Newsletter
I Thought Wine Was My Problem. It turned out I had no idea what to do with myself.
On free time, wine in bed, and the self I hadn’t met yet.
Desire · Embodiment · Midlife
A note from Ashley
Pleasure is not a reward.
It's our baseline. It's our birthright.
And yet most women arrive in midlife exhausted, disconnected, and wondering where they went.
We've spent decades becoming experts at meeting everyone else's needs. Our children. Our partners. Our work. Our communities. We are socialized to be human givers — to be good, to be selfless, to be grateful for the life we've built while quietly starving inside it.
We've been taught that desire is frivolous. That self-pleasure is selfish. That our sensuality belongs everywhere except inside our own bodies.
So instead of returning to ourselves for the answers, we reach outside. Into achievement. Into wine. Into relationships. Into productivity, scrolling, anything that promises relief or connection or the feeling of being alive.
But what we're hungry for isn't another escape.
It's ourselves.
This work lives at the intersection of sobriety, sexuality, and spirituality. It's about learning to inhabit your body again. To trust your desire. To feel deeply. To create a life so rich, connected, and pleasurable that you no longer need to escape it.
— Ashley
Newsletter
Written honestly, without the wellness gloss.
Newsletter
On free time, wine in bed, and the self I hadn’t met yet.
Newsletter
On motherhood, cold plunges, and what my pelvic floor apparently knew first.
Newsletter
Why the thing many midlife women use to unwind is often the same thing waking them up in the middle of the night.
Newsletter
The things that helped in the moment weren’t the same things that healed.
Newsletter
Wine was sold to us as the thing that would make us looser, freer, more ourselves. Sex got sold the same way.
From Ashley
For the last eight years I've been working with women on dating, sex, and relationships.
And I kept noticing the same thing.
Whether a woman was trying to find love, repair intimacy, or understand why she kept choosing the wrong person — underneath almost every conversation was the same pattern: she was reaching outside herself. For validation. For desire. For the feeling of being chosen. For proof that she was enough.
Wine showed up in that same pattern. So did achievement, and overgiving, and scrolling, and the relentless pursuit of something — anything — that would finally make her feel like herself.
The women I work with aren't broken. They were just never taught to look inward for the things they'd been searching for everywhere else.
That's the work. Whether we're talking about relationships, desire, alcohol, or all three.
THE PODCAST
I recorded this in 2023. I’m putting it back out because everything I’m building now grew from what’s in here; a body that learns to feel everything becomes a body that needs to escape nothing.
Work With Me
All work is private and one-on-one. Both programs begin with a real conversation about where you are and whether this is the right fit.
Work With MeThe Aliveness {news}Letters
Midlife, desire, identity, and what becomes possible when you find your way back to yourself. Written honestly, without the wellness gloss.