Ashley Neese

2 weeks ago | thedeepercall.substack.com | Ashley Neese

A few weeks ago, I shared some of the lessons I learned after a year off Instagram. (If you missed it, you can read it here.)This week’s essay continues the journey, exploring what I found beyond the need to be liked, and the deeper kind of belonging that emerged. As always, thank you for being here. xI didn’t wake up one morning finally free from the need to be liked.

3 weeks ago | experiencelife.lifetime.life | Lauren Bedosky |Emily Smith |Jon Spayde |Ashley Neese

Trauma can be physical, mental, emotional, generational, or institutional. A traumatic experience can be acute or chronic. Examples of trauma include illness, accident, assault, neglect, natural disaster, torture, and war. But even life events that most people welcome, like childbirth, can be traumatic. Without resolution and healing, trauma can persist in our minds as well as our bodies, which remain primed to react long after the original threat has passed.

1 month ago | thedeepercall.substack.com | Ashley Neese

One year ago, I left Instagram for good. I shared about my decision in this essay. Here’s what unfolded…A walk with my family through the Sierras feels different when I’m present. It feels different when my awareness flows freely from our children’s laughter, to the Red Tail Hawk soaring overhead, to the scent of the lupines, to the welcomed exhale from my lungs that comes from feeling like I am enough in that moment. That we are enough.

Feb 6, 2025 | thedeepercall.substack.com | Ashley Neese

This fall my attention has been stretched with our children, the animals we care for, the uncertainty of the times we inhabit, and the longing woven through all of it to stay connected to my deeper call.

Feb 6, 2025 | thedeepercall.substack.com | Ashley Neese

There I was, cleaning my own pee off the floor of a hotel room. Not because I’d been drunk or 9-months pregnant—because I had worked myself into such an exhausted and delirious state that I couldn’t drag my body from my bed to the toilet. I don’t even remember it happening. Nic and I just found the soaked carpet in the morning. If you read part 1, you’ll know how I got there.