I’m Ashley, mama of 5, but WOMAN, before all other identities.

My story is a little wild, but most women’s lives are full of wildness, that’s what keeps it interesting right? After growing up in Connecticut and Florida, then moving to Portland, Oregon for college, I ended up in Santa Cruz, California because I saw it on a map when I was 19 on a roadtrip and decided to just drive out here with my best friend and figure it out! The healing community of Santa Cruz was fertile ground to develop my skills- I trained in massage therapy, yoga, herbalism and taught yoga classes and gave massages in addition to nannying for a living. A few years later I got married and had my first daughter in my early 20’s, and immediately got into birth work as a holistic doula attending births in hospitals and at homes all over the Bay Area.

After 2 years of doula work, I enrolled in midwifery school and started apprenticing with local midwives as well as traveling to Utah and Oregon for placements in high volume birth centers. During the course of being on-call 24/7 with a small child, I became a single mother. I chose to leave my co-dependent marriage because my former husband struggled with addiction, and this is where my healing journey really started.

Newly diagnosed with Lyme disease, adrenals completely exhausted, running on empty and living in a yurt with my 4 year old daughter cleaning airbnb’s for a living- I had to rebuild myself one step at a time.

For the next few years I dedicated everything to healing, I sought out many practitioners, tried every modality I could afford, and went all in because I was desperate to get rid of the symptoms that I believed to be Lyme disease. The modalities worked up to a point, and I was able to feel functional again, so I coasted for awhile and settled for that “good enough” feeling.

In 2019, after a long day of prenatal visits another city over, I had to stop at the gas station. I saw a man, he saw me, it was love at first sight. He put an ad on craigslist looking for me, and I found it. We went on our first date which turned out to be our last first date ever- and got into a whirlwind romance where somehow I ended up going from a single mama of 1 to a married mama of 5 in a blended family in just over 2 years time. I had our first daughter together in 2020, and immediately became pregnant again at 6 months postpartum, giving birth to our second in 2021. This was during the time in our history where the whole world shut down, and people were afraid and disconnected. The stress of that, combined with the underlying root causes that still existed in my body contributed to a major relapse of chronic illness after the birth of my 3rd daughter (our 5th together).

During the first year of being a mama to two under two (and 3 older ones!), I experienced debilitating anxiety, food sensitivities like never before, a brain that felt like it wasn’t even working because I couldn’t form words, weight loss resistance when I had never had any issue before, feeling like a 90 year old grandma upon waking with back pain and overall achiness, and fatigue every afternoon that left me feeling nearly drunk and wondering if there was something seriously wrong with me like cancer. Again I went to all the practitioners, tried all the modalities and relentlessly pursued feeling better. With so much on the line and so much responsibility I just could not continue feeling that way!

In 2022 I discovered the world of functional medicine and started to understand what that really meant. I did all the tests, I did the protocols, I stayed consistent and then about 6 months into really being consistent with the foundations of health- I started feeling better! This wasn’t just being farther down the line postpartum, this was like a weight was being lifted off of my body that had been there honestly since childhood. I did have tick-acquired Lyme disease due to being bitten many times as a child in Connecticut, my dad even had Lyme disease, and ended up dying early at age 39 due to an inflammatory lifestyle as a clinical psychologist, and ultimately from a heart attack. I am passionate about preventing dis-ease because I know that his death was unnecessary, and my suffering over all those years was unnecessary.

How did I do it?

I started with the foundations of health- I got my sleep, stress, nutrition, hydration, exercise and womanly cycles optimized by being consistent and just doing the things that needed to be done — even if I didn’t want to do them! This meant going to bed at 9:30 when I really wanted to stay up and have some time alone. This meant transitioning to a paleo diet after being vegan for 17 years (not saying it has to for you, this is my story!).

When I implemented all the lifestyle changes that were FREE and accessible, I started to address my detoxification and drainage pathways. I consulted with a practitioner who looks at genetics and figured out where I needed supplementation to be able to detox, and realized because of my genetics I really need to ABD (always be detoxing). I integrated simple, quick and effective detox support practices into my lifestyle.

And then, I started specific protocols that my body was actually able to handle once my foundation felt solid and my drainage pathways were open. I am still on this journey, but because of how far I have come- I am ecstatic to share that healing is possible and that you don’t have to feel like shit as a mom. Even if you don’t have underlying chronic illness or autoimmune issues, the stress that we undergo with pregnancy, birth and healing postpartum can wreak havoc on our bodies and it is up to us to rebuild a strong foundation and then continually be detoxing due to the environment we live in. My controversial opinion is that while we do have built in “detox” organs in our bodies, we are not self cleaning ovens! We do need to be focusing on supporting our bodies in detoxification and eliminating outside factors like the water we drink, our inside air quality, our body products and food as well as lifestyle chemical exposures so that our bodies and our children’s bodies don’t have to work so hard to feel good!

My WHY is this- when we feel better, we act better. Simply, mothers are raising the humans of tomorrow and we need our mothers to be at their best so they do their absolute best and we have kind humans roaming the earth, creating positive change and spreading compassion and love.