The best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard:
When I was 19: It was a cold February night and I was wearing blue flared sweatpants while my Dad drove two girlfriends and I to an airport hotel in Montreal. While he drove back to Ottawa, we set the hotel alarm clock to some ungodly hour to make sure we got to the airport in plenty of time for our flight to Puerto Vallarta. Two days into the trip, we met two brothers in their 40s at a themed dinner at our resort - the resort was called the Radisson Vallarta but now it’s a Planet Hollywood and I’m telling you this in case you are also resort obsessed like I am.
One night we were driving into town to go to the bars and I found myself stretched out on top of everyone in the back seat of the cab while they all shouted “Rapido!!” and I laughed a laugh that felt alltogther new and reckless like a piece of me was finally coming a little bit apart.
Later that night on the dance floor one of the brothers asked me if I had a job. He knew I had a job but I could see that there was something more to his question. So I told him yes - I actually had a retail job at Banana Republic at the time as well as a job coaching gymnastics in addition to going to university full time but the point wasn’t the job at all I would soon find out.
“You get paid for the work you do at your job right?” he asked over the blaring early 2000’s club music.
“Of course,” I yelled back while sipping a pink and white frozen miami vice - wondering where this was going.
“Your relationship sounds like a lot of work,” he went on (I may have admitted about the tumultuous state of my relationship back home over margarita refills earlier in the week) - “but you’re not getting paid.”
(Spoiler alert - His advice wasn’t creepy even though the large age gap may lend itself towards that assumption - but rather it was informed. I was 19, that relationship sure felt like a lot of work and in ending that chapter I found myself working at a summer camp - single for the first time in 4 years and finding some joy in the revelation that I could feel whole on my own).
When I was 29: I was sitting in a hospital conference room drinking apple juice and learning to swaddle fake babies with Andrew. We were in the midst of another long day at a multiples prenatal class and theme of the course seemed to be how hard it would be to care for newborn twins. It was the type of course where scheduled c-sections were mostly already scheduled, where the instructor was adamant that the mom not be left alone with the babies for at least six weeks post birth and where breastfeeding sounded like a pipe dream.
Fast forward to the five nights we spent at the hospital after giving birth to our twin daughters. Five nights of relentless conflicting information about how much the babies were or were not eating, capped off with the casual way our obstetrician showed up and admitted that no one actually talks to anyone else at the hospital in obstetrics.
It felt like a reckoning of sorts - hearing him admit that truth. In a way it felt like he was saying, “We can’t agree on anything here,” - so rather than take their advice as gospel, I should instead listen to my own intuition. And then the information trickled down into my being, releasing me on the way, of any notion of how I should do this early motherhood thing, and instead freeing up space to make my own decisions, to listen more to my gut than to any class or book I’d read. I nursed those babies for 15 months. I didn’t count the hours (or minutes) between feedings. I surrendered to the fact that it was easier to just do what felt right over someone else’s notion of how this show should run. I still come back to that lesson always.
When I was 39: I was on a zoom call in my kitchen with Amy and she was wearing bright red lipstick and her arms were flailing around and she was asking me about movement and meditation and what I was doing for myself in that area and we were in the middle of a strategy call and all I could think of was that this was the missing piece. I was years and years into my career evolution and I’d been craving some secret push to level up and it seems that push would come in her question. What was I doing for myself in that point in my life? I was working out. I was giving myself manis and pedis, god knows I was drinking wine and I was busy - I had three businesses I was juggling but I craved more. She told me she was going to send me some youtube videos.
& there is magic in meditation, there is this intangible sweetness from doing something strange for the sake of just shaking up the universe, your energy and maybe even calling some good things in.
When I was (last week) years old: I read an ad on social media about knowing where to draw the line on a client project. Knowing when the client would be pleased and not going an inch further and I can’t stop thinking about it. I am someone who can make a beautiful website in one day. I am also someone who will spend all of my Saturday hours while at a dance competition in between routines madly perfecting a client site until I deem it worthy of not only their eyes, but my harshest critic too (me - I’m the harshest critic).
5 things I saved this week:
1 | the prettiest colour combo
2 | an instant room maker
3 | some sexy flats
4 | filed under: when we have an airbnb ideas
5 | shopping for swimwear is my version of therapy
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Thank you for reading. I used to write a lot so this feels good. — Ashley.
Love this, Ashley!
"…there is this intangible sweetness from doing something strange for the sake of just shaking up the universe, your energy and maybe even calling some good things in."
Gosh how I relished in these words. They moved through my mind like some kismet bliss! I loved this post, this format, and all the pretty imagery 🪄✨.