Episode 14 - Facing the Origin Story Part 2: Compassion with Boundaries

Now Available - Facing the Origin Story Part 2: Compassion with Boundaries

A new episode of Builders of a Better World is now live, and it continues one of the most intimate and powerful conversations shared on the podcast so far.

In Facing the Origin Story Part 2: Compassion with Boundaries, Ashlieya picks up where Part 1 ended: sitting face to face with the man she had not seen in nearly twenty years, in what she once described as a “meeting with the monster.” What unfolds is not a tidy redemption story or a simplistic lesson about “forgive and forget,” but a deeply honest exploration of truth, accountability, empathy, and the kind of compassion that does not require abandoning boundaries.

What this episode holds

This episode moves beyond anticipation and into the conversation itself. Ashlieya describes what it was like to ask direct questions, hear difficult answers, and experience the unexpected validation of having her childhood memories affirmed rather than dismissed.

As the conversation deepens, Carl speaks about addiction, guilt, and the way his own unresolved trauma shaped the destruction he brought into other people’s lives. He traces the roots of that darkness back through drug use, a life-altering childhood accident, and abuse he experienced as a very young boy, revealing how shame, secrecy, and emotional pain can harden into cycles of harm when no healthier tools are available.

Why “compassion with boundaries” matters

One of the clearest threads in this episode is that compassion is not the same thing as permission. Ashlieya is able to feel warmth, care, and even love in that moment, while still being clear that this is not the beginning of a close ongoing relationship and that he is not being invited back into her inner life in the same way.

That distinction is what makes this episode so resonant. It offers a model of forgiveness that does not minimize pain, excuse abuse, or demand self-sacrifice. Instead, it shows what it can look like to stay grounded, coherent, and self-protective while still recognizing the humanness of the person who caused harm.

Themes in this release

Listeners will hear this episode engage with several difficult but meaningful themes:

• Childhood trauma and the stories formed around identity.

• Addiction, guilt, and intergenerational harm.

• The difference between empathy and access.

• What it means to forgive without erasing the truth.

• How inner work changes the way a person can show up in the hardest conversations of life.

Throughout the episode, Ashlieya returns to the idea that healing was never really about changing Carl. The work was inward: learning to love all the parts of herself, releasing shame, building discernment, and becoming someone capable of entering a painful encounter without fear, retaliation, or the need to control the outcome.

A turning point in the series

Part 2 also opens the door to what comes next. By the end of the conversation, the story has moved beyond simple closure and into something more surprising: a desire to send love, healing energy, and positive intention outward, while continuing to protect what has been hard-won internally.

That movement becomes the bridge to the next installment in the series, where the conversation expands into the healing ritual and “miracle” Ashlieya and Neff reference near the end of the episode. What began as a confrontation with the past continues to evolve into a larger meditation on coherence, service, and what it means to be a builder of a better world from the inside out.

Listen now

For anyone navigating estrangement, family trauma, spiritual healing, or the long process of untangling identity from pain, Facing the Origin Story Part 2: Compassion with Boundaries offers a rare kind of honesty. It is tender, unsettling, clarifying, and deeply human—and it invites listeners to imagine that forgiveness can be both wholehearted and boundaried at the same time.

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Thank you for being a Builder of a Better World—from the inside out.

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Transcript:

Welcome to Builders of a Better World Podcast, a space for depth, clarity, and honest conversation, where presence matters more than performance. Let’s begin.

Welcome back to Builders of a Better World.

In our last episode, we began hearing Ashlieya’s deeply personal story of growing up in survival mode, carrying the belief that she was “the spawn of a monster,” and wrestling with whether she would become the villain or the heroine of her own life. We followed her through years of inner work—learning to see all the parts of herself with honesty and compassion, asking the divine to teach her what real forgiveness is, and ultimately beginning to release the shame, fear, and old narratives that once defined her childhood.

We left off with a pivotal decision: after nearly twenty years of no contact, and with no guarantees of how it would go, she chose to answer a quiet inner calling to sit down face‑to‑face with the man she had known as her father.

In today’s episode, we pick up right there—on that back‑patio “meeting with the monster.” You’ll hear what Carl revealed about his own past, the choices that shaped him, and how that conversation became a mirror that changed the way Ashlieya understands trauma, responsibility, and what it really means to forgive without erasing the truth.

Let’s step back into the story.

---

Ashlieya: And so we sit down, and finally, I'm like, “Hey, so, the reason I'm here is that I just simply wanted to meet you. I don't know you. You don't know me. We haven't seen each other in 20 years at all, and it's been even longer since we've actually had any sort of real conversation or exchange. So, you know, I'm here basically just to see who you are now.”

And he said, “Do you have any questions?”

And immediately, I said, “Well, not any hard ones. Really it's just, you know, how's your life? What's your life like?” And, you know, just again, getting a sense of just who you are, mostly just out of interest and curiosity. 

Neff: Right. 

Ashlieya: I knew you as my dad. So, you know, like, yeah, kind of wanted to bring this to a cessation and, like, yeah, just be able to share space for a moment.

And eventually—because I was there for nearly two hours—eventually, the conversation got dark, but not negative in a dramatic tension sort of way. It actually got way more honest.

Neff: Yeah, I would say, like, real. Very, very real.

Ashlieya: Yeah. And I'm so grateful I did it.

Neff: Yeah, yeah.

Ashlieya: I'm so grateful I did it.

He spoke about himself and, in his own way of describing who he was, the same way I described him as a kid, teenager, young adult, working through this, you know, again, this memories, this processing of what happened, this sort of transmuting of this energy, this coming to love myself. He validated that which I was questioning about—projecting this intensity on him and worsening the severity just from my own imagination, and not being accurate.

He called himself a monster. He said he was devoid of moral value. He spoke about this darkness. He spoke about, you know, how he was extremely destructive and burned every bridge and harmed every individual that ever came into his life.

I mean, it was so—you know, I don't want to say “refreshing,” because that's not—that's really not the best way of putting it. But cathartic. Cathartic. Cathartic. Validating. So completely affirming that I wasn't misrepresenting what had happened to me. My truth of it, my perspective of it, had accuracy.

Neff: Yeah, and I think, if I remember right, you said that some of the stuff he didn't remember, but he had to be told by other people, “Hey, this is what you did.”

Ashlieya: Well, so when he mentioned the darkness, I went, “Okay, now I have questions. Real questions.”

And he said to me, in his very typical Carl fashion, he said, “I have one rule.”

Neff: Yeah. This was a little, like, what? 

Ashlieya: I'm like, okay. And I was genuine. I was like, “Oh, okay, what's your rule?” I was like, “Okay,” you know.

And then he goes, “Don't ask me a question you can't handle the answer to.”

Neff: Yeah, it’s very machismo-ish.

Ashlieya: And I went, “Okay.” And I said, “That means you would have to tell me the truth. Are you going to tell me the truth?” 

Neff: Yeah, “Can you do that?” Right.

Ashlieya: And he said, “Yes, I will tell you the truth.”

Neff: I think, to his credit, he probably did, yes. 

Ashlieya: He felt very forthcoming, very open. And when I asked him some questions, he searched. It wasn't an off‑the‑cuff kind of a knee‑jerk reactionary response. I felt there were several moments he genuinely went, “Well, hmm… Let me…” And he thought.

Neff: “Let me really evaluate—literally evaluate—what the answer of this is.” 

Ashlieya: And I appreciated it. I appreciated it so much. I said, “I'm so grateful that you're speaking like this.”

So I asked him, I said, “Where did the darkness come from?”

And he's like, “Well, I mean, I did a lot of drugs.”

And I said—and I knew that. I knew that. I knew that he was an addict, and he tricked me into coming to one of his recovery meetings once. I was like 11. I was like, I didn't know where we were going. And then I had to stand up with the rest of the relatives, and they were all going on about how proud they were of—you know, and I had to stand there and just be like, “Uh, yeah, I'm proud. Sure. What you said. What you all said.” You know, whatever.

Anyway, so I knew that that was a part of it. And so I was like, “Okay, well, what drugs? Tell me what you were on.”

And he said, “Meth. Meth was my—is—my drug of choice. I'll be addicted to meth until the day I die. I have a very severe… like I can’t smell it, I can’t be around it, I can't whatever. I turn into this whole thing, like I...” and went on to a series of stories, just, you know, reinforcing the sentiment that he was trying to articulate with the intensity, the severity, the conviction he had around this being a real addiction.

And also pure cocaine. Which is what I saw.

Neff: Amazing, yeah.

Ashlieya: As a kid, I remember that. Like, young, young kid, was when I witnessed that. And other people that he brought around were similar.

I had two primary babysitters that we called the “meth heads.”

Neff: Oh my word. Yeah.

Ashlieya: I never saw them do—I don't know, maybe I didn't know the difference between cocaine and meth at the time. I felt like I did. I'd watch movies, to be honest. Like, that's what I came to understand. That was my basis for it.

My mom liked it because they would get really high and clean the house. So it was, you know, like, not—it was known. It wasn't a thing where they were, like, hiding it.

Neff: Yeah, yeah.

Ashlieya: And then I would be sent off and I wasn't, you know, in the house for a variety of reasons. Or Carl would disappear and go on the typical, like, you know, benders of whatever. I don't know, disappearing in alleys, I don't know. But he would go off and be on this run of, you know, we all assumed just doing drugs.

And he never held a job. He never paid child support. He was arrested for multiple things. He had warrants out for his arrest for multiple things. But I would pop in and out as being a part of the family, and he would pop in and out as being a part of the family. 

Neff: Right.

Ashlieya: So we didn't spend a ton of time together. But the time we did was not nice.

Neff: Right. 

Ashlieya: Anyway.

We spoke about that. He spoke about his drugs. So I—to your mentioning of the memory—I said, “Well, but then do you remember what you did when you were high?” And he said, “Honestly, no. Not much.” He said, “A lot of the memories I have of things I've done are other people's memories. They are things that have been told to me.”

And he said, “I have this guilt. I will keep the guilt forever. I will have it until the day I die. It keeps me sober. It keeps me alive. It keeps me from being that monster again.”

And I said, “What's on your list? What's on your list of things you do remember? Do you remember hurting me?” 

Neff: Right. 

Ashlieya: Like, “What do you remember?”

And again, about, you know, sparing details, but we got to have a really honest conversation of what my memory of things were, what his memory of things were. And what my brother's memory of things were—my brother doesn't have any memory prior to 14, which is very common for kids, especially boys. Like, he just blocked everything out.

Neff: Oh, I didn't know that.

Ashlieya: So he has no memory of his childhood. He remembers very few things, some of which are good, but beyond that, he has no memory of growing up.

Neff: Oh, wow.

Ashlieya: Yeah, it's a self‑preservation thing.

Neff: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

Ashlieya: So, yeah. So he was like, “I don't really remember.” I was like, “I do. And it's been affirmed that it's accurate.” So...

And so then I went on and said, “Okay, so—” and he kept speaking about this guilt and how he's going to keep the guilt, because again, the guilt keeps him alive and the guilt keeps him sober.

Sarah, his fiancée, chimed in and contributed to parts of the conversation. It was interesting to hear her perspective of who he is, who he's been the last 11 years. She's with him. They seem to be taking care of each other. She needs loads of help. She's blind. She has lots of other medical issues. She needs a caregiver. And it is seeming to be that Carl is that caregiver.

So he went through a series of surgeries and operations, post a really intense car accident a few years ago. He's now in a very limited way. And so they really, it feels like, have each other, which I—I looked at them and I was like, “I appreciate that, actually.”

Neff: Well, thank goodness, right? I mean, thank goodness they found each other.

Ashlieya: Exactly.

Neff: They can take care of each other.

Ashlieya: Exactly.

And I just felt so much warmth and gratitude the entire time, honestly. I sat there and went, “Oh my God, I could—I love these people. I can love these people. I can love him.” I don't want him in my life. I'm not going to invite him over for dinner. We’re not going to be having conversations. I'm not gonna be, like, you know—he's not welcome in my auric sphere apart from that one moment, for the sake of assuaging all that was intended from that one moment.

However, you know, it was—I would say—it wasn't a fun experience. It was definitely a moment in my life that I am so glad that I followed my intuition, that I followed the calling, that I navigated with the kindness and the grace of just being open, having no expectations, not feeling retaliatory or reactionary in any way throughout the entire conversation.

And yet, I got to respond and say things I didn't even know I wanted to say. But I did feel that this was a “facing the monster.” And that was where the conversation went to at one point.

You know, I asked him multiple questions, you know, about like, “Okay, so this darkness. Drugs. All the things. So then you have this guilt. You recognize now that those things were bad. You recognize now that you should have made different choices. You don't want to be a continuation of…”

Neff: …the same patterns. 

Ashlieya: That's right. “So if you could go back, would you then just have not done drugs?”

And he sat with that and went, “No. It would have to be before that.”

And I was like, “Okay.”

And he said, “It would definitely have to be before my accident.” He was hit by a car when he was eight. I knew this. I knew this. He has a very large scar that goes from about his breastbone all the way down to the center of his abdomen, just above his pubic bone. Very, very long scar.

And I'd always been told stories by the family of how he died on the operating table three times. It was so dramatic. And he only had one kidney as a result of that, what seemed to be, very horrific incident. An eight‑year‑old being hit by a car and then having such an operation and this whole thing. It was a life‑saving, heroic effort by this hospital and these surgeons, and it changed his life.

He was very athletic, and very—just innately prone to wanting to physically exert himself like a lot of young boys, right? But I think that also kind of runs in the family, genetic affiliation or not. I know I have that—that need to continue moving my body and what that does for my psyche, and, you know, just all the things. My energy, my sense of flow, like, all of it. It's really important to me to stay mobile and stay moving.

Neff: Active. 

Ashlieya: And to take my emotions and put them into something physical is really profoundly cathartic, and it's a nice release for me.

So I resonated with that. And he's like, “I couldn't play football anymore. My school wouldn't allow me to. With only one kidney, you can't play a lot of sports.”

And so he spoke about this moment of really profound embarrassment. You know, my grandmother—I remember her very old personality: hot‑headed, very loud, very boisterous, very passionate person, not soft, and unwavering in her convictions when she makes her mind up to something. Somehow, the school was allowing him to play football. And he was really good, and he loved it. And I imagine they probably let him play because he was so good, and because he loved it.

My grandmother found out. Came to the school. Took him off the field. Annihilated the coach. Got very upset with the school. Smaller community, everybody found out about it. He was brutally embarrassed. Like, that left a huge mark on his young little eight‑year‑old existence.

Neff: Yeah, embarrassment—that’s a powerful emotion.

Ashlieya: Yes. That makes so much sense, because you grew to be so f—g insecure. Pardon my language. You grew to be so insecure.

Neff: Yeah, insecure and also physical. Do you know what I mean? Like, whatever physicality he could be, he was doing, you know? And not in a positive way.

Ashlieya: That's exactly right. He couldn't get it out in a, you know, healthily cultivated, supportive way. So I do think it manifested into aggression and resentment. And, yeah—you take all those testosterone, hormones, developing, anger, repression, you know—

Neff: Yeah, keep going, because you’re adding emotion, emotion, emotion, emotion on top of emotion… Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

Ashlieya: And then he said, “It would have—” I said, “Okay, so, you know, magic wand, no accident happened when you're eight years old.” And he was like, “It would have to be even before that.”

And I will share this, because it is an important part, just for the sake of awareness and for the sake of understanding the conversation. He said he was molested when he was a young child.

And I said, “By who?” And he said, “My uncle.”

And I said, “Which uncle?” And he told me. Like, I was very direct with my questions. He was very direct with his responses.

And he said that he made a deal with his uncle. And this resonates—this, I felt, is true. Like, true.

Neff: And if it is true—I know you're gonna say it—and if it is true, you can see the goodness in who he was as a child.

Ashlieya: Not only that—I can relate. And that is powerful.

Neff: Isn't it, though?

Ashlieya: That is powerful. I can relate. And I'm willing to say I can relate. I'm willing to acknowledge that there is a similarity between me and this person. There are multiple similarities between me and this person. Biological attachments aside, familial connections aside, any of it aside, when you seek, when you seek it, you can relate to anyone.

There are pieces of us—at the core, we are all the same. At the core, we are all the same. And whether we have this blueprint that is more geared and structured towards positive versus negative, we all have the power of free will. Some of us have more limited options than others, which I really believe. I really believe some of us have more limited options. But that's why it's important to share, and to teach people, and to expose. And to speak about, “This was an option for me. This is an option for me. If it's an option for me, it's an option for you.”

Neff: Yeah, I mean, we're all here to do the same thing, which is live and progress.

Ashlieya: You don't know what you don't know until you know. And when you know, you cannot unknow—unless, you know, amnesia or whatever. 

Neff: A hit to the head, yes. 

Ashlieya: TBIs, it happens. 

Neff: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ashlieya: So anyway, he said he made a deal with his uncle, and he said, “If you only do this to me, and you don't touch my siblings, you can do whatever to me you want, just don't—don't do anything to my siblings.”

Neff: And think about that. That's powerful. 

Ashlieya: He was the eldest of this generation of kids, and he was protecting them. 

Neff: He was trying to protect his siblings. He was trying to protect his siblings. 

Ashlieya: This young boy. Under the age of eight. 

Neff: Wow.

Ashlieya: Right? 

Neff: Wow. Seriously. 

Ashlieya: Like—yeah. That's why I'm sharing that piece of the story. That's why.

Neff: No, I mean, that's powerful, really.

Ashlieya: It is. It is. It is.

And—the Uncle did not abide by the promise. And he did not protect his siblings. 

Neff: He was not able to. 

Ashlieya: He failed, in his mind. And that is the biggest thing—that is the number one thing that he is most guilty of. 

Neff: And again, another emotion, right? You have guilt, hopelessness, and all of this.

Ashlieya: He said he couldn't deal with emotional pain. He says, to this day, “I can't deal with emotional pain. When I feel emotional pain, I just want to destroy it. All I get is angry, and I just want to destroy it, even if that meant I destroy myself. However, I came to understand that I was too cowardice to commit suicide.”

So when he was a teenager, he got on drugs. 

Neff: And the drugs made it so that he was no longer just hurting himself. 

Ashlieya: He could justify anything he did. That's what he told me. He says, “I could justify anything I ever did to anyone. I could justify it when I was on drugs. And when I was wanting to—when I was fixing, when I was wanting to get on drugs, I could justify it. I could justify anything I ever did. I had absolutely no morals. I had no concept of karma, consequence. I had no concept of how badly I was actually hurting people. I had none of that.”

Neff: So you see this journey, right? The journey of not being able to have the tools to handle emotional pain.

Ashlieya: So I asked him, I said, “So if it's not going back to choose not to get on drugs, if it's not going back and preventing you from getting hit by a car—not just, I mean, of course you would probably do that as well—but coming to this moment where you were experiencing this with your uncle, what would the choice be?”

And he said—and this was really interesting to me—he said, “I would have told. I should have told.” He said—and that was significant to me for very specific reasons—he said, “I should have told. Me not telling is what created the separation between me and my family.” And for him, the sentiment of that is, the breaking away from my family, that isolation from my family, is when the darkness started.

For him to be aware of that, and to pinpoint that, and to express that to me, again, it was like dark magic—but magic nonetheless. It was a miracle for me to be the recipient of that insight. It was so profoundly life‑altering for me. Because again, it really helps to just bring forward, in the truest, purest sense, that sense of empathy and compassion and true understanding for a human struggling through a human experience that we all have and go through. Some different than others, but it's just different shades of trials and tribulations, unfortunate situations, things that hurt us and could scar us and could be, just again, this opportunity to either go with the dark or cultivate that which you choose to become with intention and purpose.

Cultivate this sense of strength and resilience and perseverance and do the hard things. Succumbing to dark, succumbing to the wicked, succumbing to continuing to follow the pattern and continue the chain—I'm so sorry—it's easier. It's easier. And I know that because I felt it, and I felt that crossroads of, “I could do something nasty right now. I'm capable of that in this moment.” And I'm gonna choose not to. I'm going to choose not to.

And the difference between us—and this was the realization, this was THE realization—and I would never have been able to come to this awareness if he hadn't shared that with me. But I always said, I'd always said growing up, even as a child—I was also raised in a church, and I was also raised very religious—and I, again, always had this very fantastical, very imaginative brain, and I was always writing stories, and I was always reading books, and I was always watching films, probably a lot of films that were way too old and mature for me, but it was beneficial. Honestly, it helped me.

So I had this kind of, again, just romanticized way of viewing life and this fantastical way of living life. I've always believed in magic and miracles. I’ve always wanted to believe in magic and miracles. And I knew and felt—my way of defining it and describing it is—that I had angels. I had angels when I was a kid. I have angels today. And you can call them different things. You can say whatever it is. But our auric fields are made up of our vibrational frequency. It is our life force energy. You can call it your soul, you can call it whatever you want, you can call it simply just electricity. I mean, it just is what it is. It's frequency. We emulate this frequency.

And within our auric field, within this sphere that surrounds our physical bodies, we are the collective of our ego—everything we've ever known, everything we've ever come to experience is what contributes to the essence of us. And we can control our frequency. We can. We can have the utmost control over our frequency, and we can decide to be higher vibrating or lower vibrating. We never stay the exact same. We have to fluctuate. Nothing stays the same. It’s the law of this land. In every atom and every cell, nothing is completely stagnant, nothing is actually stationary. It's all energy, it's all matter, it's all frequency. So things change. They have to. 

Neff: They have to for balance. Absolutely. 

Ashlieya: It is the law of this world. That's how we measure time.

So in coming to understand this and know this about myself, and have this insight from the time I was a kid—just this faith that I had, this, what I call higher wisdom, because to me, that's the same thing. Our angels have this guidance. They have this way of contributing this information to us. It's higher wisdom. In my opinion, that's another word for it. There's this intelligence that is in all things that are surrounding us all the time. You just have to tune into it. And within our own auric fields, I do find, is where my guides are. It's where my spirit team is.

And from the time I was so young, it's like I had these angels and they protected me and they kept me safe. And furthermore, they kept me in the ability to accurately perceive situations, and therefore make self‑beneficial decisions.

I made decisions as a very young kid that helped to keep me safer. Not entirely, like, completely safe all the time. You know, I went through things. But there were other things I could have experienced, but I said no, by the power of some divine blessing. Six years old, seven years old, I said no. And he looked at me—I'll never forget this—he looked at me and he said, “Would you tell?” And I said, “Yes, I would.”

And then there was one other time I had to say those words as a young teenager: “Would you tell?” “Yes, I would.” I don't know how I knew to do that. I don't know how I thought to do that. But it became so clear in the moment, when I'm having this exchange with him. He said to me, “I should have told. I wish I would have told. If I could go back and have this change in the trajectory of my life and my existence, if I pinpoint the moment that darkness became what it was, I would have told.” Not “stop it from happening,” right? Like, it's so interesting that he said that.

It came to me, into my awareness, the realization: I had something he didn't have. Call it angels, call it higher wisdom, call it exposure to a book I read, a film I had watched. Something gave me that ability, that strength, that knowing. Something gave me—something was the example for me.

Neff: Yeah, it gave you an understanding of something that maybe you didn’t even know you understood.

Ashlieya: Exactly. Exactly, that he didn't have. That he didn't have. And that was the difference between us. That was the difference between us in that moment.

And I sat with that, and my first thought really rushed over me. And I couldn't even be as present with it in processing all of it until the following night.

We have this whole conversation. We have this exchange. You know, we wrap up. He's like, “I hope this can be a bridge. I hope we can, you know...” He's like, “Thank you for coming to see me.” He was appreciative and expressive of that appreciation to me. And he said, basically, “I hope that you can see that I'm trying, and I can earn the right to, you know, keep building this bridge between us.”

And I said to him, “With your permission, I would really like to send you love and healing energy and all‑around just positive thoughts and hopes for you and for your life. And so, if you'll allow me, moving forward, that's the promise I would like to make to you, is that I will send you this love and this healing energy. And you can do the same for me, if you would like.”

And he said, “Yes. Yes. Let's do that.”

I said, “That's the commitment that I would like to make from this.”

Neff: And I know there’s a lot more to this story, but I just do want to say this, or ask this, maybe: would that conversation have gone the way it did if you hadn’t have done the work to get to that point? 

Ashlieya: I don't think I would have even wanted to have a conversation if I had been—depending on which chapter, which version of Ashlieya you're speaking about. Teenager—teenage years—would have been angry, would have been aggressive, would have been inflammatory, attacking, exacerbating of any vulnerability or wounds. I definitely would have come from a place of spite and retaliation. Probably a bit of vengeance as well. That would have been teenager.

Early 20s to mid‑20s, I probably would have been very sad and very hurt and very, “You should have, you should have, you should have. You didn't and you should have,” right? “I didn't get what I needed. I didn't get what I deserved. I'm a human and I'm entitled to a better situation.” Right? Sad, sad, sad. I'm sad. I'm upset. That would have been early 20s into mid‑20s.

Mid‑20s on, it was apathy. “I don't care about you. You're not worthy of my energy and my focus. I have alchemized, you know, that which I need to for me. And I no longer look back at my childhood and my history with a sense of provoked or invoking of negative emotions. I can articulate with fact what happened to me and have conversations without feeling, you know, quote‑unquote triggered about things.” I had reduced, if not eliminated, those triggers at that point. I thought I was entirely immune to being affected by him, by the history. If he and I had bumped into each other on the street, I could have very easily just pretended he was a perfect stranger, and thought nothing about it. I had no interest in exploring who he is now.

Years had to pass.

So it depends on what timeline in my life's journey we're speaking about, but there were definitely chapters where I wouldn't have even thought to pursue putting myself purposefully, with intention, in the same proximity as him—from a state of protectiveness, defensiveness, and then a state of, “I don't want to be wounded.” You know, it's like a self‑preservation. To a, “Why would I care? Why would I have interest? He's not worthy of me casting my gaze upon him, let alone me putting forth any effort or energy to pursue a conversation.”

And then, you know, coming to a place where I wanted to live with no regret, and I wanted to move forward feeling like I really brought this piece of myself to the truest and fullest cessation I possibly could. Not in the sense that it's now eradicated from my existence, but in the sense that I am proud—proud, like really proud—of how I've navigated that entire aspect of my life and all those pieces to myself.

And I wanted the truest understanding of forgiveness, and I wanted to take that as far as I possibly could. That was an intention I had. And I wanted to love all of myself to the highest and fullest potential I possibly could. And I really wanted—and I had done what I could to really eliminate the sense of shame, really kind of, again, just transmute this idea of embarrassment, which is—I mean, that's kind of crazy. I understand embarrassment. I totally do. That's exactly what I'm saying. It's so unnecessary. It's so unnecessary. 

Anything anyone feels embarrassed about—like, please, let me help you work through that—because honestly, we all have our stuff. And the more we share about our things, the more that we, you know, express this undeniable whole self‑care and wellness, even the pieces that we at one point wished had never happened—when we can hug those and love those and say, “Hey, I still got you. I'm still with you. I will take you. You are under my command now. I'm gonna make you what you deserve to be made of, which is constructive and positive. I'm gonna take you, this ugly little thing...”

It's like when you adopt—I'm so sorry for this example already—when you adopt this ugly little mutt from the pound, and you're like, “You are really unfortunate.” And its tongue's all hanging out, and it's got disgusting hair and it's matted, and there's, like, dingleberries on its butt and all these things. And you're like, “I'm gonna bathe you. And I'm gonna brush you, and I'm gonna trim you, and I'm gonna groom you, and I'm not gonna try to make you something other than what you are. But I'm gonna invest in nurturing you, and loving you, and giving you a safe place to be for the rest of your frickin’ life. I'm gonna feed you healthy, good food, and I'm gonna ensure you have clean water, and I'm gonna cuddle you and snuggle you. And when you whine every once in a while, I will come to your aid and go, ‘What do you need?’ But we're not gonna—we're not gonna stick you in the corner, unattended to, flea‑infested, just allowing you to be in this back room, right? Screaming and squawking whenever someone comes to the door. No, no, no. You're part of the family. You're a part of the collective. Let's, you know, give you some TLC.”

Because that's what we need. Every single piece and part of us deserves that.

Neff: Yeah, you just—that's so awesome, because there’s a subject you just addressed right there. We could have a whole podcast about that. The little you inside you needs all that care.

Ashlieya: If you go to the roots of it—because we all do this. I was a therapist for a long time. And a very, you know, common technique, protocol, method—you know, you “upgrade the child.” You honor the little girl. “I'm with you, I love you, I protect you. Look at who you've become. Aren't I awesome? I have you now. You're with me.” You know, kind of a thing. And there's no fear, there's no whatever. Like, this is what you have to look forward to. You are safe, you are healthy, you are involved, you are cared for. Right?

It's in alignment with that. But even, again, the pieces where you're like, “Jealousy, guilt, resentment, fear,” you know, all of the parts of you that are like, “Oh, this gives me the—” when I have to address it. You know, the working through that, you know, and looking at yourself in the mirror with that piece of you in the forefront of your essence and going, “Okay, no, little rat dog. Time to go to the groomer. We're gonna take care of you.” 

Neff: But doing that work, it's your whole thing. It’s building a better world from the inside out, you know?

Ashlieya: Yes. 

Neff: You were able to have this interaction with Carl and not be selfish and not be hateful and not be—all of these emotions and things that you've had to go through earlier.

Ashlieya: I was a whole self. I was a whole self. I was able to go into the situation with no expectation, needing nothing from him, okay with however it ended up, knowing that I am who I am and what I am because I am. And I assign meaning to what I assign meaning to. I have the power and the authority. I have the intention. I—

Neff: So it’s important to do that work. It’s so important to do that work.

Ashlieya: Oh, yes. That is the work. Yes.

Neff: Otherwise, we are reactive all the time, and we’re, you know...

Ashlieya: And then magic happens. Magic happens. When you believe in magic and miracles, when you follow your intuition, when you're in tune enough and regulated enough and coherent enough to have accurate intuition, when you're in this lovely, harmonized, elevated, positive, energetic auric field, you're witnessing and experiencing and able to retrieve and conceive, perceive, this higher wisdom. And you navigate based on that, miracles happen.

So that night ended, and then the following day, my flight got delayed. Like, brutally delayed. I was supposed to fly home, and it was like a series of unfortunate events. I was like the awkward, unfortunate girl at the beginning of a rom‑com. It was like the com without the rom. Just going through all these really weird mishaps—my luggage falling down the escalator, my pouring water down the pocket of my pants so it looked like I peed myself in the middle of the airport. Like, all these crazy things.

My flight got delayed, then my flight got super delayed, my flight got rebooked to 5 a.m. the following morning. You don't get a hotel voucher because it's due to weather. So I'm like, “Okay, now I'm stranded in this airport. I need to go find a hotel. What am I gonna do with my evening?”

Oh my gosh.

I did everything I could to stay positive. Did everything I could to stay in a positive mindset. I was so grateful from the weekend, so grateful for my experiences—my mom, my brother, the Carl conversation. I was bound and determined to stay in a positive state.

I get to the hotel. I'm all excited about bougie bottled water. They have no bougie bottled water. I love bougie bottled water. I'm a water snob. There's no bougie bottled water to be found in this super nice—I picked, like, the nicest hotel near the airport possible because I was really looking forward to some glass‑bottled water. Acqua Panna, Saratoga, nothing.

Okay, fine. No problem, no problem.

I'm on the toilet as soon as I get into my room. A maintenance guy barges in and sees me on the toilet in my hotel room. Like, it was just ridiculous. I'm like, “Oh, hi.” He's like, “Oh my God, I'm so sorry.” “It's fine, just my day‑to‑day, no worries. Like, no big deal.”

However, I was forced—because I had to get up at 3 in the morning for this new flight, unexpectedly—to be alone in my hotel room, able to properly process and integrate what I had experienced. Which may have gone entirely differently had my flight not been delayed, had I not been alone, isolated in this hotel, forced to be in bed by 8–9 p.m., knowing I have to get up before dawn to catch this flight.

So I'm lying there, and I'm like, “Okay, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep.” And because I'm still processing and integrating all of this—from this conversation, from my feelings, from my responses to his responses, from all of this, from the gratefulness, from the gratitude, from maintaining coherent energy despite all my little mishaps throughout that following day—I received this rush of perfectly organized insight that really took me through, from beginning to that moment, everything in my life. How everything I've ever done, every choice I've ever made, everything I've ever studied, everything I've been practicing, everything I've been preaching, has led me to this moment, and now this is what I have to do.

And I—you and I have done these coherence healings. It's not exactly the way Joe Dispenza does them. I do them a little differently. And I've been intuitively doing them for most of my life.

Neff: Yeah, you did. You did one for me before we even went to any of Joe Dispenza's things. For my foot.

Ashlieya: Joe Dispenza has a group that does what they call coherence healings—I think they're called coherence healings. 

Neff: That is what they call them, yeah. 

Ashlieya: And it's basically energy healing, essentially positive intention, elevating emotion. And I've been doing something similar for a very long time.

And so I had this very profound, again, this extension of the realization that I had from that conversation. And it put me into this, “I have a series of actions now that I want to take,” again, in honoring my promise to send him love and healing energy—which I don't even know why I said that, to be honest. I don't even know why I said most of what I said during that conversation, during that exchange. The questions were just coming out, and it just led us to this, which led us to that, which led us to this.

And I'm receiving these downloads for hours. I was processing this and working through that. And there was just, like, something almost going across the screen of my brain. And there was something I—I was like, “Okay, this is really what I want to do.” And I contacted you and said, “Hey, can you do this with me?”

We had a dinner. We had someone else that I invited—a couple people that I invited, in addition—and said, “Hey, can you help be a part of this with me? Because I'm on a mission to continue to be that which I am, which is a life full of magic and miracles.”

Neff: That's right. An example. Absolutely.

Ashlieya: Yes. An example.

So that's what we did.

Neff: Yeah, it was beautiful.

Ashlieya: We gifted a miracle.

Neff: Yeah, it was beautiful. 

Ashlieya: You felt like you were trying to wrap up the conversation. Do you want to keep wrapping up?

Neff: No, I wasn't wrapping up, actually. What I was gonna say is, you know, at that moment, after your conversation and handling it the way you handled it, and I'm hearing the story—I'm trying to tell you the experience I went through listening to you talk about this.

And I'm hearing the story, and I'm thinking of, you know, just how real the forgiveness is that you've gone through. You know? And then you took it to the next level of—and that's what I'm saying—you took it to the next level of what I would consider forgiveness to be about, and that is now you want to do something for him. Right? Which is: give him health, give him strength, give him what he didn't have, and what you felt like you could maybe, hopefully, contribute through miracles, you know?

And to me, that was even taking it to a level that I've personally never seen anybody go to, to be honest. When you talk about forgiveness, you know, some would argue he didn't deserve it. You know? And then you tell this story, right? That's what I'm saying. You know what I mean? People would walk around going, “He doesn't deserve it.” And yet you do it. You forgive him. And not only do you forgive him, now you want to do something really good for him.

And that's—you know, and then, you know... It's a great example of how we should all live.

Ashlieya: Well, that's my hope in talking about it. That's why I'm sharing it—is it's possible. I could have never, never, ever have fathomed that I would have been sitting at a Mexican restaurant asking you to help me with this miracle. I could have never imagined.

I could have never imagined sitting across from him and feeling—feeling—the truth that we are all connected.

Neff: Amazing, right?

Ashlieya: We are all connected. I am an extension of him and he is an extension of me, just as we all are.

Neff: You said it. You saw yourself.

Ashlieya: I saw—

Neff: In some of his experiences.

Ashlieya: I could relate. I could relate.

Neff: How do you go from—and that's what I'm saying—how do you go from hating, fearing, apathy, to, “I see. I see you. I see you as a human being. I see you. And not only do I see you, but I love you”?

Ashlieya: Yep.

Neff: That is the lesson of today's world. That is what everybody needs to feel and experience. We are all walking around being harmed by people, and then hating, and then fighting, and then not caring, and then having apathy.

That is today's lesson for today's world. How can you go from hate, apathy, to “I see you. I understand your humanness. I even relate to you”?

Ashlieya: Follow my Unbothered Blueprint. No, but… 

Neff: Do you know what I'm saying? Like, that is so powerful.

Ashlieya: The path is clear to me now because the path is what I have done. So, you know, I'm not saying that I know the way for everybody. I'm not saying that I am, you know, God's gift. I'm not, like, you know—I always say it, I'll continue to say: I am not a coach, I am not a teacher, I am just an example. I am one example for how to do whatever it is that you perceive of me, because your perception is your own of me, and has more to do with you than it does of me. You know?

But I am here to say and to be the proof that magic and miracles are this existence in this world. It is possible. That which you think isn’t possible may actually be possible. And I want to share my stories so that people who don't think it's possible can hear what I have done and know that it is possible to arrive to that pure—just, like, it's forgiveness in the utmost totality.

Neff: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Ashlieya: And I wanted that. I didn't know why I wanted it. I said a prayer at 24, 25 years old, and said, “Please give this to me. Help me understand it. I'll earn it. I'll earn it. I'll earn everything. I'll do the work. I'll walk the walk. I'll take the journey.”

And that's—and I took it. I took the journey, I took the steps. And yes, I can say, if I had to go back and plot out the map that I led—that led me, rather—yes, I can say that I know the formula to get there. And anyone can do it. Because if I can do it, you can do it.

And I went from being the spawn of a monster—I was that. I was always… 

Neff: Using it as an excuse sometimes. 

Ashlieya: Using it as an excuse, justifying my erratic behavior, justifying my extreme temper tantrums and my violence and my aggression and my prone‑to‑being‑survival‑driven—just navigating life in this mode of just pure needing to survive, necessity to continue to breathe. That's it. That's what navigated my existence. How I navigated my existence.

Neff: And we—and I would give you that excuse. You know what I mean? Like, again, we're talking about the fact that as a general rule, people walk around going, “Yes, I completely understand why you're doing the thing you're doing because you went through this. And, you know, I would hate this person, too.” You know? I mean, it's very easy to do that.

Ashlieya: There's that, though. That, to me, is placating, to some extent.

Neff: Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean.

Ashlieya: I don't know that placating is as authentic as really understanding.

Neff: Yeah, no, no, I agree. 

Ashlieya: And that's my point, is if we all really do try, you can really understand if you want to. But what you have to understand is all the things that anyone in the spiritual woo woo community is preaching about—because it's true—you have to see that person as a reflection of yourself. And only when you can understand, truly, truly understand that there is no separation—there's no separation between us and anything else in this world. Energy is energy. We are all connected. We are unique in certain ways. We are meant to be unique in certain ways. So go beyond that. Go through that, because it's superficial. And a lot of it is an illusion. A lot of it is an orientation that gives you a perception. Shift your orientation. Go a little bit deeper. Be willing to really, really, really look, understand, and know thyself.

And you will find—you will find—you are on that route. You are on that same journey to the utmost forgiveness.

Neff: I think it's magical.

Ashlieya: You're on a journey of self‑love. You're on a journey of integration, of, you know, really being in alignment with your truth. And that forgiveness, I think, in a sense, benefits yourself.

Ashlieya: Immensely. 

Neff: Even more so than anything else, right?

Ashlieya: Immensely. 

Neff: Yeah.

Ashlieya: You… I thought—I thought maybe seven years ago that I was resolved in my, you know, processing and—again, I don't want to keep using the word “alchemizing”—but healing, recovering from, no longer affected by, my childhood. That my memories—I could articulate them to someone without getting emotional, just factually stating, “This is what happened. This is something I experienced.” And I thought that was it. I thought that was the work. I thought that was done.

I had the same sentiment that you spoke of: “He isn't worthy.” 

Neff: Right. 

Ashlieya: “He doesn't deserve.” 

Neff: Right. 

Ashlieya: That cast of judgment. Right? That which you see, you see with. 

Neff: One hundred percent. 

Ashlieya: Anytime you look at someone and tell them, or even think, “They don't deserve something,” you are telling yourself you don't deserve it as well. You are instilling a limitation pertaining to your extent of self‑worth, your truth and what you deserve to be forgiven for.

Neff: Wow. 

Ashlieya: When you're in it, it makes complete sense. You know, again, if you told me—if you took a screenshot of that moment and sent it to me at 15, I would have said, “There's no way.” You would have took a screenshot of that moment and sent it to me at 20—I would have said, “There's no way.” Twenty‑five—“There's no way.” Twenty‑eight—“There's no way.” You know, I had to really—again, and it was inner work. It had nothing to do with him. It had nothing to do with my grandmother. Nothing to do with it. It was me. And the pieces and parts of me.

Neff: And you do say—and of course this has value—you do say, this is your journey, this is what you went through, it may be different for other people. But what I think is important is, like you said—like you say—you don't know until you know. 

Ashlieya: You have to believe. 

Neff: And you do have to believe in the possibility, of course. But why not try? You know what I mean? Why not do? Why not work at it? Why not put the effort into it?

Whether you can see an outcome or not. Whether you can see a possible future of whatever it is. Do you know what I mean? Like, why not put some effort into it today? And who knows? You might be extremely surprised at the outcome. Like you're saying, 10 years ago, this wouldn't even be on your purview.

Ashlieya: Nope. I would not—I would not have been capable of conceiving it. I wouldn't have seen it as possible.

Neff: And you are, today. We are here, we are now in the present moment. 

Ashlieya: So grateful and glad and celebratory.

Neff: So grateful. 

Ashlieya: I mean, like, I feel the resolve now is true. The resolve back then was so stunted. So stunted. The resolve now is true.

You talk about—I mean, you know, I do have proper discernment. My frontal lobe is accurately working for the time being. I realize that my physical body is mortal. My soul and my identity feels invincible. And I've spoken about that a couple of times. I genuinely—I know there will be future hardship. I know that there will be future resistance.

Neff: Resistance. Yeah, well, like you said last night.

Ashlieya: I know that there will be, because I, you know, I'm not fully cooked. The self‑improvement journey is never‑ending. I—you know, being human, inherently, I'm a faulty filter. Like I talk about all the time. 

Neff: We need challenges for progress. 

Ashlieya: And you have to—what goes up must come down. You know, I can't stay this super high‑vibrating—I'm not a celestial being. I'm a human. 

Neff: Yeah, we are here on this earth.

Ashlieya: So, I know that. However, the conviction and trust I have in knowing—knowing—I can navigate situations with confidence and grace and understanding that I have benevolent intentions, that I genuinely wish to do no harm, that I have instilled a pattern in my existence with which aligns by my highest and truest good—I know that. I know. I know that I have no ill will. I know that anytime I take action into something, if I in some way disrupt someone else's peace or comfort, it was on accident. It was on accident. I know this.

I know that I am capable of making the decisions that ultimately are good for me.

Neff: Right. And that's what I was gonna say, exactly. 

Ashlieya: I trust myself. 

Neff: You also know that by having the attitude that you have, it is good for you. That by wanting health, happiness, joy, whatever, for everyone—that is a benefit to yourself.

Ashlieya: But I know how to not be a martyr, and I know how to not self‑sacrifice. I know how to fill my own cup first. That's Builders of a Better World. It’s an inward-to-outward process. That's what we're talking about.

Neff: Yeah, exactly.

Ashlieya: I didn't arrive to this conclusion to see him, to do for him. No. I did for me. I navigated the conversation for me. I was considerate, and I was mindful. But I was practicing being of service to myself, and in turn, I was of service to him and the situation. And that led to being of service in this bigger way.

Neff: Absolutely.

Ashlieya: Because I was fit for service.

Neff: You did—this, I think, is also an aspect of it, right? Is that you were in the right mindset and in the right place.

Ashlieya: Coherence.

Neff: Exactly. 

Ashlieya: Alignment. 

Neff: So that you didn't have an outcome in mind.

Ashlieya: Audacious authenticity.

Neff: You just went in being true to—

Ashlieya: Trusting myself.

Neff: Yeah, trusting yourself. And then the experience created this outcome. But it wasn't something that you went into going, “I'm doing this so that I can get this,” or “I'm doing this so that I can get this.” You said it yourself. You're like, “I'm not 100 percent sure what this is about, necessarily. I just feel called to do this. I feel called to have this experience.” And then you're there, and you're present, and you are listening, and you are feeling. And because you were in the mindset that you were in, and you were coherent and all of that, then the experience created something beautiful, in my opinion.

Ashlieya: I had no fear. I had no anxiety. I had no fear. There was no inner nervous system cortisol spike. There was none of that.

Neff: Because you've gone through that journey, based on kind of what you're saying—and again, this is just me talking here—but based on what you're saying, it's kind of like, because you've done that journey, then you have an understanding that the next time you go through this process, you'll be able to do that. You'll be able to be coherent. You'll be able to—

Ashlieya: I have the skills.

Neff: You have the skill set, right? You can go, “Oh, well, this is what I did for this. I'm gonna continue to do that.” Because obviously it served you. It served everyone. Do you know what I mean?

Ashlieya: That's right.

Neff: So rinse and repeat, really. Right? 

Ashlieya: And be the example. Be the change.

Neff: Yeah, exactly. 

Ashlieya: Be the change. And I want to talk more about that.

This was a long episode. We're gonna cut to Part 2. So we have more to share about this. Part 2 will be a continuation of this conversation. We'll speak more about continuing to alchemize, continuing to maintain that balanced, grounded sense of self, to go into the miracle that we gifted, and, you know, the little two‑part ceremony that we participated in, in doing our own version of a healing.

Neff: I had some great insight for my own personal development based on—see, and that's what I think was so awesome about all of this, is that you can hear it, and you can kind of have your own experience. You know, this is different for me than it is for you. Totally. I had a really awesome experience last night. Again, we will talk about it later. But I had a really awesome experience last night, and it had nothing to do necessarily with, you know, Carl and what we were doing, but it did. You know what I mean?

Ashlieya: Totally.

Neff: Yeah, it was really great.

Ashlieya: I look forward to hearing about it.

Neff: Yeah. 

Ashlieya: Do you? Stick with us. Stay—stay present for Part 2.

Thank you so much for being here. We are here to be the example, to be the change, and to be builders of a better world, sharing all the things. 

Neff: Sharing the stories that hopefully help you along your way, your journey. 

Ashlieya: And if there's anything from this conversation that you would like to hear, please comment. Do subscribe, do share. Reach out to us if there's any questions that you have. I would really be curious to address them for you. And if you have any comments or feedback, I would also love to hear that. So please comment, like, subscribe, share, and join us again to build a better world.

Neff: Ciao.

Ashlieya: Cheers. Builders of a better world.

---

As you’ve heard, today’s episode brings us to the end of what was originally one long, continuous conversation—what Ashlieya called “Part 1” of her own journey.

For the podcast, we’ve edited that conversation into Part 1 and Part 2 to make it easier to listen, pause, and process. But the story doesn’t stop here.

In the next episode, we’ll step into what will now be Part 3 of Facing the Origin Story—a new recording where Ashlieya and Neff return after this experience has had time to settle in their bodies and lives. They’ll unpack the two‑part healing ceremony they mentioned, the “miracle” they set out to gift, and how compassion with boundaries keeps unfolding long after the back‑patio conversation ends.

So if today stirred something in you—questions about forgiveness, estrangement, nervous system safety, or how to be the change inside your own origin story—stay tuned. Part 3, and possibly more, are coming soon as we continue building a better world from the inside out.

Thank you for joining us here at the Builders of a Better World podcast. Please share, subscribe, comment, and be sure to pass this episode along for anyone who may need it. See you next time.