This is a conversational interview segment in which Ashley recounts a prolonged, near-fatal health crisis and how she survived. She describes severe physiological collapse (yellowing skin from liver failure, hair loss, extreme weight loss to £90), doctors offering no clear diagnosis or treatment, and a four-year struggle between life and death. Ashley credits spiritual faith, an intense will to live, and employing physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual resources for her survival; she emphasizes the mind–body connection and how prolonged stress hardwired her nervous system into hypervigilant survival mode. The transcript also links that survival programming and subconscious perfectionism to a later “second wave” life-altering health event that is introduced but not yet detailed.
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£90
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I was literally dying. My body was shutting down. Like, my skin was yellow from my liver shutting down. My hair was falling out. I got down to £90. I literally looked like a prisoner from a concentration camp. I was so frail. It was clear I was dying. My body was shutting down. But there was no clear answer. It was, you have some rare viral infection we don't know, we can't treat. Therefore you need to accept, like, this is it, right? Because we can't treat you. And I just. And my mom, thankfully, I think, I mean, I had a deep belief inside my life was made for more than 13 years. And that I had this incredible body that, yes, was facing Goliath, facing the biggest mountain. And the hardest part was the uncertainty of it all. Like, what are we fighting? But if I give my body every resource and tool, both from a physical standpoint, mental, emotional, spiritual, I believe it was designed to heal and it might be a road. And it was four years fighting between life and death.
And then again in your 20s, which we'll unpack later.
Yes, my 30s, actually. Yes. But my body was a long journey, but we just kept going and I kept fighting. And it was, it was also the real introduction to me of the intricate mind body connection because it, it helped save my life. I had nights where I literally was too afraid to go to sleep. I felt so close to death. I had, I had days I couldn't even utter a word. Like, it's a very scary place to be when you realize the amount of energy it takes to speak. You know, it's something we do so effortlessly, even to lift a finger. I had days. I didn't have the strength to hold a book. And so I was, I was there. Like, I. I can tell you I know what it feels like where your body is right there teetering on the edge. And so I wouldn't go to sleep some nights I would will my body to stay awake because I really felt like if I surrendered that conscious will to live, my body was so tired, it was so exhausted, it was so sick. And so I would stay up and I would tell my body to keep fighting and to keep living. And that's when I really lived. How powerful the mind body connection is and that the brain and the body are always communicating and to either help us and heal or to literally. I know if I had said, I'm done, right? And we've seen this with soldiers who kind of give up the will to live and they'll go in a corner and they'll die, and not because of any real physiological reason I could have done that. I really felt that way. But I just had this such strong desire to live and felt like I was created to keep living. And that's when I realized how powerful that connection was.
It's such a powerful spiritual question that maybe has no answer. Like, I believe in a higher power. It doesn't mean that it's a bearded dude in the sky, But I definitely believe that there's an omnipresent energy that loves and guides all things. And I kind of really enjoy the wisdom of the Dao where it's the middle way, you know, not too hot, not too cold. The great Dao loves and nourishes all things, but it doesn't lord it over them. You know, we do things for you, do things for your husband, he does things for you, not because you have to, but because you love them and you want to. But what about that I guess almost dichotomy of like love, hate, life, death. I wonder what makes us do that for ourselves. Like there's some special thing inside of you that maybe doesn't exist in everyone. Doesn't mean that you're better, just means that you're different. So there was something inside of you that was like, not only am I not going to die, I'm going to create meaning from this, which is a totally different construct than just like I'm going to make it through. I look at the phrases out there, I don't know how you feel about this. Fuck cancer, cancer survivor, the kind of neuro linguistics and what that's telling the unconscious mind that I'm a warrior, that I'm an overcomer. It's like, well, you're just going to keep attracting more of that.
Well, that's a part of my story. Absolutely. I was a fighter, right? And I'm not saying that at certain times in our life we have to access that the fight or flight mechanism is for our survival. And it's this beautiful thing that when we can access it, helps us survive, helps us do amazing things.
In a season.
In a season. And that's the key, not forever. And that's a huge part of my work today. If not the whole root of it is, then we get stuck living in it and society also in many different mechanisms we're pushed to do so and at in all directions. But my system got hardwired into survival without me really realizing, right? Because I was not. Many people live in that type of dire situation for four years where every day is an uncertainty. Every day you're trying to will your body to live. All the experts don't have answers. You're just believing. And I. And I absolutely have always believed in God. And that was a huge source for me. I had a feeling in my heart, as many of us do, that there was something that I was sent here to do, right? Something greater. And that pushed me. That greater purpose of turning everything I had gone into into purpose was one of the major motivators for me to keep going. Because it wasn't easy. It would have been easier in that moment to say, this is too tough. I don't wanna live like this. But it was that, that greater meaning that I think all of us. Well, a lot of us have that no one else can really see or understand. But it's something on your heart that tells you to keep going right through those seasons of survival. But I did not realize what was happening to my nervous system, right? And we know that when you go through a prolonged physical, mental, or emotional experience that is stressful, your system starts to break down and. And the emotional brain starts to take over when. Which really puts your body now in this hypervigilant, overprotective setting and you're living in survival, that becomes the default. I didn't realize that consciously, right? I was like, I'm a fighter. I survived this. And then when I got over it, I was like, I'm gonna go live my life, like, seize the day. So I wasn't like, feeling like I was living in survival. I wasn't operating, but I had this stress system running that I could feel like you couldn't see. I had a hard time. Here I am. I went back to dance. I'm a professional dancer. I have a hard time breathing deeply, like, as if my system wouldn't let me. And we know to do so is to let go, is to truly trust.
And there was no chill. Ashley had no chill.
No chill, no chill. I. I was your type A, right? Went to school on academic scholarship, cried when I got my first A minus. Like, felt like a failure, which took me many years to understand. When I was facing Goliath, I felt like it was all on my shoulders and I. I did it with God. But yet it felt like I had to be the perfect patient, perfect faith, perfect optimism, perfect everything in order to win, you know, defy the odds. And that hardwired me at a deep subconscious level that to not be perfect was to mean I was going to die. I had no idea about that consciously. That came years later through my work. Like, why is it so important for me to be perfect? And why am I crying over an A minus where it feels like a failure? And I. And as if that is this huge thing and that's that disconnect right between conscious and subconscious. Because when I did defy the odds, my brain was super validated and like, look what we did. Let's stay in survival like this. This worked for us.
This makes us live.
This makes us live.
Yeah.
So we can't shut this off. I'm just going to subconsciously run this program in order to keep you alive. And then that I realized was a huge contributor to why I went through a second life altering health.
The second wave.
The second wave.
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