Aug 26, 2020
There’s a lot of debate these days around the topic
of masks…no, I’m not talking about Covid masks right now, I’m
talking about the proverbial masks that a lot of us put on. Maybe
we are putting on a mask that says that we think we’re perfect or
our life hasn’t been hard, or maybe we’re hiding things in our
past. Those masks can be so dangerous, but when we begin to remove
those masks to reveal the deep layers of truth within us, that’s
when we really come alive. My guest this week is Ashley
Abercrombie, a writer, speaker, and author of the book
Rise of the Truth Teller: Own Your Story, Tell
It Like It Is, and Live with Holy Gumption. She’s
also the cohost of the hilarious and helpful podcast, Why,
Tho? and can be found basically wherever there is a
coffee or a cheese board. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband
and two sons. I had the absolute best conversation with Ashley.
When I met her, I knew she was my kind of person. With no further
ado, join me to hear more about Ashley and her mission.
6:00 – The Ashley Abercrombie 101
- Ashley is an author, speaker, and
podcaster. When
she was 21, she moved from the small town of Eden, North Carolina
to Los Angeles where she met her husband and they had their first
baby. Four years ago, they moved to Manhattan and had their second
baby. Not long after, they realized how much they missed their home
in California and decided it was time to move back to their beloved
community there.
- Ashley has been writing since she was her little
girl. Her best-selling author and chart-topping podcast were not
overnight successes. Ashley has been writing since she was a little
girl; hers has been a journey of 20 + years spent writing on lunch
breaks, early in the morning, and late at night because she simply
loves expressing herself through the written word.
- Writing has been a way for Ashley to process her
own pain and serve the community around her. In her early 20s she
became distracted from that calling and experienced a lot of pain,
but was able to process it, recover, find her voice, and pursue
writing and speaking full time.
- It took a long time for Ashley to understand how to
put on her own oxygen mask first but take off her “performance” and
“strong” mask to realize she couldn’t be strong all the time, every
day.
- Especially in the Christian sphere, we can act like
we need to show up with everything clean and tidy and that we can’t
have messy stories, which is obviously a lie from the pit of
hell.
11:36 – A Deep Wound, A Lifeline
- Growing up, Ashley and her brother spent a lot of
time with their grandparents and great aunt while their parents
worked. Ashley went to church with her great aunt every Sunday
morning and brought flowers for the alter and opened the library
for the pastor and church members. For Ashley, it represented a
place where she could find respite and quiet from the noise of
school and the hustle and bustle of trying to figure out everyday
family life.
- When she was 16, Ashley decided to walk away from
the faith community because as a teenager, she was struggling to
relate to an older church crowd. At 21, while living in Los
Angeles, Ashley came back to the church in one of her most broken
moments. She found a community where she was loved and not
judged.
- So many people grow up in the church but walk away
from it at a young age, wrestling with their faith and what church
looks like as an adult. We can absolutely be constantly wrestling
with God and asking hard questions.
- There is so much shame around difficult
conversations. Often the church makes judgements or avoids these
conversations all together. The silence of shame became unbearable
for Ashley and becoming more an more isolated worry what people
would think about her but knowing she couldn’t tackle her struggles
on her own.
- She started asking God where He was. One day she
took a drive around Raleigh, NC and it started to storm. She
started shouting at God and as she did, she felt flooded by the
love the Holy Spirit had for her. She’d never experienced anything
like it before, especially since she thought she had to have
everything right before she could be loved by God.
- It was the first time she admitted to herself that
she couldn’t hold things together, and certainly not on her own.
It’s when she started to take the mask off and stopped caring what
people thought about her.
21:30 – Leading with Story
- Recover communities lead with stories. The first
thing you hear when you go to a meeting is other people’s stories.
They also helped Ashley realize the things from her childhood that
affected her as an adult.
- Ashley leads with stories in her book, the way she
learned in recovery. It’s connective and teaches us that we’re not
perfect. We don’t have to wear masks all the time, performing for
each other.
- For the first time in her life, Ashley started to
read the Bible and listen to sermons. She realized in the church
she was fed a “victory narrative,” but when she took time to
examine the lives of people in the Bible, she realized their lives
were very hard and began to identify with the imperfection she was
finally learning about.
- The Bible makes room for ALL people from all walks
on life on all different journeys. Ashley realized she could
finally stop trying to be perfect all the time because victories
never came from easy times in the Bible. God uses imperfect, flawed
people with imperfect, flawed stories.
- These biblical stories were literally the
foundation of our faith and God’s plan! The more we own the dark
parts of the story, the more healing it is for others who have
parts of their stories they feel shame over.
- It’s easy for our shame to creep back in even in
the midst of owning our stories in their entirety. God doesn’t lead
us with shame or guilt or holding our past over our heads. We may
have to reconcile our pasts, but you can identify that shame is not
from God. It is not how we would speak to ourselves or anyone we
love.
- We’re often expected in our cultures and societies
to stay inside certain boundaries and stay in our little boxes. If
we branch out from this, we’re told to get back in line. This is
especially true for women in our culture. The reality of integrity
is a deep commitment to being who we are, even when we’re working
toward improving our lives.
32:47 – Consequences
- We can made mistakes and find freedom in
forgiveness and repentance, but there may still be consequences to
our actions. Even when David repents and has been forgiven, God
tells him he will still have to face the consequences of what he
did.
- When we’re brave enough to take off our masks and
make mistakes and try again and do our best and be honest with our
story, we give others the courage to do the same. We are supposed
to value people as made in the image of God. It creates community
here on earth as God designed it when we drop our performance
narratives and allow our real stories to come through.
37:30 – Faith and Justice
- Ashley is passionate about social justice, fighting
human-trafficking, and initiatives against mass incarceration.
There’s a huge relationship between faith and justice and for many
people in the world right now, they are waking up to it for the
first time.
- Justice is the heart of God and goes hand to hand
with righteousness in scripture. There is never a way we can hate
our neighbor but say we love God. We can’t divorce our love of God
from love of neighbor.
- When Ashley really started listening to people’s
stories, she finally started to understand how unjust our systems
are. God invites us to learn His ways in a relationship with Him
that includes humanity. We must hold people and systems accountable
to right damages and injustice that they create, which includes
letting them feel the consequences of those actions.
- God has a lot to say about injustice, over 300
scriptures as a matter of fact. We are to create righteous
communities and connections, valuing all people in God’s
image.
51:06 – A Prayer
- As we navigate the rest of the 2020, Ashley’s
prayer for the world and for herself is that this would be a time
for us to lean into what the Spirit says.
54:00 - Getting to Know Our Guest
- Find out what Ashley’s professional athlete hype
song would be, how she’d prove she’s from the future if she could
time travel, what she thinks we’ll be nostalgic for in 40 years,
and a few of her guilty pleasures. Be sure to stay tuned to find
out what it means to Ashley to run a business with purpose.
(So Many) Memorable Quotes
10:26 “I believe that I have a voice and that it’s
important that I use it. I believe that about every person, no
matter our sphere of influence. I believe that God has created us
so uniquely to speak and that we live in this very wild world that
is looking for hope and looking for grace and looking for more
nuance than our news narratives and social media narratives allow
us to have.”
10:59 “I didn’t know how to let people in I didn’t
know how to say, ‘I have needs too,’ and I just thought I could
always be the fixer or the advisor, the one people came to, the
strong one…you realize that falls apart at some point. I’m not
strong all the time.”
11:19 “I had to go on a real journey of taking off my
mask and getting real and stop pretending and performing and learn
how to be in real relationship with people. We can be loved even
though we’re broken.”
14:58 - “I’m still unlearning some of the things [in
the church] that are cultural and not biblical. Even though I’ve
been hurt in the church, and I think if you’re human you have and
the church is not perfect (it has imperfect people in it), overall
I really do love that gathering and the corporate worship, and
being together.”
15:27 - “For me in some ways the church has been a
deep wound, but it’s also been a lifeline.”
22:27 – “I have come to a place where I value so much
more, integrity over image.”
23:32 “I really began to identify, and I began to
allow myself to be imperfect because that is all I saw in the
scripture … imperfection.”
“The bible is so diverse and rich. It makes room for
people. It makes room for people of all colors, all shapes, all
sizes, all backgrounds, and I just began to cultivate a life that
did that too.”
35:59 – “When you meet a free person, you feel free
to speak…when you see a brave person stand up against injustice, it
makes you feel brave. It makes you feel like there’s a normal
person doing the right thing, so I can be a normal person doing the
right thing instead of pretending this thing doesn’t exist.”
“Our courage gives others courage. Our vulnerability
allows space for vulnerability for others. Our love for humanity
cultivates diversity, equity, opportunities for people to be
together and I think that’s really what we’re here for.”
39:23 – “Justice is just not a trend. It’s the very
heart of God. Justice and righteousness are present together in
scripture.”
About Ashley Abercrombie:
Ashley is a speaker and writer,
whose work has been featured in various magazines and digital
outlets, including Darling, OprahMag.com, Relevant, and Grit and
Virtue. She is the author of Rise of the Truth Teller: Own Your
Story, Tell it Like it is, and Live with Holy Gumption, and
her YouVersion devotional, Finding God in the Hard Places,
has been completed by over 250,000 people. Ashley is the co-host,
alongside Tiffany Bluhm, of the hilarious and helpful podcast — Why
Tho.
For more than 15 years, she has
worked in non-profit spaces, leading faith-based initiatives,
serving as a prison chaplain and pastor, and speaking at
conferences, churches, and events. Ashley has an unrelenting
passion for justice, particularly anti-human trafficking and mass
incarceration initiatives, and serves as the Executive Board Chair
of Treasures, a non-profit that reaches and supports women in the
sex industry, and victims of sexual exploitation. Ashley and her
husband, Cody officiate a lot of weddings, leading couples through
premarital counseling, and are developing a curriculum and course
to help people prepare for marriage.
Born and raised in the Southeast of
America, Ashley has called Los Angeles and Manhattan home, so she’s
got a little southern, east coast, west coast twang. Ashley
currently resides in Los Angeles, raising two boys by the pool,
with her husband and beloved Nespresso machine.
Connect with Ashley:
- https://www.ashabercrombie.org/
- https://www.instagram.com/ashabercrombie/
- https://www.facebook.com/ashleyabercrombienyc
- https://twitter.com/AshAbercrombie
- https://www.pinterest.com/ashabercrombie/
Thank you to our partners of the show:
Ammas Umma
Did you know I have an ethical brand directory?
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The Lemonade Boutique
This episode is sponsored by The Lemonade Boutique, a
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