I don’t have time to write this but the more I have to do the more I get done, you know? Also, Dolly and Wendell are gone and what even is the point anymore? Will we make another star as good as they?

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This afternoon, I will order an iced caramel macchiato from Starbucks—not my favorite but hers and tonight, I will keep my tradition of reading through some of her journals and scrolling through our pictures on my phone.

The day before Aunt Michelle came off life support, my mom and I went to the beach. I’d been spending lots of time with Aunt Michelle at the hospital as one of her official caregivers, and it wasn’t getting any easier, so the beach was another form of therapy I was grateful to have.

While we were there, sitting under our umbrella, we got a call from my uncle saying Aunt Michelle had officially asked to come off life support and it was happening tomorrow. I was wrapped in my towel drying off and I bit down on it hard to keep from sobbing.

In the middle of this, this group of girls came up to me and asked if I would take their picture. I did. Then I snapped this one on my phone because I thought it was funny that they had no idea. They couldn’t see my saddest face behind my sunglasses.

Below are notes copied and pasted from my phone that I wrote during the time I spent with her in the Mayo Clinic’s ICU. Extra thoughts are added in parentheses.

We changed rooms and it made me want to throw up again

I almost passed out holding her hand during a coughing fit (Pulmonary fibrosis makes you cough a lot and it was particularly horrifying with a trach)

She wants the nurses to know they’re doing a good job

She forgot who I was one time. Told me there were snacks and I said “I know, I’m the one who put them there”

Body is starving but I’m not hungry (I spent days at a time in her room at the hospital. You can only pack so much food and I didn’t want any of it anyway. I frequented the hospital Starbucks just to have something in my body.)

Today she wants to hold my hands. Both of them.

I almost told her I was seriously thinking of moving to North Carolina but the nurses started coming in to take her away.

She asked to come off life support. August 27.

Her younger sister told me “she loved you the most” (This was the day she died and I’ve only told two people in the world about it until now.)

September 12

If I had been there more often, would I have been able to help keep her spirits up long enough?

I don’t have anything poetic to say about it, but her death and the year leading up to it cross my mind regularly and I remain affected by the experience in ways I’ve processed in therapy and in ways that have helped me grow as a person. I think it’s part of the reason I’m interested in end-of-life care one day.

I wish she was still here, but thank you for letting me remember her in ways that are helpful to me. She would think this is so weird.

Later, gators.

— Ash

“This is you.”

Yikes.

I guess it’s appropriate then that my word for this year is ask, which is annoying. Why didn’t I choose a word like “theuniverseknowswhatIwantandhandsittomewithoutmehavingtosayanything”? Who knew I’d have to actually practice my word?

In 2023, I told the internet I was moving states and posted a wish list of items to help me stock my apartment. People I knew only through Instagram and people I hadn’t spoken to in years cleared the list and my apartment lacked nothing. I don’t know why that felt fun and easy, but it did and it remains one of my favorite things that’s ever happened to me.

In 2025, when I had an unusual stomachache that wouldn’t go away, the only reason I didn’t drive myself to the hospital was because my car didn’t have enough gas to get there and back. I didn’t want to inconvenience someone for “just a stomachache,” but after an emergency appendectomy (is there any other kind?) I ended up having to accept help moving my body from one position to another, washing my hair, and preparing food.

Now in 2026, I feel like I’ve met my quota for asking for help. But why, then, did so many people send me that video? It’s the same people who know I’d rather pay to take an Uber from the airport than ask someone to pick me up. There’s an unhealthy fear of taking up too much space or whatever.

I wasn’t planning on telling the Internet, but you’re getting to witness some real-time growth here: I’m starting grad school this fall to get my Masters in Counseling. Do you know where this is headed?

I’m going to ask you for money.

First, context. People like knowing what they’re paying for, right? This part I have no problem sharing.

When I started my undergraduate studies, I declared a counseling/psychology major. I loved my intro classes, but college was hard with undiagnosed ADHD and anxiety, and I also had no interest in getting a PhD, which is what I thought you had to do to get a job in the field. A year in, I switched my major to business, which was the actual worst (gross, macroeconomics) then finally landed on English simply because even at 19, I believed if you could write, you could do anything. I have no regrets about this decision. Here I am doing anything!

But I graduated ten literal years ago and in all this time I’ve still wanted to help my community through counseling. I love the job I have now and I plan to keep it through and beyond my masters pursuit (when have I ever been able to do one thing at a time? I can’t recall) but I have a real desire to contribute to society in a way that feels more meaningful to me. I don’t necessarily feel called to digital marketing—good at it and grateful for it, yes—but I do feel called to care for people. I will tell you all about my thoughts on AI and the Internet one day, but for now I’m ecstatic to begin preparing for a job the need for which I don’t think will ever go away.

After earning this degree, my hope is to one day own a private practice wherein I will practice play therapy, which is typically used with children ages 3-12. I also hope to help adolescents and adults with depression, anxiety, and OCD, as well as having some kind of helping hand in end-of-life care. Is that too many things? I hope not. Again, I can’t do just one. There are a lot of people I want to help.

Okay, bear with me for this part. Best for last, right? This is like ripping off a band-aid.

My school, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, has a Partnership Program, which allows students to pay tuition through fundraising. I don’t love telling you these numbers or doing this at all, but my goal is to raise $3,300 per semester (or $6,600 per year) for the next three years.

Will you help me do this?

If you decide that it’s in alignment with your life and situation, there’s a button below to make a monthly or one-time tax-deductible payment. Then I’ll add your email address to my super special list and you’ll get monthly updates from me about my schooling. Plus if I see you in person, I can provide thanks in the form of sourdough baked goods or art or something else I don’t know yet.

Donate here

This is so weird and clearly I feel some type of way about it, but thank you for reading and caring. I will be thrilled to answer your questions if you have them. And because I can’t stop thinking about it, here’s this clip from Parks & Rec.

One last clip because this is who I really am and if I’m asking you for money you deserve to know who it’s going to.

LATER, GATORS. Thank you for being here.

I missed a June update because who has the time and so that means I’m forcing two months of my life upon you. It’s already August as I write this, and I’ve spent much of today in a horizontal position, trying to prevent a sickness I sense is coming from all my buzzing about. No matter.

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One thing I don’t feel great at is acting fast, but I could win marathons in thinking and feeling. (Does this make me a duathlon-er? If I learn to do all three, is that a triathlon? Now I’m feeling meta.)

I’m afraid that acting fast, or nipping it in the bud, as Barney Fife says, means I’m being impulsive/running away from my problems/being a quitter/etc., so I tend to overcorrect and think decisions into the ground or wait way too long to see if it gets better, which isn’t helpful when something needs to be addressed ASAP.

I started working with a new client in April and three weeks in, the two of us had a Zoom meeting wherein she expressed dissatisfaction with how our work together was going. She wondered if I was overwhelmed, or didn’t want to be doing the work, or if I even wanted to be on the team at all. It was somewhat out-of-the-blue feedback, since this was our first one-on-one meeting since I came on board, and I reminded her that I had been reporting that everything was on track and none of my tasks were overdue with no comments from her stating otherwise. This seemed more like an issue of communication and misalignment of priorities (and panic and unrealistic expectations from her, but I didn’t say that part out loud.)

It was a long, unpleasant Friday meeting, and in short, I think she thought she was trying to care for the person (me), but it came across as her questioning my competence. She said “I hope I’m wrong,” and almost cutting her off, I replied, “you are.” Her suggestion was to give us both 30 days to reassess. A performance improvement plan? I’ve never been on one of those.

I closed my laptop, left the coffee shop, cried in my car, and asked God for a sign within the week about whether or not I should drop this client because I could not live like this, with someone expecting me to not be able to do my job, for 30 days. I can handle work-related feedback, but this person-related feedback that I disagreed with affected me (and my weekend) deeply.

I consulted with friends, family, clients current and past to see if I had any blind spots that I could correct. In addition to being afraid of acting fast, I’m also afraid of being arrogant, so since I didn’t think I was wrong in this situation, I wanted to check myself. I asked people I knew who would tell me the truth, and all of them reassured me of my ability to do my job well. One person I consulted with was a friend who used to do similar work for the same client. (Why on earth did I not reach out to her before I signed a contract?) After sharing my rendition of the details, she replied, “you need to get out, because this will not change.” Amongst a slew of other kind and validating things.

Hello, Sign Within the Week.

Something I don’t think I’ve said to anyone out loud is that I knew something was off with this client during the interview process, but I continued anyway. I haven’t said it because I didn’t want anyone to think I was trying to retroactively protect myself, but the real reason is how am I supposed to explain a gut feeling telling me one thing and my ability to see potential telling me another? I liked the business, it was work I could do, and one of my strengths is building rapport with my clients—it would be fiiiiine. Let the record show: my gut knew it would not be fine and I didn’t listen.

But I listened to the feedback from literally everyone I asked and nipped it in the bud by submitting my resignation via another Zoom the following Friday, a week after that original terrible meeting. I guess nipping it in the bud technically would’ve been not taking on this client in the first place, but let’s just be happy that I parted ways at all. I spent several months debating the release of another client in 2025, so these seven days felt like lightning.

I closed my laptop after my resignation, and openly wept in a Panera across from the friend I asked to be there with me. I think I was sad that it didn’t work out, because I really did want the partnership to reach the potential I saw, but I also had experienced such inner turmoil because of this client and I was exhausted from it. It was also because even after kindly but firmly (firmly for me anyway) stating why I was leaving and that no, there was not a part of this job I would still consider doing in a different capacity (I was asked to stay), I could tell the client and I would never be on the same page about this. We will save people pleasing and codependency for another day.

I started this post over a month ago now, and I’m trying to finish it out, but thank goodness my feelings are not as strong as they were for the first eight paragraphs. I do not miss the client or the paycheck—the money wasn’t worth it, quite frankly—and I’ve enjoyed the life I’ve lived since we parted ways. I can’t see a way in which my New York trip could’ve gone the fantastic way it did if I’d stayed on that team—I would’ve been checking my phone constantly and probably stuck somewhere on the street trying to complete an “emergency” task.

So to land this plane, I nipped it in the bud as best I could, I’m learning to trust that things will be okay, and I’ve apologized to my gut for not listening to her (but could she be a little more assertive, please? Don’t worry, I see the irony.)

So much happened in May that I either can’t remember it all or just can’t be bothered to continue talking about it here. I do make the rules and I will cease writing when I lose interest, which could be sooner than usual due to one of the updates you’ll read below.

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