parts will immediately create urgency—turning leisure time into an optimization project or filling the calendar just to avoid the discomfort of stillness. Unless we reassure them that it’s okay to relax, they’ll keep looking for something to do.

Writing this feels like a meta-exercise: I’m feeling the urge to over-explain and produce content, which contradicts the very thing I need right now—to stop doing, let things settle, and rest before the next stretch.

At the same time, what I’m experiencing is very different from the liminal space my clients often describe.

They’ve arrived at the terminal desperate to leave where they were, but they don’t have a ticket yet. They have no gate assignment, no departure time, and no clear picture of what their destination looks like. Standing in the middle of a crowded airport with nowhere to go isn’t just an open stretch of free time—it can be pretty disorienting and maybe even a bit terrifying.

The last time I was in this kind of liminal space was in 2018. After selling everything I owned and spending a year and a half living nomadically, I ended a long-term relationship, left my career in entertainment, and settled into a new place. By then, almost everything that had once given my life structure was gone, and I had no idea what I was going to do next. Become a yoga teacher? Start a YouTube channel with my friend? Sell real estate? I had plenty of ideas, but no real direction. Not having a title or a plan made me burst into tears anytime someone asked how things were going or what I was working on.

Two Kinds of Liminal Space

How you navigate that threshold depends on what kind of transition you’re in:

If you know where you’re headed, build a container. When a new direction is already clear, use light structure to keep from overthinking or filling every open space. Decide what belongs in this season and what doesn’t, then give your structure a trial window so you have enough time to see how it works while still leaving room to adjust. I once planned to try something for 42 days, but by day 21 I had all the information I needed and I changed the plan. The container gives you something to work within without requiring you to commit to it permanently.

If you have no idea what’s next, experiment without committing to anything. When you haven’t found your next direction yet, rushing to choose a path usually means recycling what you already know. Instead of forcing a direction, allow yourself to gather low-stakes data. That might look like taking a workshop outside of your industry, visiting an unfamiliar place, or starting a small creative project you might abandon in a couple of weeks. You can do this even when some parts of your future are already clear. For me, that’s meant carving out time to tinker with building an AI app and exploring different platforms for delivering courses, without needing either one to become “my new thing.” You aren’t choosing your next identity; you’re simply tracking what energizes you versus what only appeals to you in theory. This removes so much of the pressure to figure it all out.

Leaving that space unoccupied can feel counterintuitive to our drive to produce. But when you leave it open, you give yourself a chance to find out what might be there: the need for rest, the feeling of relief of leaving an old role behind, the natural pull toward a new interest, or the activities you choose to engage in when nobody is watching or judging you.

Hi, I’m Sheila. I’m a somatic parts work coach who helps healers and creatives better understand themselves, their patterns, and what they truly want, so they can make choices that support both their work and the life they want to live.

My work is for thoughtful, growth-oriented people who are tired of following someone else’s definition of success and want to cultivate deep trust in their own direction.

If you’re ready to work together, send me an email sharing your current goals and challenges to get started.

I’m endlessly curious about why we do what we do, how we become who we are, and what it takes to create a life that feels like our own.

Last week, I was having a conversation with a friend about what actually makes content compelling enough to “cut through the noise.” As creators continue to churn out content to stay relevant and appease the algorithm, we, as business owners, found ourselves asking: How do you differentiate your own voice in all that noise? How do you stand out?

There’s a difference between differentiating your work and trying to stand out. One comes from knowing what’s distinct about your work. The other can turn into managing how other people perceive you.

That got me thinking about another question, though. I’ve never cared much about trying to differentiate myself from others in my field - in fact, I find the whole concept a bit amusing. It implicitly positions me in relation to peers, creating an imaginary pressure to set myself apart from the competition.

This perspective isn’t because I think I’m better than anyone else, but rather because I already feel different - having lived a fairly unconventional life. Still, I understand how easy it is to slip into this mindset, especially when so much social media advice centers on how to stand out.

You can differentiate your work based on concrete realities: your specialization, methodology, experience, point of view, or the people you work with. But when differentiation turns into standing out, it becomes impression management. With constant impression management, you spend mental resources monitoring and adjusting yourself in response to what you think other people are perceiving.

• Am I establishing enough credibility?

• Do my opinions sound distinctive enough?

• Am I relatable enough to the people I want to attract?

• Am I showing enough personality or vulnerability?

Our internal read of how we’re being perceived is rarely aligned with reality. And even if our prediction is accurate, we still have to ask whether continually managing ourselves in response to that prediction is where we want to spend our attention.

For me, that answer is no, because social media isn’t a primary source of clients. Most of my clients have come through other people’s communities, referrals, and organic connection. Half of my clients don’t even use social media, yet they still found their way to me.

I find the whole thing, frankly, quite exhausting. If you look at what works on social media right now, there’s a lot of emphasis on strong hooks, relatability, shareable content, and showing your personality. Why am I spending so much of my time, energy, and capacity trying to stand out on a platform when I don’t particularly care to organize my work around what that platform rewards?

Again, my goal for social media is to nurture my relationships. The core of my work is deepening my mastery of guiding my clients to navigate challenges and cultivate relationships with themselves. Getting clear on what my actual work is about made the decision to restructure how I use social media easier.

Over the last year or so, I wondered why it felt like such a struggle to show up in a way that felt good on my Instagram grid. I did everything I could think of to make the process more enjoyable. The approach that worked best for me was co-creating with my executive assistant. But even when that worked, something about the underlying premise of creating endless content for my grid still felt off.

I’ve invested huge amounts of time, energy, and resources into experimenting with different ways that I can create content on social media. In the process, I’ve become more comfortable speaking on camera. I worked through one fear, then another. And after processing and metabolizing those experiences, I’ve come to the realization that I prefer long-form writing on Substack.

Sometimes we assume resistance means there’s something we need to work through. And sometimes there is. But after you work through it, you might discover: Oh. I still don’t want this.

I think that’s an important distinction. I needed to work through my fear of visibility before I could accurately determine whether I actually liked the form of visibility I was pursuing. Now I know that I can show up on camera.

I can share more of myself. I can be seen. The fear is no longer making the decision for me. But being capable of doing something doesn’t necessarily mean I want to keep doing it in that particular way.

Distinguishing between what you can do and what you want to do is essential; one measures capacity, the other points to alignment.

Now, I’m not saying I’m leaving Instagram. But I am changing the way I post on my grid. Since I don’t use it as a primary marketing tool, it makes no sense for me to keep creating content for it the way I have been. Once I worked through my fears of being seen, I was able to ask a different question: Do I actually enjoy creating content for Instagram?

The answer is yes and no. For as long as I’ve been on social media, it’s really just been a way for me to connect with others and nurture my relationships. I am obsessed with stories. Posting on mine, checking in on what my friends are up to. Having little conversations in my DMs. I love doing whatever I want in stories.

As for the feed, I’d really much rather create posts that can serve as a portfolio for my work. I want to reclaim my time and energy and focus it on developing my skills as a writer here, while exploring new forms of communication like podcasts or audio recordings.

It’s interesting that all of this is happening for me now, and I wonder how much of it has to do with the current eclipse season. With my Scorpio rising, the eclipse hit Leo in my 10th house of public expression and visibility, bringing up questions for me about the difference between being seen and performing an identity for other people.

Interestingly, I am the most open I’ve ever been to public expression. But I also know, deep in my bones now, the difference between letting myself be seen and performing being seen.

There’s this whole notion of being relatable. Showing my real life. Expressing myself vulnerably. And all of those things I very much want to do, but not in the form I’m currently doing them. It’s like the Instagram feed itself doesn’t fit how I want to show up.

I don’t have enough space. It feels cramped. Creating content feels like creating for other people rather than for myself. This could be so very different for you, of course. But it makes literally no sense for me when I’ve been running my business successfully for over two years and have only once had someone actually find me through Instagram.

Anyway, so I’m still creating content for the feed. But it’s going to be my way. The way I want to. It’s going to reflect my style and my work and my pace.

Interestingly, I attended a Human Design Q&A recently that gave me another way of thinking about all of this. We discussed how most Projectors don’t thrive on social media when we follow the common strategies because we’re not designed to be in constant creation mode. We’re meant to spend far more of our time actually guiding. For us, less is more. Quality over quantity.

Following my Human Design even further, I’m going to be spending days completely offline as well. These last couple of weeks have drilled home how much I need my alone time. As a 6/2 Projector who is still technically “on the roof,” it’s important for me to have time not only to recharge, but to play around and develop my Line 2 gifts.

This is part of the same experiment. Managing how I’m perceived takes energy. When I’m not spending so much of mine doing that, I have more available to create and express myself in ways that actually feel aligned with my design.

When the way you express yourself feels natural, you stop spending so much energy on the process and have more for the work itself. It’s also about where you’re creating, how you’re expected to show up there, and who you’re creating for.

Authentic expression isn’t only about what you express. It’s also about where you show up and how. I can feel the difference when a platform fits me. There’s more energy there. More play. More of that juicy, alive feeling that nourishes my desire to create.

I’m super curious if you have been noticing similar shifts in yourself. Have certain things started feeling more draining while others are lighting you up? Where are you spending energy managing how you’re perceived? And what might become available if you gave yourself permission to express yourself in the places, platforms, and ways that actually feel like you?

Hi, I’m Sheila. I’m a somatic parts work coach who helps healers and creatives better understand themselves, their patterns, and what they truly want, so they can make choices that support both their work and the life they want to live.

My work is for thoughtful, growth-oriented people who are tired of following someone else’s definition of success and want to cultivate deep trust in their own direction.

If you’re ready to work together, send me an email sharing your current goals and challenges to get started.

I’m endlessly curious about why we do what we do, how we become who we are, and what it takes to create a life that feels like our own.

I was having a conversation with someone recently, and she was asking me how I do what I do. How do I get coaching clients? How do I run an online business? How do I do the whole entrepreneurial thing?

She was exhausted from constantly hustling and trying to make things happen, not knowing where the next opportunity would come from. On top of that, she was doing everything on her own. No support system, no stable foundation.

And it got me thinking about my approach to business in general.

I’ve been self-employed since high school, so I’ve had a lot of time to learn what works for me and what doesn’t. Some of those lessons came from experience and a lot of trial and error, and some might have to do with being a Projector. I don’t have the same consistent energy for doing and producing as Generators and Manifesting Generators, so I’ve had to become much more conscious of how I use mine.

I’m not a business expert, but I’ve developed my own way of approaching it. I pay close attention to what I can realistically sustain.

I’ve learned that a business can grow beyond your capacity to support it. It can demand more time, energy, and resources than you have available.

There’s no shortage of advice on growing an audience, getting more clients, increasing revenue, or scaling your business, but there’s almost nothing about what that growth costs us. It’s as if we’ve decided that how your life feels is subjective and therefore separate from the “serious” work of running a business.

You can pour everything you have into the business without ever being replenished. When you don’t create space for the things that regenerate you, the business stops supporting your life and starts consuming it.

That’s a trade-off I’m not willing to make.

The most important thing for me is feeling good in my body. Let me rephrase that. I want to feel juicy in my body. I want to feel nourished. I want to feel rested. I want to have space. I want enough silence to hear my own thoughts.

Of course, there have definitely been periods of my life where I worked a lot and felt tired and overwhelmed. Eventually, I realized that it just wasn’t sustainable. I had to learn how much I could push myself into strain before I reached the edge, without going over. And I had to learn how long it would take me to recover from those push periods.

Because why run a business if the business is just going to take over my life? Why run a business if I’m just going to become a slave to myself and resent what I’m doing?

I want my business to be part of my life, not the thing my entire life is built around.

Obviously, money matters. But I think when you become too obsessed with the money aspect of your business, you can lose sight of what you’re even doing.

Suddenly, you’re trying to beat last month. You need more clients, more money, more engagement. You need to grow and scale.

And at some point, I think we have to stop and ask: why?

Because okay, let’s say you hit your numbers. But what did the rest of the month feel like? Were you working the entire time? Were you constantly stressed? Were you glued to your computer? Did you have time for your relationships? Did you get to experience joy? Did you have any space where you weren’t thinking about the business?

And how much money are you now spending just trying to recover from the stress of making the money?

That’s where only focusing on the metrics makes zero sense to me.

You can make more money while also needing to spend more money just to get yourself back to neutral. You’re stressed, so you pay for things to make yourself less stressed. You don’t have time, so you start paying to solve the fact that you don’t have time.

Meanwhile, you’re telling yourself the business is doing better because the revenue number went up. But let’s not ignore the costs to your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. And let’s not ignore how the day to day reality is worrying about how you’ll be able to keep this up. Maybe you even promise yourself once you reach a certain amount, you’ll be able to relax and live a little more.

I think sometimes we are striving toward things that we don’t actually have the capacity for yet. We want more clients, more money, more visibility, more opportunities, a bigger business.

And there’s nothing wrong with wanting those things. But what happens if you get them?

If your life already feels full with five clients, what happens when you get ten?

If you’re already overwhelmed by content creation, what happens when your audience triples and you decide that means you have to create even more?

I think sometimes we assume capacity will magically arrive after the growth.

And sometimes we make promises to ourselves that things will change.

Once I make this much, then I’ll slow down. Once I get to this level, then I’ll hire help. Once the business is stable, then I’ll rest.

But there is always another level. There is always a higher number. There is always something else you could optimize.

I intentionally do less than I technically could. I used to write to-do lists with 15+ tasks. Now, I aim to make meaningful progress on one main project per day.

Could I technically fit more things into the day? Yes. But that’s not really the question I’m asking.

The question is what pace allows me to do my work and still feel juicy and alive, where I can also spend time playing, exploring, and enjoying myself.

So I intentionally leave space in my day for things that have nothing to do with work. I might go for a walk, take a bath, dance in front of the mirror, journal, or simply spend time alone. Sometimes I literally just need to close my eyes and relish in the feeling of not doing anything.

Time alone is an absolute must for me.

Even during very busy weeks, I try to protect some of that space, especially on the weekends.

That being said, movement is something I really want more of and am still figuring out, so this isn’t me pretending I have some perfect balanced routine. I don’t.

But my point is, I’m not trying to use every bit of available energy for my business. I want some of that energy for my life.

A successful business is one that is integrated into my life and fits my life.

I want my business to grow, but I also want to grow as a person. I want my relationships to deepen and my community to grow. And I want to have the time and energy to actually be present for the life I’m building.

I want my business to grow at a pace that gives me time to enjoy what I’m building.

If your business makes more money but requires more of you to sustain it, how sustainable is that growth?

If demand for your work grows but you spend less time doing the work you actually want to do, are you growing in the right direction?

If your client list grows but you’re too depleted to be present in your relationships, what does that leave for the people you love?

I want my definition of success to include more than what happens in my business.

My time, my energy, my relationships, my community, my creativity, my desire to play, my ability to sit in silence and hear myself, my enjoyment of being alive - all of those things belong in my definition of success too.

Maybe being a Projector is part of why I’ve had to think about this so much. Maybe my energy simply doesn’t let me get away with pushing past my capacity for very long. But I don’t think you have to be a Projector to ask these questions.

I don’t want a business that looks successful from the outside while I’m obsessively thinking about it to the point that it takes over my entire existence. I want my business to support an expansive life and grow alongside it.

If this resonated with you, here are a few questions you might reflect on:

✧ What kind of growth would make my life feel more expansive?

✧ What is my current way of working costing me?

✧ Am I building the capacity to support the growth I want?

✧ Outside of work, what do I want to have time, energy, and attention for?

Hi, I’m Sheila. I’m a somatic parts work coach who helps healers and creatives better understand themselves, their patterns, and what they truly want, so they can make choices that support both their work and the life they want to live.

My work is for thoughtful, growth-oriented people who are tired of following someone else’s definition of success and want to cultivate deep trust in their own direction.

If you’re ready to work together, send me an email sharing your current goals and challenges to get started.

I’m endlessly curious about why we do what we do, how we become who we are, and what it takes to create a life that feels like our own.

There was a long time when I kind of operated under the assumption that being taken seriously required a clear demonstration of my expertise. I felt like I needed to prove that I knew what I was talking about, but I was never quite sure what that was supposed to look like. The more I tried to sound authoritative, the less natural I felt. Authority felt like an unfamiliar persona I was constantly trying to figure out how to express.

For example, I attempted to create PDFs that were filled with dense, technical information. I wanted them to have as much value as possible, and because of that, I never really knew how much information was enough. So I kept adding more.

But despite how much information I put into them, nobody connected with them or even really knew what I was talking about. And on top of that, they had zero of my personality in them.

It wasn’t just the work I was editing. I was editing myself.

The playful parts. The weird parts. The intuitive parts. The feminine parts. I hid my softness, non-linearity, emotion, and wildly associative thinking.

Coming from a background in modeling, I think there was a part of me that believed that if I wanted to be taken seriously in this new line of work, I needed to distance myself from the very parts of me that had ultimately helped make me successful before. Modeling gave me a place to be expressive, intuitive, feminine, and creative. Those parts of me worked there.

But modeling had also trained me to become very good at figuring out what other people wanted to see. I learned to pay attention to the photographer or whoever I was working with and adjust my personality and presentation to fit what they were looking for. That was a skill I carried with me into my new work.

And I think there was something else happening, too. I wanted to prove that I was more than what I had done before. Modeling had often left me feeling like I had spent years not really using my brain, and now I wanted people to see that side of me. In trying so hard to prove that I was intelligent and had something substantive to say, I overcorrected. I started hiding the parts of myself that I thought might make people take me less seriously.

Some of that performance was for an audience that only existed in my head. And some of it was for the people with more credentials than me who I imagined might one day come across my work and judge it.

I’d seen plenty of comments about how anybody can become a coach and sell anything. How coaches can speak with a lot of conviction without necessarily having the experience, training, or integrity to back it up. One of my biggest fears was being seen as one of those coaches. I imagined someone coming across my work and thinking, Who is she to talk about this? She just started. She only has this many years of training.

A lot of what I was creating was an attempt to make sure nobody could say that about me.

But in trying to control that perception, I spent so much time and energy thinking about how I wanted to come across that it often kept me from creating at all. And when I did create, it often sounded like a watered-down version of me.

By watered down, I mean edited so closely that there was almost no way I could be misunderstood. Zero silliness. Personal thoughts kept to a minimum. Everything had to pass the “Does this make sense? Is this valuable?” quality control check. If I wanted to go off on a tangent, I shut it down immediately because I assumed nobody wanted to hear about it or would care.

It even made it harder to figure out what I actually thought, or to give myself the space to develop a unique point of view. Instead of following an idea somewhere interesting just to see where it went, I was already trying to turn it into something “valuable.”

When you’re trying to make something “valuable,” you’re often deciding what’s valuable based on what other people have already responded to. So you end up repeating the same ideas over and over again. You keep to the topics everyone else is covering, or what you’ve already talked about, because you already have some evidence that it’s worth saying.

What’s funny is that after I’ve read a couple of articles on the same topic, reading someone else’s opinion with literally the exact same thoughts offers me zero value. Yes, please explain to me again what 500 other people are already talking about.

There’s a clear shift that happens when you prioritize your own genuine interest over what you think you “should” be talking about. You start asking different questions. You let yourself explore beyond what you already know. You challenge yourself to think about something you haven’t thought about before, without needing to know where the idea is going or whether it will turn into something useful.

But realizing that didn’t suddenly make it easy to let other people see more of me. I didn’t get out of the habit of editing myself by deciding I was going to be completely unfiltered and authentic everywhere. I practiced.

Over the course of about a year, I gradually started showing more of myself. I started with voice notes to long-term clients, people I already felt comfortable with. Then voice notes in a private community. Talking videos in my stories. Talking videos in my reels. An in-person event where I was the only one presenting. Eventually, I found myself live on Zoom in front of more than 200 people, doing a demo with someone I had never worked with before and facilitating an experience with a new collaborator.

That gradual progression wasn’t something I planned. I just paid attention to what felt normal after being uncomfortable for a while. Once it stopped feeling like a big deal, I’d gently nudge myself toward the next step.

I thought authority was something I had to prove by showing how much I knew and presenting myself in a way that looked credible. But the harder I tried to prove myself, the more I edited out the very things that made my work mine.

I didn’t need to become more authoritative. I needed to trust that my own way of thinking, expressing myself, and seeing things was worth sharing. And people can feel the difference. They can feel when you’re actually living your work and letting them see you in the middle of your own process, rather than trying to prove that you’re qualified to talk about it.

When someone is thinking out loud instead of rehearsing the same exact story they’ve been sharing for years, there’s space for a spontaneous insight. There’s aliveness. There’s transparency. We can feel that in our nervous systems.

It’s obvious when something has been overly perfected because that human connection starts to disappear. Nobody is moved emotionally. Nobody leaves wanting to know YOU as a person. Maybe they learned something useful. Maybe they even save the post. But once they’ve gotten what they came for, that’s kind of it.

Thanks for the information, bye.

The more of my personality I’ve allowed into my work, the more genuinely aligned my connections have become.

Creating takes less out of me because I’m not spending as much energy managing how I’m being perceived. Noticing how people respond to what I say. Wondering if they like my work. Wondering if they get it.

I’ve stopped trying to make sure everything I create appeals to everyone. It absolutely won’t resonate with everyone, but the people it does resonate with have something to connect to. Something specific enough that they can recognize themselves in it.

So, if this resonates with you in some way, my invitation is to keep showing up. Let your authentic self be seen in increments, and discover more of who you are through the process.

Hi, I’m Sheila. I’m a somatic parts work coach who helps healers and creatives better understand themselves, their patterns, and what they truly want, so they can make choices that support both their work and the life they want to live.

My work is for thoughtful, growth-oriented people who are tired of following someone else’s definition of success and want to cultivate deep trust in their own direction.

If you’re ready to work together, send me an email sharing your current goals and challenges to get started.

I’m endlessly curious about why we do what we do, how we become who we are, and what it takes to create a life that feels like our own.

Last week I had to teach a room of people I didn’t know well, in person, for the first time. And a part of me, I call her Or We Could Just Not, stepped in and insisted on mandatory hibernation.

She’s a floaty, jellyfish-like presence in my system whose whole job is to numb me out of anything that feels too intense. So there I was, days before the event, perfectly cozy and content to remain buried under blankets, with absolutely zero motivation to prepare. I briefly considered ‘winging it,’ but my nervous system panicked and decided that was a recipe for disaster.

I recognized what was happening: internal conflict. Different parts of me wanted different things, and my jellyfish part had taken the wheel.

This is what parts work calls it when we treat our different feelings, thoughts, habits, and body sensations as parts of us — almost like members of an internal family, each with its own voice, its own worries, its own way of trying to help. Like any family, they don’t always agree.

Seeing your parts clearly, instead of being swept away by them, gives you more choice when you’re facing internal conflict, making difficult decisions, or wondering, “Why did I react like that?” Your parts are trying to tell you something.

Meet the Cast

Most people’s inner worlds include a few recurring roles:

• Managers — the proactive parts that try to keep life running smoothly by staying one step ahead. They plan, organize, anticipate problems, and work hard to keep you from feeling overwhelmed or getting hurt.

  • For example, your Perfectionist might keep refining your content so nothing is “wrong.” Your Planner might want a spreadsheet for the spreadsheet. Those two parts of mine are best friends.

• Exiles — the parts that carry emotional pain from the past. They’re often younger parts of you, though not always a literal child. These are the parts that still remember what it felt like to be rejected, not good enough, left out, ashamed, or alone. They hold experiences that were too overwhelming to process at the time.

• Firefighters — the reactive parts that jump in when an emotion becomes too overwhelming. Their job is to make the feeling stop, and they want relief right now. They don’t care about the long-term consequences. Truly, they give zero f’s. They care about getting you out of pain as fast as possible.

  • They might say, “Who cares? Let’s go shopping.” Or, “Just one more episode.” Or, “Order the fries.” They’re the parts that would absolutely hit the giant red “MAKE THE FEELING GO AWAY” button without reading the instructions.

Every part has a reason for doing what it does. Even the parts that lead to arguments, impulsive decisions, procrastination, or numbing with food or wine are usually trying to keep you safe from emotional pain. They may be using outdated strategies, but they’re trying to help.

Read more

I’m endlessly curious about why we do what we do, how we become who we are, and what it takes to create a life that feels like our own.

I was trying to decide what to write about this week when I realized I should write about avoidance.

I’d been putting off preparing for my first in-person workshop for weeks. Every time it crossed my mind, I’d feel a surge of anxiety, convince myself it wasn’t really a big deal, and move on to something else.

If you’ve ever procrastinated or avoided an important project or conversation, and then felt guilty about it, here’s something to consider: you weren’t actually failing to respond to your stress. You were responding to it.

We tend to look at avoidance like it’s the exact opposite of coping. But it isn’t.

Avoidance is a way of putting off the discomfort of the unknown until you have the mental space to face it. Delaying engagement with a thought isn’t an inability to cope. It’s your nervous system actively controlling the flow of stress so you don’t get overwhelmed.

It doesn’t solve the whole problem, but it does titrate the amount of stress to keep you functional.

There’s also this common myth that being “emotionally regulated” means staying calm in the face of big challenges. That’s not reality.

If you’re dealing with something new and your nervous system detects and interprets it as a threat, you will get dysregulated. The severity of that dysregulation depends on your capacity for stress, which varies depending on what else you’re dealing with.

Rather than aiming to always be regulated, aim to build greater resilience. Resilience is the ability to respond to the stressor and move back into regulation.

To better illustrate how these mechanisms work, I’d like to share a recent experience where my own nervous system became overwhelmed and how I navigated it.

I have a series of group events that I need to lead. Group work is not my favorite thing, and these events are quite different from what I typically do.

I usually work with small, intimate groups online and facilitate sharing. These events involve larger groups, one is in person, and I don’t know the people attending. Each one needs to be thought through, planned, and executed over consecutive weeks.

I’m also not just facilitating these events. I’m teaching, which is another thing outside of my comfort zone.

They’re also new collaborations, so how I perform will determine whether we continue working together. Every meeting about these collaborations involves feedback and refinement.

On top of all of that, I was already busy with client work, trainings, and long-term collaborations. So for July and August, I have week after week of uncertainty and new challenges.

At several points over the last week, I found myself feeling resistant, angry, and guilty. The same thoughts kept coming up: Why on earth did I agree to all of this? Why is it all happening at the same time? I already have way too much on my plate.

When you stack a series of new challenges back-to-back, your brain stops parsing these into a sequence of actionable steps. Instead, it collapses them into a single, looming threat.

Instead of seeing individual tasks, all I could see was one big, blurry cloud. It’s hard to move toward something you can’t clearly see.

My initial response to the threat was procrastination. My nervous system was trying to protect whatever bandwidth I had left to function well.

The turning point for me was resourcing myself and taking back control. I started by dialing back the scope and focusing on the smallest viable step:

• I checked out the space: I went and physically stood in the room where the in-person event would happen, visualizing how I might want to set it up.

• I used a sounding board: I talked through the logic with a partner, which was simply the first act of externalizing the challenge and grounding my thinking.

• I sought clarity on the participants: I found out who was attending, which helped demystify the room and allowed me to tailor my preparation rather than guessing.

• I guarded my time: I blocked off my calendar so nothing else could sneak into those key planning windows.

None of these steps were the work itself; they were just the scaffolding I needed to feel safe enough to begin. They were small, specific actions spread over a few days that turned a vague, scary dread into a clearer picture.

I also prioritized resourcing my nervous system. I treated my body as the foundation for this work, making sure to engage in restorative practices like walks, massages, and maintaining my regular routines to keep me grounded. By tending to my physical state through movement, restorative rest, and therapeutic support like my IFS sessions, I created the internal capacity I needed to show up for the tasks I had been avoiding.

So, if you are currently facing a project and feeling that familiar mix of dread, avoidance, and guilt, stop asking yourself, “Why can’t I just get this done?” Instead, ask: “How can I support my body? And what is a piece of this I do not understand yet?”

Once you start resourcing yourself physically and clarifying those details, you aren’t just making progress. You are providing your nervous system with the steady stream of certainty it needs to regulate.

Hi, I’m Sheila. I’m a somatic parts work coach who helps healers and creatives better understand themselves, their patterns, and what they truly want, so they can make choices that support both their work and the life they want to live.

My work is for thoughtful, growth-oriented people who are tired of following someone else’s definition of success and want to cultivate deep trust in their own direction.

If you’re ready to work together, send me an email sharing your current goals and challenges to get started.

I’m endlessly curious about why we do what we do, how we become who we are, and what it takes to create a life that feels like our own.

Have you ever made it through a seemingly ordinary week feeling utterly exhausted, then looked back and wondered what you actually accomplished? It might not look like much on paper, but your calendar rarely captures the full weight of the mental and emotional effort behind those events.

On the surface, last week was a pretty ordinary week with no major events. I uploaded a couple of talking videos, checked out a place I’ve been meaning to visit, and had my very first in-person session with a new client. Even so, I spent the entire week dealing with a strange contradiction: feeling completely overwhelmed by doing more than I wanted to, yet still feeling like I wasn’t doing nearly enough.

Because of my ADHD, much of my energy goes into anxious anticipation. Being highly sensitive also means I easily become overstimulated. As a result, I’ve developed a habit of processing nearly every experience afterward, asking myself: How does my body feel? What came up for me? Do I want to keep doing this, and what should I do differently next time?

On a calendar, my week might just look like a scattering of videos, meetings, or new places to visit. What those blocks fail to show is the true reality of my typical week: constantly stepping outside my comfort zone and processing the wave of emotions and triggers that emerge before, during, and after every single experience.

Here is a closer look at what those calendar blocks actually looked like:

• Client Sessions: Far more than a scheduled hour, these blocks included an initial face-to-face meeting with a new client, involving emotional preparation beforehand and deep reflection afterward.

• Collaborative Projects: Rather than simple discussions, these partnerships involved navigating uncertainty, managing energy, and investing time without a guaranteed outcome, relying entirely on mutual alignment, pacing, and communication.

• Entrepreneur Group: This felt like much more than just a typical meetup. It involved opening up about a professional challenge, processing external feedback, resisting the urge to compare (unlike my small business, these people have real companies!), and realigning with my own journey.

• Co-working Time: This went way beyond silently sharing a workspace with laptops open. Instead, it turned into an active session of brainstorming, collaborative decision-making, and exploring a whole new set of ideas.

• A Haircut Appointment: Far from a standard trim, this meeting with a new stylist evolved into an evaluation of our dynamic to see if we would be a good fit for a coaching relationship. I listened through the lens of a coach, paying close attention to our interaction and what unfolded for each of us.

In each case, the event itself was only part of the experience.

Before almost every new experience, there’s anticipation. During it, there’s staying present while managing uncertainty and overstimulation. Afterward, there’s processing: noticing what came up, how my body responded, what I learned, and whether I want to do it again.

None of that appears on a calendar.

While calendars track our schedules, they don’t capture cognitive load, emotional processing, or the ongoing work of regulating our nervous systems. Those demands accumulate throughout the day, increasing the amount of mental and physiological effort required to keep functioning well. By day’s end, our exhaustion often reflects not just what we did, but everything each experience required before, during, and afterward.

Lately, I’ve been addressing my fear of visibility, but this week brought a new kind of exposure: being directly evaluated by a potential collaborator in front of others. Although the feedback was incredibly kind and supportive, my vulnerable side interpreted it as a sign that I hadn’t done things perfectly.

Putting your work online requires being seen, which frequently feels like being exposed, especially in the early stages. Visibility means accepting that judgment, misunderstanding, or indifference from others is inevitable. There is no shortcut around this discomfort, but facing it repeatedly diminishes its control over your choices.

Therefore, the dysregulation I experienced, namely the nagging feeling of falling short, was information to explore rather than a problem to solve. An activated nervous system in a new environment or dynamic isn't broken; it's highlighting that something meaningful is occurring. We wouldn't feel anything if nothing were at stake.

A major challenge of personal growth is that our brains rely on past experience to predict what will happen next. When we enter unfamiliar, unpredictable, or personally meaningful situations, those predictions become less certain, often increasing vigilance, physiological arousal, and self-consciousness. That response isn’t necessarily evidence that something is wrong. More often, it reflects uncertainty rather than danger.

With repeated experiences that end safely or more successfully than expected, the brain gradually updates its predictions. Over time, unfamiliar situations become more familiar, reducing the need for the same level of vigilance and allowing the nervous system to respond with greater flexibility.

Part of me wishes I could strengthen my nervous system without involving other people. But certain kinds of growth only happen in relationship. Whether it’s my stylist, co-workers, business peers, clients, or collaborators, these interactions expose me to uncertainty in ways that private practices never can.

Journaling and meditation help me prepare, but they can’t replace real-world experience. Some lessons can only be learned by participating, noticing what happens inside me, and discovering that I can tolerate whatever follows. That is exactly the risk I chose to take, again and again, throughout the week.

This learning process is continuous. My nervous system is actively building tolerance for situations that felt impossible just six months ago, including appearing on camera more, attending in-person events, and cultivating deeper connections within local communities rather than observing from afar.

Activities like speaking on camera, sharing my true personality, and posting authentically instead of optimizing for performance metrics have shifted from daunting to nearly routine.

However, just because I can tolerate these experiences doesn't mean they don't consume my energy. In-person interactions remain particularly draining for me. As a coach and a Projector, I tend to be fully present and deeply attuned to the people and environments around me. Human Design describes Projectors as having a penetrating, absorbing aura, which aligns with my experience of naturally taking in what's happening around me. As a result, conversations often become deep and meaningful, but they take more out of me than they appear to from the outside.

Part of me has internalized the belief that there's always another challenge waiting. It wishes my nervous system would adapt completely so these interactions and experiences wouldn't exhaust me. Every time one edge becomes familiar, I’ve already introduced several more. By the time speaking on camera feels ordinary, I'm experimenting with new collaborations, facilitating in-person groups, or stepping into unfamiliar communities. In business and personal growth, continual expansion is often treated as the standard. Even though I know integration deserves just as much attention, it's difficult not to move on to the next challenge.

Amidst this, I’ve at least learned to intentionally reserve space for what replenishes my energy. The moments that made me feel most alive this week consisted of simply wandering around, capturing photos, and exploring unfamiliar places with nowhere to be and nothing to prove.

Maybe you’re navigating something similar right now, some version of the same challenges I’m moving through. If so, these questions might offer some insights:

• What is your nervous system learning to accommodate today that felt impossible six months ago?

• What has shifted from daunting to completely ordinary in your life?

• What activities still drain your energy, even though you’ve learned to navigate them?

• What experiences made you feel most connected to yourself and alive this week?

Hi, I’m Sheila. I’m a somatic parts work coach who helps healers and creatives better understand themselves, their patterns, and what they truly want, so they can make choices that support both their work and the life they want to live.

My work is for thoughtful, growth-oriented people who are tired of following someone else’s definition of success and want to cultivate deep trust in their own direction.

If you’re ready to work together, send me an email sharing your current goals and challenges to get started.

I’m endlessly curious about why we do what we do, how we become who we are, and what it takes to create a life that feels like our own.

Learning you’re a Projector for the first time can be quite an experience.

I remember when I first found out my Human Design type, how deeply seen I felt. It was 2022. I was in school, had just bought a house, and had just gotten married, all within the same few weeks. I planned, managed, and executed every piece of it myself: the closing paperwork, the moving boxes, the wedding logistics, on top of classes and deadlines I still had to keep up with. By the time it was all done, I wasn’t just tired. I was utterly depleted.

I also felt a sense of shame when I read how Not-Self Projectors are described: bitter, unappreciated, drained, resenting the world for not seeing or valuing what they have to offer. That summed me up to a T.

As a Projector, you’re told to rest. Stop trying to keep up with the Generators of the world. Prioritize your fascinations. Remember that your energy is limited.

So you try it for a while, and you eventually realize it’s much easier said than done. The experiment, as it’s often called in Human Design circles, is said to take about seven years to fully take hold.

Resting while everyone else is doing so much and moving forward can make you feel like you’ll be left behind. Truly, how much rest does one person actually need? How will your dreams ever get accomplished if you’re not “doing” enough? Are you just being lazy? Why does everyone else have to work while you get to take it easy? Is it okay to want what you want and still barely be producing anything?

And then there’s the question underneath it all: why does doing what’s supposedly right for you still feel so wrong?

Probably because you were taught that doing more was right and resting was something you had to justify. No wonder slowing down feels wrong.

Another Projector asked me recently: “How do you shut down the voices of guilt?”

I don’t think the goal is to shut them down.

If a part of you feels guilty every time you prioritize yourself, there’s probably something it believes, and it’s worth getting curious about what that is.

You can read every Human Design book. Listen to every Projector podcast. Know your authority, profile, environment, and variables. And still override your capacity.

Information can help you recognize the pattern. It doesn’t automatically change your relationship with it.

If your nervous system has learned that being unavailable, disappointing someone, or putting yourself first threatens connection, you may not be able to simply “reframe” your way out of it.

This is where somatics and parts work become useful. There’s usually more than one voice inside you: the part that wants to rest, and the part that’s terrified of what rest might cost you, the same part that shows up as guilt. Underneath both is your Self, a calmer, more compassionate part of you that can hold space for that tension without getting pulled into it.

From there, you get curious about what the guilty part is protecting you from, when it learned this, and whether that threat is even still true today. Most of the time, it isn’t. The guilt is running an old program, still trying to keep you safe from something that already happened, in a life you don’t live anymore.

It’s a practice you return to, the same way trust with anyone takes ongoing conversation.

Early on in my Human Design experiment, one of the things I tried was practicing not being productive.

Whenever I had down time at home, I’d find chores to do around the house. There was always something that needed to be done. Meanwhile, I’d resent my partner for just sitting around, not doing anything.

It drove me insane, actually. Are you ever going to clean this house? Do you think it cleans itself? The voice in my head sounded exactly like my stepmom’s. I’d internalized years of her berating me for not cleaning as much as she did. Mind you, our house growing up was immaculate, because she cleaned around the clock.

So when I finally tried sitting on the couch myself, it felt foreign. That same voice immediately piped up: “Are you just going to sit there? Do you think things get done by themselves?”

Part of me felt threatened by the idea of resting. But another part felt quite relieved to finally do nothing.

It didn’t take long to realize my stepmom’s voice wasn’t the only one in there. There was a part that needed everything to be perfect, a part that equated being useful with being loved, a part terrified that if I stopped moving, everyone else would keep going and I’d be the only one left behind.

Most days I couldn’t tell they were separate at all. It just felt like being one overwhelmed, exhausted person.

It took years of therapy and somatic work to learn that those thoughts weren’t just me, they were parts, each with its own job. And underneath all of them was a steadier part of me too, one that had been there the whole time, just waiting to be recognized as separate from the noise.

Once I had language for that, the question changed. Not “how do I make this stop,” but “what does this part actually need from me?”

These days, some of the things I used to feel guilty about don’t bring up guilt at all. My beliefs have changed. But every so often, I realize there are still choices that bring up guilt.

When I do, I turn toward it instead of away from it, let it know I see what it’s trying to do, and make my choice from there. The guilt might still show up. It just isn’t the deciding factor anymore.

This is the work I do for a living now. Every week, I sit with clients while they meet these parts of themselves for the first time and realize something simple: these voices aren’t in charge.

They’re relationships waiting to be built, not just through conversation, but through practice.

Saying no. Resting. Nothing falling apart. Actually feeling better. Small pieces of evidence, accumulating into a new pattern.

Now, a few years into the experiment, I prioritize tuning into my own energy rather than orienting around what’s happening outside of me.

How do I feel? How much energy do I have? Where does my energy want to go? What does it feel like when I’m resourced?

I exercise discernment. I don’t answer every question just because someone asks it. I’m less available to some people so I can be more available to the ones who actually recognize my wisdom. I communicate clearly how much capacity I have, and I set boundaries and expectations accordingly.

Journaling has also become a daily practice, my way of staying attuned to myself and processing whatever I’m carrying before it piles up.

None of this feels easy or empowering right away. Saying no can feel selfish. Resting can feel irresponsible. Checking my capacity before helping someone can feel transactional. But I’ve learned that even an aligned choice can honor my energy and still stir up discomfort.

What does it actually mean to embody my Projector-ness?

Not perfect rest. Not following every Human Design rule correctly.

Those were just starting points, teaching me to notice my own patterns in the first place.

What I’m actually doing is building a relationship with myself. I listen to my parts instead of letting them run me. And when that’s uncomfortable for one of them, I don’t shut it out. I stay present with it and work with myself so I can choose what’s actually best for me.

Hi, I’m Sheila. I’m a somatic parts work coach who helps healers and creatives better understand themselves, their patterns, and what they truly want, so they can make choices that support both their work and the life they want to live.

My work is for thoughtful, growth-oriented people who are tired of following someone else’s definition of success and want to cultivate deep trust in their own direction.

If you’re ready to work together, send me an email sharing your current goals and challenges to get started.

I’m endlessly curious about why we do what we do, how we become who we are, and what it takes to create a life that feels like our own.

I’m participating in the second cohort of the Yap Challenge with Jessi Jean and making it my own. For six weeks, I’m challenging myself to show up a little more authentically, do one small thing that scares me each day, and share the parts work, nervous system practices, and insights that are helping me along the way.

I don’t know exactly where this will lead. That’s part of the experiment.

One of my favorite things about a container like this is that it makes consistency easier. The bar is low enough to keep showing up, I have a couple of friends doing it with me, and there’s room for imperfect days.

That’s why I think commitments like this often become about more than what you originally signed up for. Much of the growth comes from deciding what you want to practice while you’re in them.

For me, the daily videos are just the vehicle. I’m learning to trust the way I naturally think, speak, and express myself.

You hear it everywhere: just show up as yourself. Be authentic. If only it were that easy.

Some of us learned early on that it wasn’t always safe to be ourselves. Different parts of us only came out in private. We feared judgment, feared not being liked, or felt we had to fit a certain role.

This challenge gives me a place to practice something different. Every time I hit record, I get another chance to let a little more of myself come forward.

Two parts I’m inviting forward right now are the playful, silly part who just wants to have fun without wondering if she’s “too much,” and the part with strong discernment who reads a room, notices when something feels off, and isn’t afraid to say it.

Interestingly, I seem to fear being both too much and not enough. For a long time, I believed that if I worked hard enough, I’d eventually outgrow the feeling of not being enough. Whatever I made, or whoever I was on a given day, had to earn its place before I let anyone see it.

I’ve worked with this pattern for years, so I wasn’t surprised when it resurfaced here. But something has been shifting. Instead of asking, “What should I post?” I’m learning to ask, “What would be fun to make?”

That question changes the experience of creating. It makes it easier to let different parts of me participate instead of filtering them out. Looking back, I think part of what made the process feel so heavy was that I was only allowing one version of me to show up.

The work I do goes deep. It explores healing, self-trust, and the parts of ourselves that are hardest to understand. That will always be part of what I create.

But if that’s all I make room for, everything starts to carry the same weight. I need space for curiosity and humor too. I want some of my work to feel light, playful, and enjoyable to make.

If I’m going to spend time getting better on camera and connecting with people, I want to create in a way that makes me want to keep showing up.

People who look effortless and authentic on camera usually just have more reps in.

Before filming a reel, I spent a few minutes being ridiculous. I made weird faces, danced around, and purposely messed up. Anything to loosen myself up.

By the time I hit record, I wasn’t as focused on getting it right. I could just express myself.

One thing I’ve appreciated about this challenge is having space to experiment with different ways of showing up. It’s helping me discover what my voice sounds like when I’m not trying so hard to get it right.

I don’t know how much of this will stick after the six weeks are over, or which parts of me will still need this kind of support once the container is gone. But for now, giving myself permission to be silly first, messy first, or unfinished first is what’s making it possible to express more of myself.

Hi, I’m Sheila. I’m a somatic parts work coach who helps healers and creatives better understand themselves, their patterns, and what they truly want, so they can make choices that support both their work and the life they want to live.

My work is for thoughtful, growth-oriented people who are tired of following someone else’s definition of success and want to cultivate deep trust in their own direction.

If you’re ready to work together, send me an email sharing your current goals and challenges to get started.

I’m endlessly curious about why we do what we do, how we become who we are, and what it takes to create a life that feels like our own.

I love planning for the month ahead. Balancing scheduled commitments with little experiments I can pick and choose from. It’s like coming up with a rough draft for what the month could look like. Creating space for rest, play, expansion, and integration.

For July, I plan on experimenting with a couple of my Human Design placements.

A friend recently shared a reel about using Mercury placements to guide marketing decisions. This caught my attention because I really want to show up more authentically, and not limit myself to just posting about my work as a coach.

But I have parts that have deeply entrenched beliefs that it’s not okay to do that. Something I’m gently working through (and seeing slow, steady progress with!)

Despite what many people claim, there's no single right way to market your work. I believe there are countless ways. Experts love to tell you what they think you should be doing: post every day, get on podcasts, record talking head reels, batch create content. Those posts get attention and inspire ideas. I get it.

But that doesn’t mean you have to do it all. Not everything is going to make sense for you, your goals, or the way you naturally work. And since time is limited, you’ll need to narrow it down.

So how do you determine which one is more likely to work for you?

For July, I'm playing around with two Human Design placements while focusing on showing up more authentically on Instagram and Substack.

In Human Design, the conscious Mercury gate is associated with the what - themes you’re here to communicate, including your ideas and perspectives. The unconscious Mercury gate reflects the how - ways you’re naturally inclined to express them.

My conscious Mercury is in Gate 61, which is associated with mystery, contemplation, and the drive to understand life’s deeper questions.

My unconscious Mercury is in Gate 43, which is associated with original insights and seeing things from an unexpected angle.

Together it could look like diving into a topic that I find genuinely fascinating (Gate 61), sitting with a question until something clicks, then sharing the unexpected connection or perspective I discovered (Gate 43).

These descriptions resonated and gave me confidence to lean into a style of expression that already felt natural.

I treat everything in my Human Design chart as a suggestion. Before I adopt it, I check in with myself first.

• Does this actually feel aligned right now?

• Does this reflect a part of me that wants to embody something new?

• Does it expand something I’ve already been sensing?

If the answer is yes, I’ll try it. If not, I leave it alone.

In fact, that’s how I approach almost every framework.

Human Design points to my gifts and how I work best. Astrology shapes timing. Tarot brings my attention to subconscious feelings. The Enneagram gives me patterns to watch for.

Each one gives me something to pay attention to. I use the information as a starting point to try things out.

If my Human Design suggests I naturally communicate through stories and personal insight, what shifts if I spend a month leaning into that?

If astrological transits point toward expansion in my career house this year, what happens if I’m a little more willing to say yes to opportunities?

If tarot brings up a feeling I’d been overlooking, what shows up when I pause and check in with that feeling?

A framework might inspire an experiment. But my experience determines whether and how I continue using that approach.

Funny enough, one of my Human Design variables is called Probability. It's described as moving through the world by paying attention to what's most likely to happen rather than every possible outcome. I chuckled at how accurately describes my decision-making process.

So that’s the approach I’m taking this month.

I’ve got a few things on the calendar, a few ideas I’m curious enough to test, and I’m going to let my own experience decide what sticks.

We’ll see what happens.

Hi, I’m Sheila. I’m a somatic parts work coach who helps healers and creatives better understand themselves, their patterns, and what they truly want, so they can make choices that support both their work and the life they want to live.

My work is for thoughtful, growth-oriented people who are tired of following someone else’s definition of success and want to cultivate deep trust in their own direction.

If you’re ready to work together, send me an email sharing your current goals and challenges to get started.

I’m endlessly curious about why we do what we do, how we become who we are, and what it takes to create a life that feels like our own.

Over the past week, I’ve been deep in the process of updating my website copy, which turns out to be much harder when you’re still discovering what you stand for.

Updating website copy can be a long and involved process for coaches and business owners alike. There’s a whole industry telling us that we need to get clear on what we do, who it’s for, and how to talk about it. Business coaches will often ask questions like, “What do you stand for?” or “What’s the hill you’re willing to die on?” They want your work to be clear enough that the right people can quickly understand its value.

It all makes sense in theory, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to do.

Two years ago, when I first hired a business coach and joined her mastermind, I was being asked to define my ideal client and philosophy before I felt ready to answer either question. I hadn’t even started my coach training yet, and I remember thinking, “I have no idea. How am I supposed to know who I want to work with?”

I found it difficult to form strong convictions without enough experience to back them up. How could I trust my own answer?

But I had to start somewhere. I considered the few interactions I’d had with people so far (mostly friends and former classmates I’d practiced coaching with). I also reflected on my own healing work. What did we all have in common? It seemed like we were all struggling with similar issues: anxiety, overthinking, and self-destructive patterns.

Based on that, I decided to start by focusing on anxiety. It was the clearest common thread, and it was something I felt confident helping people work through.

Over time, though, I’ve realized that the work I do tends to shine when someone isn’t just trying to feel less anxious. They’re also trying to move toward something.

Maybe they want to start a business, make a career change, put themselves out there creatively, find a partner, or pursue something that feels deeply meaningful to them. The desire is there. They feel inspired. They take a few steps forward, and then their old patterns activate.

They start thinking, “I’m not good enough” or “I don’t know enough.” Life gets busy. Momentum fades. Frustration builds as they find themselves back in the same cycle of starting, stopping, and blaming themselves for it.

My work helps people relate to their anxiety differently, not get rid of it. As they move toward their goals and encounter resistance, uncertainty, and fear, they learn how to build a relationship with the parts of them that show up along the way. Over time, they get out of the start-stop-blame cycle and learn to listen to themselves with more compassion, so they can understand how they actually work instead of how they think they should work.

As these patterns became clearer, so did my philosophy. Or at least I thought.

I updated the copy on my website, pouring at least eight hours into it. I was quite pleased with my progress. So professional.

Then I had coffee with a new friend who happened to be a somatic practitioner as well. As we exchanged ideas, I excitedly pulled up my website to show her.

She looked it over and said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about here.”

She meant it in the kindest, most supportive way. As a practitioner herself, she understood how difficult it can be to translate nuanced work into language that other people can immediately understand.

A part of me pouted, I thought it was clear! Sad face emoji.

It was a useful reminder that knowing what you believe and communicating it clearly aren’t always the same thing.

That conversation motivated me to start talking to my clients—the ones I love working with. I asked them how they would describe the work we do together.

As I listened, new insights emerged. The goal wasn’t to get rid of anxiety, self-doubt, or difficult emotions. I was helping people understand those experiences, develop a different relationship with themselves, and move through life with more self-trust.

In the process of finding clearer language for my work, I experienced firsthand that self-trust grows through learning to stay connected to yourself.

Through paying attention to your needs, emotions, and experiences. Through getting curious about what’s happening beneath the surface instead of immediately trying to fix, suppress, or override it.

I’ve been having to practice that with my own website this week. No, my website isn’t perfect. But it is getting clearer. I could give in to the perfectionist part of me that wants to spend the entire month refining it. I also have other parts that can recognize it’s clear enough for now, and that I don’t need to have everything figured out before I share it. At some point, continuing to refine it wouldn’t make it clearer. It would just be a way of trying to feel more certain before I let myself move on.

Many people spend years looking outside themselves for answers, searching for the right framework, strategy, or person who can tell them what to do. Those things can be incredibly useful. They can offer perspective, guidance, and new ways of thinking.

The problem is when we hand over too much authority and lose touch with our own experience in the process.

I believe self-trust develops through learning to hold both. Taking in information while staying connected to your own values, needs, and observations. Making choices, reflecting on the results, and gradually building confidence in your ability to navigate whatever is in front of you.

It makes sense that it took me a while to articulate what I believed. I needed time, experience, and enough distance to reflect on what I was seeing.

I needed to encounter different ideas and discover where I agreed, where I disagreed, and where reality seemed more complicated than the answers being offered.

A philosophy isn’t something I could have decided on in advance. It emerged through experience, reflection, and time.

Around the same time, I started seeing this not just in my coaching work, but in my writing too. Earlier this year, I started The Artist’s Way. As part of the 12-week program, you’re encouraged to take yourself on a weekly artist date—activities designed to nurture creativity. I felt inspired to write about the experience as I was going through it.

It often takes me a while to get to my point, and Instagram didn’t feel like the right place for that. So I started a Substack instead.

Here, I could be long-winded. I could follow a thought all the way through. Stream-of-consciousness writing has always been how I make sense of things. It’s what I’ve done in journals for years.

After a month of writing, I started to understand something on a deeper level: there is no shortcut around experience. The lesson you’re looking for is often embedded in the process itself.

If you’re in the messy middle of figuring out what you want next, what you believe, or what’s actually true for you, give yourself permission to move forward with ‘good enough.’ Trust in your ability to learn as you go.

Clarity emerges through trying things, paying attention, reflecting on what happens, and noticing the patterns that reveal themselves. It can also come through conversations with other people, not so you can adopt what they think, but so you can better understand what you think.

You don’t have to know exactly what you believe before you begin. Often, you discover it through living.

Hi, I’m Sheila. I’m a somatic parts work coach who helps healers and creatives better understand themselves, their patterns, and what they truly want, so they can make choices that support both their work and the life they want to live.

My work is for thoughtful, growth-oriented people who are tired of following someone else’s definition of success and want to cultivate deep trust in their own direction.

If you’re ready to work together, send me an email sharing your current goals and challenges to get started.

I’m endlessly curious about why we do what we do, how we become who we are, and what it takes to create a life that feels like our own.

I started The Artist’s Way book club the same way many of my adventures begin: because someone else wanted to do it. Kelsey, a member of my Embodied Success community, mentioned she had been hoping to work through The Artist’s Way with a group, so we set it up together. Members checked in with each other weekly and met once a month to discuss the book. I didn’t know it then, but it was exactly the kind of thing I’d been craving.

The Artist’s Way is a twelve-week program built around two practices: Morning Pages and weekly Artist Dates. Morning Pages are three pages of stream-of-consciousness journaling each day. Artist Dates are an hour spent alone doing something purely for enjoyment. I’d done the program once before in my twenties and barely finished.

At the time, I was living alone in Orange County, California, wanting to feel more soulful and artistic somehow. I loved Morning Pages and found I had plenty to write about each morning, mostly complaints and frustrations. The Artist Dates never meant much to me. Most weeks I’d just go rollerblading at the park or hiking on a trail. I was traveling constantly, had no real routine, and didn’t care much whether I completed the program.

This time felt different. I had space in my calendar for the monthly meetings. Morning Pages were an absolute treat. I’d been doing them for years and loved settling in with my Paper Republic leather journal cover, breathing in the scent of the leather as I wrote.

The Artist Dates were what worried me.

How would they help me? What would I discover? Would I become more creative?

More importantly, would there be free parking?

We got off to a strong start. A bunch of people joined us, though most were realistic about their level of commitment. Life was busy, after all. My first few Artist Dates were simple: a walk in the park, journaling under the trees, browsing a shop filled with work by local artists, and practicing speaking on camera over a croissant at a hotel café.

Over the first few weeks, I noticed a pattern in my Morning Pages: leaving the house took far more effort than I realized.

I was spending most of my time in my home office. Client calls during the day. Group calls in the afternoons. Not much reason to go anywhere. I’d work a little, take a bath, take a nap, and work a little more.

There wasn’t anything wrong with my life. I’d just gotten comfortable with my routine.

The pages kept nudging me toward the same question: what else could be possible?

I had stopped venturing very far beyond my usual routines.

I wanted my world to feel a little bigger.

Looking back, the timing was perfect. I had fewer clients on my calendar and more room for something new. The part of me that takes care of everyone else was ready for a break. I rarely made room for things that were purely for enjoyment, curiosity, and exploration.

For my fifth Artist Date, I attended an event at a local co-working and wellness space that had recently opened. I remember the dread leading up to it.

I don’t want to go alone!

What are we gonna do there?

Network? Mingle?

My inner child was not happy about it.

I went anyway because anticipatory anxiety is normal for me. And it turned out fine.

The following week, I attended a networking event for women in business. This was well outside my comfort zone, and I never would have gone if not for the weekly Artist Date I had to fulfill. I felt nervous and awkward. My inner child was protesting. But I ended up having fun.

I could tell my sweet inner child had had enough of my business-oriented shenanigans, so I agreed: no more of those.

They’d given me the exposure I needed to warm up my socializing muscles; now I could keep showing up in those spaces and building relationships on my own time.

But part of me still wanted the Artist Dates to be interesting.

Don’t just go to the park and be alone.

Do something different.

Meet people.

Expand your world, remember?

The rest of the dates were a blend of sound baths, yoga, and somatic movement. They weren’t especially novel, but they gave me a reason to leave the house and be around other people. I reconnected with a yoga teacher and met a few new people without overwhelming my nervous system.

For the last date, I wanted to slow things down.

So I went to a cute hotel and just took photos.

It felt so good to listen to my inner child, who only wanted to capture things that caught her eye and put together little moodboards.

There wasn’t a point to it, which might have been the point.

At our final book club meeting, it was just me and Leslee, one of my longtime clients and friends—the only one who could make it that evening.

We talked about what we’d each gotten out of the experience.

I came out of it just as devoted to supporting people. In fact, I felt more connected to my community and met people I genuinely enjoy spending time with.

I also knew I was bringing my achievement-oriented parts along on the Artist Dates. These parts wanted something to show for the effort. A connection. A lesson. A piece of content. A new opportunity.

I’ve made peace with that about myself.

But the dates that nourished me the most were the ones that didn’t need to produce a result.

A shocking revelation, truly.

So moving forward, I’ll keep one date to nourish myself and one to stretch me a little. And maybe the stretches don’t need to happen every week. Once a month might be enough for this season.

Besides, I’ve already expanded my world.

Now I get to enjoy it.

Hi, I’m Sheila. I’m a somatic parts work coach who helps healers and creatives better understand themselves, their patterns, and what they truly want, so they can make choices that support both their work and the life they want to live.

My work is for thoughtful, growth-oriented people who are tired of following someone else’s definition of success and want to cultivate deep trust in their own direction.

If you’re ready to work together, send me an email sharing your current goals and challenges to get started.

I’m endlessly curious about why we do what we do, how we become who we are, and what it takes to create a life that feels like our own.

Over the last couple of weeks, I tried a few things that didn’t go as I’d hoped, and it got me thinking about the value of trying again. We don’t always give ourselves credit for it, but it’s incredibly valuable. Each attempt isn't much by itself, but over time, those attempts start to accumulate. Not just in what they produce, but in what they teach us.

And then there's what happens in between.

When an attempt falls short of what you were hoping for. When you spend the next few hours (or days) replaying what went wrong. When you start picking apart every little decision you made. And eventually decide it's because you're terrible at whatever this thing is.

Most of us perfectionists and overachievers probably recognize this spiral. What we often miss is that it also contains an opportunity to shift a pattern.

That shift has a name: a corrective experience. It’s when something happens that challenges a long-held expectation about yourself, others, or the world — and your nervous system gets a chance to learn something new.

For me, the old expectation was: try something, fall short, criticize myself. What changed was learning to turn toward my inner critic instead of being run by her. Slowly, my nervous system started learning a new possibility — that when things don’t go as planned, I can give myself what I need rather than punish myself for getting it wrong.

For a long time, I didn’t know how to do that.

For most of my life, I thought my inner critic was the problem. The reason I struggled to relax, why I pushed myself so hard, why I worried so much about how I was coming across. What I didn't understand was that criticism was how she tried to help.

She developed that way for a reason. Growing up without much emotional support, she learned to step in and manage things. To keep me safe by staying one step ahead of whatever might go wrong.

From the outside, I seemed fine. Most of the time I was the one helping other people with their problems. And when I did speak up about what was bothering me, it was easier to talk about what was happening around me than what was happening inside me. The loneliness. The pressure. How much energy it took to appear like I was doing okay.

It took me a while to understand her role. Somatic parts work helped me see that she wasn’t trying to make my life harder. She was trying to protect me. When something painful happened, she learned to work overtime to prevent future hurt.

She’d find someone who did it better. Someone who made it look easy. Then she’d use them to reinforce the belief that I wasn't ready yet. If someone else was doing it better, then maybe I wasn’t ready yet. Maybe I needed more time. More experience. More confidence. As long as I wasn’t ready, I didn’t have to risk being seen before I felt prepared. I didn’t have to make mistakes in public. I didn’t have to let other people see me figuring it out. She’d find evidence that I wasn’t ready because “not ready” felt safer than taking the risk.

The truth is that readiness doesn’t usually come before the thing. It comes from doing the thing. She didn't know that confidence could be built through experience.

Now when she gets louder, I know she’s protecting a scared part of me that’s asking for attention. So I turn toward her. I ask what she’s worried about, what she needs from me.

Sometimes she has something specific to say. Most of the time she just needs reassurance. To know that if this doesn’t work out, we’ll be okay. If we’re disappointed, we’ll be okay. If we need to adjust and try again, we can do that too. It's not all on her to carry the responsibility for how things turn out.

It’s okay to be bad at things, to have less than ideal experiences. To be new, to be a beginner, to cringe a little when you replay it in your head. It’s okay if it didn’t go as you’d hoped. You have another chance. Maybe you’ll change your approach. Maybe you’ll do the exact same thing and it will go differently. You can try again anyway.

If every mistake is followed by criticism, overthinking, and the decision to never do the thing again, of course it’s hard to keep trying. But if every mistake is followed by compassion, curiosity, and support, trying again becomes easier.

Trying again feels very different when you’re not alone with what happens afterward. It feels safer.

Back then, when something went wrong, she was on her own.

Now she has me.

Want to start building a kinder, more supportive relationship with your inner critic? The next time things don't go as planned, try this before moving on.

Notice:

• What does your inner critic say?

• How do you respond to her?

Ask yourself:

• Do you agree with her immediately, or do you question her?

• Do you try to push her away, or get curious about what triggered her?

• Do you wish she’d just stop, or do you wonder what she needs?

You don't need to fix her or figure everything out all at once. But the more you pay attention to that pattern, the more space you have to respond differently next time.

Hi, I’m Sheila. I’m a somatic parts work coach who helps healers and creatives better understand themselves, their patterns, and what they truly want, so they can make choices that support both their work and the life they want to live.

My work is for thoughtful, growth-oriented people who are tired of following someone else’s definition of success and want to cultivate deep trust in their own direction.

If you’re ready to work together, send me an email sharing your current goals and challenges to get started.

Last week, during a somatic therapy session, I found myself describing my body as a chocolate bunny. You know the ones they sell at the grocery store during Easter? One solid piece, molded into its shape.

When I wake up in the morning, my back, hips, and spine feel stiff. There’s this impulse to stretch, twist, and reach, like I need to break out of that sealed chocolate shell just so I can move again.

I start with my neck. Crack, crack, crack. Then my thoracic spine. Followed by my hips. But there’s still this stagnant, stuck energy that yearns to move, up or down my back, clearing whatever I’ve accumulated overnight so I can feel ready for the day. I know the answer is to hydrate, foam roll, and spend time stretching in my yoga room. But my automatic thought is: I don’t have time for that.

Lately, I've been noticing a pattern among many of the clients I work with. Different circumstances, similar struggles. Heavy work weeks. Completely depleted by Friday. Yet unable to slow down enough to actually recover.

It reminds me of a younger version of myself, constantly working, traveling, stressing, hoping my body would just cooperate so I can get on with the program.

The lives my clients are navigating are genuinely demanding. Careers and businesses. Relationships and families. Dreams and goals they're deeply passionate about and actively pursuing.

Planning and structure are how we build those things, how we maintain relationships, show up for people who depend on us, and move toward what we care about. Optimization is necessary. It’s how things get done.

That’s what I used to think, anyway. As I’ve grown, I’ve discovered a more sustainable approach, one that starts with listening to and prioritizing my body’s signals above everything else.

The body is a compass. A subtle intelligence that keeps orienting towards something longing for attention, if we’re willing to slow down enough to listen to it. For me that’s slow mornings. Regular body work. Client calls only three days a week. Each season is different, and this season my body is asking for more movement.

During somatic training last week, we watched videos of dancers. Their bodies moved like water, shapes appearing and dissolving, one movement flowing into the next. Choreographed. Organic. Spontaneous. Creative. Alive.

I noticed I wanted to feel that in my own body. My upper back and shoulders yearned for that kind of articulation and fluidity. We did practice exercises exploring different qualities of movement; fast, slow, directional, wandering, strong, soft. I have zero desire to become a professional dancer. But my body was telling me it needed more of this. Movement with no outcome attached. Just movement for the sake of movement. Play for the sake of play.

I think spontaneity is one of the ways into our most authentic creativity.

What emerges when we pause long enough to notice what actually wants to happen? What does the body want to do right now, if it could do anything? Lie down and rest? Stretch out wide and take up more space?

The way we hold ourselves and how we move are habitual patterns, and they keeps us thinking and feeling in habitual ways.

When we’re in constant optimization mode, the nervous system stays in a kind of low-grade anticipation, ready for the next task, the next decision, the next thing to get done. That’s part of what exhaustion actually is. The cost of being perpetually on.

But when we step out of that, something shifts inside us. Maybe the tightness in our chest softens. Our shoulders drop. Our eyes begin to wander. We start to see the world as it actually is, right here in this moment. Without the urgency of a dysregulated nervous system, we gain access to our creative selves. Our playful selves. Our whole selves.

Play supports regulation. It gives the nervous system an opportunity to come back into the present, back into the body, and back into connection with ourselves. When we make space for it, our ambitions become easier to sustain over time.

How many things have we accidentally turned into projects that were never meant to be projects? Personally, this is one of my biggest challenges. I get so excited about starting something, creating a system for it, and making sure it seamlessly integrates with the rest of my life.

What did we used to do simply because it felt good, before it became a goal? What would we still do if no one ever saw it?

This week a client asked if he could book me twice a week, one session to continue doing inner work, and another just to give himself permission to rest. To stop thinking. To just be. We settle in, he scans his body, and I guide him through yoga nidra. He already knew what he needed: rest. He just needed someone to hold the space.

The invitation here is to leave a little space in your schedule for rest, spontaneity, curiosity, play. Whatever it is your body has been communicating that it needs more of. Keep building toward your vision and pursuing your passions, while trusting that some things are valuable precisely because they lead nowhere else. Ambition becomes more sustainable when we stay in conversation with the body, listening to what it tells us about pace, capacity, and what it needs to sustain the life we're building.

Last week, I probably spoke with ten different people who all agreed they hated posting talking videos on social media. Up until this point, I felt the same.

But I am committed to working on it.

I'd been aware of my visibility problem, but only recently started focusing on it more intentionally. So last month, I sought out support. I wanted to work with someone with a similar skill set in somatic trauma resolution to help me work through my fears, and I found just the person: Tori.

I knew she was the right person for this because of how she showed up on social media. She spoke naturally on camera. It felt genuine and comfortable.

We met for our first session a few days ago and started getting to know two parts of me.

One of them is the part that learned that being “too much” had consequences. The room-scanning, the instinct to avoid attention, the tendency to play small, all of it began as protection for a little girl who didn’t know how to say no and came to believe being seen wasn’t safe.

She’s the part that anticipates the judgment that could come with posting:

Ugh, does she ever stop talking about herself? She thinks she’s so great. Nobody cares. Who does she think she is?

We also got to meet the part that existed before all of that. The one who spent her days bouncing between friends’ houses, playing, connecting, and never really thinking about how she was being perceived.

She’s the part that wants to share without overthinking how it’ll be received. She’s not trying to teach anyone anything or contribute to some larger body of work. Something catches her attention, and she wants to talk about it.

She already knows how to connect. She’s just been suppressed by the part trying to keep her safe.

What we were actually touching was much deeper than posting. Beneath the surface were questions of choice, acceptance, belonging, and two very different beliefs about how connection works.

Part of me believes connection is something you maintain by reading the room and managing yourself well. Another believes connection happens when you simply show up as yourself.

It makes sense that both exist. Both want belonging - they just go about it very differently.

Now that I know which parts tend to show up when I get on video, the practice is learning how to let both exist without letting either take over. That doesn’t happen in one session. It happens each time I get on camera and pause to notice what’s happening.

Before I record anything, I ask:

• What does my body feel like right now?

• Am I showing up as myself?

• Am I overmanaging how I'll be perceived?

I have no idea what this will look like a few months from now. But already, it feels different to actually understand what’s happening instead of just calling it a visibility problem.

And now I’m curious about you: what happens when you put yourself out there? What parts tend to show up?

How do we measure all of this inner work we’re doing?

I measure it by whether my lived experience has actually shifted.

• Do I have more capacity?

• More choice? More self-trust? More vitality?

• Am I closer to living the life I want?

These are the questions I return to often.

After attending back-to-back somatic workshops this past week, I realized there’s another marker I now pay attention to: range.

The breadth of states I can access.
And my ability to stay connected to myself while moving through them.

An Awakening

One workshop invited something primal in me. Movement, voice, cathartic expression.

This was held in person. An intimate group of five women. We each shared why we were there and what we were hoping to experience.

I was there to have someone hold space for me and whatever emerged.

That evening, a bold part of me awakened. A part that wanted to be witnessed. A part that delighted in thrashing around.

Tori, who was facilitating the experience, had crafted a playlist to move us through different emotions.

What surprised me was how quickly I could access that animalistic energy. It felt untamed, powerful, and wild. The group energy intensified, and for a moment, it was like we were transported somewhere else. Tori beat on her drums loudly and I could hear high-pitched hollering. I joined in with my own voice, imagining we were dancing around a fire pit in the middle of a jungle.

The Wisdom of the Body

The second workshop invited something else entirely.

Slowing. Pausing. Small movements.

An exquisite sensitivity to the layers of the body.

Less doing. More listening.
Less force. More surrender.

It awakened a different kind of intelligence: a quieter, deeply attuned knowing already present in the body.

It was held online, in the privacy of my office, with Paula, someone I feel deeply comfortable with. She’s been teaching somatics for a long time, and you can feel that immediately in the quality of her presence, her attunement, and her creativity.

We explored the difference between intentional movement and authentic movement. What does the body want to do when it’s not being directed or controlled?

My body craved stillness. To simply be. And oh my goodness did that feel nourishing. I felt it deep in my bones.

After a year of diving deeper into somatic work, I notice I can now move between very different states more fluidly, while staying connected to myself.

These two workshops highlighted that contrast beautifully. In one space, I accessed boldness, intensity, and wild expression. In another, I softened into nuance, sensitivity, and deep listening.

Both felt meaningful in completely different ways.

I can feel the difference in my range and capacity, even if I can’t fully explain how I got here.

There’s no clear path, no single moment I can point to and say, here, this is where it happened.

Growth rarely works that way.

What I can say is this:

I could access very different parts of myself without feeling disconnected from my authentic self.

Both felt like me.

Where do you notice more range in your own experience? And what helps you stay connected to yourself as you move through different states?

Last night I attended a three-hour workshop taught by one of my favorite yoga teachers. The theme was activating the divine feminine energy within us, and the practice was inspired by the book Awakening Shakti. Shakti represents the power of the universe and is personified through goddesses like Bhuvaneshvari, who represents space, and Lakshmi, who represents prosperity.

The workshop included some yoga, meditation, and reflection. During the meditation, we were guided into deep rest by imagining a sparkling star on different points of the body, visualizing ourselves as constellations of light. It was so deeply relaxing that someone softly fell asleep and started snoring. Totally understandable. Gia has put me to sleep many times before. She’s incredible at guiding yoga nidra.

It had been nearly seven years since I’d seen Gia, yet the second she looked at me and started speaking, my body remembered her immediately. When Gia looks at you, it feels warm, gentle, and deeply attentive all at once, like she’s seeing beyond the surface of what you’re saying.

Being back in her workshop after all this time felt strangely familiar, like no time had passed. I found myself listening intently to the mythological stories she wove so artfully between poses and meditations. At the same time, I felt completely different from the woman who first met her all those years ago.

When I first started yoga teacher training, I was in a deeply transitional period of my life. I had just left a long-term relationship and was trying to build a new life for myself. I didn’t really know what I was doing or where things were heading. I signed up for her training knowing that I loved yoga, the way it brought me back to my center and connected me to a community. And that I wanted to do something outside of my comfort zone.

The thought of guiding a room full of people through poses was so far outside of my skillset. I wasn’t fully committed to the path, so the decision itself felt super uncertain from the beginning. I signed up feeling pretty nervous and embarrassed that I didn’t have a plan for what I’d do with the certification.

Training itself definitely pulled me out of my comfort zone. There was a point near the end where we had to come up with our own sequencing and teach a yoga class. Some of the other students had been teaching dance for years and put together incredible flows. I felt ridiculous compared to them. When it was my turn to teach, I remember feeling so cringe. I honestly wish I could’ve opted out of it. The feedback I received was pretty mediocre.

We all kept in touch afterwards, checking in with each other and encouraging each other to pursue our dreams. A friend and I would meet up for lunch and talk about our plans to start a yoga YouTube channel. We never actually followed through on that. And neither of us became yoga teachers.

But I made two very close friends from that training who I still speak to today. And I met another friend there who introduced me to my husband only a week after the training ended.

Back then, a part of me thought for an experience to be worthwhile it needed to lead somewhere concrete. A certification. A new identity. A clear answer about who I was becoming. I remember thinking, If I’m taking a yoga teacher training but don’t even want to become a yoga teacher, then what am I doing here? Am I hoping for my teacher to become my mentor and take me under her wing? Am I just expecting things to magically come together?

I was so focused on whether or not I would become a yoga teacher that I couldn’t yet recognize the subtle ways my life was already changing. The conversations after class. The friendships. The introductions. The people who would quietly become part of my future.

During the meditation, we imagined the body as a constellation of stars, each point quietly lighting up one by one. Looking back now, life feels that way too. Certain people, experiences, and moments illuminate over time, and only later do you begin to see how they relate. The people we meet often become bridges to other people, other experiences, and other versions of ourselves. At the time, it can all feel random. But years later, you realize how deeply connected it all was.

I didn’t walk away with any major tangible results at the time beyond the certification itself. But what I did get was something even better. Sometimes experiences create space inside us. Space to meet people. Space to become someone new. Space for a life we cannot yet imagine.

Hi, I’m Sheila. I’m a somatic parts work coach who helps healers and creatives better understand themselves, their patterns, and what they truly want, so they can make choices that support both their work and the life they want to live.

My work is for thoughtful, growth-oriented people who are tired of following someone else’s definition of success and want to cultivate deep trust in their own direction.

If you’re ready to work together, send me an email sharing your current goals and challenges to get started.

Have you ever stumbled into something and walked out knowing - ooh, this is for me?

A couple of weeks ago I signed up for what I would describe as a wellness networking event. I walked in a little nervous, but left feeling all bubbly and excited.

The event started off with yoga (weights included, which I truly did not see coming), moved into breathwork, and ended with local artisans and wellness activations scattered through the space. Curated enough to get a little taste of everything. It turned out to be really fun!

Being in that space reminded me of what I want to be doing with my work and how I want to feel while I’m doing it. Open, curious, and willing to try new things.

That excitement, that curiosity about what else could unfold - that’s what I’m craving and hoping for on Substack. A place where I can post a thought that may not necessarily go anywhere, or share an opinion without packaging it into a clear, actionable lesson. Somewhere I can show up outside of my practitioner role and explore something just for the sake of exploring it.

If we don’t know each other yet, hi! I’m Sheila and I’m a somatic parts work coach. I spend my weeks in sessions with clients, holding space, being present with their parts, tracking what’s happening, and witnessing the depths they might need to move through.

Lately I’ve been noticing that when I close my laptop, a different part of me has been craving to show up.

The one that’s a bit more playful, gets inspired by all the things, and can’t resist diving into rabbit holes.

I’m pretty new to Substack. I’m starting to get a sense of what draws me in. So far, it’s the kind of writing that can hold more than one thing to be true at once - writing that expands what feels possible and makes connections I wasn’t expecting. And I’m hoping to get to that point in my own writing. Right now, I’m still trying to allow myself to let it be a messy process of discovering my voice. But the goal is eventually to have this feel like an invitation to ponder and play.

So here’s what I want showing up in this space to feel like.

Spacious. Uplifted. Expansive.

Like the wellness event I went to, where I left knowing I wanted to come back for more - I want to keep coming back here to explore, to discover. And hopefully visitors feel the same way.

Hi, I’m Sheila. I’m a somatic parts work coach who helps healers and creatives better understand themselves, their patterns, and what they truly want, so they can make choices that support both their work and the life they want to live.

My work is for thoughtful, growth-oriented people who are tired of following someone else’s definition of success and want to cultivate deep trust in their own direction.

If you’re ready to work together, send me an email sharing your current goals and challenges to get started.

What’s alive in me this week? The desire to expand. And I’m noticing that I don’t quite know what I’m wanting to grow into. I just know it’s time for me to push myself out of my comfort zone in a way that feels a little more stretchy.

THE POLARIZATION

It’s like I’ve been going to the gym consistently working out with 5 pound dumbbells, and it’s time to increase the weight.

Writing here is my way of doing this - trying something new and putting myself out there - stretching.

But how I approach it is where I have to be attuned to my own capacity. The overachiever part of me wants to jump straight to 10 pounds - do all the things I feel like I *should*. I haven’t pushed myself enough lately and I need to do more than necessary.

But another part of me knows that starting with 8 pounds is more aligned - easing into a new platform, honoring my creative energy, and sharing what feels good in this season.

Here’s how I’m approaching this new stretching exercise to make sure it remains aligned and expansive ↓

AN INTERNAL PROCESS OF ALIGNMENT

I teach my clients that alignment is the most important thing.

Alignment is found within, when you come to an agreement with your parts. You don’t have to know exactly what you’re creating. It’s enough that you know the direction you’re headed and what values are guiding you.

What am I getting out of this?

• to build a library of work?

• to build a following?

• to signal that I know what I’m doing?

• to express who I am?

• to improve my communication skills?

• to grow my business?

What’s the bigger reason for all of this though? I kept pushing deeper. Why do I need better communication skills? Why does any of this matter? Why do I need to engage in any of this?

I want to express myself. Why? To understand how I’m changing. To let people see themselves in my journey.

I want to have better conversations. Why? To attract people who want to work with me. To deepen client satisfaction.

A RETURN TO VALUES

Next, I check in with my values. My values are alignment, growth, resonance, freedom, and purpose. Does my approach to writing articles on Substack fit these values? This is where re-alignment had to happen.

I looked back at my list and something stuck out to me. "Improve my communication skills." I'd written it down without thinking too deeply, but sitting with it now it felt wrong. Like I was describing someone who needed fixing. That one line told me a lot about the energy it was coming from. I’ve noticed that when I’m trying to “fix” myself, it usually means an inner critic is running the show. And that energy doesn’t actually hold up long term.

And while writing on Substack might not directly grow my business, it might be how I find the people who actually get me. Who like the way I think. Who want the kind of depth I’m trying to offer.

Instead of trying to show up a particular way, I know deep down that I’m aiming for deep resonance.

What I’m actually trying to do here is be more authentically myself, so that the right people can find me.

I want longer containers. Deeper conversations. Better results.

For my clients, yes. But also for myself.

This is what choosing the 8 pound weight looks like for me. Stretching by starting a Substack, while maintaining alignment with my values and making sure my capacity has expanded before pushing for that 10 pound weight.

What are you currently expanding into?

Hi, I’m Sheila. I’m a somatic parts work coach who helps healers and creatives better understand themselves, their patterns, and what they truly want, so they can make choices that support both their work and the life they want to live.

My work is for thoughtful, growth-oriented people who are tired of following someone else’s definition of success and want to cultivate deep trust in their own direction.

If you’re ready to work together, send me an email sharing your current goals and challenges to get started.