Whole Man
This podcast is for high-performing adults who have achieved external success but still feel burned out, disconnected, or unfulfilled. Many grew up in survival mode, built a life that looks good on the outside, and now feel like they’re only living half of it. This podcast is me figuring out how to become whole in real time and taking you with me.
Whole Man
#9: Stop Abandoning Yourself (Ft. Ashley Coleman)
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Your darkest season might be the most honest one you’ve ever lived. Ashley Coleman joins me for a raw conversation about “dark night of the soul” moments, spiritual awakening, and what it actually looks like to stop abandoning yourself when your nervous system is flooded with fear, shame, or grief.
We get practical about inner child healing and nervous system regulation, including the counterintuitive practice Ashley swears by: stop trying to feel better and meet the emotion instead of running from it. We also talk about her path through sobriety, yoga philosophy, Reiki energy healing, and shamanism, and why real trauma healing often requires tracking core wounds like abandonment, betrayal, and separation from source instead of just managing symptoms.
Then we shift into the story everyone asked for: how we met at a Charlottesville festival, what we each had to release beforehand, and how raising standards around loyalty, sobriety, and emotional presence changed everything. If you’re rebuilding after burnout, healing relationship patterns, or trying to create a healthier partnership, this conversation will challenge you while keeping it grounded and human.
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Enjoy!
Dive Deeper with Ashley Coleman
Website: https://wingedalchemy.net/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wingedalchemyofficial/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MysticsPathMysterySchool
Newsletter: Build With Brennan: Helping people who feel like work is consuming their life take back control of their well-being.
My YouTube Channel: Video versions of the podcast.
Business Website: Is your business or career consuming your life? | I help people stop surviving and start living through various coaching services.
Other Social Links: LinkedIn, facebook, instagram.
Welcome And Guest Introduction
SPEAKER_02Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Whole Man Podcast. Today I have a very special guest, somebody who is near and dear to my heart. She is amazing in all the ways. She has so many titles, too. She is an aspiring interfaith minister. She's an energy practitioner, Reiki healer. She is trained in shamanism. She's been a yoga instructor and teacher for over 10 years. And she is one of the most important people in my life, if not the most important person. Everybody give it up for Ashley Coleman. Ashley, how are you doing today?
SPEAKER_00I'm a little nervous, but I'm doing great.
SPEAKER_02Good, good. So Ashley's my girlfriend, and it's going great. Just want to let you guys know. Um, Ashley, the reason why I wanted to have you on, there's many reasons. I feel like we have such an amazing story as far as how we bet, and we have such similar ideals and values, and we have a very similar trajectory in our life. So if it's cool with you, I want to talk about first what led up to us meeting. And I want to hear your story. I want to hear what put you on your soul path right now, what put you on this path of um helping women never settle for the life that they don't deserve. Um, what set you on this path of self-improvement, becoming a whole version of yourself? And then we'll just go from there. So take it away.
SPEAKER_00Okay, thank you for having me. Yeah. So specifically leading up to our meeting, or before that, like what put me on this path?
SPEAKER_02I would say what's your origin story? Yeah.
Ashley’s Origin Story And Early Trauma
SPEAKER_00So essentially, very sensitive soul, and you know this sensitive soul, grew up in an amazing family, started to realize that I was feeling things deeper than other people, had a lot of spiritual attacks, nighttime terrors that really started with scary movies at a young age, and then I would hear things in my head. So that was like my core trauma is spiritual trauma. So feeling attacks in my mind of we're coming to get you. And that's where my struggles really started as a young person. And then I knew from a very early age that I was here to help people. So as I would go through those struggles, first it was the spiritual attacks, then depression, then addiction. I always knew that my deepest struggles were connected to how I would serve people. So I remember being very young thinking, well, I will help kids sleep in their room at night. So, like super young, already knowing that my trauma was my connected to my purpose in some way. And then in eighth grade, I carried around a book, Psychology for Dummies. So I just knew and I thought that I had to go down this particular path of being a counselor and things and come to find out. I don't have to do that. But I did study psychology. So once I got sober, went into the whole addiction world for seven years. My drug of choice was pot, and you don't hear that too, too often. So that was my story. And then hit my dark night of the soul in a four-year toxic relationship, found yoga, and then my awakening took off. That was 2014.
SPEAKER_02For the people that don't know, what is the dark night of the soul? Because I haven't used a ton of spiritual terminology yet on this podcast, and I want to get super mystical and esoteric with you today and ground it. So please tell the people from your beautiful explanations what the dark night of the soul is and why it happens.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so mine was one of mine, like the first one that really broke me into my awakening was I was in my partner's bathtub. He was out drinking, smoking, doing things. This was many years ago, probably 2012, 2013. And you hit peak pain, essentially. It's peak pain. You cannot go further. You hit your knees in addiction and recovery. It's known as the um the gift of desperation, where you literally cannot go any further. Peak pain is the greatest way I could explain it. And for me, I started praying. So usually when you get to that point, you lift a prayer, you ask for help, you open your mouth. That was at least how it was for me and for the people that I've helped in that addiction and recovery space. So it is peak pain, and it's when your heart breaks open. Like Rumi, the Sufi mystic says, the wound is where the light enters. So you hit that climax and then you break open. And hopefully you have that mustard seed of faith. Hopefully you hold on five more minutes. They say in recovery, don't leave five minutes before the miracle. So hopefully you have that tiniest bit of faith, or you find it somewhere, and then you push through to the other side.
SPEAKER_02And so that happened for you.
SPEAKER_00Yes, more than once.
SPEAKER_02More than once. Tell me about the journey of when that happened the first time. How did that change your life? And what was your next chapter?
SPEAKER_00Well, it was a full moon in Capricorn in 2014. I remember it very clearly. And 2013, I think it was 2014, and I remember praying in the bathtub, angels, if you are with me, please lift this pain off of me. Because the emotional pain was cutting me so deep, I felt like I was dying. Nobody was holding a knife to my head, like nothing was happening outside of me that was an attack. My story has been the attack came from the inside out. And so I said that prayer. I watched the moon dance across the sky all night. I was up all night. And then I'm not exaggerating. When I woke up the next day, it was gone. The attachment to him had left like a light switch turned. It was a miraculous healing. And I I left the relationship. And I it was a clean, beautiful cut. I walked away. I never looked back and I rose my standard and I haven't abandoned myself since.
SPEAKER_02So that was the first time it sounds like you saw the glimpse of your true value, and then you drew the line. And you're somebody who's a very loyal person. So it sounded like your loyalty first was to things that didn't serve you. In that circumstance, it was your partner, and then you turned that loyalty inwards, and it's like I'm never abandoning you again. Which side note, one of the things that Ashley taught me that's been revolutionary in my life has been whenever I'm feeling dysregulated or feeling out of my body in a way, feeling like I'm not me. We all know that fight or flight feeling, that microwave feeling, especially the people who listen to this podcast. The thing that she taught me to do was to stop, to grab your stomach and your heart, to close your eyes, take a deep breath, and then say, I'm here for you. I'm never abandoning you again. What do you need? And she taught me to imagine not that I myself, adult Brennan, is dysregulated, but more so my inner child is dysregulated. And how you would treat a child in your adult life is how you should treat your inner child. Hopefully, if you're a good person, you wouldn't just abandon a child if they were throwing a fit or if they were crying or if they were in pain. And so you really taught me a lot about that. And and that's obviously served you well in your life. So from that moment on, it sounded like it sounds like your life took a transformation. So I'd love to hear more about what that transformation has been for you. So who was the not true self Ash? And who is the Ash who is becoming her true self? And then where are you at now?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well said. I'm so glad that practice serves you. It always makes me tear up hearing you speak about that because if I can help you love yourself, then that's a massive gift for my own soul. So thank you for that.
SPEAKER_01You're welcome.
SPEAKER_00And yeah, so I stopped running from my demons. I was running, I was, and I don't run, but I was running.
SPEAKER_01That's true.
unknownWatch it.
SPEAKER_00I was running, running, running. So after that prayer, I left. I closed my, I got the keys to my new apartment, one bedroom. So blessed. I wept on the way with my dad getting the keys. I left cold turkey, that relationship and other relationships, and I just made that vow. I'll never abandon you again. I made a vow to my soul. I created a soul contract. I'm never leaving you again. And from there, I put myself first and I dove hard and fast into what I had been running from. And I don't necessarily recommend that. That's why I take people on these journeys and guide them and bring community together around this, because I had another dark night of the soul-ish when I was doing my healing and in my apartment, and I just awakened a huge piece of darkness from my teen years. I tracked where it came from and what it was, and it was the part of me from high school, whatever wound it was at that time. And I just remember hitting the floor in the kitchen and just going into like a three-day dark darkness. And I know that what's coming is going out. And so I already had that template of on your healing path, you hit rock bottom or you get close to that, get excited because you're about to bust through, you're about to step on through to the other side. That's a song I think.
SPEAKER_02She's a singer too, a legit singer, by the way. That was a sneak peek.
SPEAKER_00That was a sneak peek, yes. Um, I popped through that too. And the way that I I say pop through is because I don't try to get out of it. So I've learned a method, and that is to go as far into it as you feel safe to go. Go deep, go in, meet the pain, go towards the darkness.
Meeting Pain Through Inner Child Work
SPEAKER_02And when you say it, is that the emotion that you're experiencing in the moment? So what is a good way to, if somebody's experiencing a lot of pain and suffering in the moment, a lot of emotional charge, walk me through the specific practice of what you do in those moments.
SPEAKER_00Can I cuss? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Fuck yeah.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_00Stop trying to feel better. Just stop. Stop trying to get anywhere. Stop trying to fix anything. Give it up. Put down your gratitude list. Stop efforting to change yourself at all. Why do you need to be different than who you are? Why is depression bad? Why do we try to get better and get away? Okay, there's a time and place for that. But often that is the abandonment of self because you're trying to get better, trying to get better, trying to feel better. Again, that's not bad or wrong. There's a place for that. But what saved my life is I stopped running. I said, okay, fuck it. And I sank in and I faced the boogeyman and I said, Talk to me. I'm here with you. So the boogeyman, what people run from is the two-year-old. They think it's this sometimes, and I've seen this in recovery, where it's a devil on my shoulder and it's whispering, do bad things. And I was like, Can I workshop that with you? And we went through this process of that's the two-year-old doing the dance of darkness because it thinks I need love, nobody's fucking paying attention to me. When I act out, people look at me and care about me and give me attention. Attention is survival. So the boogeyman is the two-year-old, the three-year-old. And so I've practiced and I've taught this for like nine years is go in. And it sounds really cute and sweet, but ever but you might fight it. It might be really hard. And I still do this sometimes, or I'll dance around the emotion and I'll try to lift my vibration and feel better and go to gratitude. And it's like when it's not working, you need to put it down and actually meet and face off. And that's very shamanic. It's very direct, it's very penetrating in truth, which you're beautiful at, and you do that and offer that. You slicing through and really being with what is.
Training In Yoga Reiki Shamanism
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it's it's so interesting and so counterproductive to maybe what some people on here have learned. Because if you grew up in an environment in your house where it wasn't safe to fully feel the depth of your emotions, if it wasn't safe for you to express yourself. For me growing up, I had a ticking time bomb of a stepmom. So I didn't know what version of her I would get. It was the Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde situation. So I'd wake up and she'd maybe be a loving, peaceful, very joyful stepmom. And then other mornings I remember waking up and she would be like a landmine. Like you say one wrong thing, she would scream at me, she would do all these things. And so if you grew up in a similar environment, a dysfunctional household, maybe you learned that feeling your emotions deeply aren't isn't safe. And because of that, from my experience, and I'm sure you've experienced this in your work, like we we bypass our emotions and we unconsciously just kind of shut them down and then they get stuck there. Yeah. And it's almost like the more we keep those emotions stuck in our body, the easier it is for us to disassociate because there's no space for our soul to be in our body if it's stored with a bunch of traumatic, uncomfortable memories that we just never learn how to fully process. And so when you first learn, I can say this from experience, I'll say this to the people when you first start going within, it's almost like trying to ride a bike for the first time. Yeah. It's terrifying. It feels so intense, it feels so heavy, especially when you start transitioning out of fight or flight mode and you're like, oh, I can start feeling things now. It feels like you're just like this toddler who can't stop crying and who's angry. And yeah, and that's a sign that you're healing. You know, that's a sign that those things are working. Um, so from your experience, what would you say? So you've learned how to do these things. Talk me more through the journey of how you've learned how to do this stuff. Like, what is the training you've gotten? You guys heard Siri, I'm gonna turn that off here.
SPEAKER_00Blooper.
SPEAKER_02Whoops. Go ahead.
SPEAKER_00Um, the training that I've taken for this, yeah. A lot of it's been fucking around and finding out.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And a lot of it's been education. I love to study, I love degrees, I love certifications. So once I got sober, I found out, hey, I really love school. And so I made straight AIDS at VCU, studied psychology, addiction studies, and religious studies, and then studied yoga teacher training, which you learn Indian philosophy, you learn the Hindu tradition of what is God, what is soul, what is healing, how to have ethics. And so I learned the Indian philosophy, and that changed my life. And so I became a philosophy nerd and just really opened up Pandora's box of all the spiritual things and trained extensively in Reiki, levels one, two, three, master. I've trained over 45 people in Reiki. So my hunger to share the wisdom is very strong, and it's been very strong. And shamanism, though, such a humbling tradition. Reiki, they're different medicines. Reiki is a Japanese energy healing technique, and it's becoming more popular now. They're bringing it into hospitals and things like that, so that's amazing. And shamanism found me, and it was really about are you in your body? Do you have the awareness of where you are in all of your relationships with food, with partners, with friendships? So shamanism is relationships. So I went on to train with Alberto Violdo. As the world was shutting down in 2020, I was learning how to exercise entities and heal souls, help souls heal themselves. That's important. Um, and do these really specific shamanic techniques for soul healing. And the core of it is I'm trained to track core wounds. So everything that we suffer with can be tracked to three or four main core wounds. These are the big ones: fear of death, betrayal, abandonment, separation from source. So that's a key element with my training is tracking core wounds. Where does this stuff begin? Because it's really fun and cute and sexy to clip off the leaves of the tree and heal the symptoms for a certain amount of time. But I'm really interested in where did this begin? And let's complete the story so we can move on and write our story of destiny, which is in the unknown. It's in the book that's not written yet.
SPEAKER_02Beautiful. Yeah, it sounds like because I've dealt with a lot of I actually work with a ton of clients and people I meet where they've gone to therapy, they've read the books, they've listened to the podcast. Literally, you're if you're a listener to this, it's because you resonate with the fact of awareness doesn't mean change. Yeah. And when you've explained to me what shamanism is, it's all about tracking the core wound. And when we say core wound, I want to be more specific for the people. It's not a physical wound, obviously. It's uh it's a wound in the psyche, it's a wound in the spirit. And from your perspective, where does those where do those wounds come from? Why are we, why is our society set up so that it's hard for us to live as our whole selves? Where does that come from? What's your perspective on it? What kinds of things do you see happen in people's lives as a result of these wounds? I just want to dive deep on what that looks like on the outside.
SPEAKER_00So your first question there was where do these begin?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. A lot of the times in the bloodline, even past lives. So I was a person that carried things over. I didn't have any intense trauma in the physical world that I knew of. Mine was under the surface, and that was part of my confusion. So I believe there's past lives, there's things that run through the bloodline, there's things in the invisible realm that we can't say, oh, that's why I'm I feel fucked up around this topic, right? People have these big phobias and these big fears. Like one of mine was if I get up on stage and sing, I'm going to die. That never happened to me. I never got booed off stage as a child. That was a deep, energetic, spiritual wound through lifetimes. And okay, you can't prove that. But once I started to heal the past lifetimes, the fear went away, right? So the proof is in the evidence through the healing, it goes away, it changes. So I would say that's one piece. And then another piece is all healing is inner child healing. So it is the two-year-old. It's the meaning you made. For example, a child gets dropped off at daycare. They could register that as I just got abandoned. I'm going to die. Trauma can be like that. It's so different for everybody. And it's the meaning the child makes that determines the imprint of the wound in the system. And then God, the divine universe, loves us so much that it will keep bringing up opportunities for us to feel abandonment until we heal and integrate the wound into our wholeness. So we'll keep living through bits of that until we say, okay, what is that? Let me go in. I'm the common denominator. Maybe there's someone, you know, that person that felt like they got abandoned as a three-year-old at daycare has partners that abandon them four in a row. Okay, it's you, Boo.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00It's in, it's you're the and that was part of my story too. Where does this live in me? And we are so loved that we are pushed to wholeness, which means confronting our stuff. So I would say this happens at a young age, very young age. Shame gets imprinted in us, and then we have it within us, that fragment, until we integrate the pieces. And also, I'd like to share there's no perfectly healed state that I'm aware of. And I had a 73-year-old teacher that ordained me um Star Wolf as a shamanic minister, and she said, We're always gonna be a little fucked up, Ashley. So maybe we can all just breathe if you're open to it, and just ground that we're always gonna be a little messed up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we can know that without believing that we're not worthy.
SPEAKER_00Correct.
Why Core Wounds Keep Repeating
SPEAKER_02You know, I think we can, yeah, imperfection is the is part of being human and understanding that we have a divine peace to us. And the way that I see that is we have beliefs that either reflect our true selves or or beliefs that are fragmented that reflect the trauma that we experienced and went through. Well, that's amazing. And I love your insights. And now I'd like to talk about what everybody wants to hear, which is um how we met. Like what is our story, and how did we even, these two people out of seven billion people, I don't even know if it's more than that now, on the earth. How did we cross paths? And then what has that changed for us in our life? Because these people who are listening to me, they know my story, now they know yours. So now I'd love to talk about what led to us meeting and then what's been a result of that. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Who goes first?
SPEAKER_02Man. I'll talk about yeah, I I'll talk about my experience before I met you. And so, as people may or may not have known about me, I moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, October of twenty twenty three, and this was after my Dark Knight of the Soul, uh, my peak pain.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And my peak pain was after spending years and years and years chasing success. Using success as my drug and thinking that it was going to fill the void of me not feeling good enough deep down unconsciously. And so I was forced to burn out and lost everything. And then I was living with a friend of mine in Missouri because I didn't have any other place to go. And I get a phone call one day from a friend of mine that I used to work for with the company that I used to work for. And he calls me and says, Hey Brennan, what are you up to nowadays? And I told him, not much besides trying to recover from the hell that we just escaped. And he was telling me about his plans on buying a supplement store in Charlottesville, Virginia. And apparently he'd already put purchased the store. And this was somebody I really respected and liked from the industry. And he asked me if I wanted to move out with him to join forces. And in my heart and my soul, even though I wasn't super connected to this at this point in my life, I felt like it was a fuck yes. And anything at that point would have been better than the situation I was in. So I said, let's do it. I don't care what I have to do. Let's move on. And so I ended up moving to Charlottesville, Virginia, October of 2023. And at this point, transparently, I was still struggling with Adderall addiction, still struggling with edibles. And I was very confident that I could help build the store because that's what I had done for six years in my life. And it's interesting because the way that God has protected me in my life is by making the things that used to work not work. So I was doing all the same behaviors and stuff that I used to do that was super successful my prior career. Literally the same business model. Everything was the same, except I was very different internally because the veil of illusion of being the hustler and the grinder was fading away. So, like when I was engaging in these behaviors of trying to build this store, build this business, nothing was working. And the store wasn't making any money. And I had to live in the store at that time because I didn't have any income really. I was getting paid like 900 bucks every two weeks or something. Like not enough to sustain an apartment. And long story short, with that, about four months into doing that, I get a phone call from my buddy one day, and he says, Hey man, sorry, I can't pay you. I don't know what you want to do, whether you want to work for the store for free, or I just can't pay you. We're not making enough money. And so I had a decision to make. I don't know if I've actually told you this for a while. I still worked at the store for free. I still worked at, I worked like one Saturday for free a month because I wanted to give the guy I worked with a day off. And that was very much so like a people-pleasing thing. And I started working at Orange Theory Fitness to just make ends meet because I'd built a partnership with a regional manager. And yeah, eventually my body was like, you're done. You can't keep working and not getting paid for it. And so I ended up uh quitting that, was able to get an apartment with the guy that was the manager of Orange Theory, and that was a whole other story in itself. And and then I just started to feel compelled to go all in on my coaching business again. And this was, I had no right at this point in my life, like coaching other people on burnout because I was so deep in the cycle. But I knew in my soul the way that I've always learned is trial and error. So I just kept trying. I started picking up free clients from Orange Theory, started asking people if I could coach them. And that built my confidence. And I was like, oh wow, like some of this stuff is really working. These things that I was doing for myself with the unconscious mind and nervous system regulation. And then my reality started to shift. And eventually it got to this point where I was not allowed by the divine, by God. My energy would not allow me to keep working a nine to five job. And so I was like, all right, well, I don't have any other choice. I'm just gonna go all in on my business again. And I was terrified to do this. Um, I'd done this two other times, failed miserably. And so I did it, started working a little bit. And throughout this time, I was also um dating a girl who was very much so to me a friend. I didn't have a romantic connection to her, but I felt lonely and felt obligated to date her because she had a romantic connection to me. She broke off a five-year relationship after she met me, and she was very much so yeah, attracted to me in that way. And I was trying to force myself to be. And I just honestly think I just needed somebody to be there for me. So here I am again, following the pattern of moving to a different city, moving to a place I don't know anybody, and just trying to fill the void. And so even after burning out and losing everything, I still didn't really learn that lesson. And finally, I remember when I broke up with her was when I quit my job at it, it was LL Bean that I was working for. And that was the last job I ever had. I quit LL Bean, and then I got this insight from source from God that was just like, you're a burnout prevention coach and you need to break up with this girl. And I remember going to the river and just like sitting there with that, and I was like, shit. I was like, all right, like I gotta do this thing. And I tend to get these like sudden realizations, as you know. Um, you've got gotten to listen to that since we started dating. And yeah, it was so powerful because I was like, I have to move on. So I closed out, I let go of the things that God showed me was no longer serving me, and that was the relationship at the time and the job. And then I just started to go all in on this burnout prevention coaching, and it still failed for a while. I was still very much so for a month and a half, I had a little bit of a runway. And then from there, I didn't have any runway, and I started lift driving early morning and late nights. And then I was just still trying, doing free workshops for people, figuring out how to make this business work. And I remember getting a DM from somebody I followed on Instagram. Um, and he ended up being my business coach, somebody I had followed for like two weeks. He sent me a video message saying, Hey man, love your niche. We should talk. And then my heart was like, Yeah, just do it. So I went on a call with Chase right away. His name's Chase, by the way. Shout out, Chase Tollison. And uh I went on a call with him right away. And at this point, I was like barely scraping by, barely making ends meet. And I remember we had a sales call, and I just knew in my heart, no matter what the price he said was, I had to do it. And it wasn't, it was like I didn't have any control over it. I just had to make it work. And he dropped the price on me, and it was significantly more than I'd ever paid for anything in my whole life. And I took out a loan and I did it. And then at the same time that happened, I decided to delete all my dating apps. I decided to really focus on okay, what do I need to do? What beliefs do I need to change? What behaviors do I do I need to embody to start really creating life that I want for myself? Because this hustle and grind and self-sacrificial way of living, it's not working. And what version of myself is required of me to call in the woman of my dreams? I remember making a decision of is that person trying to chase on social media? Is that person trying to like show up online? Because that just has never really been my energy. I've never really enjoyed like going on dating apps and using superficial things to meet people. I've always wanted it to happen organically when we're in our element. And so I was like, okay, I'm gonna close this out. I'm gonna delete these apps. And I made that decision. And then my business started to work about two months into uh coaching with him. I was able to do my business full time. I started to gain traction and momentum. And then I got invited to do a burnout prevention talk uh for this festival called TomTom Foundation in Charlottesville. And I was kind of iffy on it because I was trying to prove my value and my worth. So they said that I wasn't gonna get paid for the talk. And my logical brain, my primal brain, was like, well, it's not very likely you're gonna get a consultation out of this. You should probably just not go. And I remember making the decision of, well, I just want to have fun. I just want to go speak. I just want to talk about my experience and hope somebody resonates with it. And that's what led me to being a speaker on the burnout prevention panel. And then I remember sitting on the panel, and I saw you a little bit before uh the huge slow motion moment happens. I saw you briefly in the other room. I thought you were with another guy, so I didn't really pay much attention because I was trying to get my mind in the zone for my talk. Because at this point, I didn't have a ton of speaking experience. And I remember the talk had started. I was talking, I was saying something, and then I just feel this big, powerful energy, the most powerful, calming energy I've ever experienced in my whole life. And I was experiencing that energy as the door opened, and then lo and behold, this woman walks in, and I always describe it as a movie where a woman walks in, and then there's light shining from the back of her, it's slow motion, it's like the the hair is waving back and forth, and in comes you. And I just remember in that moment, my soul was like, Oh, that's her. And it was very much so, like just it's like time stopped. I was exactly where my feet were, I was fully in my body. And I just remember being like, You better own this talk, Brennan, because your future wife is watching. And I remember that. And I say this by the way, we're not officially engaged or married yet. Stay tuned, that'll happen at some point. And yeah, I just remember feeling like it was just divine intervention, I knew. And so that was my experience of how I met you. So I'd love to get your perspective of that.
SPEAKER_00That was so beautiful. I always uh tear up when you share your side of the story. Maybe it's because I'm a Pisces and I I just see it so vividly when you share that. So I love it. Thank you for sharing.
SPEAKER_02Of course, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So what led up on my end to us meeting?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, maybe like the month before. Like, what was what were the things you decided to do? What was the decisions that you made to put yourself in a readiness state to be able to what influenced you to make a decision to go to drive an hour and 15 minutes to the festival? Just I would love to hear the chain of perfect synchronistic events that led up to that point.
SPEAKER_00Well, I've always been ready. I always had this romanticized vision of hubby and kids. I've always known that. And I was just settling. So I just remember being with somebody over the summer, you know, and then going to Bali for a month. I I just remember like what I did leading up to it, and it was all very intentional. And I just remember this moment of sitting on the couch with the person I was dating, and we were having a great time, you know, and I just told him my vision of sacred union. And you've heard this a couple times, um, and I won't go into that, but essentially like how I believe partnership is meant to be, loyalty and how I feel that that's meant to be, choosing each other and how I feel that's meant to be. And he was so surprised at that share. I was like, oh my god, his like jaw fell off.
SPEAKER_02And he's what was your share? I want I wanted to be specific. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Um well, I I'm like, I'm unavailable for anybody that watches corn. I'll say corn because I don't know if we will get censored. You might, I mean, you know, I don't know if you can say that. Yeah, the viewers can connect the dots there. Yeah. I was like, I'm period unacceptable, not available. Yeah. And I really wanted somebody sober, but at this point I didn't claim that yet. That came later. That was a huge piece. And then I thought, you know, cheating doesn't just happen on the outside, liking somebody's pictures to me that sexy is cheating. So I had a I had a standard for relating that nobody was able to meet at this point. And everybody that I had dated had online girlfriends, except for one person, had online girlfriends, you know, liking sexy pictures. And I'm just like, I don't want to have to deal with this. And I just believe that there's somebody out there that holds the same vision of sacred union. And if you are having an experience of being with somebody else in your mind while you're with somebody else, with your partner, that's a problem, actually. If you're playing out being with somebody else, that's a problem. That's cheating. And I really hold that. And he his jaw fell off. And I'm so glad I said to myself, man, that's a red flag for him. Not, man, you're too specific, Ashley. Because my mom, you know, all men drink beer and watch football. I love her so much, and that's her, that's been her experience. And I always had this more fairy tale sense of what I truly wanted. So I stopped settling. And then I went on this journey. I went to Bali. I really chose myself. I spent a month in Bali traveling Indonesia by myself and started to say, you know, I'm preparing for my husband. Unconsciously, I felt that. And so I did all the things I wanted to do. I dated a woman, went to kinky parties. I, and this is important because I played out all the things that were lingering, all these, ooh, desires and questions. I rolled the tape. I, and it was scary as shit. But I rolled the tape on these experiences. And then that last little piece was, oh, I need him to be sober. And that was that last piece. I was so tired of feeling the anxiety of is he gonna get a drink? And is you know, and I dated somebody sober. And I said, I am literally not willing to go back. So my journey was raising my standard. And then I had a friend a couple weeks before we met, I had a friend, Jerry, who asked me because I was very flirty and single, you know, at this time, and she was like, Ashley, why are she said something like, Why are you entertaining even the thought of somebody if you know they're not a match to your desires? And she cut through, and that's a good friend. I was like, Yeah, and we literally sat at brunch at a wedding venue, of which I just texted her and asked, What was that called? Because it was so beautiful. I wanna, I wanna look into it. I wanna, it's got a mountain view. And we sat at brunch looking over the mountain. There was a dog sleeping in a pot, a planner pot outside. It was the coolest experience. We had this cabin sisterhood adventure, and that's another piece because I met a woman at the cabin sisterhood weekend adventure who was at the talk, and I met her at that weekend, and she was the person that had me stick around and and and linger so that you and I could meet. It was so synchronistic. And and she, my friend Jerry at brunch got out her piece of paper and was like, tell me everything that you want and a partner. And I do this too, but there was something about doing it with her that felt like okay, this or nothing. This or nothing. And that's a really strong piece. This or nothing. And so we wrote it all out. And then I went out to dinner with some friends, and one of the friends was the founder of this festival. And he gave me a free VIP ticket. Shout out, thank you. Free VIP ticket to the, I don't know, week long, however long it was. I was only able to go on Saturday. I was totally single, had just released that relationship like a month prior with somebody I was with for about four months, learned so much, healed a lot. And I was just feeling myself, and I didn't have any friends to go with, you know. I like sort of reached out to people. I didn't try that hard. I love solo adventures. I will say that. I like to get behind the wheel, I like to do fun stuff, I like to adventure. So it wasn't out of character for me to go to that by myself. I would say it was brave, but it wasn't out of character. So I just remember the night before I was picking my schedule and I knew that I was gonna go alone. And I don't wake up early usually, especially on the weekends. So I was like, nine o'clock sessions, I'm not gonna make that. So if yours had been early, I wouldn't have been there. I just literally wouldn't have been there. So I saw yours, it was the perfect time, like four o'clock.
SPEAKER_02The last one of the entire festival.
SPEAKER_00A really nice time. I was like, oh yeah. And then I was like, Brennan, and then I went on the rabbit hole, a slight rabbit hole of who is this guy? I'm really big on tone and posture and presence and energy, and you're and yours just attracted me. The tone of your voice, and I even used to do this when I would look for a therapist. If the tone of the voice is off, I can't hire you. So there's gotta be a resonance with the tone, with the posture, with the whole thing. The handshake is important too, people. You gotta have a strong handshake and eye contact. Brennan, good job.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, very, very straightforward man. And so I put that, I added that one to my schedule. I added some other things to my schedule, and I just was feeling myself and looking all cute and business professional, and it was hot out. So I remember wearing a skirt, you know, I looked like professional and feminine. I just loved my vibe. And I'm driving out there and I say out loud, this is also not out of character for me, though I've never said it like this before. I said, God, out loud in my car. You've heard this like six times. I said, I have no expectations today other than to meet my future husband. And I just let it go. I was like, oh, that's cute. Just like let it go. Said it out loud. And then I remember saying, Oh, I'm gonna lead from my feminine. This was just very intuitive. I have realizations when I'm driving a lot. I was like, Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna forward face with my feminine, and my masculine is gonna be in the back protecting me. So I made that shift and then I got so inspired at this workshop before yours about neuroscience. And anyways, I was starving after it. And yours was right after. I was starving. I ran to the smoothie shop after that. I got my smoothie, was so hungry, came back, couldn't even drink it because I got all nervous. Um walked in, I was like, Can I go in there? It was like 10 minutes past. I was like, Can I go in there? And I walk in and I sit down, and it was like electricity was beaming at me, and I just felt like I was like plastered up against the wall, just like feeling these electric shocks. And I was so hungry.
SPEAKER_02You actually sat in electric chairs, what happened? Oh yeah, I put it there.
The Festival Moment And First Date
SPEAKER_00Wouldn't that be a banana? Gosh, that's what it felt like. And then you just kept looking at me with those blue eyes, and I I just I felt like I was so visible. I felt and I felt shy and in like in a sweet, feminine way, empowering way. And then how are we doing on time? Can I finish the story here? Finish it. And then I was sitting in the chair scheming. I said, Okay, I need to talk to this guy. I said, I don't like to force somebody, I don't like the energy of force. I like alignment and flow and intention. So I said, All right, Ash, you're either going to go up to him after or you're gonna message him on Instagram. Either way, you're gonna win this shit. Either way, it's in the bag. Because it's like once you have the person's information, it's done. It's because it already had crossed like our timelines. And so I knew it's in the bag. And I didn't know that you were my future husband. I don't, I mean, maybe intuitively, but I was actually working on the opposite because I used to overpotentialize people. I just made that word up, where I would date for, oh, he's the one, and oh, this is it. And then you put on blinders when you do that, at least for me. And you miss signs and cues and red flags. So I was to the point where I was not doing that, and I was not getting swept up in the visions, I was watching the actions of the other person slow at a time. I didn't jump to it, oh, it's the one. That's a very important part for me. So it came to the end of the talk. You said that you're in recovery. I said, Oh, it is done, it is done. And then the talk ended, and I was like, what's gonna happen? I'm not gonna force myself to be super awkward and just stand here alone and like meet him. I was just gonna see what happened. And then some woman, I I noticed somebody I knew, which is odd because it's in Charlottesville. I don't know that many people there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And it was a woman I hadn't met at the sisterhood cabin adventure weekend thing. And I go up to her, she's like, Oh my gosh, Ashley, I want to talk to you. Wait, wait. I want to talk to you. I said, Okay, bet, I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna stand right here. I was so happy she said that. Because I was like, okay, well, I have a purpose now, I'm waiting.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, somebody told me to.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So I stood three feet behind you. She ended up wanting to talk to you and then talk to me. So I stood three feet behind you guys talking. And when I tell you those minutes were long, I was like, my heart was beating. I felt so alive. And I have all my yogi tools of deep breath and posture. I was using everything I had. I have a lot of tools for this, right? To not to guard, but to regulate. And long story short, y'all stopped talking finally. And she stepped aside and you turned around and I said, It's done. You were so close. It was it was right there. So I just shook your hand. I stumbled over a word or two. Uh, but that was it. And do you want to share? Well, let me, I'll finish and share that. I said something like, um, hi, I'm Ashley. I heard you're in recovery. I work in recovery. I would love to talk to you about your journey. And then what did you say?
SPEAKER_02After that, I said, Great, what are you doing right now?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So I remember for some reason intuitively clearing out my whole schedule for the rest of the day, which at this point was not super common for me. I usually had a lot of any open space in my calendar was filled trying to build my business or doing something. And yeah, I remember thinking, so there's a sales principle that I learned way back in the day. It's called Bam Fam. It's called book a meeting from a meeting.
SPEAKER_00Listen up, people. This is good.
SPEAKER_02It's called book a meeting from a meeting, which means that the technique is you always want to make sure you get commitment from the other person if you want to see them again. For a sales, it's important, obviously, because people sometimes get cold feet and they let their emotions and their fear override the thing that is meant for them. So I've learned how to do it in sales. So it was second nature for me at this point. And so I bam fammed you. And I was like, what are you doing right now? And then you said you were free, but there was a caveat. I think you wanted to go get a drink.
SPEAKER_00I had to talk to my friend. I said, 10 minutes. Give me 10 minutes, I'll meet you right outside in 10 minutes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. And then I know this is getting a little bit long, so I'll like cut to the end of that day. Essentially, we spent six hours together for the entire You couldn't get him away from me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember feeling so nervous the whole time because your energy is so calm and it's so cool. And it's very you're very much so leading and you're feminine. And I wasn't used to being around people who had that energy. And I was still very much so struggling at this point in my life with a little bit of survival mode, and I was still very intense and things. And I'm intense now, just in a different way. And I just remember feeling like, man, this girl's so interesting. And we spent six hours together.
SPEAKER_00Read each other's natal charts, human design, studied each other, talked about kids. I mean, we covered all the bases.
What Love Taught Us Both
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And nerded out. And so fast forward to which you're definitely going to be a guest again, and we can talk about what's happened up to this point in our lives. We met almost a year ago now. It's been 10 months or something like that. And maybe we can end this by saying, what are the top things that we've learned from each other since meeting each other? So thing number one for me was I learned what's truly important in life is not the things that money can buy. And it's not the material providership. I learned that providership doesn't just mean fronting the bill. It doesn't just mean paying for things. It doesn't just mean having the resources financially to support somebody. What it really means, and what women actually want is somebody who's emotionally present, somebody who has integrity, somebody who has the capacity to hold them and all their emotions. And just somebody who has a willingness to commit and be loyal to the relationship. And it's interesting because my whole life, what I've been focused on is what I lack, which is I lack the ability to make enough money or I'm not good enough, right? The core wound I help heal in the world is this deep underlying belief of I'm not good enough. And that's what fueled my success for a long time. And so because of that, my blinder was on as far as what my center was and what I truly wanted for my life. I have always had this big vision for my business, and I wanted to be the successful, wealthy person, and I still want that, and it's gonna happen. What I didn't realize was how much I was craving family and a woman who could show me what it was like to be unconditionally loving for somebody because my the love I received from my parents growing up was very much so conditional.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, especially from the feminine, especially from the feminine.
SPEAKER_02And so you've taught me that. You've taught me that it's safe to enjoy life, and you've taught me not only how it's safe, it's required if you want to sustainably show up. And you've taught me that there's no amount of external success or thing that's gonna fill the void of a lack of having feminine energy, meaning that you've taught me that the part of us that's sensitive, that's vulnerable, that's loves life, the inner child, all the things that we're taught not to value in our society, that's actually the stuff that makes life worth living. And you've shown me what it means to do something for a purpose greater than myself. And not in a self-abandonment way. Of course, not in a people-pleasing way. I've had to confront some shit, y'all, in this relationship. I've had to confront the deepest dark. She was talking about how she's an expert in the inner world. Yeah, we've both had to confront some very deep rooted beliefs and parts of ourselves that would have gotten in the way if they were encouraged to keep living through us in the relationship. And so that's been my experience. And my life is 10X. I mean, my business has um I've made a lot more money in my business, I've become way more happy, and it's been super uncomfortable, and it's been everything I've ever wanted and more. So that's been my experience.
SPEAKER_00That's beautiful. So well said.
SPEAKER_02Thank you.
SPEAKER_00What have I learned? Yeah, what have you learned? I've learned that my value doesn't come from how much money I make, but my value is my love. My love has helped you or slash healed you, however you would want to say it, but I lean towards helped you heal yourself. My love and my essence is the treasure, as these feminine embodiment teachers might say it. I've really seen that. Because I used to feel well, my father didn't to a large degree. He did his best, and I have amazing parents, and he never was able to hold me emotionally and like meet me at that level. So you helped me really understand that it's okay if he is never able to. And he has met me in many ways, and what I experience with you is what I always desired from the masculine. Not just financial providership, which I have, but emotional, mental, spiritual safety and containment. Like I'm not leaving you, like I'm here. Let me hold you, let me coach you, whatever you need. So my value is my essence, and I've watched my love help change your life. And that is deeply, deeply meaningful to me, life-changing. And then I've learned that I'm allowed to desire more and more and more. And you've said one time or a couple of times, your desires are from God, and I want to help you attain your desires in my body and in my heart, these deep, like feminine, it's like the life force of what wants to be created next. And so I've realized that it's not too much. It's not too much to ask. You've helped remember when it was hard for me to ask you to mow the wand?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, which that was you know, I get it.
SPEAKER_00Right. I mean, that's yeah, it's a big, it feels like a big act of service. And you wanted me to say it straight up. Like you've always wanted me to look at you in the eyes, not beat around the bush. Hey, if if you go by here, it's like tell me what you want. Hey, can you please go by here? Blah, blah, blah. So you've helped me see that I'm not too much and that I'm allowed to ask straightforward. And that's been incredible. And let's see, what else have I learned? Yeah, I've learned that to the like going off of the I don't ask for too much. There was I was right. I was right in my soul that somebody would meet me at the level of loyalty. And I fought for that. I fought to get for that. I had heartbreaks through that. I begged people to be loyal to me and stop liking all these Instagram models. I mean, it sounds funny. It's like I want to laugh after saying that, but it's a real problem. It's a real serious problem where people are leaking their focus out. Men, women, whoever. So I was right in my soul that somebody would be loyal to me. And so that's what I'll share. I could go on, but I think I'll pause there. I think that was three.
Where To Find Ashley And Closing
SPEAKER_02Well, that's beautiful. And I'm working on receiving all of these things because that's a trait of the feminine. So thank you. And it's been amazing. And I can't wait to see where this love takes us. And thank you so much for being a guest today. Um, where can people find you if they want to inquire more about your services, learn more of your amazing wisdom? Tell the people what they want to hear.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for having me. This was lovely. So, a couple things. My website is wingedalchemy.net. That's winged like a bird, wingedalchemy.net. And I have a podcast called the Spiritually Empowered Podcast, a YouTube channel where the podcast is video and I make other videos. I have a Mystic Monday that I put out teachings for on YouTube, and that's Mystics Path Mystery School on YouTube. And then Instagram is Wanged Alchemy Official. I put things everywhere, TikTok, but I think the best way to find me is wangdalchemy.net, and I have all my links on there, and then the YouTube channel, things like that. Um yeah, I think that's it.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. Well, thank you guys so much. Let me know if you liked this guest format. You're the first guest on my new podcast, Whole Man. And this was amazing. So if you guys like the episode, please subscribe. If you're watching on YouTube, please give me a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen. And we'll talk to you next time.