I’m Ashley, a wildly passionate mother, writer, and early childhood educator. I currently run a Montessori-inspired daycare out of my home, where the children and I guide each other in finding a little bit more of our own true essence each and every day. I grew up alongside four brothers in a small town outside Omaha, Nebraska. My sun is in Sagittarius, my moon is in Scorpio, and my rising is in Cancer. I love cooking, reading, thrifting, intentional movement, sunshine, organizing, child development, functional medicine, designing children’s spaces, holistic health, and the mind-body connection (somatics). My education is in exercise science, psychology, and early childhood education.

For as long as I can remember, I have told people that when I grew up, I’d be a teacher. So unsurprisingly, this lifetime has truly been full of abundant opportunities to guide others, including coaching tennis, personal training, nannying, teaching Maria Montessori’s philosophies to toddlers, and supporting the vulnerable youth in my community through resources such as the YMCA’s Reach and Rise Program and The Crises Textline.

My hope in my time with the vulnerable youth was to leave them with one message; that it is never too late to be the person they want to be— even though it sure can feel like it. This sentiment is a knowing for me because I, too, was once considered “at-risk,” and my mentors showed me that there was another way of being; that I could choose differently than the generations before me.

Little did I know that choosing differently would require cleaning up a mess I didn’t make, but it was certainly possible and quite worth it.

As my time with at-risk youth ended in 2020, I started preparing for my first child. I spent a lot of my preparation wondering what it would be like to influence a child’s life meaningfully from the very start. That is when I began my early childhood education and psychology studies. It wasn’t long into my education that I stumbled upon a quote from Nathaniel Brandon: “Regardless of what we think we are teaching, we teach what we are.”

That quote led me to the awareness that nurturing children isn’t really about them; it is more about how I nurture myself. If I want children to be fulfilled, curious, respectful, honest, thoughtful, honest, empathetic, and functional humans who stand in their unique truth, I must show them what that looks like.

Now more than ever, I’m focused on restoring the connection with my most genuine essence, and I’ve shifted my studies to somatic experiencing and human potential. Through my practice and experience thus far, I have found that presence, breath, somatics, wonder, movement, and purposeful language are the pathways to connecting to our most authentic essence.

Now more than ever, I am dedicated to guiding children along these paths of nurturing their intuition, nervous system, and most authentic expression so that they can notice and nurture the profound essence of themselves in a more meaningful way from the very start.