What My Invisible Adult Braces Are Teaching Me About Alignment

Alignment called. It wants my emotional support beverages.

While sitting at my desk today, attempting to focus on a completely different entrepreneurial task, I had a flash of awareness that I couldn't resist sharing with you.

A little over a month ago, four days before I stood on a TEDx stage, I got my scans done for aligners.

Invisible adult braces, for those who don't know what aligners are. (I didn't know the term until recently.)

And I don't think that timing was an accident.

Because these teeth aren't just teeth.

They're my dad's jaw.

The tight, too-close-together teeth I inherited along with his last name.

They're years of making do, making peace, telling myself it wasn't that bad—even as I caught myself feeling a little bummed out by my smile in photos.

And I smile BIG in photos.

Like, full-dental-records view-every-time big.

My dad died last year. We were estranged—for many necessary reasons, and I'm now officially the last person with this last name in my family line.

I've known for a long time that part of my work in this lifetime is to take what I've inherited—patterns, stories, and even bone structure—and slowly invite it into greater health and alignment.

But here's what I also knew:

I couldn't change this mouth until I'd truly made peace with it first.

I needed to stop resenting the inheritance before I could genuinely tend to it with love.

I needed to do the compassion work before the structural work.

And somewhere in me, I think I always intuitively knew that was how it needed to happen.

So I waited—until it felt like an act of care rooted in acceptance rather than resentment and rejection.

Four days before my TEDx talk, I got the scans.

A few weeks later, I got my first aligners.

This picture is of excited me who had them in for less than an hour... before realizing what it would actually mean.

So, I'm officially one week into this 18-month journey of structural "alignment.". . With a heaping side of metaphorical ancestral healing.

I'm still speaking a little funny and generally annoyed by having plastic in my mouth all of the time.

But still...

Totally worth it.

And evidently, like so many things in life, I'll adjust.

Alignment Isn't Just About What We Move Towards, It's Also About What We Are Asked To Give Up

Here's what we don't talk enough about with alignment:

It will ask you to assess and change your daily rituals—and sometimes your oh so comforting coping strategies.

Those who know me well know that I have a deep and committed relationship with what I lovingly call my "emotional support beverages."

The constant cup of decaf tea keeping me company beside my laptop.

My "foffee"—fake coffee full of adaptogenic mushrooms and other magical things.

The occasional Ollipop cola. Something about a cold can of something special just makes the day feel a little more fun.

For years, something special to sip has been like my nervous system's security blanket.

A little touchpoint of comfort throughout the day.

And now...

I'm committed to plastic trays that have to stay in my mouth, ideally, for 22 hours a day.

No food.

No drinks.

Just water.

All day.

As small as that sounds, it's been lighting up all kinds of "stuff" within me.

Because it's not really about the beverages.

It's about what I reach for—often unconsciously—to soften the edges and stresses of life.

And that has made me think about how often we do this in other areas of our lives.

We reach for the familiar role.

The familiar relationship.

The familiar story.

The familiar way of working.

The familiar distraction.

The familiar coping mechanism.

Not necessarily because those things are good for us anymore, but because they're known.

And when we're navigating uncertainty or moving through a significant transition, the known can feel safer than the possible.

Alignment Is Often a Game of Subtraction

We talk about "getting into alignment" like it's this powerful upward movement.

Bold, brave choices.

New beginnings.

Big declarations.

And sometimes it is.

A relationships ending.

A brave geographical move.

A hard conversation.

A career change.

A decision to finally stop abandoning yourself.

But underneath all of that, alignment often asks a quieter question:

What are you willing to give up to become who you say you want to be?

Every time I don't reach for a comforting drink, I hit this tiny crossroads:

The short-term dose of familiar comfort...

or the long-term investment in where I'm going.

Do I want momentary comfort or big picture alignment?

Some days I'm grumpy about it.

When life asks us to release a coping mechanism—a habit, a role, a relationship, or a story about ourselves—we're allowed to miss it.

We're allowed to have our messy feelings about it.

That's not failure.

That's grief.

And growth often requires us to let something go in order to move in the direction of our becoming.

Learning to Stay With the Discomfort

But beneath the irritability, something else is happening.

I'm learning to sit in the discomfort of the present without immediately reaching for my "binkie in a ceramic cup."

And that feels like a much bigger practice than giving up my beverages.

It's a practice of staying present.

Of developing capacity.

Of allowing discomfort to exist without immediately trying to make it disappear.

This is something I return to often in my work around Imaginal Change and navigating uncertainty.

We can't always control what's changing around us.

But we can become more capable of being in relationship with what is happening.

We can develop greater discernment.

Greater relational capacity.

Greater capacity to remain connected to ourselves while something familiar is falling away and something new is beginning to emerge.

Sometimes transformation isn't about adding another strategy.

Sometimes it's about creating enough space for something different to become possible.

"We're Going to Make Your Entire Smile Bigger."

At my initial consultation several months ago, the orthodontist said something I keep thinking about:

He said: "We'll definitely bring those bottom teeth into alignment, but we're actually going to make your entire smile bigger."

That's what this whole season feels like.

Underneath each specific adjustment is a larger intention.

A life where more of me is expanded in the direction of joy and yesness.

And maybe that's what alignment really is.

What Are You Being Asked to Bring Into Alignment?

So I want to turn this toward you.

Is there something in your life asking to come into greater alignment?

And if so:

Have you done the compassion and acceptance work yet?

Because I don't think we can sustainably change what we still resent or reject.

The structural work lands so much deeper & more sustainably when it comes from love rather than resistance.

What have you made peace with recently? (or what do you want to feel more peace around?)

What old pattern, role, habit, or story are you beginning to recognize as something you no longer need to carry forward?

And what small comfort might you need to release to actually move toward the life you're creating? (anything from complaining to scrolling to . . . healthy emotional support beverages are fair game)

These questions aren't always comfortable.

But sometimes the uncomfortable questions are the ones that open the door to the most meaningful change.

If you're navigating a significant transition in your life, work, leadership, or relationships, this is the kind of territory I explore through Imaginal Change—the process of developing the human capacities needed to navigate uncertainty, remain connected to ourselves and one another, and participate consciously in what is emerging.

You can learn more about my work, explore The Imaginal Change Podcast, or watch my TEDx talk, Unshakeable: The Power of Connection When Everything's Crumbling for another doorway into these ideas.

And if you're ready to explore what becoming unstuck can look like in your own life, you can also learn more about Unstuck Yourself: Thrive Beyond Burnout & Discover Your True Purpose, co-authored with Laura Cardwell.

Until the next Imaginal Change reflection, I'll just be over here sipping my water—in the fanciest cups I can find—speaking slightly weird, and dreaming up my next chapter along with you.

Because sometimes alignment asks us to subtract.

Sometimes it asks us to soften.

And sometimes...

It asks us to make room for a much bigger smile.