Of the hundreds of characters I’ve written, the one that’s been the most impactful is likely Ash. A friend to ten-year-old Anna as she goes through abuse, on a personal level, Ash represents so much for me. He represents hope. He also represents the ability to completely redefine experiences from something traumatic to something into something manageable.

When I was nineteen, I volunteered to be a hotline specialist for the local rape and sexual abuse center in Nashville. The training for this was very hard. One of the most meaningful, and personally helpful, topics was neuropsychology – specifically the role your amygdala and hypothalamus play in stress and flashbacks. I created a story in which my hijacked amygdala was my very own “bodyguard” and the ‘diminished’ hypothalamus, its assistant. I redefined what was harmful into something that allowed me to feel just a little less broken.

The goal of this workshop series is to help others redefine the “ashes” of their lives into something empowering and hopeful by offering concrete, practical and unique coping strategies to help de-escalate anxiety, training on the brain and defense mechanisms, personal narratives, and the completion of a creative project. We identify the “smoke signals” and then shape them into something useful, allowing them to become flames of transformation and renewal.

Participants will receive a 90 page PDF toolkit with additional opportunities for reflection, helpful charts for identifying smoke signals and resource options to help ease the discomfort. Fire destroys… and renews. The key is in the recognition that, within us, exists a phoenix who cannot be broken or destroyed but will rise from within the flames. 

What is ashRISE?

There are years of my life I only remember in fragments. A glance. The smell of his breath.  The way I learned to make myself small enough to survive it.

Abuse doesn’t just end when the leaving happens. It lingers — in the way I hold my shoulders, in how I scan a room for danger, in the breath I forget to take. No one knew that my smile was just a well-dressed panic attack. My calm was a costume stitched from fear.

The turning point came quietly — not a breakthrough, just a slow, stubborn decision to stop hiding. I started learning how the nervous system stores survival. Polyvagal theory gave me words for what I’d lived: how we fight, flee, freeze — and how safety isn’t a thought, it’s a felt thing. I made up stories about my amygdala being my bodyguard that helped me understand how hard my body and my brain were working just to keep me safe. Understanding the science helped, but it wasn’t enough. I needed heart. I needed creativity. What I really needed was permission to be me. 

So, I started—and then kept— writing — not for publication, just to have somewhere honest to go. It was a space where it was okay to let the screams take up space, to not hide anymore. 

That’s where ashRise was born.

In the midst of the darkest storm, in the middle of our greatest pain, we can

R: Remember

what was lost; remember what the trauma cost; grieve for that.

I: Imagine

what it might feel like to step forward into the unchartered territory of tomorrow — a blank canvas for you to define. Like stained glass, you are beautiful and able as you are today.

S: Shape

and mold your steps forward – not by losing or forgetting the past but by bringing it with you, knowing you are supported and encouraged.

E: Empower

yourself with practical tools and techniques designed to help you feel present and capable of moving forward and achieving your dreams and goals not because of or in spite of your trauma but with it.

ashRISE is a six-week workshop I built for people like me — people who’ve endured and adapted and now want to transform. It’s part neuroscience, part creative rebellion. We start each session with practical techniques designed to help us feel safe and truly present, then move to learning the science of defense mechanisms. From there, we make something: what I call a Personal Transformation Project — a work of art, writing, or creation that turns your survival story into something visible. 

The first time I ran it, a woman told me, “This workshop is life-changing. The sessions feel like a sanctuary from the real world.” I cried at that because a sanctuary exactly what I had been trying to build — a place where survivors could be seen, heard and truly accepted without having to explain.

Every cohort teaches me something new. One man wrote music out of his anxiety patterns. Another woman stitched her divorce papers into a quilt. Each act, in its own strange beauty, said the same thing: I’m still here. People often mistake resilience for toughness. It’s not. It’s tenderness that’s lived through trauma. It’s knowing the fire nearly took you and lighting another match anyway.

I used to be afraid that healing meant diminishing the impact of the trauma. It doesn’t. Nothing replaces or makes up for the loss. Healing is simply recognizing that you are still as valuable as the you before the trauma was. That person you grieve for, the one you miss? Healing recognizes she’s still with you. 

For me, ashRise is the aftermath of survival turned inside out — the alchemy of turning pain into art, shame into story, memory into motion.

I still have hard days. I still flinch sometimes. But when I see the faces in that final session — people holding up what they’ve made from their own ash — I know this much:

We can’t rewrite what happened, but we can re-author what it means. And that’s what rising looks like.

Limited to 10 for an intimate & personal connection. 

Virtual. 

Free. 

NEXT COHORT BEGINS DEC. 28, 2025!