From overwhelm to presence

Becoming the adult in the room

El Matador State Beach x Lani Trock

Hello dear ones,

I hope this finds you entering the portal of 2025 as well as possible. I realize that will mean different things to each of us especially in the midst of raging wildfires, the recent inauguration, and our commitments to staying open in the face of so much uncertainty.

By some miracle, nobody in our home was sick over the winter break. We haven’t had as much rain as we hoped out here in the Sierras, but the sunshine and blue skies have been medicinal all the same. I’ve spent the last few weeks hanging with our children and the horses (and donkeys and puppies, LOL!) Meanwhile, Nic spent them closing down his thirteen-year-old business and labor of love, Homestead Apothecary.

It's been tender and expansive witnessing Nic connect with the incredible community he built around plant medicine as he says goodbye. Homestead is a big part of our family—from the plants he grows, to the medicine we take, to the ways it has financially supported us. Just the other day Sol and Zen were in the bathroom ‘making medicine’ by mixing soap and water in a pitcher with their toothbrushes. It was such a sweet moment.

During this transition, Nic and I have been cycling through many conversations and questions about what we want this year to feel like. How can we create more space in our lives? How can we be more present with each other, our children, the land, and the animals? How can we move away to trading our time for dollars and generate more holistic wealth? What would it mean for us and our family if we both took this year (mostly) off work to dive deeper into what is calling to us?

In the thick of this change and meditating on these inquiries, I find myself at the beginning of this year exhausted yet grounded, clear. I haven’t slept more than two hours in a row over these last weeks (Zen and our foster daughter continue to have regularly occurring nightmares), and in the same breath, I’m accessing presence in new ways.

This is new for me. For many of my parenting years, exhaustion took me directly into overwhelm and helplessness. That child inside me would cry out, who is coming to take care of ME? Where are the adults in the room??

I’ve lost count of how many times my younger self has called out those questions in the dead of night with sick, scared, or detoxing young children only to realize after intense emotional and mental anguish, that nobody is coming to take care of me. That I am, in fact, the adult in the room.

I wish I could tell you when exhaustion stopped being so triggering, when I began to feel more of my adult self and less of my overwhelmed younger selves who are naturally terrified to caretake children. At some point, somehow, those overwhelmed and helpless younger parts began to integrate. While I’m often frustrated from being up all hours of the night and feel on edge from consistently broken sleep patterns, some days I’m able to breathe deeply and step (or stumble) fully into my adult self and give the children (and myself) what is needed. It feels like nothing short of a miracle.

From this clear-eyed, grounded adult self, I’ve been considering my writing and teaching practices, and more specifically The Deeper Call, the home and community for this work. What keeps surfacing from my gut is a deep knowing that it’s time for me to take a break from this space.

As many of you know, I’ve spent the better part of the last five years teaching myself to slow down and tend to my most basic needs, despite a personal history that entrains me to patterns of rushing, of endless motion, of exhaustion. (Not to mention how our culture supports and rewards this never-stopping.)

Could I keep going, crafting essays that take hours and hours or giving myself pep talks about how important it is to keep teaching breathwork sessions each month because I made a commitment to myself and to our community?

Sure.

I could push. I could keep going. I could tell myself, it’s just writing, don’t make it so precious, don’t make it so meaningful. I could tell myself, you are a teacher, it’s terrible to break a promise on something you started, don’t be lazy, just keep teaching.

I could go back to a dissociated, rushed momentum, overriding my body’s signals to downshift, but pushing myself past my limits is something I’m less and less interested in.

I don’t want to push myself in those ways again. Even though I’ve done it in the past. Even though my stats will decrease. Even though the algorithm will de-prioritize my work. Even though I will earn less income. Even though some part of me will feel like a failure.

My body, my inner wisdom, and my family are asking me to take a pause. And I’ve done enough work to trust that if I don’t honor this reasonable ask, I’ll end up in another cycle of depletion and burnout.

I’ve done enough work to trust that, despite what my younger self thinks, I’m not a failure for needing or wanting a break.

I’ve done enough work to trust that what’s best for The Deeper Call is for me to continue honoring myself, even when that means stepping back for some time.

I’ve done enough work to trust that it’s okay if readers unsubscribe or cancel their paid memberships or unfollow this space.

I’ve done enough work to trust that my worth is not contingent on how much I share in the public sphere, through some days I get sucked back into that cultural narrative.

I’ve done enough work to trust that the readers who truly care for me and for themselves will wholeheartedly support this pause.

Right now, I don’t know what will awaken and unfold over the coming months. I also am unsure when I will come back to this space (perhaps by the Spring Equinox, maybe in the heat of Midsummer). What is clear to me is that this isn’t good-bye, this is a pause. This is a time for me to recalibrate, a time to step back, a time to follow my own deeper call.

During this pause I’ll leave paid subscriptions on as gentle encouragement to support creatives to take breaks and to normalize paying creatives for their larger body of work, not just a particular essay or breathing practice¹. You are of course free to pause your paid subscription or cancel it at any time.

For all paid community members, you will continue to have access to our essay archives, breathwork immersions, and Breathwork Library, full of short, restorative breathing practices that I suggest bookmarking as a handy practice guide.

And, if you’re here to practice trusting your inner wisdom, slowing down, and connecting to what matters most, I can say with confidence that you are still in the right place.

Before I sign off I want to say thank you for supporting The Deeper Call for nearly two years. Without your support this space would not be what it is. I’m deeply grateful for your insightful comments, the ways you show up for inner work, and the ways that we are helping each other become more alive, present, integrated humans.

Finally, I want to acknowledge how generative it feels to be part of a community that gives each other permission to change, to refill our cups, to honor our sacred pauses. You all remind me that our value is not determined by our output, our growth metrics, or how much we can do. Our value is shaped by how we tend to ourselves, each other, our neighborhoods, and our planet. If there’s one thing I’m taking with me on this pause, it’s that.

With so much gratitude,
Ashley

1. This idea was inspired by the lovely

Emma Gannon

in her recent essay on taking a pause to focus on her new novel.