What if the tension you feel between your ambition and your desire for deep partnership isn’t about choosing one over the other — but about staying true to who you really are?

In this episode of Elevate Daily, I’m joined by Eve Simmons — journalist, author, and Health Editor of the Daily Mail UK — for a deeply honest conversation about identity, ambition, and what happens when the life you thought you were building suddenly asks to be rewritten.

After years in partnership and just months into marriage, Eve experienced an unexpected ending that didn’t just dissolve a relationship — it destabilized the identity she’d quietly been living from. Through her own healing journey and extensive research into the stories of others, Eve began to uncover the subtle ways ambitious women dim their power, edit their truth, and suppress their desires in order to make partnership feel safe.

This conversation is not about blame or breakdowns. It’s about self-trust, emotional maturity, and the courage it takes to orient your life — and your relationships — around who you actually are.

In this episode, we explore:

1. The difference between loving someone and actually liking them — and why this distinction changes everything
2. How ambitious women unconsciously make themselves smaller in relationships (and the hidden cost of doing so)
3. The grief of mourning a future that was never truly yours
4. Why the most destabilizing collapses often become our greatest liberations
5. The gendered patterns Eve uncovered around emotional expression and the “hydraulic model” of suppressed feelings
6. What it really takes to reclaim yourself after destabilization — and how Eve moved from collapse, to experimentation, to wholeness
7. Why liking yourself is foundational to being truly met in partnership

Whether you’re in partnership, navigating the aftermath of an ending, or standing at a threshold where an old version of yourself is being asked to fall away, this episode is an invitation to remember that choosing yourself is what allows both your ambitious spirit and your desire for deep, nourishing love to coexist.

Meet Eve Simmons

Eve Simmons is a journalist and author based in London, currently serving as Health Editor of the Daily Mail UK. She has written two books — one about eating disorder recovery, and her most recent, What She Did Next, a collection of stories exploring divorce, identity, and rebuilding after sudden separation. Through her writing and research, Eve brings honesty, intelligence, and humanity to conversations at the intersection of ambition, partnership, and self-trust.

Eve’s Gene Keys Illuminated in This Episode

1. Gene Key 5 — Dislocation → Orientation → Unity
2. Gene Key 4 — Intolerance → Understanding → Forgiveness

Connect with Eve

1. Purchase Eve's New Book →What She Did Next

You've done the vision boards. Mapped the revenue goals. Created the quarterly plans. And by March, you're hitting your numbers, but something doesn't fully feel right.

You're building something beautiful. But if you're honest? It doesn't quite feel like yours.

Here's what I've learned working with accomplished women entrepreneurs: You can accomplish everything on your list and still feel empty. You can hit every revenue goal and still feel exhausted. You can build something impressive and still feel like you're operating from someone else's blueprint.

In this episode, I'm inviting you to design your year differently, not from borrowed strategies, tactics, and default patterns, but from devotion to who you're actually here to be.

Because sustainable success isn't created by doing more. It's created by leading from your specific design.

1. Why designing from identity matters more than setting goals
2. The shadow patterns that keep successful women trapped in borrowed strategies (distraction, control, half-heartedness)
3. Real examples of how your Meaning Code reveals what makes success feel delicious for you specifically
4. How to explore your own Meaning Code and begin designing from devotion, not default

Explore your free Gene Keys blueprint to uncover your Meaning Code and the frequencies that guide your fulfillment and leadership.

→ genekeys.com/free-profile

If you're standing at a threshold — feeling a new identity emerging, or ready to build on your own foundation instead of someone else's — ILLUMINATE is for you.

This is my signature 90-minute Gene Keys experience where we decode your Mission, Money, Meaning, and Magnetism codes. Crystal clarity on your shadows, your gifts, and the precise moves that leverage your unique design.

For accomplished women whose success has outpaced their soul — this is where devotional leadership begins.

→ Explore ILLUMINATE

Leave a five-star review to help other visionary women discover devotional leadership.

Continue the conversation on Instagram @alexia_usgaard

or explore my work at alexiausgaard.com

And of course, until next time, I hope you elevate your life, one intentional day at a time.

With love & devotion,

Alexia

This is a special episode.

What you're about to receive is a guided visualization I've typically reserved for women inside my private Concierge experience, retreats, and intimate gatherings. This year, I felt an intuitive nudge to share it more openly — because so many of us are being called to reconnect with our highest vision in a deeper, more devotional way.

If you're here, I believe you're meant to receive this.

This is a guided visualization into your highest vision for the year ahead. Not the vision your ego wants to create. Not the vision shaped by should-driven strategy or proving energy.

This is an invitation to soften out of default mode and reconnect with your soul's truest knowing.

1. A release of depletion, pressure, and proving energy
2. An expansion of your capacity to receive pleasure, ease, and support
3. A sensory journey into a day in your life one year from now
4. A connection with the version of you who already knows what truly matters

This is a space to listen, feel, and receive - not to figure anything out.

I recommend giving yourself a quiet, uninterrupted moment for this practice. Light a candle. Close the laptop. Let this be a ceremony.

This visualization is not a one-time experience. Return to it whenever you need to recalibrate, remember what you value, and realign with the vision you're here to create...from devotion rather than depletion.

At the end, I invite you to journal anything that came through, allowing this vision to be witnessed, honored, and integrated.

ILLUMINATE is where your highest vision meets your unique energetic design - bringing precise clarity to how you're meant to lead and expand with ease.

→ Explore ILLUMINATE

For a simple practice to ground your highest vision into ritual-led living, I also offer my Weekly Ritual Tracker as a gift.

→ Receive it here

If this episode opened something within you, consider sharing it with a partner, friend, or fellow leader and creating space to speak your visions aloud together. There is something deeply powerful about feeling supported and witnessed as what's emerging begins to take shape.

Until next time, may you continue to elevate your life, one intentional day at a time.

With love & devotion,

Alexia