Today we’d like to introduce you to Ash D. Collins

Hi Ash D., please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.

Maybe I was born with a natural resiliency. Maybe it was developed out of necessity. Whichever is the case, I have been served well by it.
My father was abusive. He went to prison when I was twelve. His choices had a ripple effect on my life. By the time I was 20, I had a drug addiction. By the time I was 29, I had a Department of Corrections inmate number. At 40, I sustained a serious hand injury that could have been career-ending. None of these are what make my story unique. What does is that I choose not to make these what defines me.
What defines me is my creativity and my honesty, the friendships that I hold, the faith that I keep, and that I never quit. Not anymore. I can turn challenges into opportunities so that’s what I do. It is what I have always done.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?

I’m sure there were smooth bits here and there. In fact, in my late 30s I had a period where my life was great.
Most of it though has been full of bumps. I already mentioned that my dad went to prison when I was 12. What I didn’t mention was the guilt I carried for decades. You see, I was a key witness. At the time, for a long time, I thought it was my fault that he had gone to prison. I hated myself for something I had no control over, his choices. His actions.
The guilt I carried led to a series of bad decisions and those decisions led me into many bad situations. As a teenager I found drugs and, for a while at least, they made it so I didn’t have to think about how depressed I was. I remember those early years, I would have done anything, and I do mean anything to try to not feel what I was feeling. Drugs numbed me. I mistook numbness for happiness. It is true that many kids experiment and grow out of it by their early 20s. For me, it took much longer.
Now let’s fast forward through boyfriends and one-night stands. Through benders and parties. Let’s fast forward to the end of the first decade of the 21st century. By then I had a full-blown drug addiction. One I had to feed, constantly. Something to know about drug addicts is that we only have so many options. We die, we go to jail, we go to rehab/hospital, or we find recovery. That’s it. There is no toning it down or using a little. We stop using—by circumstance or by choice—or we die.
I had to go through three of these, to avoid the fourth.
Prison most likely saved my life. That’s not to imply that prisons are rehabilitative because by nature they are not. For me though, it was the first time in my life that I could just stop. Even in rehab, I was worried about what others thought of me. I was worried about guys and going for cigarettes. In prison, I worked. I spent my days doing hard manual labor in fields for almost no pay. It reset me in many ways. By the time I got out, I knew I had to do anything and everything to not go back. So I did.
This, of course, does not mean that my life has been smooth sailing. I’ve faced a lot of challenges since, some positive, some not. It was the adversity of my past that made me better able to face whatever came my way.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?

A few years after my parole ended, I started volunteering in the prisons I was once at. I wanted the women to see that it was possible to not go back. For two years I went in and taught those women about spirituality and life. This was one of my most life changing experiences. This period of teaching, and my time incarcerated, inspired my first two books, Paganism for Prisoners and Paganism on Parole under the nom de plume, Awyn Dawn. I wrote these books while earning a bachelor’s degree in Integrative Healthcare. These books, while designed with the incarcerated population in mind, also serve as guides for anyone who wants to find strength through paganism.
A few years ago, I moved to London, to get an MFA in Creative Writing. I finished my third book, 111 Magic, which is a deep dive into empowerment using meditations and more. And I wrote my debut novel, working title, American Glass. This is different than anything I have written before. For starters it is fiction based on lived experience. More than that though, it has a complex narrative structure. I had to balance all the elements so as to not make it over complicated. It took two years to get all the nuances right.
When I am not writing, I do public speaking engagements, teach creative writing, run workshops, and do readings. All my contact information can be found below.

What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?

There are two. Honesty and resilience.
I look around and see so many people who would rather live a lie that does not allow them to grow than to trust in their own resilience. I have been through a lot in my life. More than I would wish on anyone. I tried on different personalities. I was a goth kid, a raver, a tomboy, a cowgirl, a thug, and a seductress… I’ve dressed in all black and dressed in pink sparkles. I’ve made excuses and hid behind my trauma. I’ve tried to be everyone else because I was afraid to be who I am. I thought that I had no substance of my own.
When I stripped away the masks, I started to like who I was. Then accept who I was. Then I began to love myself. It took time, but I did it. I realized that all the things I had been through were things I had survived. I won.
I broke down for a while, but I put myself back together. I got up and I said, “No. You’re not beating me.” We all have a choice. We can curl in a ball and pretend to be victims of life. Or we can cry our tears, feel our pain, stand up, move on, and live life. In my experience the latter is the better of the two options.

Pricing:

• Public speaking £120.00 hr/ £400 p/day
• Workshop £120.00 hr/ £400 p/day
• Private tutoring, contact for pricing
• Other, contact for pricing

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.awyndawn.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ashd_collins/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AshDCollins/
• Twitter: https://x.com/AshD_Collins
• Other: https://linktr.ee/ashdcollins