We recently connected with Ashley Lagunas and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Ashley, thanks for joining us today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

I’ve heard it once said that the best things you’ll ever teach your kids will be “caught” not “taught”. Meaning, it’s things you do that always speak louder than the things you say.

One thing my parents did that I remain grateful for till this day is the way they took risk, and did very hard things.

I was eight years old and my mom was just starting her remission to breast cancer when they decided, with four other families, to move to southern Mexico and start a church. The list of why this was a crazy idea was a long one. They didn’t speak the language, they had never been out of the country, they had three young kids and my mom’s health was fragile. Yet they had a dream. That dream packed us up and took us on the wildest and greatest journey. We were in the realm of the unknown and learning to figure it out as a family. We spent many hours lost in cities as my dad tried to read street signs and my mom giggled through ordering food, and figuring out how to explain to the store clerk the cut of meat she needed to make a roast. They were leading with their faith and a dream, which was full of inconvenient and hard things, while their three kids where watching from the back seat taking life notes. My little eight year old self had no idea what I was learning. I remain thankful for my parents journey that taught me creating things and pursuing a dream will take you to places you may feel like you don’t belong. Dreams are full of unexpected detours and take way longer than you thought, they are hard and require a wild grit to keep going (Thank you mom for doing that for us when I know you didn’t feel like it). yet, the biggest thing they taught me was simply; dreams are possible.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Growing up I didn’t know that this would be the path for me. There where shadows of it. I definitely loved music, I loved preforming and I was captivated by the poems my dad would write and recite after his sermons on Sunday. Yet, it was when I started out on my own path during my college years that I began to discover more of who I was. Really it was when I discovered who God was. While I did grow up in a Christian household, my faith really was centered on my parents and their faith. Our family went through a hard time that shook my beliefs to my core. I felt lost and I began searching. A friend inviting me to church on my college campus and I quickly learned I wasn’t the only one searching. It was a marking time for me. I began to get to know who Jesus was and is; The loving God who died for me, rose for me and was with me in the thick of what I was going through. I bought a guitar and started learning, it wasn’t long before I wrote my first song.

What really began my growth journey with songwriting was when I had an amazing opportunity to travel and share my faith others. I started serving with a non-profit organization that would take groups of people to different nations to live for five months at a time. We would work with local organizations and serve in soup kitchens, children’s homes and sleep on dirt floors in villages. It was incredible. My songwriting grew a lot during this season and so did my faith. I’d come home with journals of songs, and I knew a dream of sharing those songs was growing inside. Thus began the journey of doing that. It’s been a journey that has grown me in ways I had no idea would.

My music has been that space for me where what I am going through collides with my faith and a song is birthed. My hope is that my music invites others into that same space; a space where hope and courage are tangible and present in their own life. I want others to know they are not alone, and that God has created them with purpose. I hope that my songs bring a clarity of who God is to the fog of what walking by faith can feel like sometimes. He is with us through and through.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

When one feels called to create, often times resources (finances, gear, and opportunity) are non-exist. Yet there exists this desire to create and that heart space can feel hopeless. I remember feeling this way when my husband and I had this strong desire to make music but we felt like we didn’t have any community or resources to do so. He had lost his job and we where living in my grandparents basement. All I really had was my faith, my journal and my guitar. So I’d sit for hours and write. Sometimes our most creative space are the times when we don’t have all the elements to succeed. That pressure causes us to lean and learn new ways. The basement became that place for me. I had read a story out of the Bible about a man named Paul who took a voyage that changed his life. It was a journey to where God was sending him to a place called “Roma” but getting there was going to take all he had. The journey was turbulent and long and involved many days of slow sailing, and eventually he even looses his ship. He gets there. He gets to Roma; the place where God was sending him. I felt a little like Paul, in a boat of my own trying to sail through and get to where God intended me to be. Around the same time, I actually found a piece of paper in the dirt when I was on a walk, there was a word written on it; “Roma”. I taped it to my mirror in the basement. I felt like it was God’s sweet word to me, saying you’ll get there. Fast forward a few years after that season in the basement. Doors and resources began to open for my music and we recorded my first project. I was sitting in the studio listening to the mix of my first song. My drummers wife had set her bag down next to my guitar, I looked over and there was one word, written across her bag and the word was “Roma”. Only a loving God takes a word I found in the dirt and brings it to a “Roma’ moment of my own. I realized there was purpose in my journey and that it was actually the season of not having all I thought I needed that gave me what I needed as a creative. While resources and opportunities are essential they never replace the journey of who we become in getting there.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

The truth is, creative or not we all have “Roma” to get to of our own. I hope to continue to make music that brings others on a journey and reminds them that there is purpose to where they are at and that God sees them and is with them in it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.ashleylagunas.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ashley.lagunas/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ashleylagunasmusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNo49s4Xx3hOEn-c3JIJppQ
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@ashleylagunasmusic Follow on Spotify; https://open.spotify.com/artist/0NtT4wt6EUODMNyschztLt?si=XKdYt_l6RGuMk_njK4ceUw

Image Credits
Jena Willard