Dear friends,

The lupins have nearly reached their peak out here in the Sierras. The bright green of the oak leaves matches the vibrant grass on the rolling pastures. Our herd of horses have rubbed almost all of their winter coats off on fence posts and our pollinator garden is full of busy bees.

Just last week we planted eight new fruit trees, rows of vegetable starts, and a few white sage plants to keep the energetics of our little spot in the mountains clear and clean.

While weeding around the pathway the weight of the world hit me hard. It was the first moment I’d had to sit down after hours of walking and getting new soil in the garden beds with the family. As I pulled out weed after weed, I noticed myself going faster. I felt a familiar compulsion to get out every single one. The sound of my kids nearby faded further away. I couldn’t stop pulling. It had to be perfect. Something had to be perfect.

I finished a section of weeds around our plum tree and within seconds our two-year-old daughter ran up and plopped down in my lap. She pressed the back of her head into my chest. I inhaled the scent of sweat and fresh soil from her perfect ringlets. I exhaled without even trying.

This winter it has felt challenging to keep putting one foot in front of the other, to keep bringing my attention back to my breath, back to our kids, back to my commitment to stop scrolling. But the plum trees are blooming regardless of the fact that it could still very well snow again between now and May. The lupins are reaching for the sun, stretching themselves as far as their energy will allow. The bees are zipping from flower to flower, pollenating every last flower.

This is our sixth spring in the Sierras, and the fifth in our beloved garden. I’ve had gardens in most of the homes I’ve lived in as an adult. Even when I was abroad in Berlin, I had window boxes of culinary herbs growing in each room of the flat. What feels different about this spring is how much more I’m able to receive from our garden. Just this morning I cooked a few fresh handfuls of curly kale I harvested at sundown yesterday. I was surprised by how sweet it tasted, how soft it felt in my mouth, and how much delight it brought me knowing we helped set up the conditions for it to grow.

Years ago, one of my spiritual teachers said that working in his garden was one of his main pathways for manifestation. I was intrigued and asked if I could have a bucket of his compost. He agreed. I remember driving to his home in Los Angeles and filling the bucket in his backyard. The smell was like nothing I’d ever experienced, like rain, and mushrooms, and grass, and the earth itself. I was convinced (and still am) that part of why it was so incredible was because of the energy and care he put into it.

Yesterday all five of us were in the garden, Sol watering the beds, Zen tickling the roots of our starts, Freya “digging holes”, Nic dumping fresh soil, and me, weeding. When I double checked our fourth bed, I noticed three german chamomile greens popping up with one little flower. I rubbed the yellow center of the floret, brought my hand to my nose and inhaled deeply. My shoulders dropped. My eyes softened. A smile widened across my face.

Chamomile was one of the first medicinal herbs we planted five years ago. Like a trusted friend, it shows up every spring. It never asks for more than bit of fresh soil, clean water, a little attention, and the space to grow to its full capacity.

I looked around at my beautiful family. Seconds later Sol sprayed Zen with the hose. I couldn’t help but laugh.

Below I’m sharing what we’re planting this spring and why — the fruit trees, the medicinal herbs, the vegetables our kids are tending. If you’d like to come walk through the garden with me, I’d love to have you.

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I’m 25 years sober today. I’ve been sober for more years than I was alive when I stopped drinking.

During my first week in outpatient treatment, my roommate told me someone was on the community payphone. I hadn’t been receiving calls except from my parents, so I had no idea who it would be. I picked up the receiver.

Hello, I said in a small voice.

Hi Ashley, it’s Mr. Nolan.

My breath stopped. I felt the weight of the telephone cord in my hand, the plastic receiver warm against my ear.

I just wanted to let you know that I’m 25 years sober.

An unexpected exhale left my body. My shoulders lowered just a fraction.

Woah, I said, still surprised.

I had no idea you were sober.

Yeah, he responded.

It’s not something I share openly at the college. But I want to let you know — if you decide to come back to school, you can always talk to me. I want you to know that you won’t be alone.

I was twenty-one. I was terrified. I didn’t know anyone who was sober outside of the people in that facility. And here was my art teacher — a man who always wore the same uniform, black polo shirt, black pants, thick-rimmed glasses, with a truly terrible comb over — calling to tell me he’d walked this road too. That I wouldn’t have to walk it by myself.

When I re-enrolled in art school I used to go up to his fourth-floor office for lunch, looking out over midtown Atlanta. We’d have these meaningful, rich conversations — about getting sober, about going to therapy, about using my art practice as a way to process pain and grief and all the family stuff I needed to move through. One afternoon, I offered him part of my apple. He laughed and said, I can’t eat an apple. I didn’t understand why. Then he took his teeth out — his dentures — and just sat there giggling like it wasn’t a big deal.

He was extremely supportive, even after I finished his class. I checked in with him often during my last two years of school. Somehow I graduated with honors. He even wrote me an incredible recommendation for grad school in San Francisco. Every time I came back to Atlanta, I’d visit him and we’d go to 12-step meetings together.

Mr. Nolan passed away years ago. I wasn’t able to go to his memorial, but I heard it was well attended. He was beloved — in the art world, in the rooms. He sponsored a lot of people. He was the kind of person who just wanted you to make it.

He was 25 years sober when he called me in rehab. I’m 25 years sober today.

In many ways, our lives couldn’t be more different. He was a distinguished, tenured professor, living alone, making art, devoting himself to his students and his sponsees. Content in that. In college he taught place-based, land-based art — work that was about locating yourself in an environment, not observing it from a distance. Work that moved through you.

My life at 25 years sober is loud and full. This morning I watched Zen and Nic muck out the donkey pasture while Freya and Sol rode their bikes in the driveway, our dogs trailing close behind. I had a client session in an hour. Our garden needs pruning. The new apricot and pear trees need planting. One of our horses needs his eyes cleaned. There is always someone or something that needs tending.

I think about this sometimes — how much of my creative energy goes into horse training and planting seeds and sitting on playroom floors until a child feels safe enough to sleep. I’m not making land-based art. I’m living it. I don’t think he, or I could have predicted that.

What Mr. Nolan gave me was never really about sobriety. He held my hand. He offered me compassion. He helped me come home to myself and showed me it didn’t have to look a certain way.

And, for whatever reason, I let him.

It still surprises me. At twenty-one I already had a long history of relationships that were painful and fraught and in many ways traumatizing. I had every reason to say no thanks to lunch in his office. Every reason to keep my distance. But something in me picked up that phone. Something in me kept showing up to the fourth floor. Something in me was still reaching for connection even when so much in my life experience said it wasn’t safe.

I think most of us have felt this at some point — the part of us that reaches for someone, however awkwardly, even after being hurt.

I see this in our rescue horses. They come to us shut down, braced, with every reason to refuse a human relationship. And they still reach when we are patient. I see it in our foster children who arrive detoxing, dysregulated, having already experienced such existential loss. And still they reach when we care for them without trying to get something in return.

And sometimes, when reaching feels impossible, we can start somewhere more manageable. As they say in the rooms, we become willing to be willing.

That’s often the beginning — the moment something in us softens just enough to imagine reaching again. Even after disappointment. Even after grief. Even after years of learning to do everything alone.

Below I’m sharing a small reflection I return to when I think about the people (and animals) who helped me along the way — the ones who reached toward me, and the moments I found the courage to reach back.

You’re welcome to try it with me.

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Dear friends,

Lately I’ve been noticing how quickly I override myself, even in small moments.

Just sitting down to write, I did a brain dump — a part of my writing practice where I empty out all of the ideas in my head that might want to turn into a letter. As I typed, my heart rate sped up, my jaw tightened, my back tensed.

I started typing faster. When my list was exhaustive, I scanned for the major themes. That familiar part of me trying to tease out: what’s the most interesting piece I could share right now? What’s relevant? What’s supportive? What’s engaging? What’s deep but not too heavy? What’s personal but not self-indulgent?

Within a few moments my shoulders locked onto my back. My mind bounced around from one idea to the next.

I looked at the time. 11:51 am. Nic and the kids will be home by 1:30 pm. Between now and then I need to get this essay draft completed, fold the laundry, vacuum, eat lunch, email back two clients, and clean the kitchen. Oh, and take some kind of time for myself before I jump into care taking mode.

Of course I feel stuck. Of course I feel pressure. I want to optimize this time so badly. I want to draft a meaningful letter in half an hour.

I’m trying so hard to write something good, I can’t even locate what’s calling to be written.

I want to nail it so much, I can’t even land on one thread and carry it through.

As I type, I find myself still scanning for the best possible thing to share.

I push my chair away from my desk and take in a long breath.

I gaze out the sliding glass doors.

I sit quietly for a few moments until my back starts to soften.

Then I chuckle thinking about what’s the “best”. Nic has a great story about this elderly woman that used to come into the café when he worked at Borders Bookstore many moons ago in Los Angeles.

This woman would walk up to the counter, and Nic would ask, “May I take your order?”

Her response was always the same. Spoken in a thick New York accent she replied, “what’s the best? I want whatever is the best.” Period.

Me too, me too.

I want whatever is the best.

But not because I want to eat the best soup or the best sandwiches or have the best coffee at the café.

I want to be read with admiration. I want to be read with head nods, and yeah, same here’s. I want to feel useful in the world.

Because when I’m admired, I feel like I’m okay.
Because when readers nod along, I feel like I’m not alone.
Because when I’m useful, I feel like I have a place in the room.

I’ve spent most of my life excelling. School and art as a kid. Sobriety in my twenties. A breathwork practice that grew quickly. A book that did well. Graduate study layered on top of foster parenting. Again and again, I found I could push through. I could endure. If there was pressure, my body met it automatically. The discomfort was invisible because pressure was my baseline.

It felt like being good.
It felt like being responsible.
It felt like being strong.
It felt like mattering.

And, it came at a cost.

It’s biologically expensive to push myself to be the best — to carry tension in my back, clenching in my jaw, the urgency to hurry up and do a great job already. Over time, that kind of pressure doesn’t just live in my body. It pulls me away from myself. I get detached from what I really want. I lose the ability to hear myself.

And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with wanting to do a good job or do things well — or even have some semblance of excellence in my life. The thing I’m unpacking these days is the drive to be the best because it has a way of keeping me stuck. I overthink. I loop. I second-guess. I scan for the best move instead of making one.

My body is capable of pushing through and enduring a great deal of stress. In this season of my life, I’m most invested in expanding my capacity to sit with the discomfort of not getting it right, of not being the best, of just letting myself be okay.

I’m humbled every day raising three tiny humans who teach me, over and over, how not the best I am.

The way I rush them out the door when we’re late.
The way I tighten when their feelings fill the house.
The way I raise my voice when I forgot to set the boundary much earlier.

About how many mistakes I make. About how many limitations I have. About how unreasonable my expectations are — of myself, and honestly, of them a lot of the time. About the relentless pressure I put on myself to do better and be better as their mother.

When I’m able to take a step back and widen my view — to see the mountains behind the trees, or my kid’s anxiety under their challenging behavior, or feel my horse’s concern before it escalates to their push into me — my shoulders drop just a bit.

There’s a 2% decrease in tension, a one second extension of an exhale. When I can stay there and join that micro moment of ease, I gain the ability to see where my past is showing up in the present. I’ve got a little more access to meeting the difficulty of the moment with a touch more compassion.

And in that sliver of space, I practice moving from surviving the moment to participating in it.

Below, I’m sharing exactly what’s helping me ease that tension by 2%, a 3-minute breathwork practice for accessing safety, and the music I turn on when I’m tightening. If you’re craving a little more space and choice in your own body, I invite you to join us. Just click the link below for bi-monthly practices and offerings to support your softening.

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Dear friends,

I spent my birthday last week under the sheets, hiding from the light.

A level ten migraine came raging to the back of my left eye at 2 am.

I couldn’t look at my phone, read a book, or even call a friend to say, I’m not feeling well. The only thing I could do was prop my head up with an extra pillow and lie on my right side. The only thing I could do was be with the pain. And with the grief. The grief I knew was waiting for me. The grief I kept telling myself I didn’t have time to feel.

Between waves of nausea and trying to will myself to sleep, I noticed how many sensations were present. Tightness in my forehead, gripping in my stomach, weakness throughout my entire body. The few times I reached for my phone hoping to escape the extreme discomfort and pain, failed. The screen made the migraine worse. And the effort it took to reach my arm down to the floor to pick up the phone drained my body even more.

I had a full day of pampering organized and scheduled a month in advance. I planned an hour to hang with Maeve my yearling, receive a magical lymphatic facial, get some journaling in, and have a session with my trainer. I was so ready for this me day.

And there I was in bed, un-showered, puffy eyed, having a very different me day.

Seven hours later, our 4-year-old ran down the hall, and jumped in bed with me: Mommy, we’re here to take you to the hospital!

For the first time that day, I felt my body exhale just a little.

Thankfully, a friendly nurse was able to get me into a bed within twenty minutes. Shortly after a brief consult with a doctor, she wheeled two IV bags into my room along with a tiny bottle of Zofran and two small bags of magnesium. The tension in my stomach began to loosen. Help is finally here.

As she adjusted my IV, I started to cry. Not from the needle prick, which always makes me wince, but from the kindness in her voice.

You’ll start feeling better soon, she assured me.

The worst is over.

The tears kept coming.

I just want to be cared for, I thought.

I’d been going for weeks. The kids cycling through sickness, the trip to Disneyland we’d planned for months, Freya’s night terrors waking us at all hours, the unshakable dread about what’s happening in our country. All of it held in my body while I kept showing up, kept tending, kept going.

I needed care too. And there it was from a stranger in the ER on a Wednesday afternoon.

Because I was in such severe pain, my usual defenses were down. I didn’t have the energy to apologize for not feeling well. I wasn’t able to try and make myself smaller to seem like less of a burden. All I could do was lie there on that scratchy sheet, covered in the blankets the nurse brought me, and feel the grief.

Within a few minutes of the first magnesium bag entering my body, I began to feel warm all over. I’d arrived in several layers with thick wool socks, unable to stop shivering. Now the warmth was coming from the inside.

My eyes kept leaking. I let them. The level ten pain lowered to a four, and my mind slowly drifted away from the discomfort.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since. I’ve written before about how hard it is for me to receive in the past. But this was different. This wasn’t me struggling to accept a compliment or take in a friend’s genuine praise. This was my body saying: you will lie here and be cared for. Period.

I’ve been thinking about why it took a complete collapse for me to let someone care for me. Why didn’t I just... ask.

And I keep coming back to this: somewhere along the way, I learned that receiving was something I had to fight for. That I need to be undeniably struggling, screaming for help, or explaining the severity of my situation ten times over, before I am allowed to stop giving and start letting in.

There’s so much I’m holding right now. Solomon’s anxiety. Freya’s unprocessed trauma. Zen’s impulsivity. The news I try to read in small doses. The horses who need more of our time. The uncertainty of what comes next and the knowing that all I can do is breathe here now.

I know I’m not alone in this. Perhaps you are holding a great deal too. And I notice the story I tell myself: that I need to keep going, keep holding, keep showing up—that I can’t put anything down yet. That I cannot stop yet.

But here’s what I’ve been reflecting on since my trip to the ER: receiving isn’t about building capacity to hold more. It isn’t about filling back up so I can return to endless giving.

Receiving is about letting myself feel supported. Even for a moment. Even when nothing is resolved. Even when the world outside is going full tilt. Even when nearly everything is out of my control.

So, I recorded a breathwork practice for receiving.

Because in the middle of all of it—maybe especially in the middle of all of it—we deserve moments of being held.

Below is a ten-minute breathwork practice for those of us who struggle to receive. You’re welcome to practice with me.

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Dear friends,

The doors opened and suddenly we were flying.

One moment I was slumped in a wooden boat, exhausted and overstimulated with a sweaty toddler on my lap and the next I was suspended over London, stars scattered all around me, the city glittering below. I gasped in delight. Wow. This is magical.

I turned my head to look at Zen, Solomon, and Nic. Everyone’s mouth was open and eyes were wide. I felt Nic’s hand on my back.

Last week we traveled to Disneyland to celebrate Zen’s fourth birthday. I’ll save you from the details of what it takes to navigate a theme park with three kids under seven who live on a ranch in the middle of nowhere—the sensory overload, the crowds, the inevitable level-ten meltdowns. By the time we got on Peter Pan’s Flight, I was nearly defeated and ready to drive six hours back home.

But when the nursery doors opened and we launched into the starry sky, I couldn’t help but smile. Watching my children’s faces and hearing their squeals of joy as we floated over the rainbow brought tears to my eyes.

This moment has stayed with me. I think it’s partly because I couldn’t leave. On a ride, you’re held in the experience of wonder; you can’t just rush off to the next thing. For several minutes on Peter Pan’s Flight, the magic kept coming. Stars, London, the rainbow, my children’s faces. Moment after moment of wonder with nowhere else to be. My only job was to stay and receive it.

I live in one of the most beautiful places in California. The moon rises over the Sierra National Forest in front of our house every single evening. I practice pausing, taking a slow breath, noticing the light on the peaks. And many days I feel a flicker of awe. But then I’m on with my day. The kids. The horses. The dishes. The laundry. The dogs. The emails.

Since our trip I’ve been reflecting on why I don’t linger a little longer in wonder. Partly it’s just life with three young kids and a rescue ranch, there’s always something or someone needing my attention or care. But part of it, I think, is that wonder can feel almost wrong. With so much heaviness in the world, who am I to stand around marveling at the mountains? Who am I to linger in the beauty of the oaks?

And then a small voice asks from the back of the room: but who are you not to?

Below, I’m sharing five ways I’m practicing wonder (that don’t require a trip to Disneyland). You’re welcome to join me.

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I adulted so hard in 2025.

I adopted our daughter. I got back to weekly functional training. I reconnected with childhood friends. I trained in psychedelic assisted therapy. I buried two horses and my dog. I showed up for mediation with an estranged member of my family. I went back to therapy. I grieved the more freedom-filled seasons of my life. I rescued two wild horses. I ate so much freaking protein.

I gave myself permission to be mediocre.

I adulted in ways I didn’t even know I had the capacity for—taking care of Nic and our three sick kids for nearly two weeks without raising my voice.

I adulted in ways that brought me face to face with my limitations—for the first time, recognizing the looping conflict Nic and I have found ourselves in for years has an origin that has nothing to do with him.

I adulted in therapy so hard that my subconscious is choosing to be more present, choosing to let more in: the warmth of our middle child’s body lying on me as he falls asleep. The way our daughter calls me Mom, a name I’ve worked so hard for. The way our oldest still asks to hold my hand as they fall asleep.

I can actually feel their love now.

Below I’m sharing what’s keeping me steady as I step into this next season — the small delights, simple practices, and points of connection that are making adulthood feel a little more doable. If you’d like to come with me, and aren’t already a paid subscriber, I invite you to click the link below.

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Dear friends,

The winter solstice is here and I have a Field Note to share.

I recorded this from my bed with the sun streaming through the window, five shades of green moss glowing on the granite boulders, and that particular quality of December light settling in.

Nic and I have been talking at length about family rituals this year. We’re big full moon people, big seasonal people. We love a ritual connected to the land and its cycles. And this solstice feels especially important after such an expansive, stripping-away kind of year.

So, I’m sharing a simple rest and gratitude practice with you. Something we can do together to honor the tiredness, acknowledge what our bodies have carried, and connect to what we’re grateful for, without trying to fix or change anything.

Inside we explore—

• A grounding practice you can do anywhere (sitting, lying down, walking)

• Permission to let the tiredness be okay

• A simple gratitude practice that lands in the body

• My prayer for all of us as we move into the longest night

This will be our last Field Note and my final share for 2025. I’m going to practice my own medicine and take two weeks of rest, well, as much as one can with three young kids and a band of mini horses :)

Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for being part of this community. Thank you for supporting The Deeper Call.

I am truly grateful for you.

See you in January!

With love and care,
Ashley

PS
If you are a paid member (thank you so much!) and want some somatic support this season, here is my go-to breathwork practices for easing holiday stress.

And, if you to engage with a longer end of year practice, please visit our Breathwork for Intention Setting immersion from last December. I’ll be flowing through this sequence of writing prompts to myself take inventory and sketch out what I want to call in for the New Year. x

Dear friends,

I really wanted it to be real.

The AI-generated image of me hugging my younger self, the one I spent two hours trying to create while my kids slept. I wanted it to actually heal something.

It started last week while scrolling Facebook for vintage horse trailers. An old friend shared an image of herself smiling huge, hugging a sevenish-year-old girl who also looked like her. Sort of. The soft focus photo almost looked like a Polaroid taken at a party. She wrote that the AI-generated image was a visual representation of healing her inner child, a way to love herself from within that outside sources can’t quite reach.

“Wow”, I thought. “I should try this.”

A huge part of me hoped this image would be magical. That it would somehow take the painful parts of my childhood and wrap them up in a big cozy hug that would translate into my body right now. That I would actually feel something shift, a stretching of my heart space, a deep sigh of contentment, a weight lifted off my shoulders.

I went searching for an app.

Two hours later, I was in an AI image-generating rabbit hole. I uploaded some current photos of myself and some from my childhood. I typed in a clear and direct prompt:

Create a realistic studio-style portrait of adult me gently hugging my younger self. Keep both faces exactly as they appear in the photos. Soft lighting, neutral backdrop, natural tones, tender expression.

Each image came back stranger than the last. Some of the images were of me with a fake version of my younger self, others were completely AI-generated, with AI trying to capture the “vibe” and “essence” of my prompt and uploaded images (AI’s words not mine btw).

I became frustrated. What started out as a fun and mostly lighthearted evening activity quickly became something I needed to get right. I kept tweaking the prompt, trying to get AI to give me what I wanted.

As the night went on, I felt a familiar sensation of urgency running through my nervous system. My heart rate increased. My focus sharpened. Looking at the images, especially the ones where my original photos were used and altered, gave me such a strange feeling.

The dissonance was disorienting; my brain couldn’t stop prompting AI because I wanted it to be real.

Below, I’ll share a five-minute practice that’s actually helping me connect with my inner child - and it doesn’t require a single prompt.

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I’m back with our fifth Field Note, recorded from inside our kitchen in Mariposa, looking out at the rain coming down. The house is quiet, Nic took the kids to preschool. I’m feeling super cozy in my favorite wool socks.

I know many of us are in a tender space heading into December. If you’re feeling the weight right now from the holidays, the year ending, all the expectations—you’re not alone.

I’ve been stressed lately by a project I created, pushing through even though my body has been telling me to stop. This morning I hit a breaking point and finally asked: What’s keeping me from quitting?

In this Field Note we’ll explore:

• Why we keep pushing when our bodies tell us otherwise

• How guilt and shame keep us locked in commitments that aren’t serving us

• Discover how the path getting narrower is actually a sign of healing

• Practice identifying what you might need to release

Let’s take a breath together and see what needs to shift.

With deep care and gratitude,
Ashley

Dear friends,

The shift from maiden to mother happened gradually, though on my recent trip to LA, it felt like all at once. One day I was in Lululemon yoga pants getting all the looks at Moon Juice. Now I’m stumbling into Sqirl while tables of hipsters whisper about Zen in his overalls and cowboy boots.

I am becoming invisible out in the world.

And the thing is, part of me should be relieved. Isn’t this what I wanted when I left LA eight years ago? To stop performing? To stop feeling like I had to be thin? To stop gripping onto what’s left of my youth?

But standing in front of that “Nobody Wants This” poster of Kristen Bell, I wasn’t relieved. Her head is nearly the size of my entire body. I scan her face: not a pore in sight, not a crease on her forehead, not a wrinkle near her eyes. We are the same age. Maybe it IS time to get Botox.

I wasn’t relieved—I was grieving. Grieving a visibility currency I didn’t realize I’d been spending. Grieving the way I used to light up a room. Grieving the version of myself who thought visibility meant I had more value.

Below I’ll share a practice to release oxytocin that’s been helping me meet my aging face with a little more compassion and a little less retail therapy.

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Dear friends,

Last month, sitting on our living room couch, an email I received about Thanksgiving made my chest so tight I stopped breathing. It was from my cousin, inviting us to a gathering with 20+ family members, including one I haven’t seen since a huge fight we had three years ago.

My mind did one of the things it does best: list-making. Within a minute, I had a ten-point list of reasons we were not going to attend Thanksgiving dinner this year. My inhale felt sharp as my stomach clenched. I looked out of the sliding door at our deck. Billie Jean, one of our outdoor cats, brushed up against the glass. It must be nice to be a cat, not having to deal with family dynamics on Thanksgiving.

Driving four and a half hours in a car during the holidays with three kids under seven and a six-month-old puppy is sure to be exhausting. Listening to Zen and Sol fight over the LeapFrog games and Freya shout her stream of demands from behind my driver’s seat is enough to make me want to stay home. Waking up at all hours of the night in a cramped hotel bed with stiff sheets, flat pillows, and that one red light on the smoke detector that all the kids focus on when I’ve worked so hard to get six consecutive hours of sleep each night feels like a big sacrifice.

And then there’s the heavy emotional labor I’ll be navigating with adults as well as my kids in someone else’s space that sends a surge of stress through my system.

Oh, and of course, my younger parts that decide to come out because they are perpetually trying to get healed at one of these family gatherings. This will likely lead to another fight.

I stay put on the couch. Nic joins me after taking Zora, our Bernadoodle puppy out to pee.

I rattle off my list and he listens. Right away, he offers, “We could stay home if that’s what you really need.”

We sit in silence for a couple of minutes.

“Remember how much Zen enjoyed hanging out with the family in Laguna Beach this summer?” Nic asks.

I nod my head, smiling.

I’m sure this sounds strange, but sometimes I forget that two of our children are adopted. I know that I take my family for granted at times and that family holds a different meaning for me than it does for our kids. Zen talked about our family for weeks after the summer gathering at the beach. He loved being tossed up in the air by one of his older cousins. He erupted in laughter when my Dad chased him and Sol around the patio during dinner. He swam up to everyone he knew in the pool, just bobbing in his neon life vest, so happy to be surrounded by people who loved him.

I tell Nic I’ll keep thinking about it.

So many of us are holding an invitation this season (or anticipating receiving one) that makes the body tighten. You might be holding one right now.

Below, I share what I did, and a two-minute practice you can use when a decision feels hard to make.

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Dear Friends,

I’m sitting in a redesigned 1930s hotel lobby, a block from my children’s Montessori preschool. The light is dim, the noise a reasonable decibel.

I’m fresh out of an intense personal-training session—my first time crying during one. The linear gym has black walls and small mirrors. The sharp scent of sanitizer from the previous client lingers in the air. Somewhere between planks, unilateral leg squats, and tricep push-downs, the right side of my head began pounding. I tried to organize my shoulders and arms to relieve the pressure from the weight, but the stimulus was overwhelming.

All I felt was tension increasing in my head as my mind scrambled for ways to manage the discomfort.

After three reps, my head pain intensified so sharply, I dropped the weights. Tears burst from my eyes.

My head instinctually lowered in shame.

I quickly picked it up to meet my trainer’s eyes: “I’m not sure what’s going on, but I think I need to cry.”

He suggested I lie on the floor to breathe and move through whatever was surfacing.

I lay there crying, my chest rising and falling, the cold gym floor steady beneath the weight of my body.

Not that long ago, I would have rushed to explain the tears—to trace them back to a memory or prove to him and to myself that I wasn’t a mess.

But this time, I didn’t. I let my body release the tension. I inhaled through my nose, exhaled long and low. After a few minutes, the pounding eased and the wetness dried at the corners of my eyes. What surprised me wasn’t that I cried, but that I didn’t resist the release.

Later that day, I heard Taylor Swift describe her goodbye ritual.

(Below, we’ll talk about Taylor Swift’s ritual and I’ll give you one way to create your own.)

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My shoulders round forward as I stare at my profit and loss statement. The numbers blur on the screen.

Since becoming a mother six years ago, my business profits have decreased 10–15% every. Single. Year. Looking at last year’s numbers, after expenses, I realize I cleared almost nothing.

I push back from my desk, legs numb. A word surfaces before I can stop it: underearner.

For the last five and a half years, I’ve chosen to be home with our children. I’ve chosen presence over profit, caregiving over career expansion. In a way, under-earning has been a choice.

But somewhere in choosing presence, I stopped believing my work — created and offered in those precious margins of motherhood — had real value. I stopped believing it deserved full reciprocity.

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I’m coming to you from our kitchen table today. The house is finally quiet after Solomon’s seventh birthday party this past Saturday. The rain is pounding outside, our second storm of the fall. I can already see tiny green shoots pushing through the earth.

It’s been three years since my book Permission to Rest came out. For so much of my life, I believed rest was something you earned—a reward after working hard, something that happened far in the future.

But the land here is teaching me something different. The horses taking midday naps without earning them. The oaks dropping their leaves. Rest isn’t separate from living—it’s woven throughout everything.

In this 10-minute Field Note I explore—

• How rest can be a rhythm, not a reward

• What the horses teach me about natural pauses

• A guided breathing practice we’ll do together

• Finding rest in the small moments between tasks

With gratitude,
Ashley

💬 Group Check-In

Please join us in the comments if you feel called to share.

What would change if you gave yourself permission to rest right now, without earning it first?

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If I timed my toddler's nap right, I'd have twenty minutes to pull this off. I rushed into our home office, throwing dresses onto a pile on the floor. Nothing fit right over my four-year postpartum body. Too tight here, too frumpy there. Five discarded outfits later, I grabbed the white dress with the high-waisted belt. I thought it helped me look put together but effortless. At this point it was becoming increasingly difficult to “show up” for the camera in a way that matched my pre-childbirth image. I was so far from that woman. She could throw on any of her designated social media “looks” and be ready to go.

I managed to get a bit of under-eye concealer over my chronic dark circles and set up a makeshift tripod. Even as I took a deep breath before opening my iPhone’s camera, I felt in my chest how much of a performance this already was. I got myself situated and recorded a short vagus nerve reset meant for "downshifting stress”, connecting my breath to eye movements in front of the camera. My own stress remained in high gear and I spent the next ten minutes in a frustrated frenzy creating text for the video. I pressed post just as Zen woke up.

That video was one of my top posts from 2022, clocking in over 23k views and counting.

Behind the scenes, I was a deeply exhausted and depleted mom struggling to get through each day, but I could still fake it. I could get dressed up, be a model of calmness, and offer refuge in the sea of Instagram insanity. And it worked. Sure, I was faking it. The problem was, I wasn’t really making it.

That white dress became a symbol for performing wellness, loose enough to hide my postpartum weight, neutral enough for people to project their ideals onto, and clean enough to imply I had my shit together. The algorithm loved it.

And I wasn't alone in this performance.

Scroll through any wellness social feed and you'll find thousands of us, exhausted humans, teaching regulation while our internal resources are depleted, guiding presence while dissociated, marketing mindfulness while our nervous systems are completely burnt out.

The wellness world has become a culture of lengthy morning routines to have your ‘best day ever,’ expensive supplements for 'peak performance,' and cold breathwork plunges to 'upgrade your nervous system.' Like so much in our late stage capitalist culture, healing has become another place to excel, another place to strive to get to the top. And if you’re doing it in public on social media, you learn quickly that the masses prefer what keeps their attention: bite-sized teaching, clean girl aesthetics, and transformation stories that skip the messy middle.

One could argue that some of this is shifting. And yes, many in the younger generations don’t want perfection, they want the actual mess. But as long as we're consuming and creating content for algorithms designed to harvest attention, nothing really changes. We've just traded one performance for another, idealistic morning routines replaced by crying videos, clean girl aesthetics swapped for 1am trauma confessionals. The algorithm doesn't care what we post, just that we keep posting.

The algorithm can't feel the way our shoulders creep toward our ears as we craft each post. It doesn't register the breath held in our throat, our stiff jaw, or the exhaustion that follows performing our own healing process for strangers' consumption.

While we're trying to curate what we think you want our healing to look like for your own viewing pleasure, our actual healing waits.

Our bodies know the difference between being witnessed and being watched.

Our bodies know the difference between tuning into our social media feeds versus attuning to our actual human needs.

Nineteen years ago in grad school, I recorded myself crying on my computer and projected it on a gallery wall. Viewers were moved and very uncomfortable. The piece was such a hit, I was invited to show it in a bigger, more prominent gallery. That was my art, a deliberate examination of vulnerability as performance. I wasn't trying to heal. I was making visible the act of being watched while breaking down.

Social media collapses this distinction. It has us thinking the performance is real life.

So, what does actual healing feel like in the body without the camera rolling? As you already experience in your own body, it’s nothing like what gets posted. There are absolutely no clean girl aesthetics in healing. Healing doesn’t give a shit about aesthetics.

In my body, real healing feels like the out breath after a painful conversation. The tears that flow when I look at photos of my kids while they sleep, that little bit of distance giving me the space to appreciate them. The tears that come when Nic reaches out to touch my arm late at night as we struggle to find our way back to each other after conflict.

In my body, real healing looks like lying on the couch at 3pm because my body won’t let me keep pushing through the day. It’s eating the same simple meal of 55g protein breakfast (grass fed beef, eggs, and blackberries from our neighbors patch) for weeks in a row because food decisions are just too much to manage on a daily basis. It's the chiropractic session where I start crying the second I place my face in the cradle and give my body permission to be taken care of.

The white dress couldn't hold any of this and no Instagram video could capture it. None of this would trend. There's no hashtag for shoulder dropping, no filter for the relief of a real exhale, no optimal posting time for lying on the couch at 3pm. The algorithm has no use for healing that can't be packaged into 15-second wisdom.

Performing wellness, performing our healing interrupts the very transformation we seek. When I posted about nervous system regulation while depleted, anxious, or dissociated, I strengthened the internal split I felt between my performing self and my actual body. Every curated video or piece of content deepened this fracture.

I was stuck in cycles of feeling shitty about the metrics. Was this post helpful enough? Did it get enough likes? Did I look pretty enough? Did it get enough comments? Worse, I could never be honest about burning out while maintaining my image as someone who had it together.

When I stopped performing wellness, my healing didn't end, it deepened. Without an audience to consume those curated parts of my journey, my body began to organize and regulate in ways that Instagram couldn’t capture.

I discovered I could struggle and not craft it into a post about cultivating resilience. I could fight with Nic without mining our conflict for relational wisdom. I could delight in playing with my children without scanning for the most shareable moments.

What actually restored me was too quiet for social media: walking slowly with my children through the Oaks, tending to a broken down 25-year old mare, allowing the dishes to pile up, drinking my morning matcha without scrolling, lying on the kitchen floor staring at the ceiling.

These are practices I could have documented. I could have packaged them into beautiful little reels for consumption. But filming them would have bled them dry of their actual healing. The camera would have transformed them from restoration into more content, more proof that I was doing wellness 'right.' The real medicine was in keeping them private, letting them accumulate quietly in my body instead of publicly in my metrics.

Last month I took that white dress out of my closet. I tried it on. I looked in the mirror. My face looked older but more content, more me. My lines were deeper, and of course they were. They weren’t paralyzed from Botox. My shoulders were soft, not frozen on my upper back. My eyes were still underlined with dark circles—regular sleep is still a distant dream in our home—but some light had rekindled in them.

I took off the dress and put it in a bag to give to a close friend. I am not that woman anymore.

Dear friends,

I’m back with our third Field Note, recorded from the southeast corner of our deck, listening for woodpeckers in the bull pines. The wind had just quieted, the sun tucked behind clouds, and I realized how much I’ve missed this audio connection with you.

These last few weeks have felt heavy. Personal, global, everyday—it’s been a lot. Sometimes time stretches endlessly, and I wonder: how do we breathe when the future feels impossible?

In this Field Note, I share a simple practice I first learned in recovery: living one hour at a time. It’s not about productivity—it’s about survival, about finding gentleness when life feels too big to hold.

Together we’ll:

• Try a grounding practice for the hour ahead

• Explore why lowering the bar can be radical care

• Remember we don’t need to carry the whole week

This practice has carried me through foster care, adoption, family upheaval, and running the horse rescue. It’s one I return to again and again.

Let’s take a breath together and see what this hour needs from us.

With warmth,
Ashley

💬 Group Check-In

What could you set aside this hour to feel a little more present?

I’d love to connect with you. x

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My one-on-one practice is open again. I've seen profound shifts happen in just a few sessions. If you've been craving deeper change, not just temporary relief, I'd love to work together. Book here →

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Dear one,

After a long season focused on motherhood, tending our land, and caring for the horses, I’m re-opening my one-on-one practice again.

Maybe it’s the conversations we’ve shared, the notes you’ve sent, or the quiet pull in my own heart, but I can feel peoples’ rising need for deeper, more intentional support right now. And I’m ready to meet it.

If you’ve been feeling…

• Stuck, even though you’ve “done the work”

• Exhausted by “the work” and falling back into old patterns

• Burned out by living and working at a pace that feels unfocused, unsustainable, and inhuman

• Like your body is trying to communicate with you but you can't quite decipher its messages

…these sessions are made for you.

What can 1:1 breathwork sessions offer?

Our time together isn't about fixing or forcing, but moving at a pace that's gentle, integrative, and provides lasting calm.

Whether you're ready to finally break through patterns that talk therapy alone couldn't shift, find sustainable rhythms that actually work with your nervous system instead of against it, or learn to clearly hear and trust the wisdom your body is constantly offering you, I'll walk beside you as you meet what's ready to change.

For those of you who’ve never done breathwork sessions before, they begin with your intentions and what feels most alive in the moment. From there, I’ll guide you through Regenerative Breathwork™ and other somatic and nature-based practices to help you meet yourself beneath the noise.

You don’t need to come with anything prepared, you don’t need to have ever done breathwork before, and you don’t even need to feel ready. You just have to be willing. I’ll do the rest.

Details:
+50 minutes via Zoom
+$300 per session
+Start with one, or schedule as often as you like

Because this work asks a lot of me (and you), there are only a handful of spots open right now. If you’ve been feeling the call to work together, I’d love to support you.

Book Your Session

With care,
Ashley

Client Love

“My only hesitation about working with Ashley was the cost, but it has definitely been worth it, no question.”

“Ashley’s authentic kindness and breadth of knowledge about the body and the way trauma patterns influence our nervous system has given me access to a part of myself I thought was broken. Since working together I have been able to, for the first time in my life feel safe in my body.”

“If you’re ready to change on a cellular level, learn to deeply regulate yourself, and reorganize your limiting beliefs, I cannot recommend Ashley’s work enough. I’ve struggled with PCOS and have been trying to get pregnant for a long time. After a few months of working with Ashley and doing all of the homework she suggests between sessions I am elated to share that I got pregnant and am almost at my due date!”

Early this summer I found my grandfather’s old 35mm camera from the mid-80s tucked away in my office. A friend had sent me scans of their own film prints a few months earlier, and something about them nudged me to pick up film again.

When my film arrived a few days later in the mail, I found myself opening the box with a familiar sense of excitement. I removed the lid from the plastic container, pulling out a fresh roll of film. I lifted it to my nose. Deep inhale. That particular smell, part vinegar, part cherry with just a hint of coffee, immediately took me back.

I’d already purchased a new battery from the ancient hardware store in town and prayed it would actually work as the package was covered in a thick layer of dust. The battery, though fresh from the box, had a 2019 expiration date on it. Let’s give this a go, I thought.

I opened the camera back and loaded the film with ease. My fingers remembering just how much new film to pull out so it would catch correctly. I was ready to start shooting.

While everyone else was curating their perfect summer on the gram, I was in our bedroom imagining a different kind of season, a slow photography summer that no algorithm would ever see.

When photography became content

Long before images became ‘content’, I studied photography in both my undergrad and graduate programs. Initially I shot 35mm, but by the time I was working on my MFA I had expanded to include medium format. I loved shooting and the rituals of being in the darkroom, developing and printing photos.

Somewhere between my third iPhone and fifth sponsored Instagram post, I traded my quiet and slow photography practice for something louder, faster, and much less nourishing. Without fully understanding the implications of this new technology, Instagram began to change my relationship to images. Instead of sharing my art, I became obsessed with tracking metrics. Instead of sharing images that I truly loved, I shared the ones that would garner the most engagement. Every moment in my life from washing my face, to cooking a meal, to walking through Griffith Park became a potential moment to post to the grid. This made it challenging to practice presence and actually live in the moment.

The sheer exhaustion of seeing so many aspects of my life as potential content came to a head last year when I left Instagram. Since then, I’ve been in a practice of not just reclaiming my attention, but reclaiming something I thought Instagram stole from me, my love for photography.

A summer without the algorithm

Instead of curating an idealized summer for the gram, I spent mine relearning what it felt like to shoot photos before the algorithm. Film, it turns out, is the perfect antidote to Instagram-brain. With only 36 exposures, every shot matters. There's no instant deletion and no immediate validation. You take an intentional shot and then you wait, hoping you captured the moment well.

One of my favorite shooting experiences this summer was bringing my camera to Solomon’s camp field trip in Yosemite National Park. We arrived to the camp meeting spot early. Sol played on a nearby play structure in an open meadow surrounded by granite mountains. I circled slowly, taking in each angle, wondering if it was even possible to capture the majesty of this land on my grandfather’s Nikon. I found a stunning old Oak tree that felt worthy of at least a few shots on my brand new roll of film. I popped off three and headed back to play with Sol.

Looking through the photo prints a few weeks later, I noticed that old Oak tree translated beautifully to film. So rich in texture, shadow, and that stunning analog grain that is sadly missing from digital images. The Oak felt more alive than it could have ever been on my phone screen. But it was the shot of Sol, sitting at a worn picnic table, slightly blurred against the pines and granite mountains, that stopped me. No one would double-tap this on Instagram. But holding it in my hands, I knew it was exactly the shot I’d been waiting for.

Here’s what I noticed

Six rolls of film later, something had shifted.

Shooting film meant leaving my phone in my pocket. There wasn’t any checking in quickly to see how the shot looked. There was no on-the-spot editing pulling me further out of the present moment. And best of all, there was nothing to post. It was just me, the click of my shutter, and then back to living my life. I’d take a photo of the kids playing in their room or Nic with one of our rescue horses and then return to being with them.

The film camera changed so much for all of us. I noticed there was much less pressure to perform, especially because the kids weren’t constantly running to my side to see the images I just took. They stopped shouting take another one of ME! while I popped off a shot or two when inspiration struck.

And then there was the waiting, sometimes a month or more before we saw the photographs. Each envelope of prints became 36 surprises: beautiful light leaks, composition ‘mistakes’ that turned out to be really cool, and of course the photos we completely forgot we snapped.

And now, as summer has officially come to an end, I’m ready to share some of them with you.

And, it’s not lost on me that I’m basically sharing a photo dump, something literally created for social media. In essay form. On Substack. Such peak millennial behavior. This is basically Instagram for people who read. Trust that I am laughing at myself about this as I type!

The truth is, none of these photos were taken to prove anything, sell anything, or try to show you how ‘good’, or ‘evolved’ I am without social media. These photos exist because I’ve rekindled my love for photography and I occasionally felt like trying to capture a moment on film.

I get that it’s a bit ironic that I’m sharing these ‘unposted’ photos here. But maybe that’s the point—choosing when and how we share, making it intentional, making it matter. Or maybe I just wanted to show you what summer looked like without filters.

Either way: no algorithm required.

💬 If you're also trying to reclaim your attention from the algorithm (or thinking about it), I'd love to hear where you are in that journey!

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