We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ashleigh Stevens. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ashleigh below.

Alright, Ashleigh thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The most meaningful project I have ever worked on was my memoir, Becoming Home: Journeying Through the Rooms of My Past to Reclaim My Story.

I have dreamt of writing my memoir since I was in the second grade. I filled composition notebooks front to back throughout my school career, constantly searching for opportunities to tell my story. Looking back, I know it was my coping mechanism. It was how my brain processed the world around me, and I am still very much the same.

I always knew this was a bucket list item for me, but I never thought I would have the courage to put my work out there. No one in my family had ever seen a glimpse of my writing, not until my book came out. It was always this private, safe space for me, and I was scared to share it.

However, through years of therapy, I felt like I had a story worth sharing. I learned so much throughout my process, and I felt a responsibility to share that with the world. So many people suffer alone and never get help. I felt a deep need to show the world that if I could share my darkest moments, my worst memories, and how I made it through them- maybe I could inspire someone else to do the same.

I just kept telling myself, “If I help even just ONE person, this memoir will be worth it.”

I never expected to receive so many messages from people stating that my memoir helped them get into therapy, feel less alone, and feel loved, heard, and cared for. It changed their perspective—and now I can say that it was all worth it.

Ashleigh, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I grew up the youngest of five children. I quickly learned that having a village of people around who love you is the key to making it through life’s hardest moments. I also learned that marrying your best friend is a fantastic decision. I learned that being a mother to two amazing young girls is the best job I will ever be blessed to have. I have learned that I am indeed crazy for being an 8th-grade English teacher. However, I get the opportunity to love, inspire, and teach a hundred kids every single year, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. They have changed me and inspired me, much like my own two children have.

I am a woman who loves to write and who decided that the kindest thing I could do for the world would be to share my journey through my memoir.

I am most proud of the help my words have brought to my readers.

Reviews like this especially:

“Becoming Home is a heartfelt memoir by Ashleigh Stevens. It takes the reader through the rooms (chapters) of her life as discovered in a therapy program in which she faces her trials and errors in a journey to understand her life and to recover from the terror of an abusive step-father and a boyfriend, as well as from the grief of family tragedies. Her specific steps of therapy are woven into her personal story as she moves toward acceptance and forgiveness. She accounts for her most traumatic issues by entering each one as a “room,” which she describes with the colors and designs that fit the eight particular traumas that have affected her personal growth. By facing them systematically, she has managed to free herself from their negative results. Within the rooms, individual chapters demonstrate the problems and the solutions which she describes as “joy and sorrow twirling together in a dance.” Little doubt exists that Ms. Stevens is a survivor, and she reveals her struggles with power, truth, and honest self-blame.

I would strongly suggest any reader of Ms. Stevens’ memoir have a box of tissues handy for both the sorrows and the joys. Not long into the book, I discovered her heartfelt and brutally honest attempt to tell her story for the sake of helping others, particularly teens, in facing their troubles and in escaping from self-condemnation. One thing became especially clear to me: in her personal growth, Ms. Stevens felt the impossible need to be perfect. She blamed herself for nearly everything that happened to her (most of which was not her fault or anything that she could control). Yet, through a structured mental therapy program, she eventually gets free from self-blame to achieve her professional goal of becoming a teacher and her personal goal of achieving happiness in spite of her difficult young life. Becoming Home by Ashleigh Stevens will marvelously achieve her goal of helping others free themselves from the deep troubles we all face, young and old, as we make our way through our lives.”
-Reviewed by Jon Michael Miller for Readers’ Favorite

It means the world to me because this is more than just a book you can read and enjoy; it is a book that is changing people’s lives, and I cannot believe I am the woman behind it. I am very proud of this work because it embodies everything that I am.

Of course, I am proud of the five-star seal it received from Reader’s Favorite and the kind reviews, but I am mostly proud of the fact that it inspires many people to get the help they need.

What sets me apart is my level of care. Whether that is in teaching or writing, I am a thoughtful person who pours her entire heart into every project. My students know that at the end of the day, I care about them deeply as human beings first and students second. My readers know that I am in this with them. They are not alone, and I am never too busy to hear their stories and offer compassion.

I want my students and readers to know the following things: I care, I believe in you, and you can do this.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I had to unlearn was that everything has to be perfect.

It doesn’t. This idea of perfectionism consumed me. I felt like I had to be a perfect person: daughter, sister, wife, mother, and teacher. And clearly, since no such thing exists- I kept falling short and eating that failure.

I was so set on this idealistic way of being that it was hard for me to see any issue as being “not my fault.”

I struggled so much with self-blame; throughout my memoir, my readers get a close look at that. I blamed myself for the abuse I suffered, and I felt like it was my fault that my brother was sick, that my other brother passed away, and that everything was spinning out of control. I thought it was all because of me. That I deserved it. That I wasn’t worthy of love because I wasn’t perfect.

Unlearning that in therapy was the hardest thing I have ever done. It was ingrained in me, and it still is sometimes. I feel like this is a constant process for me- to stop apologizing when it isn’t in my control.

Unlearning perfectionism is so hard, but it is also so freeing to be able to say, “I am worthy of love, just the way I am.”

This was probably the one spot in therapy where I felt I was not progressing the way I wanted to, and when I decided to publish my memoir, it was my way of forcing myself to face this issue. If I could release my shame and let the world see me for who I am, then I feel like I would finally let go of this constant pressure to be perfect because the Lord knows I am not.

Instead, I am relatable, and I am learning that is a far more interesting thing to be.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When I was eighteen, I had just enrolled in college to become a therapist. I was set on helping the world. A month into my first semester, my oldest brother, Ryan, passed away unexpectedly while my other brother, Scott, was fighting cancer at the exact same time. My life was blowing up all around me.

At first, I coped recklessly. Then, I dropped out of school, realizing that I was in no place to help others, and immediately forced myself into therapy.

When I look back now, at age thirty, I am insanely proud that at just eighteen, I had the courage to admit that I needed help and that I had the grit to work through my issues.

Everything in my life started to fall apart all at once, but when I started fixing who I was- things started getting better around me.

I think we have a lot more control than we realize over our lives. So when things get insanely hard around you, look in. I truly believe you can get through anything if you can create a life with meaning. I went through so many tough moments, from an abusive stepfather, to an abusive boyfriend, to grieving a brother while holding onto another for dear life, it was really tough. I never thought I would make it out until I did.

The resilience came, but I did not do it alone. My therapist helped me along the way, so did my family, so did becoming a mother. I knew that once I found the light at the end of the tunnel, the only thing left to do was share it. So, I wrote my book for the world to see. I wanted to share that even in our darkest rooms that haunt us deeply, there is light, there is something we can use for good.

I have found that my experiences, good and bad, have molded me into the understanding and compassionate person that I am proud to be. What I once saw as “stains and dents” I now see as opportunities for connection.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Home-Journeying-Through-Reclaim/dp/B0CRNL1YPL
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ashleightheauthor/?igsh=MWJ2NHpsdmp6ejgzOA%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
• Other: Becoming Home Merch: https://www.bonfire.com/store/becoming-home/

Image Credits

Libby Watt Photography