Ashley’s Substack Podcast

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...

Unsplash, 2025 I woke up yesterday with low, depressed energy. It was Sunday, and I hadn’t written anything to post on Monday. Maybe Saturday’s wine stole Sunday’s energy. Two glasses can send me to sluggish city. I’m trying to stick to my commitment to share something once a week on Substack. But I didn’t have a draft for this week. According to my “Writer Tracker” Google Sheet, I wrote five time...

Alexander Grey, Unsplash, 2018 Last week I completely fell off my usual routines. Barely a social post, no Substack draft ready to publish Monday, and a recycled barre routine (with Mr. Jones by Counting Crows as my warm-up. I’d just seen them live and was transported straight back to the 90s). Instead, life handed me an audition. There’s something beautiful in that disruption: when the neat struc...

Credit: Unsplash I keep wanting to write this as an essay but honestly it feels more like a rant, like I just need to spit it out first. I’ve been tempted to write about genocide. Or maybe not genocide itself but disruption . And how disruptive it is to simply… have a voice. To open your mouth at all. Because we’ve all been trained to censor ourselves. Somewhere along the way we learned that disru...

The Yukon Theatre rewired my brain in the ’80s and ’90s with films like Edward Scissorhands , Alive , My Girl , Forrest Gump , Romeo + Juliet , and Seven (just to name a few). Photo credit: Ken Wuschke, Aug 2025 A couple weeks ago I mentioned that I started a course called Lovergirl , led by poet and creative catalyst kitty knorr . The idea is to stop chasing romantic love, and start seducing our...

Hi friends, My conversation with poet, author, photographer, and philosopher of the heart, Ulrich Schaffer , was one of those rare, quietly electric hours that I know I’ll return to again and again. We talked about the kind of writing that comes not from the head, but from the heart. The kind of writing that surprises you, heals you, and stretches you into who you're becoming. Ulrich shared insigh...

There are writers who tell stories. And then there are those rare humans who hold space for truth, for ache, for the quiet beauty of being alive. Ulrich Schaffer is one of those. A novelist, poet, photographer, and philosopher of the heart, he has spent his lifetime writing into the silence most people avoid. I’ve had the privilege to read, Heartwork , a deeply personal and quietly universal book...

There’s a version of me that’s still thirteen years old, living in a basement dorm room, whispering jokes through a yellow barrette. She’s unfiltered, ridiculous, and free. I was reminded of her again last week at a dinner party with strangers. The event was called Dine Wilder , a pop-up dinner for women I didn’t know, hosted by a brilliant woman named Emily Shimwell —in a butcher shop, of all pla...

I want to share a brain nugget I’ve been rolling around this week—though honestly, it feels more like batting around one of those Oopee balls from Kentucky Fried Chicken family meals in the 90s. Do you remember those? Those water-weighted plastic beach balls that flailed through the air and made that ridiculous boing sound. My brother and I used to chase one around Rotary Park in Whitehorse with a...