Ashley’s Substack Podcast

Content note: This video includes some nudity and graphic, grotesque imagery, including monsters and corpses. AI was used to create the film’s visual scenes and to help with research. Every word of the script is my own. Last month, I wrote an essay about how Mary Shelley came up with the brilliant story of Frankenstein when she was only 18 years old. It wasn’t quite the story you’re used to hearin...

I sat down with Jenny Bartoy, editor of No Contact: Writers on Family Estrangement , an anthology featuring 32 writers, including Cheryl Strayed, Stephanie Foo, and Nick Flynn. We talked about the complicated feelings from relief to shame and guilt that can come with family estrangement. Jenny explained that going no contact is rarely a decision anyone makes lightly. For many, it’s something they...

“Don’t fall into the trap of the own mind. Like, break free. It’s the harshest confinement of all.” — Emmett What happens when surviving prison requires you to harden yourself, but healing requires you to do the opposite? At 22, Emmett Tatter was sentenced to ten years in the Florida prison system. He served eight and a half. In this episode of Wannabe Wisdom , we talk about his memoir COUNT TIME...

Hi %%first_name%%, It’s a wild time to be alive, isn’t it? I find myself saying that more and more these days. As an elder millennial, I haven’t completely come to terms with the fact that we’re living in the science-fiction movies I grew up watching. Artificial intelligence was once a fun futuristic idea, and now it’s a tool we use. My dream as a child was to have an AI ice cream detector that co...

Hi %%first_name%%, I swear I’m not a Substack how-to expert! But yes, this is my second instructional video in two weeks. Enough of you asked how to change your email on Substack that I went looking. And this is not intuitive at all. 👀 I looked where any rational human being would look: your dashboard, your analytics, settings, settings inside the settings. Nope. Then I tried the profile. And spo...

Hi %%first_name%%, I have 5,500 followers on Substack. Nearly half of them have never received an email from me. Half of you are thinking, “Duh!” And the other half of you are thinking, “What? Why?” Understanding the nuances of Substack’s audiences can feel annoyingly confusing when you’re starting out. But even if you’ve been here for eons, you might not be thinking about non-followers, followers...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wannabewisdom.substack.com ✨ This is a special post for Paid subscribers. Your subscription includes full access to all hypnotherapy and guided visualizations, ad-free, in both downloadable video and audio format. 👉 Access the archive in ✦ Member Library

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wannabewisdom.substack.com This is a special post for my Paid subscribers. Huge thank you to for supporting my work. 🙏 Part of your subscription includes full access to all my hypnotherapy and guided visualizations. On Substack, you get them ad-free, in both downloadable video and audio format. Access ✦ Member Library 👉 Scroll down to...

Hi friends, You already got Tuesday’s letter, so you know the James story. This is the podcast version. I’m putting it here so you can just press play and listen, dishes-in-the-sink style, if that’s more your speed. For now, here’s James (HVR) . The plane, the three phones, the carbon, the billion years. His debut memoir is Too Soon et pero Too Late: French Grace. American Collapse. Colombian Care...

Some stories don’t knock politely. They kick the door open, hijack your phone, and force you to thumb-type a memoir at 30,000 feet while your body battles a virus. In this conversation, I sit down with James (HVR) , who writes as Hawtorn V. Rabot, to talk about his debut memoir T oo Soon et pero Too Late: French Grace. American Collapse. Colombian Care , a raw, funny, uncomfortable, cinematic book...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wannabewisdom.substack.com Hello loves. How are you? No, really. How is your heart today? Where is your breath? And what does your mind-body need before you walk back into the big thing you’re trying to bring into the world? For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking about heart coherence. Which sounds, I know, like something a yo...

What if the work still matters before anyone sees it? In this video, I’m talking about creative confidence, writing into the void, and the private devotion of making things without immediate proof that they matter. I share memories of my dad’s early-morning spiritual life in the Yukon, my own experience starting Substack during a very “what the hell is happening” season, and the dull pain of creat...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wannabewisdom.substack.com You know that feeling where you're genuinely trying to be present and receive the goodness in your life… and your brain, bless it, immediately hands you a cortisol spike and a to-do list? And the list goes something like this. Rest after the emails. Joy once the laundry’s done. Peace when you finally become a...

This is your Tuesday edition of Wannabe Wisdom Diaries. I publish every week. In this conversation (my first solo Substack Live 🙌), I talked about why it can feel so hard to define your work when you’re not offering one neat, obvious service. When you are the brand, and your work lives at the intersection of voice, story, transformation, creativity, and lived experience, the “what” can take a whi...

Hi loves, Happy Saturday. ☺️✨ There’s a lot happening behind the scenes at Wannabe Wisdom . Some of you know I’ve started turning my written essays into spoken-word YouTube video videos on Wannabe Wisdom Diaries, and I’m also going to let those videos live here on Substack. This story is about the time I cried so hard in a yoga class in Tulum that it briefly became an event. In this video, I expl...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wannabewisdom.substack.com Hi Loves, I’m starting something new here: sending theta therapy sessions directly to your inbox. This is the clean version: ad-free, downloadable, and easy to return to whenever you need it. You can watch or listen straight away. This session is a short hypnotherapy practice for stress relief. I guide you thr...

One of the things I care most about is helping people go deeper in their storytelling and create from a place that feels fully alive. That’s the heart of what I do here on Wannabe Wisdom . But I also love sharing what I’m learning as I go, especially the practical, challenging, and very real parts of building a writing life online. I’ve been on Substack for almost three years now. Time has flown,...

The part of business we don’t talk about enough is the part happening inside us. In this Live, Dennis Berry and I talked about emotional intelligence, but really we were talking about the inner skills underneath everything else: focus, distraction, dopamine, purpose, self-awareness, and the ability to pause before reacting. This is the kind of real-life practice that shapes how you lead, how you r...

In this live conversation, Kristi Keller 🇨🇦 ( HomeBody(ish) Magazine and Unstack Substack ) and I untangle the myth that you’re supposed to have one clean, consistent “voice” online. Especially on Substack, where your business self, your grieving self, your funny self, and your slightly inappropriate self all end up sharing the same feed. We talk about what happens when audiences overlap: when cli...

The first thing I ever published was about a dead mouse floating in a toilet. I remember staring at it longer than I should have. Not because I was deciding what to do. But because something inside me had already decided. I was going to write about it. And that realization filled me with a strange shame. Because it revealed something deeply suspicious about my character. Something opportunistic. S...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit wannabewisdom.substack.com Hi, friend. I’ve spent the last couple weeks putting together my first digital product, and I’m excited to finally share it with you: Getting Started on Substack (Without Losing Your Mind). It’s a one-hour guided video walkthrough, plus a written companion you can come back to anytime. I made this for Substack...

Writing and publishing form a kind of tightrope. You listen to your gut about what’s ready to share, but you also try not to freeze in the paralysis of perfectionism. On Friday night, I went to the touring Michael Jackson Broadway show with a friend who had loved MJ as fiercley as I had when we were kids. Sitting in the dark, tapping my foot to “Billie Jean,” I suddenly remembered a “talk show” I...

Hi friends, This Canadian Thanksgiving, I was grateful for something we rarely toast: free speech—the chance to say what I believe about love, creativity, politics, or the weird mystery of being alive—without getting punched. However, lately that freedom feels fragile. Sometimes I think hitting “publish” has replaced skydiving as our generation’s adrenaline sport. I’m lucky to use my voice, and I...

This week, I had an epiphany: failure is worth it. Last week, I was sitting at my laptop on a grey Tuesday morning, staring at my Substack dashboard and wondering if I was delusional. I’d just spent three days writing an essay that got no comments and one pity like from my husband. I remember thinking, Maybe this isn’t going anywhere. Then a few days ago, I shared a note on Substack’s Notes about...

My husband was away. The dog had already been walked, fed, and pooed. I didn’t have any classes to teach. On the calendar: one morning call and a dance class at night. Ten glorious, uninterrupted hours. When does that ever happen? I washed my hair, slipped into a matching black cashmere tracksuit so soft it felt like wearing a long-haired kitten (I wear this at some point every day. Highly recomme...