Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine: Ash the Self Healer on Grief, Power & Awakening

In this episode, Erika Taylor-Beck speaks with Ash Weigand, known as Ash the Self Healer, about her journey of healing and empowerment. Ash shares her experiences with trauma, the impact of patriarchy on women's lives, and the importance of sisterhood in the healing process. They discuss the significance of emotional expression, the concept of sacred rage, and the role of community in supporting women's empowerment. Ash emphasizes the cyclical nature of healing and the need for women to reclaim their strength and power through connection and support.

Takeaways

• Ash channels guidance from the infinite goddess and Mother Earth.

• Healing begins with forging a relationship with oneself.

• The patriarchal system has suppressed women's power for centuries.

• Powerlifting helped Ash reclaim her strength and identity.

• Sisterhood is essential for healing and empowerment.

• Anger and grief are natural responses to trauma.

• Emotional expression is crucial for personal transformation.

• Women have been conditioned to believe they are not enough.

• Community support can lead to profound healing.

• The reclamation of the feminine is vital for societal change.

Titles

• Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine

• The Journey of Self-Healing

Sound Bites

• "I allow myself to be an open channel."

• "Sisterhood is rooted in healing together."

• "Our womb is our center of power."

Chapters

00:00Introduction to Ash the Self Healer

03:24Ash's Journey: From Struggle to Self-Discovery

06:30The Impact of Childhood and Family Dynamics

09:15Catalyst for Change: The Loss of a Parent

12:12Reclaiming Power Through Spiritual Awakening

15:34Transitioning from Competitive Powerlifting to Healing

18:21The Importance of Healing and Self-Acceptance

21:30Navigating Emotional Turmoil and Transition

24:29Understanding Feminine Wounds and Societal Conditioning

28:45Unpacking Sacred Rage and Grief

33:12The Journey of Healing and Self-Expression

37:54Reclaiming Sisterhood and Women's Power

45:08Wisdom Weavers: A Community for Healing

45:14riverside_ash_round 2 apr 15, 2025 001erika_taylor-beck's.wav

Transcript

Erika Taylor-Beck (00:00.639)

Hello everybody and thank you for joining another episode of stumbling forward. This is your host, Erika Taylor Beck. And today I am really honored to have the opportunity to talk with Ashley Weigand or actually Ash. And you may know her better as Ash the self healer on Instagram. Ash, thank you for joining me today.

Ash (00:17.971)

Thank you for having me Erika. I'm super stoked to be here.

Erika Taylor-Beck (00:21.575)

I am super stoked to have you here. So Ashley is the first person I think that I have invited on that I didn't actually know personally, but I asked her to join because I have been very, I would say blessed to have found your content, especially at a time that I needed it most. And so I thought it was just, it has resonated. I always felt like the messages were very targeted. Even though I know it's for a collective, I always felt very much, wow, like this is...

Ash (00:23.5)

Hahaha

Erika Taylor-Beck (00:47.541)

this feels right. And so I was really, really honored that you said yes to recording with me today. And I'm excited to help, not that you need it, but to help share your message and a little bit about what you do, because I think it is incredibly powerful. And so with that said, do you want to share what you do? And so I'm not being super cryptic about it?

Ash (01:08.389)

Absolutely, Wow. I don't even know exactly how to put that into words. I feel like that's such a beautiful loaded question, but I think to place it into a very easy kind of text or an easy way to understand would be that I allow myself to be an open channel to

channel forward the guidance and messages and wisdom that comes from what I believe is the infinite goddess, the great creatrix, and also from Mother Earth herself and from the ancestors that surround us in this world as well too. And I channel forward that wisdom with the intention to be to spread into this world the infinite love and unconditional

compassion of the goddess of the great creatrix of Mother Earth to reignite the sacred flame of the goddess and the sacred feminine within the hearts of those who receive the messages that I'm called to channel so that we can, through that reigniting of the sacred flame of the feminine and the goddess, come together as a collective, as a society to help to heal.

Mother Earth and helped to bring her back into a place of harmony and balance society within that, back into a place of harmony and balance and kind of restore what has been broken and has been untethered and undone within society for thousands upon thousands of years.

through the rise of patriarchal control and the silencing of the sacred feminine energy of the world. So to put it into a short synopsis, I would say that that is my intention and that's my purpose of showing up every day to what I do. I love that, absolutely.

Erika Taylor-Beck (03:01.653)

That is a very long business card. No, but you're right. It's hard to put that into words what you do. And I know that you have evolved a little bit, even since I have followed you, I know that you have evolved a little bit in what you focus on. But I think when you and I talked, I think it was a week or so ago, it is insanely beautiful what you talk about with women and the power that they have and the community. And so I'm excited to get into that.

But as I mentioned, this is something that you are focusing on now, but this hasn't been what you've always done. Can you kind of talk a little bit about what your journey has been to get you to this point?

Ash (03:42.806)

Yeah, wow, another beautifully loaded question. I, you know, I always like to, whenever I'm answering this question, I always like to kind of backtrack a little bit to my origins, to my roots, right? As, you know, all of our stories originate from these beautiful roots that we start to begin to grow from within childhood. But my story, you know, it started with a divorced household, a divorced...

Erika Taylor-Beck (03:46.089)

Ha ha ha.

Ash (04:10.754)

divorced parents, my mother, she struggled with bipolar disorder, multiple personality disorder, anxiety, depression. And she herself, you know, through that really struggled with what I now believe in my heart, a lot of baggage that she was handed ancestrally, as well through the conditioning of women and the suppression of the sacred feminine energy.

And on my father's side, I grew up in confining circumstances with him and that side of my family being of the Mormon faith. And so I grew up for 18 years of my life, half of the experience of those days, because I did move back and forth between households. But half of that experience, I spent 18 years of my life in and out of the Mormon church and the Mormon faith where not only was I experiencing this wounded,

feminine energy on my mother's end, but I was also experiencing the actual patriarchal conditioning of women and the suppression of women within the Mormon faith as well too. And that faith, women are really not allowed in places of power as much organized religion is, you know, still to this day. And men hold the power and it's very patriarchal in that way. And so I grew up, you know, being in that faith, being told

what I could do, what I couldn't do, what I could wear, I couldn't wear, who I could talk to, who I couldn't talk to, what I could eat, what I couldn't eat all the whole nine. And so it, because of the circumstances that I experienced between those two households, I just always felt at a very young age, like I was living in this really confining box. And I think we all experience that in some way, shape or form in our lives because of the conditioning that our society places on us and the programming that our society places on us.

But it really felt, I even remember at so many points, like going to my mom in the good times when her and I weren't, or when there wasn't lot of emotional, physical, and mental abuse as was pretty normal in that household. But at some of the points when I would go to her and just tell her, like, just feel like I am living in a box and I'm like 11 years old, and saying this, you know, to her. so.

Ash (06:33.314)

I grew up in these circumstances that were just very suppressing, very confining, very detaching from myself. And on top of that, because of the wounds that my mom suffered through, also became very, like I was a parentified child, is probably the best way to put it. very much so was looked to by my mom to take care of her. I took care of my sister at a very young age because of my mom's wounds and her diseases.

things like that. And so I had to grow up really fast. I was forced into a box, disconnected from myself and disconnected from understanding, you know, what true unconditional love looked like as well too. And so growing up through my teens and my early adulthood, I

Because I felt so stuck in that box, I rebelled as much as I possibly could. I was like the rebellious churchgoer child who, you know, turned to drugs and turned to boys and turned to alcohol and, you know, the whole, the whole shebang and just was so disconnected from myself because of all of that. I adopted an eating disorder and, you know, entered into my early twenties from this like so deeply disconnected.

from myself and from the world around me place. And I just felt so lonely and so just at rock bottom. And in my early twenties, I had at that point was very reliant on alcohol to get me through the day. Like there was not one day out of the week that I did not go with, you know, going to work, coming home and drinking to an excess where it would black me out, you know, so I didn't have to.

feel and experience the pain and the loneliness and the trauma that I wasn't facing. so I spent my early 20s in that way and really just felt like I was hitting such a low, low point with myself and allowed myself to step into an abusive relationship at that point as well, too. That really mirrored the abuse that I experienced in my early childhood with my mom as well and didn't know that at the time, but now I do.

Ash (08:52.558)

very much so hit rock bottom. And it was when I was between the ages of 22 and 23 that I had what I now view as my catalyst to my spiritual awakening, to awakening, healing, to awakening, to reclamation of my power and who I am and how my life, you how I feel my life should be lived. When in 2017, my mom, you know, growing up with

the abuse that I suffered with her. was lots of really tough things, know, and hard to hold things that she would say to me and my sister. But a couple of the things that she would always say to us was, you're gonna be sorry when I'm gone one day, you know, when I off myself one day. And that was just always a threat to kind of keep us under her hand. And then between the ages of 22 and 23,

that actually happened where I lost her to suicide. And it was at that point where I thought I was at rock bottom prior to that, but then I lost my mom and I was catapulted even further into the soils of rock bottom in a way that I could not have ever understood that I would get there. So that experience, I call it my catalyst because

It was very much so in that experience that I had this deep awakening moment in like the deepest, darkest pits of my life. I experienced the most clarity that I think I've ever experienced to understand that if I didn't do something different, if I didn't try to find myself or reconnect to myself or change my life so that I could actually live from a, like actually just live in presence in my life.

that I would very much so be heading down that same road that my mom had headed down. And that scared the hell, excuse the language, hell out of me because I couldn't, I just couldn't, I couldn't go down that road. And so it was from that point on that I devoted myself. For the first time in my life, I devoted myself to myself. And I had spent most of my life in this people pleasing,

Ash (11:19.214)

caring for others mentality because of how I grew up in the church and with my mom. And so the first time in my life, I took a hard look at myself and said, I want to forge a relationship with myself. I want to heal. And so I dove headfirst. I dove headfirst into spirituality. I dove headfirst into the podcast, the self-help books, the mentors. And one of the things that I also dove headfirst into was exercise, reconnection with my body.

And that led me down this beautiful path as well in a lot of ways where I turned to competitive powerlifting to find my strength again, to find my power again. And in that journey, also became a, this passion that I have for helping women, helping women to reclaim their strength, helping women to reclaim their power. And I became a holistic women's competitive powerlifting coach.

And so I took women to competitions and helped women to find their power. And I just found this beautiful passion that I had for helping women to remember who they truly are underneath of all of the, you know, all of the conditioning that society places on us to say that we are powerless as women, right? And so I helped women at that point to find their strength and their power, but that didn't entirely feel right because

In competitive powerlifting, is so much, while it's a sport that connects you to your body and bridges that connection back into reclaiming power and strength of the body, it's also a sport that very much so tries to force and push in what I feel now and what I see now as some very intense ways. It pushes the boundaries of your body.

And it very much so was I saw women coming into the gym and going into competitions trying to push themselves, push themselves, push themselves, force themselves, force themselves, force themselves to do things that their bodies were just trying to say, hey, like not now or hey, I kind of a bit of a break and rest. And so I really saw in those

Ash (13:45.102)

circumstances and in that business, the wounded, you know, masculine aspect of society. I'm someone who very much so believes that we all hold sacred feminine and sacred masculine energy within us. The yin, the yang, the light, the dark, sun, the moon, right? And so it was that I was really seeing come to light the conditioning and the programming that was, a hold over these women.

in relationship to their masculine energy, where they just felt like they constantly had to push and overcome and do, and they could never be enough, right? And so they were always pushing themselves further and further just to be enough, just to be worthy, just to be seen, right? And to receive recognition in who they are. And that just didn't sit right with me. And it took another catalyst for me to really have this like awakening moment when I was in that business.

to completely shut down my business after I'd been a competitive coach for years and years at that point to shut down my business. But I had a client who I took to national level competition. was her first competition and I took her to competition and it was on her deadlifts attempts and powerlifting. You have a squat, a bench, deadlift attempt and we were second attempt of her deadlifts. And she walked out onto the platform

This is live televised powerlifting competition. She walked out into the platform and you know, again, she's trying to push her body past her limits. And she picked up the deadlift bar and she stumbled backwards and takes the bar with her and she falls backwards and she snaps her tibia fibia right there on the stage, live recorded for the whole world to see. And it was in that moment while I'm holding her on the stage and she's profusely crying and everybody's.

scrambling to get the medics there that I chose that that was not how I wanted to help women. I didn't want, it felt like I was just further helping patriarchal society and conditioning to help these women to feel constantly like they weren't enough and like they had to keep pushing for more and more and more to finally be enough. And so was at that point that I realized, you know, there was a lot of healing in me that I had to do as well too.

Ash (16:08.152)

to because I was also participating in this. So it's made me cause me to take a really hard look at myself and realize, how am I operating in that same belief of not being good enough and needing to force and to push. And so I took a step back from competitive powerlifting myself. took a step back from that business and I began this really beautiful like sabbatical where I was fortunate enough to take a little bit of time off from work and to

really dive deeply into healing my wounded, what I call my wounded masculine energy, I take a really hard look at where I felt like I wasn't good enough and why did I feel this way and why am I trying to push myself more and more and more and just never allowing myself to just feel good enough as I am and love myself as I am and just be okay with who I am. And so I dove into some

healing surrounding that and from that place I realized that my entire life because of conditioning and because of the traumatic experiences I experienced growing up, I was disconnected entirely from one half to the whole of who I am, my sacred feminine energy, that side of myself that inherently loves myself regardless and knows my worth and knows my value and

You know, holds myself in reverence and compassion and grace, right? And so I recovered that energy and spent so long and I firmly believe healing is cyclical and we never fully heal. It's just always evolution to the journey and the process. But I took such a deep dive into healing my masculine to reclaim my feminine and to help once I brought my feminine online, help that aspect of myself to further heal my masculine.

It was through all of that, this is very long, but it was through all of that that I came to understand that that was something that I, that was what I was actually passionate about. That was what my purpose was in this life, was to help women to just understand that they always have been enough. To understand that they have never been broken, that society has just told them.

Erika Taylor-Beck (18:01.387)

you

Ash (18:23.95)

that they are broken and society has made them believe that they are not good enough as they are when inherently just existing as the beautiful human that you are as a woman, that makes you perfectly good enough. So that's where I'm at now and that's the purpose of all of the work that I do. yeah, I think I'll stop there because it was very long.

Erika Taylor-Beck (18:50.663)

No, that was thank you though for sharing that because that's there's a lot of really deep and personal and I'm sure emotional things that you shared. So thank you for being vulnerable and sharing that because I know it's not easy, especially on more of a public forum because you've gone through some major stuff and it some of the core foundational relationships of your life. And that obviously paints how you view the rest of your relationships until

or unless you decide to make those changes, which you did. you should give yourself credit and kudos for that because not everybody does recognize it or listen to it. Even if you hear that call, they don't always follow it. And it's a very, I'm at a loss for words right now, but it's just, it's such a critical point. And I love that you were strong enough to take it.

considering all of the things that you had been through to say, look, I need to make a change or I'm going to end up like my mom and I want to help people, but this is not the way I want to do that. And I think now having heard your story and just seeing the persona that you share online, and I shared this with you before, it is very powerful. It is very warm. It's very loving. And you would not guess from talking to you or seeing you that you have been through so much darkness. And so again, just

Ash (20:13.865)

Thank you.

Erika Taylor-Beck (20:14.709)

Thank you for sharing all of that. And you had talked about at the end, women needing to feel powerful and to be seen for who they are. And I shared this with you before, but I really just went through something towards the end of last week where I started an entrepreneur business last November. I quit my 20-year corporate career and I wanted to build a business to help new managers and more tenured managers become better leaders through emotional intelligence and...

really just wanting to help set a really strong foundation because workplaces are not great places to be most of the time. And during the week, I just out of nowhere, and I'm a very even keeled person, very, very calm, very controlled. have a ton of emotional intelligence and self-awareness and out of nowhere, I think maybe Thursday, I wanted to flip my desk, punch my monitors and just, I was angry. I was frustrated. have a pendulum that I keep at my desk.

Ash (21:07.138)

Mm-hmm.

Erika Taylor-Beck (21:13.603)

And I was checking in with myself and I was getting answers, but I was like, but what does that mean? Like, I just was so frustrated and I don't know where it came from, but what it really stemmed from is I, and I was like, I'm going to burn this whole thing to the ground. I'm done. I can't do the podcast. I can't do this business. Maybe I should just go back to what I was doing before, but I don't, I don't want to do that. And once I was able to settle, I realized that's not at all what I wanted, but I was struggling with the transition.

Ash (21:36.076)

Yeah.

Erika Taylor-Beck (21:42.685)

of going from wanting to stay safe and unseen and wanting to play small to now I have to be more public. I have to be more vocal. I have to be more out there. And that transition has been really hard because I had to come to terms with some wounds that I didn't realize that I had that it's safer to play small. It is safer to not make waves. It is safer and it is more peaceful for everybody else. Like your emotions make people uncomfortable. So don't have them. Don't express them.

And so I was very independent, very self-contained. And so I went through actually a theta healing experience last week and just through some other things I've been doing, I think I was finally able to feel and heal some of those things and they came out and I was like, where are these coming from? But it was, it felt so good. And I do think it was, need to pivot from that to be able to start something new and to step into this new timeline and new self. But, some of that is I don't have to work so hard to earn

Ash (22:24.617)

Yeah

Ash (22:33.873)

Mm-hmm.

Erika Taylor-Beck (22:41.363)

anything, my worth, you know, I feel like I have to, if I'm not making money, I need to make sure that the house is clean and that I've cooked and I've cut the grass and I've done these things every day. I can't just have a day where I don't get something done. And I'm like, why do I feel like I need to earn love, respect, my place, you know, in the family, the place in earth? And it all I think stems from a lot of this, that that's kind of how we're raised. And it's so sad because we don't realize that we're experiencing it most of the time.

Ash (22:52.686)

Yeah.

Ash (23:11.19)

Yeah, I, my goodness, I, so many things came through me just now as you were speaking. And the first thing that I wanna say is how just proud of you I am for allowing yourself to experience all of that. Like for just sitting with yourself and letting it come up because that is such an uncomfortable experience to have, right? It's so uncomfortable to meet those parts of yourself that have been suppressed, the anger, the...

unjustness, the sadness, the grieving. It's so uncomfortable to allow yourself to just sit there and let it wash over you and through you and let it be moved how it wants to be moved. But that is the healing. That is the work. It is so important. And I'm truly proud of you for allowing yourself to do that because not only are you healing yourself, but you're healing the entire

higher lineage of women that came before you that didn't know how to do that, didn't have the opportunity to do that. And also you're setting the precedence for the women who experience your magic every day and also those women that, you know, are going to be trailing this world after you in whatever way that looks like. And so it's so powerful that you allowed yourself to do that. But it is so you're so right. It's so deeply embedded in us as women.

these wounds to not allow ourselves to be seen because we've been conditioned to believe that it's safer for us to play it small and to stay small and these wounds of, you know, having to show up as this perfect version of yourself or having to be perfect every day and constantly having to be proving your worth and on the go and, you know, proving yourself as being good enough. I...

root myself in, and this is what my sacred sisterhood community, Wisdom Weavers, is rooted in. This is the work that we're doing in this community, but I root my belief systems in these core feminine wounds that each of us as women hold, or the feminine energy within us holds. And these core wounds, a couple of them that I really just came through for me as you were speaking, is the witch wound, or that fear of being seen.

Ash (25:32.884)

the mother wound, is that, you know, needing to be perfect, can't, you know, sit down and rest, have to constantly be proving yourself and, you know, being good enough. And these wounds are so deeply embedded in the framework of our society because of the patriarchal conditioning that we as women have been forced into within society. And we've been taught that we, you know, just don't deserve to just stand

as who we truly are. We've been taught that we have to prove ourselves, we've been taught that we have to seek out through proving ourselves love and that we aren't inherently worthy of love. And so it causes us to, know, overstep our boundaries and people please. And it causes us to, you know, go down pathways in life that are totally out of alignment with the truth of our soul and the truth of who we are.

because we're trying to prove ourselves or receive love. It forces us into relationships that, you know, where they don't, where we one can't express the truth of who we are and feel unsafe to do that. But we also are, you know, inherently trying to prove our worth to that person. So it, you know, can force women into very narcissistic, abusive relationships. And there's just, I mean, there's so much to it.

truly this conditioning and this wounding that the feminine energy and women hold because of all of this patriarchal conditioning and judgment and shaming of women and control of women. But the thing is, that, you know, all of, because we, as women have moved through all of this wounding, we have suppressed so much. We've suppressed our truth. We've suppressed our needs, our wants. We've suppressed our authentic expression. We've suppressed our

creative expression, we've suppressed our anger, we've suppressed so, so much. And I am such a firm believer that, all of, and this is a big part of, you know, what my belief systems, whenever I do a one-on-one with someone or hold space within my community is based off of this core belief that all of that suppressed emotion, that we didn't get the opportunity to express or have suppressed because of fear.

Ash (27:52.866)

that all of that gets stuck and kind of held within our womb space as women, or if you want to call it your sacral chakra area, you know, whatever you want to call it. But within that sacred space, it's this beautiful holding tank for all of that emotional suppression. And it's also where our ancestral woundings are held as well, too. All of the anger that all the women before us experienced

in and of the same that we are experiencing through our lives. And it's all held within that space. And so the healing is to take all of what has been suppressed and to finally express it. And that expression, I found that when working with women, a lot of the time when you first allow yourself to step into that healing and to kind of really just open, I feel like the womb is also this like Pandora's box.

It's like when you finally allow yourself to open the doorway, open the lid to that box, that so much comes flooding out. And a lot of what's on top of the suppression of emotional expression that comes flooding out is a lot of anger. And I call it sacred rage, because it's sacred. There's a reason why we're rageful. There's a reason why we're angry, because we have been, there's so much injustice that's occurred to us.

We've been forced to be disconnected from our creative gifts, our power, our medicine as women. And so this rage is sacred and it comes to the surface the first time you open that lid. It's just so much anger. Like you said, you feel like you could just flip the table and just, you know, just kind of demolition, you know, your entire space. Like it's so true and it's so accurate. something that I've personally experienced so fiercely.

What I found is that, you know, what I firmly believe is that underneath of anger simply just rests grief. Grief for all the times that we as women did not get the opportunity to share our voice. Grief for all the times that we had our gifts suppressed. Grief for all the times that we didn't get to speak our truth or share our needs and our wants. Grief for all of the ancestors that came before us that were forced into being silenced and

Erika Taylor-Beck (29:57.279)

Yes.

Ash (30:17.186)

which were shamed, just grief that for centuries and honestly a couple millennia, if we trace the lay lines back to where these wounds really originated, where the separation from the feminine within women originated, it's truly just grief that is the foundation of this anger. And so when we allow ourselves to open up that box, open up the womb space, connect with ourselves within that space, our center of

power as women is our womb, our sacral chakra. Whoever is listening doesn't hold a womb, okay? But our center of power is the womb space. And so when we open that up and we let ourselves feel that anger and we take that anger and we don't like, you know, pop off at other people and we don't fly off the handle and we don't go, you know, full maniac.

right on the world, but we take that anger and we use it as the sacred rage that it is and we use it to finally express what has been suppressed through our creative gifts, through our voice, through our medicine, through the embodiment of who we truly know ourselves to be and want ourselves to be. When we finally open that up and we express that, that's the healing.

And so that rage, you know, that came up for you, I can only just, but feel that it was so sacred because it was underneath of that, you know, probably so much grief for, you know, one, not allowing yourself to in your life, you know, or being felt like you've been held back in your life, you know, from fully stepping into this version of yourself and then all the fears and the doubts that, you know, arise that have been kind of implanted.

in you and it's kind of funny that you say this because this past week, past couple days, I've been experiencing like so similar, such similar things as well too, where I'm just stepping into a lot of newness and I just had so much rage come up and so much grief and so much sadness and doubt and fear. And it's, you know, really, I just feel like all of that's got to come up. It's got, we've got to touch on it. We've got to heal it. We've got to hold it. We've got to see it.

Ash (32:30.786)

so that we can fully allow ourselves to step into the power that we have always held and that we're meant to wield in this life. So, Barry, just so proud of you, the synopsis, just so proud of you for allowing yourself to do that because again, that's the work, that's the healing, it truly is.

Erika Taylor-Beck (32:49.195)

Now, thank you. Thank you for that. Actually, a couple of things that you said resonated. When I first started going through my spiritual awakening, I had Pippa Haywood on here recently and she was kind of my magic coach, my spirituality coach. And one day we were doing chakra work and we were going through kind of a visualization and she was able to see them and said, like, you your throat chakra is a little bit more dim, know, yada yada, and we're going to work on this to make it more open and more powerful.

My heart chakra was massive. She said, it's really bright, it's spinning, it's going. And we went through all of them and she realized later, she emailed me and she said, I just realized I never talked about your sacral chakra because it didn't even register. And I had gone through kind of a sexual abuse as a child that I didn't remember. I had blocked it out until a couple of years ago. And I'm not mad about it now. Like I'm healed from that, but

Ash (33:30.166)

and

Yeah.

Ash (33:37.802)

and

Erika Taylor-Beck (33:46.687)

What was hard about that was that we never talked about it as a family. As I grew up, I had a situation in my early 20s that I spiraled out of control because I didn't, my inner self recognized, this is something that happened when you were a child, but no one talked about it. So I didn't know and I couldn't understand why I was handling it so poorly. But I didn't know how to express rage. And I didn't really know, I didn't want to make people uncomfortable because they were uncomfortable when I would be sad about.

Ash (34:11.64)

Yeah.

Erika Taylor-Beck (34:16.095)

sexual assault, you know, and so they would be upset and uncomfortable about it. So I just learned to hold it internally and I developed really bad coping habits. started drinking excessively. I was self-injuring and trying to figure out ways to, to feel it, to feel it or to not feel it. It just depended on the day. And so as an adult, you know, more recently and hearing that and doing some of this work, it makes so much sense because I didn't, that was shut down.

Ash (34:22.894)

Thank you.

Ash (34:33.549)

Yeah.

Ash (34:45.165)

Yeah.

Erika Taylor-Beck (34:45.323)

and it was, we don't talk about it, there is no rage. And I've never really been an angry person. Like I might be mad for maybe five minutes and I just walk away and I breathe and I'm fine, but it turns into internal sadness. I get frustrated and sad at myself and I internally, I don't know what to use, I internally combust essentially instead of taking it outwardly. And so that's something that I'm healing from now too. And so when you talked about that, that sacred rage,

Ash (35:06.52)

Yeah.

Erika Taylor-Beck (35:15.253)

Wow, what a powerful term. can't talk today. A powerful term because yes, it is. that it is, and you know, yeah, I'm not taking that on anybody else, but you are feeling the feels that you haven't felt for decades. And that is insane to think about that. And, he said the grief too. And there's a lot of grief in growing because you, you're

Ash (35:31.703)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Erika Taylor-Beck (35:40.553)

shedding old selves and the life that you used to have and the life that you could have had if you had been healed sooner. And so this is what I could have been if I had known or I could have dealt with it. And so there is so much grief that comes up. And I think I love what you had said about all of that because I know it's not just me. I know there are so many other people out there that are probably going through something similar, but not maybe knowing that they're going through it. And again, I didn't realize that this had happened until a couple of years ago. And then I had to go back

decades to heal something that like little Erika experienced and it totally changed the course of my life, but I had no idea about it until recently. going back, it explains so much and I'm able to look back at things and think, okay, now that I know through this new lens, this explains why I did this, this explains why I felt this way, this explains why I didn't do this. And so now that

Ash (36:20.878)

Yeah.

Erika Taylor-Beck (36:35.093)

flipping my desk period the other day, came out of nowhere. Nothing had happened. There was nothing that triggered it. I just felt so frustrated and angry and sad and I cried and I felt overwhelmed and impatient. And none of these things are things I normally feel on a regular basis. And I could not explain them. But I do think that was healing was look, it's okay to have these. Nothing bad is happening. And it was, it was weird. It was uncomfortable.

Ash (36:48.302)

you

Erika Taylor-Beck (37:04.063)

but it also felt so powerful afterwards because I was like, wow, nothing bad happened. can do this openly and it'll be okay. And then I felt like a whole new self in a way. so thank you for kind of explaining that a little bit more about the different wounds and things too, because I think, again, if you don't know about it, if you don't have the terms, it's hard to explain what you're going through. you don't know that it's not, that it is actually very normal.

Ash (37:16.662)

Yeah.

Ash (37:25.816)

Yeah.

Ash (37:31.755)

Yeah, my gosh, it is it and I think that that is you know, it just even that last sentence that you touched on there that it is normal and and that we in our society we have been so forcibly I firmly believe we have been so forcibly and very

What is the word that I'm looking at? Like intelligently by patriarchal standard, we've been so forcibly and intelligently disconnected from other women. We've been so divided in our connections with other women and in sacred sisterhood to the point where we don't understand or we don't hold these conversations with other women because we have been so taught by society that women to women connection.

and women to women, you know, sacred sisterhood and being held and received and loved on and supported in sisterhood is unsafe. And that sisterhood is, you know, something that is to be feared. And so because of that, you know, we don't, it feels, you know, so easy for us, I feel as women to just hold all of that, you know, in the womb, close to the chest and not express.

what we're going through and not understand that other women are going through, albeit in their own unique ways, but they're going through very similar circumstances or maybe have experienced eerily similar circumstances that we have. And if we all just were able to come together to rally with one another, to share our voices with one another, uplift one another and hold one another in our experiences, in our wounding, in our shame, in our pain, our anger, our grief,

we would understand that it's completely normal. I trace the lay lines of, and that's another wound, it's the sisterhood wound, right? And so I trace the wound of the sisterhood wounds back thousands upon thousands of years, prior to the rise of patriarchal control, which we kind of see really heavily rise into power and the defamation of women occur around the time of the rise of Judeo-Christianity.

Ash (39:42.35)

Prior to that, in Mesopotamian culture, in places like Sumeria and Babylon and all of these beautiful Egypt and all of these beautiful ancient places, we see cultures where women, they quite literally held each other in such reverence and respect. They healed together, they cried together, they bled together, women would take their child and if they had to go out and go hunt for the day,

for, because that was something that women did. You know, it's not widely known that women were actually hunters for their communities. They also stood in places of power and they were priestesses of the sacred goddess temples and all of these beautiful, amazing things. were head of household and they also held the wealth for their communities. It's just incredible what women did that we've been taught to forget.

But when women would go out to hunt or to go to the temples or whatnot, they would hand their newborn baby off to their sister to be nursed by their sister because they trusted her that much, like the women of their community that much. And we've just been so taught that sisterhood and conditioned through media and through patriarchal society conditioned to believe that we as women

Erika Taylor-Beck (40:44.245)

Wow.

Ash (40:59.186)

are better off separate and it's so false. You know, when we come together and we remind each other of who we are, that we hold this sacred power in our womb, our sacral chakra, that you know, our anger is sacred and that we, you know, are divine, beautiful divine goddesses in our own rights and in our own embodiments and that when we let, you know, our body's wisdom flow and we express.

our authenticity and we express our creative innate expression and we share our medicine with the world, you know, that when we come together in sisterhood and remind one another of these things, there's so much healing that happens. And, you know, I feel like that is something that I am seeing on the rise in our world today. I feel like we're living in such like vital, crucial, pivotal times in the world where we're finally seeing that reclamation of the feminine, the reclamation and rise of sisterhood, the reclamation of

of women, you know, rallying together to reignite that sacred flame of the feminine within one another's hearts. I truly believe that everybody in society, know, whether male, female, know, non-gender conforming, whatever you identify as, that we are all just these beautiful sacred mirrors of one another. And so, you know, when one woman allows herself to be vulnerably seen in her anger, in her pain, in her expression, that

shows another woman and gives another woman permission to do the same for herself and to realize, wow, hey, I'm not the only one that is going through this, that is experiencing these emotions. And it's safe for me to allow myself to feel them and to express them and to heal them. And it's safe for me to step into this connection with this woman to do that as well. And so I just,

It really truly just makes me so excited, you know, for the future of what society can be as we step back, step back, but also step into a new of, you know, these sacred ways of sisterhood and of women's power. It's beautiful.

Erika Taylor-Beck (43:01.067)

It is so beautiful. I just have all these feels as we're chatting about this stuff because it's just so incredible. And I do think, and something that you and I chatted about before, the patriarchy knew what they were doing by pitting us against each other because the power that women have when they support each other and when we're not competing, it's phenomenal. And when you have a group of...

Ash (43:17.201)

yeah.

Ash (43:23.853)

Yeah

Erika Taylor-Beck (43:25.579)

people, women that you connect with and that you genuinely support each other through the good times and the bad. So even if you're successful and one is not, they're still rooting for you because they are genuinely happy for you. That it's just, means the world. And one group too that I really have always admired, I love the power that Black women hold in owning themselves and speaking up and being confident and owning their shit. I'm just going to say it. And I,

Ash (43:36.494)

Mm-hmm.

Ash (43:46.37)

yeah.

Ash (43:49.805)

Yeah.

Yeah, I love it.

Erika Taylor-Beck (43:54.975)

And I have always admired and just thought how beautiful that is that they, and I know sometimes they get the angry black woman and I hate that because it's not angry. They're just being honest and they're being assertive. And I think so many of us have, like you said, been conditioned to not be that way. And I am always like, yes, clapping my hands for them because wow. And I, like you said too, it gives permission that.

I like how you're doing that. You're not disrupting anything. You're just being open and honest. And that's powerful. And it drives away the people that it should. And it brings in the people that it should. And it's like, want that kind of community too. And that kind of self ownership. And so I think it's so powerful. So I know you mentioned that you have kind of a community and women's.

Ash (44:36.514)

Yeah.

Erika Taylor-Beck (44:45.035)

kind of circle, do you want to share a little bit more about that for folks maybe who are interested in joining a sisterhood of sorts?

Ash (44:50.072)

Wow. Absolutely. Yes. Wow. The community that I have created, it's called Wisdom Weavers. And the intention of the community, as the name suggests, for women to come together to rally with one another, to allow themselves to become those sacred mirrors for one another, to step into authentic embodied expression, to heal openly, and through that healing, to reignite that

sacred flame of the feminine in all of her aspects, like you just kind of touched on. The sacred feminine energy is both a light and a dark energy. It is this beautiful balance between this version of ourselves that is kind of that really compassionate, gentle force, but is also that really stands in her power, isn't afraid to be wildly unapologetic in her truth.

And so in coming together in sisterhood with the Wisdom Weavers, we are healing openly and really helping to reignite that sacred flame of the feminine and of reminding each of us that we are these beautiful embodiments of the goddess in and of ourselves so that we can help to bring the sacred feminine back online within society, back online within the heart, the womb of Mother Earth.

to help to heal and to weave, which is the intention of the word weavers in wisdom weavers, to weave back together the sacred lines and the sacred codes of the feminine and the goddess back into society. so we have within that community every single month, we focus on a specific core feminine wound. This past month, we've been focusing on the sisterhood wound.

And next month we're going to focus on the witch wound. so every single month there's posts, there's content that I channel directly. I'm a channeler, I'm an oracle by heart and by soul. And so I channel directly these, what I call goddess transmissions into the community for what needs to be kind of transmitted to them to help them in the healing that they're moving through, through that wound. And there's

Ash (47:08.79)

Every single month we also do a women's circle where we come together at the end of the month around the time of the new moon after all of the healing and the connection that we forged over that month surrounding that wound. And we come together and we lift one another up and we release that wound once and for all from ourselves and we do it together, you know.

It's virtual, so we do it as closely, you know, hand in hand, heart to heart, womb to womb as we can in a virtual setting. But we let all of that shame, all of that judgment, all of that wounding go. And it's just such a sacred place. And it's new. I've had the community only open for almost about a month now, but women have already been coming together with one another and just expressing such awe.

authentic, vulnerable connection. And it's so powerful that we have been able to really see the roots of these wounds, you know, just being let go of. It's just amazing.

no.

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