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Apr 13
  • Written By Ashley Jo Brewer

    • #92 – Ashley Jo

    #92 - Ashley Jo

    Ashley Jo’s Episode

    As the 2nd of four girls born to a conservative Christian family in a small town in Iowa, Ashley Jo’s upbringing was filled with music, family and church.  She was raised to love God and live by traditional family values that carried her through to her college years, until one night, her world came crashing down.  After being drugged at a college party, everything Ashley Jo had lived for was thrown out the window.

    Instead of finding healing, she found a marriage that eventually broke from alcoholism and enduring the most painful loss of her life – the loss of her 10 month old son to a debilitating disease.  Ashley Jo’s story is nothing short of inspirational – tune in to hear her talk about how she found healing and recovery from being the wife of an alcoholic, then later healing from suffering from alcohol abuse herself, along with self-harm, codependency, and grief and loss.  You will be moved to both laugh and cry as you hear her incredible journey to sobriety and recovery, and how she is helping others who are hurting today

    Episode Resources

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    Episode Transcript

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Hello beautiful people. Welcome to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame, and I am still your host. Today, we talk about Ashley Jo, Episode 92. I am going to tell you a little bit about Ashley.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    As the 2nd of four girls born to a conservative Christian family in a small town in Iowa, doesn’t this sound like a Hallmark movie? Ashley Jo Brewer’s upbringing was filled with music, family and church.  She was raised to love God and live by traditional family values that carried her through to her college years, until one night, her world came crashing down.  After being roofied and raped at a college party, divergence from the Hallmark movie, everything Ashley Jo had lived for was thrown out the window.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Instead of finding healing, she found a marriage that eventually broke from alcoholism and enduring the most painful loss of her life – the loss of her 10-month-old son to a debilitating disease.  Ashley Jo’s story is nothing short of inspirational – tune in to hear her talk about how she found healing and recovery from being the wife of an alcoholic, then later healing from suffering from alcohol abuse herself, along with self-harm, codependency, and grief and loss.  You will be moved to both laugh and cry as you hear her incredible journey to sobriety and recovery, and how she is helping others who are hurting today.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    This podcast was awesome and really intense. I think those of us who are parents will definitely connect with the either experienced or imagined pain of losing a child and what strength and courage it must take to move through that on top of the relationships and alcoholism. Ashley and I had a fantastic time doing this. We laughed. We almost cried. We related. It’s just such an incredible story about how you can overcome so many things that are thrown your way, it doesn’t matter how many things, if you have the courage to change and the ultimate desire to change. So, I highly recommend staying for all of this episode, and you will not be disappointed. Alright episode 92, Let’s do this!

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You are listening to The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast. We’re a community of recovering people who have overcome the odds and found the courage to change. Each week, we share stories of recovery from substance abuse, eating disorders, grief and loss, childhood trauma, and other life-changing experiences. Come join us no matter where you are on your recovery journey.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You’re adorable, but as someone who went to school, I’m like, “Oh my God, that’s so f’ed up.”

    Ashley Jo:

    So my mother claims that this was the coolest haircut at that time, and I’m like, “Mom, I go back and I look at my school pictures and I am the only person with this haircut. It may have been cool when you were a child, but 90s, no, not so much.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I’m so so glad you have proof of this. Also, wasn’t sure if you were a really adorable little boy or girl.

    Ashley Jo:

    That’s a huge part of my story.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And the shirt doesn’t help.

    Ashley Jo:

    Okay, so that I have to blame on myself. My kids say to me like, “Where the hell did you get this shirt?” And I’m like, “I actually-“

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    On the rodeo store.

    Ashley Jo:

    No, I picked it out. I thought it was cool. I thought that shirt was so freaking cool and I could not wait to wear it to school pictures and it’s putrid. It’s terrible.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Here’s the thing. Let me tell you a little bit about this shirt, okay. This shirt, it could be cool and it could work. It could be something, the problem is the haircut because it’s unclear whether or not you’re a boy or a girl and that might be okay but even if you were a boy, this is a bad haircut.

    Ashley Jo:

    It’s a bad haircut and in that haircut, you see that I… She called it. She curled my hair that day.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh no, that wasn’t natural?

    Ashley Jo:

    No, that’s curled hair. So when it was natural, it was just this flat against my head.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Your mom just got canceled on the hair. Oh my God. Well, that’s what my hair would look like ’cause my hair is curly. So I, yeah. Oh honey. I know. So pretty and like really cute and like, I really it’s just like, as a mom, it’s the cutest thing. It’s really just like adorable, but as someone who experienced middle-school, it looks like sending you-

    Ashley Jo:

    It’s terrible. It’s terrible. Oh God. Yeah. I had to show you before we start recording, because I’m like, this is way too good to not-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So she curled, like she was like, “Hold on, don’t go out the door,” and like went and took your hair and curled it and that’s-

    Ashley Jo:

    Yes, yes, yes, yes she did, so-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    She’s very optimistic.

    Ashley Jo:

    And that, she thinks it was so cool. She thought it was so co-, well, she still will look at it and argue that everybody else had that haircut and then I hold up the pictures and I’m like, “Mom, this was a haircut in the 70s, not in the 90s. It was cool when you were a kid. Not me.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That’s true. That’s true. I could see that from the 70s. Yeah, that would be rough in the 90s. How old were you there?

    Ashley Jo:

    That picture, I’m in fourth grade.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. That’s going to be a no for me dog.

    Ashley Jo:

    So bad.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh no.

    Ashley Jo:

    I love that I can laugh about it now, but that time in my life was so traumatic for me partially because of that freaking haircut.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I believe it. I believe it, because if you have to defend this decision that you didn’t even have a hand in, that would be… Oh my God and kids are so mean. You know what’s funny is that I look at this, I always wonder, my husband has a history of terrible haircuts as a sober adult so I can’t speak to any of that. However, as a child, he has some of the, for his 30th birthday, I put this collage together from every year of his 30 years and the haircuts that his mom gave him, some of them were just atrocious. I had so much, we didn’t have kids at that time and I had all this judgment about like, “How do you let your kid have that haircut? Like, what’s the deal?” My children have had some of the worst haircuts and I finally understand how it happens.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Here’s how it happens. It’s like, okay, I don’t have time to get both of you. Okay, they don’t have an appointment together. Okay, it’s $50 for a two year old’s haircut that you know-

    Ashley Jo:

    So we’ll do it ourselves.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. We’ll do it ourselves. We’ll wait another four weeks. Why are we taking pictures on this day when they look like shit? It literally just happens and so I have a lot of compassion now for shitty childhood haircuts that I did not have before I had kids because now I look at pictures and I’m like, “I’m sorry, guys. I really am.”

    Ashley Jo:

    So I actually ended up firing my mom from cutting my hair, it was literally a firing because not because of that haircut, because one of the next times, oh, it gets worse. One of the next time she was cutting my hair, notice how it’s like above my ears.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. You gotta described the haircut, wait, because people can’t see it. So describe this, describe what I’m looking at.

    Ashley Jo:

    So it’s me. I’m in fourth grade, it looks like someone put a bowl on top of my head and cut around the bowl. So my hair is-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    No, it actually looks like that.

    Ashley Jo:

    Above my ears, yeah, it actually looks like that.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    She shaved the sides.

    Ashley Jo:

    The sides.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, she shaved the sides, so literally up to where the bowl, the proverbial bowl would have been, she shaved up to that. Yeah.

    Ashley Jo:

    Yes, and so when I fired her from cutting my hair, wasn’t even after this haircut.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh okay.

    Ashley Jo:

    It was a haircut before we were going to see my dad be in a play, Fiddler on the Roof and she cut my ear. Like she cut, she physically cut my ear. I had blood going down my shoulder.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And that was it. That was [crosstalk 00:06:26].

    Ashley Jo:

    I was like, “Mom, you’re just not allowed to cut my hair again, like ever, ever, ever again. I know we’re poor. I will figure it out. We will figure this out together but you are fired, that scissors is not going in your hands again.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But I appreciate how long you let her do it, like until she maimed you, like physically maimed you, you were still willing, ’cause I’m pretty sure my children don’t let me get within two feet of them with a pair of scissors and I haven’t done anything crazy to their hair. So I’m just really-

    Ashley Jo:

    I don’t know if that’s good things or bad things though.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I mean, it’s optimistic. That’s what it is. It’s like the next time, the next, it’s kind, and maybe it’s your alcoholism, right?

    Ashley Jo:

    Right, right.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It’s like, you’re chasing that hope that, one day, if you do the same thing over and over again, i.e., let mom cut your hair, you’ll get a different result.

    Ashley Jo:

    Result.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, or maybe a salad bowl instead of a cereal bowl.

    Ashley Jo:

    Yeah. Who knows? I don’t know. I just [crosstalk 00:07:26].

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Well, and then, so walk us through this picture.

    Ashley Jo:

    Oh, so that picture. Yeah. So… Well that’s me and my sister, sitting on top of a piano with the most amazing mullets that you have ever seen because even though I was born in the 80s to amazing Christian parents who loved me and were sitting on a piano and because we love music. My dad worked at the church growing up, he sang at church and so that picture is me and my sister, my older sister, Robin, sitting on top of a piano with terrible mullets. Literally my sister, Robin, her hair almost goes down to her butt in that picture and just loving life and not knowing at that point, ’cause I think I’m two right there. So not knowing at that point that-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh you’re the little one on top?

    Ashley Jo:

    I’m the little one, yes.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay.

    Ashley Jo:

    Yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Your mullet is actually borderline acceptable.

    Ashley Jo:

    Oh, it was a good mullet. If it had been 10 years earlier, it was a good mullet.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But the fade that she did, from this angle, it looks pretty clean.

    Ashley Jo:

    Oh yeah. She was good. I mean, until she cut my ear, she was great.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Until she cut my ear. Oh man. It’s really good. It’s really, I love the mullet. So was the rest of your life very Joe Dirt-esque or was this just the only remnants of that?

    Ashley Jo:

    Yeah. I don’t know. Growing up, we didn’t have a lot of money and so that’s, I think why my mom gave us haircuts is we did anything to save money. My dad was a school teacher. I seriously, he just told me the other day. I think his first year of teaching, he made $10,500 a year, as a school teacher. And so he-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    What year was that?

    Ashley Jo:

    I don’t have any idea, now you’re like [crosstalk 00:09:17]

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    What decade?

    Ashley Jo:

    Well, I was born in the 80s so it had to have been in the late 70s or early 80s. Yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah-

    Ashley Jo:

    So-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    We’re not very good with, as a society, we don’t do very kindly by our educators.

    Ashley Jo:

    Yeah. So he raised four daughters on that salary and my mom was a volunteer coordinator and worked like maybe 10 hours a week. So I have no idea how he did it. I’m very, very grateful for everything that my parents provided for us-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Where’d you live?

    Ashley Jo:

    Knowing we did not have a lot of money. So I was born in a very small town in Iowa. Everybody knows everybody, town of less than 5,000 people growing up and so, everybody knows everybody and everybody knows everybody’s business. You don’t have problems. You sweep everything under the rug.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh.

    Ashley Jo:

    So like you’re allowed to be an alcoholic as long as nobody knows and you’re allowed to abuse your kids as long as nobody knows.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right. Right.

    Ashley Jo:

    But everybody…

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It’s very tall order.

    Ashley Jo:

    Yeah, it’s a very, very tall order.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So as long as nobody knows, so like let’s talk about that for a second.

    Ashley Jo:

    Yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So what constitutes knowing, like if you tell someone, does that count or-

    Ashley Jo:

    Let me give you a picture of where I grew up.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    Ashley Jo:

    I grew up in a very, very Christian community and I need to preface this-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Born again?

    Ashley Jo:

    Christian reformed, yes, born again Christians, Christian reformed. So I grew up going to church twice every single Sunday. We went to church in the morning and at night and I grew up where you don’t work on Sunday. So just to give you an example of what I mean by like sweep under the rug is there are people where I grew up, where they would wash their vehicle on Sunday in their garage with their garage just cracked open so the water could come out as though no one would know they were washing their vehicle in their garage because you don’t do that on Sunday. So you can’t physically see them doing that and therefore, it’s okay. They must be doing something else, not doing work on a Sunday.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Hey, you know what? You want to know when I was in Salt Lake City, the Mormon girls, in order to remain virgins until marriage, they had anal sex and they decided that that wasn’t losing their virginity. So if washing your car in your garage is your justification, I think you’re doing all right.

    Ashley Jo:

    I think we’re doing all right. My goodness and I must say like, I am still a Christian. I’m very grateful for my upbringing, but there are a lot of parts of my story where I have so much shame because I literally grew up and I don’t know if this is because this is what was told to me or what I took from what was told to me.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right.

    Ashley Jo:

    I thought that my friends who did not go to the Christian school were going to hell.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right.

    Ashley Jo:

    That’s the heavy Christian background that I come from. So things like drinking, smoking, sex, having affairs, all of these things, those are sins and they are wrong and you will be judged for those sins.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay. So you’re still a Christian.

    Ashley Jo:

    I am.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay, so I went to Catholic school for eight years and my mother is Protestant, I was baptized, Episcopalian and married Episcopalian, kids are baptized. My kids are baptized Episcopalian. So in my experience, in the more born again, and even in Catholicism, there is a lot of talk about, those are sins, those things you described, and they do make it hard for you to get to heaven, unless you repent at least in Catholicism. So to me, what you’re describing is just an intense, the intensity of the volume of Christianity, not really, I mean, that’s kind of part of it, right?

    Ashley Jo:

    I think that’s the biggest thing that I’ve had to learn in my journey is that God’s grace covers me too. So as we get into my story, that’s the biggest thing that I want to get across about my journey is I have so much grace for so many people as a result of my upbringing, but because I was raised in it, I’m so hard on myself. I hear that the Bible says that these things are wrong, therefore, when I do them, I’ll give grace to somebody else, if I hear my story with someone else’s name-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    For sure.

    Ashley Jo:

    I have empathy for them. I love them. I understand. If I hear my story with my name, I’m Ashley Jo, who knew better than that, who should not have done that and therefore God’s grace doesn’t cover me. So in my sobriety and working through therapy, that’s the biggest thing that I have had to learn and accept is that His grace covers me just like it would cover anybody else, and even though, those are sins and those things are wrong and those are part of my story, that that grace is extended to me, just like it would be extended to you, just like it would be extended to somebody else. It does not matter. Thank goodness for His grace, because I probably wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for that.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, it’s interesting, when I hear you, in the secular world, ’cause I’m not super religious. We’re more follow traditions kind of deal, like we like the tradition.

    Ashley Jo:

    Yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But in the more secular world, people who let’s say don’t believe in God, they still… The same deal. They still, it’s like if I did it, if I did my best and got a B, I’m a piece of shit, but if you did your best and got a B, you did your best, good job. There’s still that same, and I think that’s combination of self-esteem, it’s a combination of being human. It’s a combination of all these childhood belief systems, higher standards and expectations for ourselves than we have for other people, all those things and I think that, despite your criticism of yourself, I think it’s kind of a normal thing to hold yourself to a different standard than you hold other people, and sometimes it goes the other way around, right?

    Ashley Jo:

    Yeah. Well, and especially for me, because throughout my journey, I’ve created this almost like alter ego for myself. I am Ashley, hear me roar. I can accomplish anything. I am a single mom with three kids. I’m the bad-ass executive worker. I can do anything and everything, and so that voice makes me even harder and harder and harder on myself because I can’t do anything and everything.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I think you’re in my head too.

    Ashley Jo:

    Yeah, that’s what led to all of my, not all of them, but most of my, many of my struggles recently, especially in life, so.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. Well, I want to just go back to a couple of things. First of all, I do want to introduce you to, I’m going to speak English now. I do want to introduce you. You are, have joined the Lionrock team, The Courage To Change: Recovery Podcast team and I’m so excited to have you. You are AJB to my ALB and you were a fan and a listener before and have come in so it’s really, really exciting to have you. We’ll do a big introduction, but I just wanted to make sure that we, I was introducing you, that you are part of our team now.

    Ashley Jo:

    Yeah. I’m very excited to be here for many, many reasons. Some of which I’ll probably get into as I go into my story, but you guys hired the super fan and so here I am, you can’t get rid of me now.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I love it. I love it. So I’m one of three girls, and I know what that was like. You’re one of four girls, which actually sounds, like as an adult, that sounds like major girl power amazingness. I don’t know if it turned out that way, but what was it like, four girls in the house, dad’s a school teacher, mom stays home and gives questionable haircuts?

    Ashley Jo:

    Yeah, definitely questionable haircuts.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You go to church twice on Sundays, which seems like a lot. I think I’d probably put it on a different day, but no judgment. So what were the messages that you picked up and what was the household you grew up in, in this little town in Iowa like?

    Ashley Jo:

    You know, all things said, I had like a very great upbringing and, like I said, I’m so grateful for everything that my parents did for me. There is some age between me and my sisters and so we were all kind of in different phases in life. So I was at a similar age as my older sister, Robin, but we went to two different high schools, so we never were together and that’s part of my story too. Then my younger sisters were always way younger than me and at a completely different phase of life than me, but God bless my dad for being able to put up with that many hormones in the house, because I don’t know how he did it. I have a 14 year old now and I’m like, woo. No thank you.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That is real intense. Yeah. That’s amazing.

    Ashley Jo:

    Yeah, but my upbringing was really good. It’s funny, we’re laughing about the haircut. The haircut is actually a part of my story. So when I was in fourth grade is when the narrative of my story really starts. That’s when my mom gave me the awesome haircut that we were talking about at the beginning, the bowl haircut above my ears. That also just so happens to be when my dad got a new job teaching and we had to move.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay.

    Ashley Jo:

    So I started a new school with that haircut, in fourth grade. My hair had been very long. It was cut short above my ears. I was maybe 68 pounds, tall, skinny, awkward, awkward, awkward. You said you couldn’t tell if I’m a boy or a girl. People couldn’t tell if I was a boy or a girl and my God, if I didn’t curl my hair and have that fluff in it, you certainly couldn’t tell. I looked more like a boy than like a girl. So when I moved, I was excited to move. I couldn’t wait to meet new friends. I’m an outgoing personality and it didn’t go well.

    Ashley Jo:

    There was one girl in my class who, I don’t know why, but she picked me to bully and I’ll never know why. I’ll never know if it’s because that was her way of showing me she liked me or she didn’t like me or I was a threat. I don’t know, but it was so hard because here I am excited to be at a new school and suddenly I have this girl making my life miserable. To the point where I remember crying myself to sleep almost every night from fourth grade to sixth grade, and I hid it from my parents, because again that Christian background, like if, and I’m not speaking poorly about, it just is what it is, if you sweep it under the rug or if nobody sees it, then it’s okay.

    Ashley Jo:

    I didn’t want anybody to think there was anything wrong with me, but there are a couple of examples of what we’d call bullying today, where she convinced a boy in our class to bring birthday treats, which was a big thing in Iowa this time, to share with the class, but not tell the teacher, because if he didn’t tell the teacher, then he didn’t have to give a birthday treat to me. So he passed them out to the entire class at recess and me and one other girl are the only girls who didn’t get one and something like a caramel apple sucker seems so small but at that age, with that haircut, in that environment, it was the biggest deal in the world.

    Ashley Jo:

    Then the other example is we would line up against a brick wall before we went inside for recess and me and one girl were constantly picked on, we’re standing against the wall, waiting to go inside for recess and all of the boys took basketballs and just hucked them at us, against the wall, and again, I don’t know, it’s all about perspective. Maybe they were doing that because they liked me. I don’t know, probably not, look at that haircut. It’s pretty terrible.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It’s questionable but things happen.

    Ashley Jo:

    But so I cried myself to sleep and I tried to make friends and I tried to be a good kid and I don’t know exactly what happened, I call it my ugly duckling moment, where one day I woke up in the sixth grade and suddenly I was starting to fit in, and suddenly I wasn’t looking like a boy anymore and then come seventh grade and my hair has grown and it’s longer and I’m becoming a woman and I’m very good at communicating and talking with people. So I go from being this girl who cries herself to sleep every night to being this, I say popular because there’s no better word for it, this popular girl.

    Ashley Jo:

    Those same people who made fun of me and bullied me, voted for me to be the class speaker of the eighth grade graduation, which sounds so stupid but in the Christian school, it’s a thing. You have eighth grade graduation and they picked me, out of all of the kids in the class, to speak to the class. So I felt like I was at my pinnacle. What I didn’t realize at that time is I held on to that little girl who was made fun of, who was the ugly duckling and I never, ever, ever wanted to go back to being that girl. Subconsciously, I made a commitment to never allow myself to be that girl again. So from that point on, I would do anything to not be that girl. So what’s interesting about my story is that after eighth grade graduation, my parents moved again, but we’re talking Northwest Iowa, small, small, small town.

    Ashley Jo:

    So they moved 10 minutes away. They said to me, “You can go to the Christian school with these people you’re in school with now, or if you want to, you can go to the public school and start over.” So you would think I worked so hard to fit in with these kids, that I would stay with them. I still don’t know why, but for some reason I decided to start over and to go to the public school and have like a fresh, clean slate, probably because nobody there knew about this ugly duckling Ashley, who was made fun of. I didn’t have to overcome that if nobody knew that. So what happened in that is I started a new school and I was a volleyball player. I think that was part of my becoming popular is people realize, “Whoa, she’s good at volleyball. This is awesome. Let’s like her.”

    Ashley Jo:

    I remember walking into volleyball camp, which started the week before school started. My parents had to literally force me to go because I was so nervous. If they hadn’t forced me, I wouldn’t have gone, but I remember walking in and hearing whispers about me and hearing people say, “Oh my goodness, she’s wearing the blue shorts. That’s this team. They’re so good.” So they’re saying positive things, but what I, the girl who struggles with ugly duckling am doing, is I’m saying I have to live up to their standard. I have to exceed their standard, and I am putting so much pressure on myself to never, ever, ever be that girl who’s made fun of, who’s ugly, who you can’t tell if she’s a girl or a boy again, and I could not handle that pressure that I put on myself and that in part, a small part, society put on me and my religion put on me.

    Ashley Jo:

    So what that turned into, I fit in right away. I was very popular right away from the beginning. I had so many friends, I loved high school. If I could go back to any time in my life, it would be high school, and most people are like, “Oh my God, you’re crazy. Why would you say that?” I loved it. I loved it. So what that turned into though is suddenly I’m 16 years old and I’m standing in the shower with a razor blade and I’m cutting my wrists, and I don’t know why. It wasn’t until a year ago that I realized all of that pressure I was putting on myself, I was experiencing so much anxiety and cutting for me was a way to release that anxiety. I can’t explain it other than to say, I felt instant relief, the second I took my razor to my arms, I felt instant relief.

    Ashley Jo:

    Then I got caught, my boyfriend and I were watching a movie and he was feeling my arms and he caught me and he told my older sister and she told my parents and my parents had like this little intervention and were like, “You can’t do this anymore.” And-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh, bless their hearts.

    Ashley Jo:

    I don’t remember a lot of this part of the story, I think, because it was such a traumatic moment for me being found out, that I’ve suppressed it, but what I do remember is they had a mini intervention, asked me why I did it. I said, “I have no idea,” which is honestly the truth. I have no idea why I did it. Then later, my mom took me on a walk and said, “You know Ashley, you really can’t do that and if you do it again, we’re going to have to send you away or get help,” and I’m like, “Send me away? Where? What? You’re threatening to send me away?” Like I’m the black sheep in the family right away from the beginning, because I was cutting myself and they didn’t know what to do. I do not blame my parents, my God, in the 2000s, they did not have the tools in their toolbox to know what the hell do you do when your 16 year old daughter is cutting her wrists.

    Ashley Jo:

    So I am a powerful, determined, competitive woman and I was like, “I’m going to show you.” So I just stopped and I actually, it became a big part of my story, where I went to church retreats and shared my story about the need for community and all of this stuff. It was a big part of, again, building up that facade, I’m never going to be that girl again. Then I wish I could say that was the last time that I did it, but it wasn’t because I did that other times in my life when I was dealing with stress too. But, overall high school was amazing for me, even when that was going on, I loved it and I was a straight-laced Christian girl.

    Ashley Jo:

    I did not smoke. I did not drink. I did not have sex. I went on lots of dates with lots of boys and that’s it. I was kind of known as the goody two shoes, Christian girl, who wasn’t going to touch that stuff because of the firm foundation that my parents gave me where I just thought that it was wrong and frankly, I didn’t want to know what my dad would do if he found out that I had done any of those things.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Did your siblings have that reaction? Did that foundation stick with them and they didn’t do any of that, you don’t have to out anyone. I’m just curious-

    Ashley Jo:

    Yeah, yeah.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment. I want to interrupt this episode to have a short little discussion about support groups and there’s no better person to talk to about this than my production coordinator, Ashley Jo Brewer, AJB, if you will. AGB, hi.

    Ashley Jo:

    Hi.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay. You’re a big fan of CommUnity. You attend CommUnity support group meetings. Why should people care?

    Ashley Jo:

    I absolutely love CommUnity because it creates a community and I know that sounds funny, but it truly provides a space for anyone and everyone, no matter what they are going through. Just to give you an example, I invited or told a friend about CommUnity because she was really struggling with binge eating disorder and had gone to many different groups and felt shunned or not accepted, or like it wasn’t a place for her and at CommUnity, she found a place because in CommUnity meetings, we don’t care what the substance is or what the struggle is. Everyone is accepted, no matter where they are in life, no matter what they are recovering from and I think that’s what’s beautiful about CommUnity.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh, I love it. Yes, I, 100% agree with you that the value is that you don’t have to know what your problem is, what your struggle is, what you want to give up or not give up, or whether you’re abstinent or whether you’re stopping, whatever. Whatever it is, you are welcome and you’re welcome in this place and it’s a great place to discover the answers to all the questions that you’re looking for in a community and have that support and it’s free to anyone. You go to Lionrock.life, and there is a tab with CommUnity meetings. There are different days, different times, different subjects. There’s even a cooking group called CommUnity Table. There are so many different options, something out there for everyone. So I highly recommend, maybe after you listened to this, if you are looking f-

    PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:31:04]

    Ashley Jo:

    Maybe after you listen to this, if you are looking for more community in your life, more friends, more support, please, please go check out communitylionrock.life. Click that community tab.

    Ashley Jo:

    Oh my gosh. I relate so much to your story, and it’s interesting you actually bring up stuff for me that I hadn’t really thought about, which I hit puberty really young, went to Catholic school and gained a lot of weight, was overweight, and was bullied, made fun of. I had some real cute, sarcasm included, haircut, and really curly hair. My dad was Jewish, I wasn’t Catholic at a Catholic school, and all this stuff you’re describing, like super boys beat me up. I mean, just crazy stuff. And then a full ugly duckling, whole other scenario.

    Ashley Jo:

    Then I’m dating older guys. For me, I didn’t have that. Again, the sin part didn’t come in for me. It’s just really interesting. I hadn’t thought about that. You were saying like, well, at the time it was this big deal. I think those things, they shape us. They really do shape us. Yeah, for a 35-year-old adult in corporate America, three kids, yeah, that’s not a big deal. But when that’s your whole world, when that’s your whole understanding, you’ve been alive for however many years, and this is a big part of it, it is a big deal. Those things are a big deal. And I think that’s hard for us as parents to think about because it’s like, oh, god, someone could shape my child in this moment when they’re dealing with their own shit. It’s scary that they’re that vulnerable to me.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It is.

    Ashley Jo:

    But they are that. I really want to affirm that those experiences are truly transformative. I do remember a lot of them, and I hadn’t thought about the fact that how much I never wanted to be that kid again. I knew that I wasn’t, and I knew that I moved away from it, but I hadn’t thought about the act of, I will never be that again. And you’re right. That is very much like I am woman hear me… I am Ashley, hear me roar. You will not f with me. You will not tease me. You will not take me down. You will not have power over me. All those things. And I hadn’t thought about how that wasn’t a conscious thought, but I think hearing your story and thinking back to that, you’re right. It was very much like that does not work for me.

    Ashley Jo:

    What’s funny is that I am Ashley, hear me roar, narrative didn’t really come until later in life. And so just to give you an example of the anxiety I dealt with in high school, I always put off, I am Ashley, hear me roar, but I was not I am Ashley, hear me roar. I was Ashley who had so much anxiety, that if I went to a clothing store and really loved a sweater and really, really wanted to buy it but it didn’t have a price tag on it, I could not go up to an employee and ask them how much the sweater cost. Instead, I would leave without it, or I would say, how much money do I have? And just go up and say, even if it’s $120, I’m getting it, because I can’t ask them. I would practice calling to order pizza like 10 times before I would call and order pizza.

    Ashley Jo:

    Then 1 out of 10 times I would end up not even calling because my anxiety was so bad. I so badly felt like I was going to be judged in some way. It’s very much a social anxiety. I just want to fit in no matter what; I want to fly under the radar, but not way too far under the radar where I’m not noticed, just like in the perfect place. Then what happened is I had a very defining moment after I graduated high school, that what you’re talking about, like those experiences that shape us, that shattered those experiences that shaped me. So this is Ashley straight-laced, goody two-shoes, Christian girl, decides to, after a church event on a Friday, go to her first party ever. I went with my friend, and it was after a night of amazing worship, praising Jesus, because who doesn’t go to a party after you praise Jesus.

    Ashley Jo:

    I got there, and instantly all of that anxiety came back of like, holy shit, I don’t fit in here. Part of the reason I was straight-laced is because I never put myself in a situation where I would be pressured to drink, to smoke, to have sex, anything like that.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That’s hard.

    Ashley Jo:

    Right. So I’m sitting there at this party feeling anxious, and there’s a drink of Ruby Red Squirt and vodka on the counter. Everybody’s drinking it. It’s a already poured drink. And I just say, you know what, I’m 19 at this point, I’m fine. What is one drink going to hurt? Well, a hell of a lot, actually. And that’s because that drink was drugged. I woke up the next morning at the apartment that I lived in with no recollection of what happened. And my best friend told me that I had sex with some guy, and I remember nothing.

    Ashley Jo:

    So in one night, everything that I have strived for… I was so proud that I made it through high school being a virgin. I was saving myself for my husband. I was so proud that I hadn’t drank. I was so proud I hadn’t done anything wrong. And what happened is, it was like Ashley was like a glass vase, and like that glass vase fell to the ground and shattered into a million pieces. And how could my God love me? How could I love me when I had ruined everything that I had worked my entire life for in one night with one drink?

    Ashley Jo:

    That created a downward mental spiral with a girl who already has anxiety. After that happened, I went and I got the morning-after pill. I didn’t remember what happened. They asked about like a rape kit and I’m like, “No, just give me the damn pill and leave me alone.” I wanted to pretend that it hadn’t happened, but mentally it put me on a downward spiral. I had my first panic attack, or series of panic attacks, that actually lasted three days shortly after that happened. My roommate called my parents and was like, “I don’t know what to do with Ashley. She’s been crying. She won’t stop. She is like barely breathing, hyperventilating. I don’t know what to do with her.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I want to stop you real quick. You know what’s interesting about this? There’s a couple things. One, you didn’t actually know what happened. So the power of belief, think about the power of belief here. You don’t remember what happened. Your friend says you had sex with someone. You have no idea. You don’t remember it.

    Ashley Jo:

    I don’t remember it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So nobody can corroborate this.

    Ashley Jo:

    The man corroborated it later.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh, he did. He did.

    Ashley Jo:

    He did. So I know it happened.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Okay, you do know it happened. Okay. Because I was going to say like, if that was the only thing that happened, then the other piece to this is, and this is very akin to sobriety. That’s why I just want to stop on it real quick, which is the idea that you threw something away, that nothing you did mattered, because you made this decision, that a decision that you made, you have no idea that you were taken advantage of, or whatever, like maybe yes, maybe no. Who knows? But the idea that it throws everything away, and this is something that I see all over the place, which is this all-or-nothing thinking. It’s really important when we’re teaching people about right and wrong, about sin, whatever flavor of moral compass foundation that we’re building for our children and for people in general, is that the idea to me that you had a drink that happened to be spiked, that doesn’t throw anything away.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Maybe you didn’t even make that decision. And if you come back to… This was something, I was sexually abused, whatever you want to call it, when I was a kid. And I remember the first time that I lost my virginity, and the guy knew about that abuse. He said, “Well, you weren’t ever really a virgin.” And I was like, it never occurred to me. It’s about what you’re taught. It never occurred to me I wasn’t a virgin, but because something wasn’t my choice, and then that didn’t count. I think just to like drop into the story of it’s really important when this stuff happens that we are going back and adjusting the narrative for today, which is everything you did in high school, all that stuff you did to give you the sober experience, the untainted, however you want to call it, experience that you wanted to have, that was important for your moral base, didn’t get undone that night. The problem was that your belief that it did, that created the downward spiral.

    Ashley Jo:

    That downward spiral was ugly for me, and thank God it was very short-lived. I started partying, and I started having sex with any man who would look at me because I’m like, I’m not a virgin. You can’t undo not being a virgin. I’m like, well, if I’m not a fricking virgin, then let’s just have sex, anybody and everybody, you look good, you look good, you look good, you look good. Yes, let’s do it.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    The Oprah of sex. You get a car, you get a car.

    Ashley Jo:

    Seriously, so what happened is during that time, I met my ex-husband. When I met him, we both worked at Outback Steakhouse. He was much, much older than me. He was in prison when I met him, on work release, working at Outback Steakhouse.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, he was.

    Ashley Jo:

    He was very charming and very attractive and very charismatic, and one of the most fun people in the world to talk to. So I was drawn in, and I say, thank God I met him and got pregnant, because getting pregnant saved my life. Because I was on such a treacherous, downward spiral, I would have probably drank myself to death or ended up taking pills. I would have ended up dying if I hadn’t gotten pregnant. Well, holy crap, now I’ve really messed up. I’m pregnant. That’s also something you do not do. You don’t get pregnant before you’re married. You definitely don’t have sex before you’re married. And then you definitely don’t get pregnant before you’re married.

    Ashley Jo:

    So my way of fixing that was when you do the wrong things, you fix the wrong things by doing the next right order. And so the next right order was to get married. So I had my daughter, and we were going to get married a couple of weeks after I had her. Three days before we got married, I found out that my almost-husband, who was no longer on work-release, was like out of prison and on parole, and all that stuff, I found out that he was buying Vicodin and oxy from a girl that we worked with, and he was a recovering heroin addict. That was part of his being in prison.

    Ashley Jo:

    I had no idea what that meant. I was born and raised in Northwest Iowa where like I have no idea. I didn’t know what an alcoholic was. I thought an alcoholic meant that you can drink, just not too much; that you can drink, but just not a lot. I had no idea. So I was so freaking naive and so young, but I knew it was wrong. So when I found out that he was buying these pills, what I thought I knew about him shattered.

    Ashley Jo:

    I just remember bawling and saying, “I cannot marry you. I cannot marry you. I cannot marry you.” And three days later, I married him. The night after our wedding, which is supposed to be the best day of your life as a woman, I remember coming home, and I remember getting in an argument, and I remember him screaming at me about something to do with an insurance claim with the birth of our daughter. I remember that spoke to every aspect of the ugly duckling inside of me, like you are worthless, you are terrible, you have messed this all up. You just married the wrong person when you knew you shouldn’t have, you pick the wrong man, your parents have a perfect marriage. What are you doing? And I fell apart. I bawled and bawled and bawled uncontrollably, and I was so weak, it brought out all that anxiety.

    Ashley Jo:

    I didn’t stand up for myself. I’d sit there and I would take it. I would let him scream at me. That was our marriage. Then, to try and fix things, this sounds bad, but it’s just the truth. I’ve kind of decided, f it. I’m just going to tell my damn story today. So to fix it, we decided to have another baby.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You wouldn’t be the first person to have done that.

    Ashley Jo:

    Right. Right. So I get pregnant immediately, because I’m the most fertile woman on the face of the planet. I stopped taking birth control so that we would have our kids, at soonest, 18 months apart, I had them a month early. They were 17 months apart. That’s how that happened. But while we’re trying to get pregnant, my husband who had told me that he was no longer using these pills, decides he has a back injury and that he needs to go to a drug dealer in a white coat to get some methadone.

    Ashley Jo:

    And so he had a herniated disc and was prescribed 90 milligrams of methadone right out the gate. First prescription, 90 milligrams of methadone and Percocet and oxy and all sorts of stuff on top of that.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    What can go wrong?

    Ashley Jo:

    What could go wrong, right? And his mother is saying, “That’s a terrible idea. Do not do that.” And I am young and naive and I’m going, “I don’t get it. Like, what’s a terrible idea?” Like, what’s going on?

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    What’s going on here?

    Ashley Jo:

    He was not only using that, he was buying it from people who had cancer. And so he just became like a catatonic, completely zombie. I couldn’t communicate with him. He would disappear for days at a time, he would lose job after job after job, which he was bartending by the way, great job for a recovering alcoholic, heroin addict. Great job. But I didn’t know what to do. And I’m like, this is absolutely terrible. And when I was three months pregnant, shit absolutely hit the fan. He ended up calling the cops on me to get me to leave the house. The cops came and were like, “Well, is there a problem?” He’s like, “Yeah, I want her to leave.” And they’re like, “Well, was she abusing you? Was she hitting you? What’s going on?”

    Ashley Jo:

    He was like, “No,” because he had to say no, nothing had happened. And they were like, “Well, sir, you’re married, and she owns this house with you, so we can’t make her leave.” And I said, “You know what, screw it. I’m going to leave. I’m done. I cannot do this right now.” I grabbed clothes, put them in a laundry basket, and my nine-month-old daughter on my hip, got in my car and drove to my dad and showed up on the driveway, not knowing if he was going to be home or not be home. I remember getting out of my car and sobbing and falling apart and being like, what the hell did I get myself into? What is going on with my life? And my dad looked at me and told me that the Bible says that you can get a divorce if your husband is being unfaithful.

    Ashley Jo:

    And even though your husband is not being unfaithful with a woman, he’s being unfaithful because he’s putting drugs before you, constantly time and time and time again. And I was pissed. I yelled at my dad and I said, “Absolutely, f-ing not. You think I’m getting a divorce?” So I called every treatment center in the area to get my husband into treatment, and getting someone into treatment when they are coming off of taking like 30 to 50-plus pills of methadone, which is used to get people off drugs, it is such a dangerous drug to get off of. It is so hard to find someone. So I had to lie to get him into treatment. He went to treatment. I lied, I got him in. I moved into a new house, three months pregnant, baby, with my daughter, not knowing if when my husband is out of treatment, if I’m going to live with him, if I’m not going to live with him, what is going to happen?

    Ashley Jo:

    He gets out of rehab. We decide to make it work. He was very involved in Alcoholics Anonymous. He went to 365 meetings in 365 days. I was very supportive of that, because I knew what life was like when he wasn’t sober. And I never wanted to go back to that again, but it also meant that I didn’t see him. He was at a meeting every night. So I didn’t see him. He’d go to the meeting and then he’d go to the after meeting and hang out, so we didn’t really have an opportunity to have a relationship. So when he was five months sober, my son was born. Then when my son was two months old, I started recognizing that something was wrong with him.

    Ashley Jo:

    I remember going into the doctor for his well-baby check at two months. I remember her holding him up and trying to bounce him on the table. And she said to me, “Does he ever bear weight on his legs?” I kind of looked at her like, what kind of question is this? And then I started thinking, and I’m like, “You know what, he doesn’t. He doesn’t ever bear weight on his legs.” She said, “Well, he could just be a relaxed baby, but that is a reason for concern. By two months old, he should be bearing weight on his legs.” So she said, “We’re going to run some tests. We’ll test him for muscular dystrophy. We’ll test them for hip dysplasia.”

    Ashley Jo:

    They ran a whole bunch of tests. That day they tested him for muscular dystrophy and hip dysplasia and a couple of other things. Right away, the muscular dystrophy test came back negative. I was like, praise God. Like that’s worst case scenario. My kid would be in a wheelchair. That would be terrible. So they didn’t get any answers with the tests that they ran. So they put us on a-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Is that a blood test?

    Ashley Jo:

    It is, yes. That one’s a blood test, yes. They put us on a three-month waiting list to see a child pediatric neurologist. When that appointment was, my husband was on a mission trip in California. I was 22 years old. I took my son into the pediatric neurologist by myself. She’s asking me normal questions. And then she’s like, “Oh, before you go, I need to examine him.” And she takes my son, Cornelius, Case, we called him, and she is looking at him and examining him and starts asking me very weird questions like, does his tongue always quiver like that? I’m like, I don’t know. Does your kid’s tongue quiver? Would you know the answer to that question? I don’t know.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Definitely not.

    Ashley Jo:

    Right. I’m like, “I have no idea.” And then she’s like, “Are his legs always like this?” And I’m like, what the hell? I don’t know what’s going on. She leaves the room, comes back into the room, and says to me, “Ashley, we are going to test your son today for something called spinal muscular atrophy, and this is not a good disease to have.” I’m like, “All right, what does not a good disease to have mean?”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, like there’s good ones to have.

    Ashley Jo:

    Right. Like there are good ones to have.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Like [crosstalk 00:51:22] me out with this.

    Ashley Jo:

    Right. And so she goes, “Well, most kids who are diagnosed before six months old,” my son is five months old, “only have a 50% chance of living to see their second birthday.” I thought muscular dystrophy was the worst thing, you’re telling me this. And then she was like, “But, if they’re diagnosed after six months, they can live like into their teens or maybe even their twenties,” and kind of giving me this almost false sense of hope. I’m sitting there going, “Okay, he’s not six months old yet. We’ve known something was wrong since he was two months old. Like why are you even telling me this?”

    Ashley Jo:

    I remember she left the room again. And while she left the room, I hurry and put spinal muscular atrophy in my phone. When she came back, she said, whatever you do, do not Google this. Well, hello. When you tell somebody don’t Google this, that’s what they’re going to do. And so I left the doctor in a sheer panic, going-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Did they test him there?

    Ashley Jo:

    They tested him, and they said… It’s a blood test. And when they test you for spinal muscular atrophy, they say it’s a minimum of two weeks before you get the results back,

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh, good lord.

    Ashley Jo:

    A maximum of eight weeks. So between two to eight weeks. This is really weird, Ashley. So I go out to the parking lot and I call my mom and I’m panicking. And I say, “Mom, they’re going to tell me my baby is going to die, and they’re going to call me on my birthday and tell me.” And she’s like, “Calm down.” I said, “No. They’re going to tell me on my birthday that my baby’s going to die. I can’t do this. I don’t know how to do this.” And she goes, “Ashley, you’re not being rational. Your birthday is in like 10 days. They said two to eight weeks. There’s no way they’re going to call you.”

    Ashley Jo:

    I have that like premonition. God spoke to me. I truly believe God prepared me to get the phone call on my birthday. But then I have to go home, and my husband is still on the mission trip, and I have to tell my husband, who’s like somewhere between 5 to 10 months sober, that our kid is probably going to die, and that’s the only disease they tested him for. And I’m panicking, because if there’s one piece of advice you don’t want to give someone who’s newly sober, it’s “Hey, guess what? Our kid, yeah, he’s going to die.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That’s…

    Ashley Jo:

    Right. I made sure somebody from the program was there with him when I told him about it, and thank God for them. At 4:30 PM on July 28, we get the phone call. That’s my birthday. It was my 23rd birthday. It was a confirmed diagnosis of spinal muscular atrophy. He was five months old when he was diagnosed with that. Then we had a series of appointments. Meeting with the pulmonologist was the hardest, because that was the first time, when we met with the pulmonologist, he rolled his chair back and he put his elbows on his knees, and he said, “This is the kind of conversation I never like to have with parents.”

    Ashley Jo:

    He told us that no matter what we did, our son was going to die before we would, no matter what. Unless we got struck by lightning or hit by a car, our son was dying before we were going to die. That’s very hard to swallow. It’s hard to comprehend. So the next three months were just a whirlwind, and it was weird because he appeared to be healthy. He just couldn’t really hold his head up and didn’t move his legs very much, but he appeared to be healthy.

    Ashley Jo:

    Then in October, his lung collapsed. So we went into the hospital for the first time on October 2 and spent 57 out of 90 days in the hospital from October 2 until January 8. We had some great days in there, days where we could really enjoy him and have fun. The hospital did things for us that they shouldn’t have done, because they knew our son was going to die. Most people get to go on like a Make-A-Wish trip or something. We never even got to do that, because we never made it that far. But they did discharge us that Christmas, even though they probably shouldn’t have. They said, “You guys go have Christmas with your family, have fun.”

    Ashley Jo:

    We did, and it was so much fun. But as soon as we got back from our vacation, I looked at Case, and I was like, he’s not okay. I went to work, because I was in denial that he was not okay. And my brother-in-law called me and said, “Ash, you got to get home now. Case, his oxygen is 82. You’ve got to get home.” For a normal person, that’s bad. For someone with spinal muscular atrophy, his oxygen could not be below 96. Because if his oxygen was below 96, he was going to crash real, real fast. So we brought him in, and I was in denial. I didn’t want this to be happening. My husband had accepted that we should probably let go of him. So he said, “Let’s withdraw care,” and I was like, “What the hell is wrong with you? I’m not ready. I can’t do that. I’m not done fighting.”

    Ashley Jo:

    We were just at very different places with it, which is hard when you’re married and he’s working, I’m taking care of him. And so I remember the moment where I accepted it. And on January 5, I remember before I went home to sleep, they always told us, go home and sleep. You need to take care of yourself. So thank God we did. But I remember before I went home to sleep, my husband was holding him up and I locked with his eyes. And all I heard in my head is “Mommy, it’s okay. Mommy, it’s okay.”

    Ashley Jo:

    The next day we’re eating crappy nachos at the cafeteria at the hospital, me and my mom and my husband, and I slammed my hands down on the table and I say, “Why in the hell are we doing this? I cannot do this. He doesn’t want to fight anymore. Why are we fighting for him?” I don’t even know if we finished eating, but we went upstairs and pulled the doctor aside and had that conversation that nobody wants to have. For us, that conversation was we had decided up until that point to do everything from a noninvasive standpoint to give Case the best quality of life that we possibly could.

    Ashley Jo:

    We could have put him on a tracheotomy, we could have put them on a ventilator. We didn’t want that. That was our personal decision for our son based off of our education on the disease at the time. We sat with the doctor and said, “We’re done with the noninvasive care. We want to switch to palliative end-of-life care.” So they took his crib out of the hospital room and brought in a big bed. They said, “It might be a day. It might be an hour. It might be five weeks. We don’t know, but it’s okay that you’ve made this decision.”

    Ashley Jo:

    For me as a Christian woman, and we were very involved in our church, they were very supportive, thank goodness for them. But I struggled like, am I playing God? Am I playing God? I just made the decision to withdraw care from my son. But what transpired over the next two days were the most beautiful, best moments of my life. It sounds so weird to say this, but when they came in… So we withdrew care on January 6, and my son passed away at 2:02 on January 8. So he made it just almost exactly 48 hours from the time that we withdrew care. I remembered them saying we’ll let you know when it’s time.

    Ashley Jo:

    On January 8, I was in the room with a bunch of people. The doctor came in and said, “It’s time.” So I freak, because what does that mean? Does that mean 30 seconds, 5 minutes, 5 hours, half a day. What does that mean? She just said, she knew that we wanted to be alone in the room, and that my mom could be there for a while to help keep us calm, but that then we wanted to be alone, me and my ex-husband with him while he passed. She left the room, and I freaked out, and my ex-husband really freaked out and was like, “Somebody read the Bible”. My mom picks up the Bible and is like, “What do you want me to read?” He’s like, “I don’t care. Just read.” So she opens the Bible and just starts reading on the page that it opens.

    Ashley Jo:

    And it opens up to the verse that says, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.” And so it sounds so weird to say this, but the day that my son died is the day that I felt the closest to God in my entire life. And my mom hung out with us for about 30 minutes. And then she said, now it’s really time. So my mom left the room, and my husband and I had the privilege of singing our son to the gates of heaven. I couldn’t tell you if it was 30 minutes or an hour, three hours that we spent by ourselves, but we spent time singing and laughing and bawling hysterically. And it’s the scariest thing, but it was the most beautiful thing.

    Ashley Jo:

    It’s so unnatural for a child to die before their parents, but the way it happened for us was such a beautiful thing. But then after that, he dies, and I have to look at the nurses and doctors and I have to say goodbye. They were my family. And usually it was, we’ll see you in a couple of weeks or a couple of days. And this time it was, I have to say goodbye. And I’m never going to see you again, because I don’t have my son in my arms anymore, because he has moved from this earth to the next. And I had a complete and total identity crisis. I was Case’s mom. And when he was sick was when I got my, I am Ashley, hear me roar. So when you are fighting for your kid’s life, you will say anything and you will say everything.

    Ashley Jo:

    I remember going up to a doctor when he was in the hospital, picking the phone up out of their hand, hanging up, and telling her, “Listen to me. The way you are treating my son is killing him. You will listen to me. I know I’m only a mom, but I know what I’m talking about.” So all of that anxiety went away and, all of a sudden, I’m this powerful woman, but then my son dies, and now I’m like, who am I? Who am I actually? And I didn’t know. And we just kind of continued on with life, and a lot of crazy things happen. We adopted my son now-

    PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [01:02:04]

    Ashley Jo:

    And a lot of crazy things happened. We adopted my son now as Ariah, and that was great. We got him right away when he was a baby, he was an hour and a half old. I ended up getting a promotion at work. And so we had to move to Florida. Meanwhile, keep in mind that my husband and I really still had no relationship. We always had somebody, either living with us or some massive death like experience or treatment or AA, something was always going on. And so we never had a lot of one-on-one time together, and so I remember the day and I want to get into this a little bit more because I don’t talk about this enough out of shame and out of fear, he was very verbally abusive to me. And when I got that strong powerful Ashley, I was not going to be the girl who lays on the couch and cries and takes it anymore.

    Ashley Jo:

    And so then we’re both throwing the verbal stones towards each other, and it is a toxic shit storm of a marriage, but still I put on the face that everything’s okay, everything’s fine. The pressure that I now feel like statistically losing a child is like the highest chance of getting divorced. I feel that pressure, everything is perfect. Everything is fine. Nobody will know anything is wrong, Ryan is sober. We are great. Don’t worry about it. Everything’s fine. And I remember the moment when we lived in Florida, where I was like, “I cannot be in this relationship anymore.” He had screamed at me and we had argued and fought so much, and I was like, it’s starting to affect my kids. And I looked at him and I said, “We need to get divorced.” And he was the kind of man that you believe when he says something because he will follow through with it.

    Ashley Jo:

    And so there were some things that were said to me, when I told him I wanted to file for divorce, that led me to not file for divorce. And so I didn’t file for divorce, but I looked at him and I said, “That’s okay. We can stay married on paper. We can pretend that we’re a family. We’re going to be roommates. Your words will never, ever, ever hurt me again. And if your words can’t hurt me again, that means your words mean Jack shit to me man.” So they won’t mean good things or bad things and I was done, and so we ended up moving back to South Dakota to be closer to family. And it wasn’t very long, and this is a part of my story I carry a lot of shame around. It was not very long where I remember I was going through my phone, dying for connection with a human being, just wanting to feel loved, wanting to feel desired.

    Ashley Jo:

    And so I remember picking up my phone and deleting some contacts and just going through and texting some people from college and being like, “Oh my God, how are you? What is going on?” Like dying for connection, and so I ended up texting a guy that I had dated in college, and that turned into me having an affair. And I eventually told my husband because he asked me who I was talking to all the time, and I just told him, I said, “I’m talking to the guy that I’m sleeping with.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right, because you’re roommates.

    Ashley Jo:

    When I said I was done, I meant I was done. You maybe didn’t take that seriously, but I did. I don’t know if you’ve lived in the same relationship I have, but there’s nothing going on here. So I just told him, and what I learned later is that it’s called an exit affair where you have an affair as a way to separate yourself from your partner. And so we ended up… I told him we separated, we did end up going to counseling. We went to a two day intensive counseling in Colorado Springs with one of the top Christian counselors.

    Ashley Jo:

    And I remember at the end of those two days, the counselor said, “Sir, can you please step out of the room? I just want to talk to Ashley.” And he said to me, “I’m going to talk to you like I would talk to my daughter, and this isn’t normally how I would talk to clients, but I’m going to talk to you like I would talk to my daughter.” And he said, “If you were my daughter, I would tell you to run as fast and as far as you can, and to never look back, because if that is how he treats you, when I am in the room, I am scared to know how he treats you when I’m not there.” And it was a defining moment for me because that-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And what did the counselor see that a long term?

    Ashley Jo:

    Yeah. So I would be like sitting back all the way back in my chair and he would get up from across the room and come and crouch inches from my face and scream with his hand going like this, just scream at me in front of a counselor who we’re supposed to be like working on this on. He didn’t touch me but it was two days of that, of him screaming and berating me and telling me how terrible I was and how I was a cheating hoe, and just all of these horrible, horrible things where he said, if that’s how he treats you in front of me I’m afraid for how he would treat you behind closed doors.

    Ashley Jo:

    And it was good for me. Not that it validated my feelings, but with emotional abuse it’s very hard because you feel like, because there’s not physical abuse it’s acceptable. And so it really messes with your psyche, and so-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And if you’ve done something like if you’re like, “Well, I did cheat on him.” Or whatever, like you kind of-

    Ashley Jo:

    Especially when I have that religious background in my head saying, “No, cheating is the number one reason you can leave your spouse, that’s like the worst sin. Why would you ever do that?” And so I had all of these thoughts. So we ended up separating, divorcing, and I ended up staying in a relationship with a man that I had an affair with. And that… so I say cutting was my first addiction, and this man was my second addiction. I said yesterday, if you looked up codependency, you would probably see a picture of me and this man in the dictionary, because I would forego any need that I have as a person to meet his needs.

    Ashley Jo:

    And I would drop plans with friends. I would sell things. I would do anything to be with this man. And so I stayed in a relationship with him for around like two and a half to three years, and it cut off. It was just a toxic, toxic relationship to the point of, I wasn’t allowed to see his friends and family. But he spent like four or five days a week with me, but I was never allowed to see his friends and family. When they came to his house, if I was accidentally there, I would have to hide in the closet.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh my God. Why?

    Ashley Jo:

    I don’t know. And I don’t know why, that’s how toxic the relationship was. I don’t know why-

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, I’m just curious but…

    Ashley Jo:

    He could convince me of that. I think part of it was like, he didn’t want people to know that I was there, that I was involved in his life. How would that look, were the ones who had an affair together, so we weren’t supposed to be together. And so it was just a very, very, very toxic, toxic relationship, and then I found out that he cheated on me with 11 women and went crazy. And that resulted in him cutting me off completely, deleting me from social media, blocking me from his phone, taking me out of his life. I don’t have a choice to be in his life because he has now a 100% made it impossible for me to be in his life. And I lost my identity again, I was like, I don’t know who I am without this man. He was there for me when I had my affair. He was there for me when my husband brandished smear campaign on my character, to all of my friends and all of my family, I felt like I owed him something. And then suddenly he’s just gone.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It’s like another death.

    Ashley Jo:

    It was another death. And so I went into a deep, deep, deep depression. And this was the first time I started drinking in a very unhealthy way, and so it started in just like, I couldn’t sleep because I would obsess about him and where he was and what he was doing. And so then I would have a glass or two of wine to help myself sleep. And then I got into this very obsessive state, I started how to having extreme insomnia to the point of like maybe sleeping two hours a night, and it was just terrible. So drinking would help me sleep. So you drink wine before bed so that you can sleep. And then at some point I was not at all in a good place. So I don’t want to say that I was, I wasn’t in a good place, but I met another man.

    Ashley Jo:

    And it was just like, Oh, he’s gone. He’s in, replace him. This is going to be okay. And I thought, I fell in love head over heels and decided to do everything again in the completely wrong order. This man was from Florida. I decided that we were going to get pregnant. We were going to move in together and then we were going to get married. We never made it to the point of getting married, thank goodness. It was not a good relationship, but we did get pregnant. I did move me and my kids down to Florida. They loved him. He was a great step in dad and we made it nine weeks there, and after nine weeks, it was very clear to me that me and this man were not meant to be together on both of our behalfs. And so I was like, well, the longer I’m here, my kids love him.

    Ashley Jo:

    The longer I’m here, the harder it’s going to be. So I’m going to go home. So I picked up my kids and I moved back to South Dakota. This part of my story, I carry a lot of shame around that I’m working on healing, but when I got back and even before I had gotten back, a part of the story that I maybe skimmed over or missed completely, is that around the time that I got pregnant, I had also slept with another man because the man that I was in a relationship with for after my affair, suddenly walks it’s back into my life, when he found out that I was seeing somebody else and about to move and about to get married or so he thought and so I thought, and so I had been with him around the time that we decided to get pregnant.

    Ashley Jo:

    And so he is suddenly going, like, “What’s up, you’re pregnant. We slept together, are you sure the baby isn’t mine?” And I’m like, “I’m 125% sure that baby is not yours. Like 125% sure, I’m a woman. I know my body. I just know what happened and there’s no chance.” And he’s like freaking out and I would feel terrible if something did happen. So I’m like, peace of mind, let’s just get a paternity test. So I find a prenatal paternity test and we do that, and I’m like, we’ll all just have peace of mind. We’ll feel great about this situation and just continue moving forward with life. And then I remember being in a meeting at work and getting two missed phone calls from the company. And I was in a meeting I’m like, “I can’t take this. I want to, but I can’t.”

    Ashley Jo:

    And then immediately getting a missed phone call from the guy I had had my affair with, and then another missed phone call from him. And I’m like, “What the hell is going on?” So I get off the phone and I call him and he’s like, “What the hell? You told me the baby wasn’t mine.” And I was like, “Right. The baby’s not yours.” And he says, “That’s not what they just told me.” And so the results…

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That you’re regretting giving them his name and phone number.

    Ashley Jo:

    I’m just like, “What the hell is happening here? What is going on? This didn’t make sense.” I called the company. They gave me the whole rhythm row that you would expect. Like, “Ma’am, I’m so sorry that you got the results that you weren’t hoping for. I understand this is a very difficult time for you, it’s DNA, DNA doesn’t lie. It doesn’t lie.” And so I’m sitting there going, “This doesn’t make sense.” But yet I have science over here going, “Really Ashley, you’re going to fricking argue science? Are you an idiot? Do you think you’re that great that you could defy science.”

    Ashley Jo:

    And so I bought into it, but then I did some research on the company and I was like, “There are a handful of bad reviews out there. So I’m holding onto these bad reviews, maybe it’s wrong.” Because I was in such a bad place mentally that I had been thinking about rekindling my relationship with a man from Florida, because all I wanted was a cohesive family unit, that’s all I ever wanted as messed up as it is, that would solve every problem in the world. So I call him and I tell him he wanted a child so bad.

    Ashley Jo:

    And I had to tell him the results came back and you’re not the dad. I called his mom. I had to have that conversation with his mom. I called his brother. I had that conversation with his brother. I called my mom. I had that conversation with my mom. My sister, my best friend. The other guy’s mom. I had this hard conversation so many times with so many people, and it was so… meanwhile, I’m 23 weeks pregnant at this time I’m exhausted. Pregnancy when you’re old is like, Oh my gosh, it’s so much harder than when I was 20. And so I’m exhausted physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And I’m just telling that voice in my head, “Just do the right thing. You did the wrong thing, do the right thing, and eventually you’ll be rewarded for doing the right thing.” And I had all these shit box conversations where I bawled my eyes out and looked like hoe and hated it. There’s probably another way to play it, right?

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    No, that’s a brutal scenario.

    Ashley Jo:

    And so then I’m faced with… I told everybody too, I did research on the company. They don’t seem really… they seem legit, but there are a few bad reviews, but there was one thing that stood out in my mind is really, really weird. And that was when I did my tele-health consultation over the phone with them and they explained the kit and what I needed to do to get it done and send it back and get it back. They said to me, “So who do you think the father is?” And I was like, that didn’t sit right with me. In fact, my answer to them was, if this is DNA, it doesn’t matter. I’m not answering that question, it was what I said. And so that didn’t sit well with me.

    Ashley Jo:

    So I kept holding on to these results are wrong. The baby is the man in Florida’s not the guy I had an affair with. The results are wrong, but the more and more time that went by, I was like, “You need to just accept it. The baby is the man you had an affair with. It’s okay, it is what it is, Ashley. You told everybody the truth. So no matter what way it comes out, it’s going to be okay.” But the whole time I just wanted to be chosen by one of these men. I just want it to be enough for them, and so I went through my entire pregnancy by myself, my mom and my best friend and my sister were there for me. And they were amazing.

    Ashley Jo:

    But I told both men, “If you want to be there, when your daughter is born, or my daughter is born, whoever’s daughter it is, you’re free to be there. If you want me to keep you in the loop, I will.” I kept them both in the loop after my appointments, but I have my daughter by myself, in my house with my mom and my sister in my midlife. It was an intentional home birth and I remember with my other kids, maybe I got teary-eyed but with my daughter Waverly, I wept uncontrollably. And that’s because the moment that she came out, all that I can think is how would somebody not want you? How would somebody not love you? And so she was born, and two days later the man that I had had an affair with came over to meet her and to see her, and we were very careful, nobody get attached to anything in the situation. Right after I had had her, the man from Florida texts me. “I’m so proud of you. I love you.”

    Ashley Jo:

    It was just a mind… to be honest with you. And so then the man I had had an affair with, from South Dakota came and met her twice. And the day after she was born, I had taken her to get another paternity test just to make sure, confirm the results. And so I remember she was two weeks old. I was sitting in my rocking chair, pumping, and I get a phone call and they say, “Hey, Ashley, it’s, so-and-so from the lab. I just want to let you know, we’ve received your paternity test results, and I’m going to be emailing you a certified document right now.” And I said, okay, and held my breath. And then immediately go to my phone. And like, it’s not there yet. I’m like refresh, refresh, refresh, and it’s there. And so I pull it up and I opened the first page and I look at it and it says, the guy from here, his name.

    Ashley Jo:

    And I’m like, okay. Yeah, it was him. So it’s fine. It was right. I accepted it. Good thing I accepted it, move on. And then I look a little bit further over on the page and it says 0% chance. He’s the father. And I’m like, “What the hell?” And I go to the next page and it says, the guy from Florida, his name 99.999999999% chance, he’s the father. And I’m like, what the f?

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Now you’re like, and I’m back on the campaign trail, going to be telling everyone.

    Ashley Jo:

    You can’t make the shit up, right? You can’t.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You need more in your life so bad right now.

    Ashley Jo:

    Oh my God, right? And so I make all of the phone calls again, make all… first of all, imagine that phone call, having to tell the guy who’s met her and held her twice and called her his daughter. Guess what? We released, not yours.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    JK. JK.

    Ashley Jo:

    And so then I think the hardest part for me was when I picked up the phone and I called her dad from Florida to tell him like, you wanted this, we have a baby together. I’m laughing because he’s probably checking to make sure it’s not April fools. The situation is just… so he has a girlfriend living with him. I call him and I’m like, “Hey, just wanted to let you know.” And I was a little bit… I didn’t say it like this, but this was the narrative in my head. “Hey, mother-f-er. I just wanted to let you know she was yours. I was right. You were wrong.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Totally.

    Ashley Jo:

    That’s the narrative in my head but conversation was more like, “Hey, so I have some alarming news. Waverley is yours.” And he goes, “All right, I’m going to get hypnotized.” Seriously, he goes, “I’m going to have no session.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Best response ever.

    Ashley Jo:

    And then he goes, “So give me couple of hours I’ll call you back.” And he didn’t call me back until later that night, because he had to go and talk to his girlfriend and tell his girlfriend that he had a baby with another woman. And so I expected that he would immediately get on an airplane and come and see his daughter, right? My God, if I found out I had a kid, I’d be on an airplane. And he didn’t, he stayed in Florida to protect his girlfriend from the hurricane, because last time I checked, humans can protect other humans from hurricanes. That’s like that apparently.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Did you know that?

    Ashley Jo:

    I did not. I did not. But now I do.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Wrap his arm around her, and those wings are powerless against his ego.

    Ashley Jo:

    Right. So, he didn’t end up meeting his daughter for weeks after he found out that she was his. And that to me was like the biggest blow. I’m also a very competitive person, and so I had this thing, like, “I’m going to fricking win against that girl. I will win you, and we will be a happy little family and I have you and not you.” I’m just… it’s messed up but it’s just honest. So he comes and visits finally, and we play house. He’s with my kids. He’s with me, he’s with her, we play house. He meets her happy little family, and then he needed to leave. And I expected him to leave and go back to his girlfriend and tell her, “I cannot be with you. I must go and be with Ashley. And we must have this beautiful family with this beautiful baby.” Instead, what I get is his girlfriend meets him at the airport with a photo album that she’s made with pictures with him and the baby, inserting her way into our life.

    Ashley Jo:

    And I was pissed. I hated her to be honest with you, I’m just being honest, I didn’t like her. And so that was the first trip. And then the second trip that put me on a mental tailspin, that’s when I started drinking. I had a massive anxiety attack and I was drinking to calm the nerves, the nerves that were going. I would literally just be physically shaking. And during that time my friend took me to the doctor and I was prescribed some Ativan as an emergency, take care of your anxiety attack you’re having right now. Go home, follow up with your general practitioner. I had never been to a doctor in the last 12 years. I wasn’t going to follow up with my general practitioner, but I’ll take the Ativan, thank you.

    Ashley Jo:

    And so he comes back for the second visit. We play house again. We’re like a little bit together, not sexually but it seems like we’re in a relationship and then as it’s prepping to be time for him to leave, and he’s like, seems to be choosing me, but then it’s talking about going back to his girlfriend, I’m f-ing overlife. I’m like, I’m done. I can’t do this. I love my daughter. I love my kids, but I can not do this anymore. This sucks, I did the right thing and this is the f-ing outcome I got and it’s shit. I got handed a shit sandwich and I don’t want it, and so I took all of the Ativan that was left and I got really drunk on fireball because I knew I wouldn’t take Ativan unless I was drunk. And so I got inebriated on fireball, took the Ativan and then text him to tell him I took the Ativan.

    Ashley Jo:

    That was a cry out for help. But he comes over and I think I said something like, “Take care of your daughter, please.” Just whatever, I was not in a good place. And so he comes over, his sister’s a pharmacist. He calls his sister and he’s like, “Ashley just took a whole bunch of Ativan. What do I do?” And she’s like, “You call 911 or you bring her into the emergency room right now.” And he’s like, “Okay, I’m just going to watch her and make sure she’s still breathing.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Oh my God.

    Ashley Jo:

    And so he doesn’t call anybody or take me anywhere. Now, given I didn’t take that much. I only took what was left. I think it was like 10 to 12 pills. So it’s not enough to do anything, but like, “Well, it could have been, I don’t know. I don’t know.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That’s… especially with alcohol.

    Ashley Jo:

    Coupled with an entire, one from fireball. It was enough to do something. So he literally sat beside my bed with his eyes at the corner edge of my bed, just making sure I was breathing. And I was like… The next morning when I woke up, I was like, “Well, what are you going to do? If I stopped breathing? Literally what were you going to do?” I don’t know, rescue me apparently. So I’m…

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Refer back to protecting girlfriend from hurricane.

    Ashley Jo:

    Right, right, right. He is Superman apparently.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    He’s protector of all.

    Ashley Jo:

    So I overdosed on Ativan wake up the next morning and I think I wake up and I’m like, “What did I do?” And he’s here. He got like steamrolled into parenting there. I couldn’t nurse, obviously. I’d taken all the Ativan in the world and drink all the booze in the world. I couldn’t nurse. So he really quickly figured out how to thought frozen milk, get it in a bottle and feed the baby.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    It’s amazing what they can do when they have to do it.

    Ashley Jo:

    He figured it out real, real quick. And so at some point he must have called my family, and so I felt like five o’clock. I might not be recollecting this correctly, but remember my mind was not in a good place. I come downstairs and my family is sitting in the living room and I’m like, “Oh, shit. Here we go again.” Intervention number two for Ashley, time to have an intervention. I don’t know what they wanted and I was pissed. I was like, “Just let me go the f back to bed and let me not think about this, and let me forget that this happened. I don’t want to talk about it.”

    Ashley Jo:

    And then, so whatever they did, their little intervention, I said whatever I said bald. Talked about postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, all of which I had on top of this shit storm paternity situation that just wrecked havoc on my life. And so three days after that, I’m back from maternity leave and my work calls and says, “Oh, Hey, we just wanted to let you know. We know you’ve been a remote employee for seven years, but if you want to keep working with us, you have to move to Florida.” three days after I overdosed from Ativan, that’s the message I get from my boss. I was making over six figures and very successful in my position, the only financial caretaker for my family. And I was like, “I have to do this.”

    Ashley Jo:

    This is a terrible time. I don’t want to go. My mental health is the worst it’s ever been. I’m not in a place where I should go, period. But I’m making six figures or zero figures. And the other guy is in Florida, given I would’ve lived three hours away from him, but I’m like, “Maybe it’s not going to be so bad, maybe this will get me my happy ending. I’ll have the job and I’ll steal the man, and I’ll have the baby and I’ll have the family.” And so I go, and the whole time that I’m there, he would talk to me like, “Oh, I love you. And I think I’m going to leave her for you and I think we’ll be a family someday. I know our moment is coming.” That was the narrative at first, like, “I’m going to be with you. I love you. I’m going to leave her.”

    Ashley Jo:

    I remember multiple times where they were on vacation together and he’s texting me or FaceTiming me going, “I wish you were here, not her.” He’s now married to her. So sorry if you’re listening to this, but so whatever. So that narrative, then at some point when I was in Florida starts to more often change. He was so certain he was going to leave her, marry me. We were going to be a family, the song perfect by Ed Sheeran. He was like, “This is our song. You are that woman that is strong and powerful in my life, I will be with you.” Suddenly this is so f’ed up, I’m sorry. I’m about to talk about all of this, but it’s so f’ed up.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    That makes it even better.

    Ashley Jo:

    That narrative starts to change to, “Hey, I read this really great book. You should check it out.” And it’s the book, Untrue. Which is basically about polyamory and having a polyamorous relationship, and so the narrative changes from, “I love you. I will leave her for you.” To, “Maybe, just maybe we can all be together and we can all love each other.” In my f’ed up head, I was so pissed. First of all, when this first came I was so mad, because I was going to win and I was like, no. And I said some really horrible things to his girlfriend, just terrible things that I am sorry for. But it slowly went from no, to, “Well, maybe this is my end to be able to win.” So maybe if I just pretend that I will be in this polyamorous relationship, then maybe I’ll win.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I did the same thing, same thing.

    Ashley Jo:

    Because I could give him sex that she couldn’t give him. Let’s just be honest. So that was my narrative, that I sought to myself, that caused me to get rid of all of my morals and values and compromise everything I believed in and just say, “It’s the way I’m going to win him.” And I didn’t even really like him at this point. He had treated me really shitty, but I wanted to win. And that’s really messed up to say, but it was the truth. And so I started being in a relationship with him when he would come and pick up our daughter to take our daughter home to her, for the weekend we would be together and then he’d go and take her. And then when he came back, we’d be together again. And then for two weeks, he’d be with her but we’d talk throughout the weeks. And he would tell me how much he loved me and all of this stuff and [inaudible 01:31:09] was to say it was just really messed up and really, really toxic.

    Ashley Jo:

    And my mental health just took a downward dive because I was compromising everything I believed in, and hated myself, hated myself. And so I was working lots and lots and lots of hours a week, like 60 hours a week. I had a 90 minute commute each way. I felt like I was being forced to be in this relationship I didn’t want to be in, just not in a good place. And I was like, “Okay, this is not working out for me. I need to go home. I’m not okay.” And so I left my job and moved back home with my kids. And when I moved home, I had another massive identity crisis. I was Ashley, this powerful executive who had just left that job, who was no longer this powerful executive who was now in no relationship, although he was still telling me how much he loved me and cared about me every day and trying to weasel me back in.

    Ashley Jo:

    And I just didn’t want to feel anything. I didn’t want to feel anything. I hated the thoughts in my head. I hated the thoughts in my mind. I hated who I was, and I just started drinking at night to sleep because it was the only way I could sleep. And I hated life, I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t enjoy… this is bad, but I didn’t enjoy time with anybody ever, except for during this crazy messed up time, I met an amazing man that I’m with right now. But outside of that, I just hated life and hated myself and my drinking just… you always say, “Hope to die drunk.” I’m a hope to die drunk, my best thought in life was, I’ll drink enough that I don’t wake up tomorrow. That was my best thought in life. That was the best way my life could end because then I didn’t really do it on purpose, I just drank too much.

    PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:33:04]

    Ashley Jo:

    I didn’t really do it on purpose, I just drank too much.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yep. It was like, I remember people would say things like, “Oh, well, were you trying to kill yourself?” And I was like, “I wasn’t not trying to kill myself.” I wasn’t trying to kill myself and I wasn’t… I was just like, “Yeah, it’s going to happen. I’m not trying to make it happen, but I’m not trying to stop it either.”

    Ashley Jo:

    Killing myself would have been an excellent outcome. In my mind, killing myself would have been an excellent outcome. And so then what that meant is I was in this place where I didn’t have enough courage to actually kill myself. I could drink insane amounts of alcohol, but I had this thing where eventually I’d just fall asleep. Probably my body trying to keep me alive.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, probably.

    Ashley Jo:

    And I hate life. And then in January of 2020, I’m like, “I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I hate every aspect of my life. I’m not a good mom. I’m not there for my family. I don’t like myself. I don’t like my job. I don’t like anything. I don’t know what to do, but I can’t live like this.”

    Ashley Jo:

    And so before January, I had researched online meetings and I had found Lionrock Online Meetings by researching. So in January, after the 11th anniversary of my son’s passing, which is historically very difficult time for me, I said, “Screw it. I’m getting sober.” And so I started going to meetings every single day. I love everybody on the platform. I got to 90 days sober, was doing great, felt better than I’d ever felt.

    Ashley Jo:

    I’m very good with transfer addiction and so I was working out like three hours a day, which is definitely not healthy. But I was like, “This is totally feasible because working, you don’t get your kids taken away for working three hours a day.”

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right. Right, right, right, right. Yep.

    Ashley Jo:

    So choose the lesser of the evils.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Honestly, if the choice is drinking or working out, work out, you know?

    Ashley Jo:

    Right. I will always choose working out. I will always choose that over drinking. And so I was doing great and then COVID hit. And now I’m a single mom, being an eighth grade teacher, being a fourth grade teacher, having a three-year-old home 24/7. And I’m like, “I can’t do this.”

    Ashley Jo:

    And so I struggled, hardcore, hard, hardcore. But every day that I wouldn’t drink, I would go to a meeting. Because I knew they worked and I knew they helped. Even though I couldn’t freaking figure my crap out, I would go to a meeting. And it was great until it wasn’t great. And then I was like, “What do I do?”

    Ashley Jo:

    And one day I text Leo, who is a person in meetings with me, and I just said, “I cannot freaking do this. I don’t know what to do, but I know that I can’t keep doing what I’m doing. And I know that I love the meetings, but I’ve got a lot of f’ed up shit that’s happened to me and two to three minutes of sharing in an AA meeting or in a community meeting is not enough for me to work through that crap. And so, I need more. And what is that more?”

    Ashley Jo:

    And so the biggest thing keeping me from getting more help or going to treatment was that I’m a mom.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yep.

    Ashley Jo:

    I can’t leave. How do I leave? How do I leave my kids? And so I started working with a therapist at Lionrock and my sobriety date is August 14. Shortly after I had started working with the therapists at lionrock, I was a few months sober. I found out that a colleague of mine had committed suicide. And it hit me like a truck. Not because I was close to him, I love him and he’s amazing person, but because he was a doctor, he was a dad, he was a family man, and I sat and watched all of our colleagues go, “Holy shit, can you believe this happened to him?”

    Ashley Jo:

    And all that I could think is, “Yes. Because it could have been me.” It could have been me, I could have been the one who died because I wasn’t doing anything to care for myself, but yet I had the outward appearance that everything was fine. And so I said, “Screw it.” I have always known that God gave me an amazing, amazing story. I wish it wasn’t my story. I wish it wasn’t my story, but it is my story.

    Ashley Jo:

    And I’ve always known that I would be called to share my story, but I was waiting for my happy ending. I was waiting for my fairytale ending. I was waiting for everything to be perfect. And when this happened to my colleague, I said, “I’m done f’ing waiting for everything to be perfect. If I feel this way, someone else feels this way. And I never want to hear again, that that happens to somebody and people are so shocked, because we are not talking about mental health. We’re not talking about these things.”

    Ashley Jo:

    The beautiful part about COVID is now we are talking about them, actually, more than we ever have. But we’re talking about them more than we ever have because they’re a bigger problem than they have ever been. And so, I was at a soccer game one Sunday, and I was just going crazy on my phone and just writing down all these millions of thoughts in my head. I had a million thoughts and I needed to get the thoughts from my brain to paper, which was a document on my phone. And all of a sudden I look at the document and I’m like, “Oh, I just created a non-profit in my head.”

    Ashley Jo:

    I created a non-profit. It was called It Could Have Been Me, because it could have been me. I could have died by suicide. I didn’t, I’m lucky. And I decided that I was done not sharing my story. I was done feeling the shame train and having so shame on my shoulders. You know what? Life sucks sometimes. And we do not talk about it enough. I did not talk about it enough. I needed to free myself from that little girl inside who felt so much pressure and so much shame. And the best way for me to do that was for me to rip off the mask and say, “Hey world, I’m Ashley. I’m an alcoholic. Here is who I am. I am living in sobriety. I have no idea what I’m doing, I’m so damn early in sobriety I probably shouldn’t even be doing this, but I am, because I’m not okay with this happening to other people.”

    Ashley Jo:

    And so in less than a month, I wrote a website, I found board members and we incorporated as a non-profit in the state of South Dakota. And we’re doing this thing. And it’s so much work, and it’s so much fun, and it’s so rewarding, and there’s such a need. I shared my story on a podcast that we do and the number of people that came out of the woodwork saying, “Holy shit, you? That’s your story? That happened to you?” And they didn’t even hear this version. I’ve never talked about my paternity scandal before.

    Ashley Jo:

    But the number of people that came out of the woodwork saying “Me too.” Or, “I struggled too.” Or, “I never would have guessed you were going through this and I’m just so sorry.” It just shows that everybody has a story. And I don’t claim to know what I’m doing in sobriety. I’m so grateful that Lionrock has taken a risk on me, and hired me, and brought me to their team, because I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m committed to figuring it out. I’m committed to working my recovery.

    Ashley Jo:

    And the biggest thing for me was realizing that I can be that Christian girl who grew up in a great Christian community and God’s grace covers me. And I think that was part of why I relapsed, is I didn’t believe that God’s grace covered me. And part of that is when you’re a Christian and you believe that God’s grace covers you, it means that you can forgive yourself and I could not forgive myself. And today I can say that I’ve forgiven myself for many things and I’m working on forgiving myself for other things. And that’s just the beautiful part of my story, I guess.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I love your story. Thank you so much for sharing it. And you know, I think that it’s really one of those things, when you become sober and you take a sober look at the things that happened, right? It’s really difficult to look at things you did while you were intoxicated. And intoxicated can mean by the relationship, by the gambling, by the cutting. Intoxication looks very different for different people. So when I say intoxication, I don’t necessarily mean drugs and alcohol.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And you look back and you think to yourself, “Well, does that make me a bad person? Is that a stain, and is that in indelible ink?” And the good news is that it doesn’t have to be. Because if we change how we live every single day, we can create more days in a row where we live like this new person than we lived like that old person.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I love that you said, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” Well, good news, you’re in good company. Most of us don’t know what we’re doing right? I’ve never had kids before, I don’t know. This is new, I’ve never been at this stage of life. I’ve never been this age before. I’ve never whatever. So that’s why community is so important, because we don’t know what we’re doing. We just know we’re doing the next right thing.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And that was ingrained in you really young, “do the next right thing.” And that’s actually a fantastic lesson to have ingrained in you. You may have lied, the next thing out of your mouth needs to be truth. The next thing out of your… It’s these baby steps that create this new life and not these monumental decisions.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I used to tell a sponsee of mine who was trying to go to college I said, “I didn’t go to college in a day. I showed up hour by hour and did assignment by assignment. And one day, I had completed all the units.” Like, it didn’t happen. It happens. All of it happens hour by hour, right? Our decision that we make and you made and have made so many decisions to try to get back to your roots and your basics, like it doesn’t surprise. I was laughing when you were talking about how much you moved. I was like, Jesus, she loves to move. Oh man, I can’t stand moving. But you know, it doesn’t surprise me that you ended up back at home base, right? Like you kept coming back to South Dakota, you kept coming back, you kept coming back to your roots. It was a constant returning home to yourself to what’s real and true. And like that person that you knew you were, and you know, you are, and now it’s just figuring out how to be you without, the intoxicants.

    Ashley Jo:

    And that’s actually been a beautiful, like learning how to be me finding myself again, really for the first time in many years, finding out who, is Ashley in this COVID world, who is Ashley as a mom who is Ashley as a girlfriend, as a lover, as a friend, as a sister.

    Ashley Jo:

    And I know that I can’t repair relationships overnight and I don’t have that expectation, but just like you said, the thing that I hold on to is I cannot change the past God if I could, I would, I can’t, but what I can do is I can commit to today being sober, being the best version of me that I can be, being the best mom that I can be being the best friend that I can be, putting in the work when I don’t want to put in the work. God, sometimes there are not enough hours in the day. Like I’m like I to do meetings, TaeKwonDo, kids, school, all this shit. There aren’t enough hours in the day, but I’ve put in the work, even when I don’t have the time I find it, and just commit to being the best version of myself

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Yeah, because we would, and it’s kind of like what we were talking about in the very beginning, we would offer that grace to someone else, right? Like we would someone else who is doing the best, they can, couldn’t find all the hours in the day. You know, if someone had to miss TaeKwonDo class and someone, you know, like we would give them the grace. Right? We would see the effort and, and we have to treat ourselves the way that we treat other people in that, in the, you know, think of ourselves that way. Even if, even if we don’t want to. And even if it doesn’t come naturally to us, I think that’s huge. And with bringing you onto the podcast team, I have known people who have less sobriety than I have, who I, you know, Ban who is, who I work with and has, she was the second episode of season one.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And she, she also has fewer years, think she just took eight years. And I look up to her sobriety so much, like her sobriety is really phenomenal and I have more years than she does, but it doesn’t, you know, the quality is what matters. And so, you know, the thing that was interesting about you, and I think the reason I say it is because I think it’s important for people to hear is, sometimes acknowledging like, “Hey, I get that I’m kind of a risk, but I want you to take a chance on me.” And I feel like, to me, that speaks to me. I’m like, yeah, you are a risk.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    You are, you’re a risk, and you deserve a chance. Cause you are, as you are the quality of all those things. And, and when you say, when you own like, “Hey, I get it, my track record looks like this, or, you know, whatever”, Like when you own it, and, and you say, “but I’d like you to give me a chance anyway, I’m hoping that you’ll see past that”, people do people will. I think it’s really important for rebuilding, especially in the beginning. Like if you’re rebuilding in the beginning, don’t worry so much about what the past looks like. Ask people, tell people that you know, that you deserve the chance and you’d be amazed at how many people are willing to do that. How many people know someone who got sober, how many people relate to your sobriety? How many people are sober? You know, sometimes they are sober. That stuff is just, it’s huge. And I would want someone to give me the opportunity

    Ashley Jo:

    And that’s what I appreciate about you. And then the first meeting that I was in with Peter, he said, “Lionrock is a place of second chances.” And I think that goes for your employees, for your clients’ for everybody. I have felt that already from you guys, and I’m just so excited to be here.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I’m so excited to have you and you’re killing it, literally going to kill me, putting me on so many interviews and, and all this. And, and I just, you know, speak to your story quickly about case, you know, I truly cannot, like, I don’t know if I cannot or will not, but some combination of both imagine what that’s like. And it’s always so interesting for me. Like when people have lost children or they have some like huge grief experience, the rest of us don’t know how to support you. We don’t know what to say. We don’t want to say the wrong thing. We don’t want to say like, I can’t imagine, cause that sounds shitty. We don’t, you know, it’s like, there’s this whole narrative that goes through, our heads of like, “f, how do you respond to that?” You know, like, I’m so sorry.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And what goes through my mind, you know, obviously a lot of different things, but one of them is that I really appreciate that you share about those special moments within the grief and within the pain, that part I can relate to, I can really relate to being in like a shit storm of absolute nightmare and there being these like, special moments that, like a little window, and how that shaped you. And as a parent, like going through that, and that’s going to shape you for the rest of your life, no matter what happens, I think, do you find, let me back up. How do you, what feels the best response from people when you tell them that you’ve lost a child? What for people who want to support?

    Ashley Jo:

    So a couple of things, I think there’s a big difference between when I tell people I lost a child now, and when I tell people I lost a child right after it happened. And so right now, my God, I’m so used to consoling the stranger in front of me because they feel so sad. It’s like simple questions like, how many kids do you have? I can’t answer three. I have four kids. One of them just lives in heaven. Like, that’s my answer. I actually hunted down a woman one time because she asked the question and I was busy and I said three, and then I didn’t feel good so I went back and found her at this busy, busy conference and was like, “Look, I gave you the wrong answer. I’m so sorry. One of my kids died. He’s in heaven. I have four kids.”

    Ashley Jo:

    And she’s like, “Oh my God, who are you?” And I was like, “I just had to set the record straight,” but very early on, there’s nothing you can say. And so what’s very interesting about you asking this is, in starting my non-profit, one of my best friends from high school is on my board. And so she actually recorded an episode with me about my story. And through this journey of the non-profit, we’ve been talking more and she’ll say things from that time after Case died, where I’m like, “What, you were there,” or “You did that, you guys came and saw me, you guys came and visited us. You guys did this,” because you are in such a haze though. The rest of the way that I explain it is the rest of the world is moving. It’s like a scene from a movie. The rest of the world is moving and you are frozen.

    Ashley Jo:

    And no matter what you do, you can’t unfreeze. And the rest of the world just keeps going. And so if I had any advice for like how to support people, just be there. Don’t ask them what they need. Just show up with something. So don’t ask them if they need food, bring them food. Don’t ask them if they want their house cleaned, call them and say, “I hired a house cleaner. They’re coming over to clean your house tomorrow at two,” because my pride wanted me to show that I could keep it all together while he was sick. And after he had died. And in reality, I couldn’t freaking keep it together. I lost my kid. I wanted to scream. I was handed a golden ticket to lay in my bathtub with my son’s stuffed animals for the rest of my life and feel sorry for myself.

    Ashley Jo:

    If that’s how I was, the world would say, that’s okay, you lost your baby, but that’s not what I want to do. And so all that you can do is there’s nothing to say. That’s what I always say to people. I know there’s nothing I can say. That’s going to make this better. I just want to be here with you and be here for you. There are no words. There’s a reason. You know, a widow is someone who lost a husband. There’s no word for a parent. Who’s lost a child because you cannot verbally put it to words. There’s there are no words,

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    But you have found, see to me, I don’t know how this sounds. I’m just going to say it, but you know, I have twin boys, right? And, and if one passed, I’d have to live for the other one, but if I had one child and I lost that one child, and again, I’m not in that situation, maybe I would rise up from the ashes and I don’t know what, but in my head that would be the end for me. And like, there’s no other reason to go on. But your experience is that you can like, you know, I know that parents do go on after the loss of a child

    Ashley Jo:

    Yeah. And it’s interesting you say that because I’ve, even though I don’t have my crap together, I’ve mentored a lot of parents who have lost children or a lot of parents who have had children with the disease that my son had. And everybody navigates that process very differently. And sometimes even if they have kids, it’s hard for them to keep going and like me, thank God I had a [inaudible 01:53:33] . I had my daughter and she, she was two years old when my son died. But you know, even that, like, she just started sleeping with us all the time because I didn’t have energy to put her to bed, like there was just so much going on, but everybody handles it differently. Every single person. And that’s the tricky part about grief is there is no book on here’s how to grieve. There is no book on here’s what you do when your kid dies and you want to scream.

    Ashley Jo:

    There’s no book. There’s no right way. There’s no wrong way. Like, I look at my story from an outside perspective and I’m like, how the hell am I standing up straight some days, you know, there is like a golden ticket that the world hands you that says it’s okay. If you want to be depressed for the rest of your life, it’s okay. If you want to be sad for the rest of your life, all I can say is I encourage people who are grieving to allow themselves to feel their feelings, whatever those feelings are. There’s one woman that I’ve been working with who is just approaching, actually I think today is the one-year anniversary of her son’s death. And so her birthday was just earlier. And she was like, “You know, I’m having a hard time with making plans for my birthday because I don’t know what I want to do.”

    Ashley Jo:

    Well, my birthday sucks too, because my son was diagnosed with this terminal illness on my birthday. I hate it historically. I freaking drink myself to sleep and then pretend I’m not older, you know, but what I said to her is I said, “You know, what, if that’s how you feel, just tell the people who are asking you about plans. Just say, you know what? I’m not sure I want to commit to anything because I’m not sure what I’m going to want to do. But if I decide I want to do something, can I let you know?” And I said, just say that if you are feeling so much pressure to make a plan or to be happy, or to be sad, you don’t have to feel happy. You don’t have to feel sad. My son’s birthday was just on February 28. He would have turned 13.

    Ashley Jo:

    I had an amazing realization that I didn’t feel really happy. And I also didn’t feel really sad. And I said, what if, what if I just be, what if it’s just, you know, my son died and that sucks, but today. I’m not happy about it. I’m not sad about it. It’s just another day where my kid died and that really sucks, but it’s okay for me to just feel whatever I’m feeling now.

    Ashley Jo:

    And that’s me, 13 years later, still going through this grieving process on a daily basis, my boyfriend is trying to make plans for my birthday. And I’m like, you know how I feel about my birthday? And he’s like, “Well, you can make happy memories too.” And I’m like, “If you want to do it, make the plans. That’s fine. But you know how I feel about my birthday? I hate my birthday. My birthday is my son’s death sentence,” you know? And I think grieving is a never ending process. Just like sobriety and recovery are a never ending process. You can’t stop going through it. You can’t stop working through it because if you do, it will cripple you. Just like if you stop working the program, you will relapse.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    If you stop taking care of yourself, you will stop being taken care of you will fall apart. Yeah, absolutely. And I love that. I think, you know, it’s helpful for people who haven’t been through that to know how to respond. And because I think a lot of people do want to there, and do want to be supportive. And, and I do think that, you know, feeling your feelings and walking through those things that applies to everything.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    [inaudible 01:56:54].

    Ashley Jo:

    That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned actually in my grieving journey is that so many people apply grief to death. Like grief and death are the natural. They go hand in hand, but grief is the loss of any hope of any dream. And so where my grieving process is very unique with my son is I started grieving the loss of hopes and dreams the day he was diagnosed. My fear went from being, “Oh my God, my kid is going to be made fun of, is he going to get a date to the prom? How’s he, how popular or not popular is he going to be too? Holy, is my kid going to make it to the age of two?” I started grieving. I will never walk my son down the aisle, you know? And I think that same journey applies when people lose an animal.

    Ashley Jo:

    When people lose a relationship that they’ve been in for three or four years, I was invited to be a part of a group of grieving women who had struggled with miscarriages. And this was the defining moment for me. It was very soon after my son passed that they invited me to this group and I got so pissed. And this is another time I heard God speak to me. I literally was saying to my computer screen, how dare they invite me to that group? They didn’t hold their baby. They didn’t smell their baby. They didn’t change diapers. They didn’t hear them cry. And all of a sudden, God says, “Ashley, that’s why they’re grieving. They didn’t get that. You did.” And I ever since then have just had this amazing empathy to meet people where they’re at. The Ashley who had basketballs thrown against her. That was my worst day then. And that’s okay.

    Ashley Jo:

    There is no scale of what is terrible grief or what’s a horrible situation. And what’s not whatever someone is feeling or grieving or going through or struggling with. It is real. And that’s their reality. And they need to heal through that and work through that. And I, because I’ve lost a mother I can never, or a son, I can never say that my story is any worse than anybody else’s. Even if somebody has all of their kids, this isn’t a comparison game.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    Right. That’s super important. And I think, you know, I think the other piece too, is if you’re trying to get sober and you have lost a child and you do have this golden ticket to stay drunk for the rest of your life, right. Like you do, and you also have the right and the ability and the support not to. And I think that finding people like you, Ashley and other women who are sober and who have lost a child so that you can, so that they can say to you, yeah, we do have that ticket. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah, I do understand.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I always think it’s really important to find people who are in recovery who, if you’ve, you know, been sexually abused, if you, whatever, like whatever your trauma, whatever horrible thing is. And in that gives you the right to, to, to beat stay drunk, find someone who is sober, who has been through that so that they can say, “Yeah, I know what that’s like, and it’s still not worth it to stay drunk.” And I think losing a child, it’s one of those things, like find people who’ve been through that because, you know, I wouldn’t say that necessarily to someone who lost a child, because I haven’t been through that. So I couldn’t say to them, like, you know, too bad.

    Ashley Jo:

    You can make it through when you’re like, I don’t think I can make it through

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    And they would say to me, like, “How the f do you know?” And I, you know, I would say “I don’t.” And, and so I think that it’s super important when you’re looking to build that community, finding people who have your experience in it to help hold you accountable also to blaze the trail, because it is different for everybody, and there are similarities that can be used across the board, but it’s so helpful to hear someone with your story, who’s done it, who can show you what to do on their birthday, what to do on your birthday, what to do on your other kids, you know, like, because they’ve done that sober, they know what that’s like sober. I get a lot of calls from people who, whose kids are going to college sober because no one knows how to do that, and I’ve done that.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    So, you know, different things find the people who like, you know, I get like, “You don’t know what it’s like, I’m going to be in college.” Some I’m like, “I absolutely do. I turned 21 sober.” So, you know, having those experiences I think. is great. And you’re just such a blessing to, you know, all the lives that you touch and, and the recovery commute, I’m really, really grateful and glad that you found, you know, recovery, that’s working for you, whatever that looks like, whether that’s 12 step or not 12 step, just keep going.

    Ashley Jo:

    Yeah. I love it. And I’m super grateful to be here. So thank you so much. This is like, I feel like I’m the super fan stalker. That was just on your show.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    I love it. Welcome. Love it. Well, thank you so much for being here. Thank you.

    Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

    This podcast is sponsored by Lionrock.life. Lionrock.life is a recovery community offering free online support group meetings, useful recovery information and entertainment. Visit www.lionrock.life to view the meeting schedule and find additional resources. Find the joy in recovery at lionrock.life.

    PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [02:02:23]

    Ashley Jo Brewer

    Ashley Avatar

    Ashley Jo is one of the producers of The Courage to Change: A Recovery Podcast team. With over a decade of experience working with C-level executives and directing corporate training events, she brings extensive production experience to Lionrock. In early 2020, she made a significant career change and stepped into the realm of podcasting.

    Her recovery experience includes substance abuse, codependency, grief and loss, and sexual assault and trauma. Ashley Jo enjoys supporting others in recovery by connecting with people and being a leader. She shared her story in Season 3, Episode 92 of The Courage to Change.