Healing from the Inside Out After Being Married to an Addict: Ashley Malik's Story

Have you ever been in a relationship that carried so much emotional trauma that your health began to suffer?

That's the essence of Ashley Malik's story, and I had the privilege of hosting her on the show where she shared it for the first time.  In a deeply personal conversation, she unveils her escape from an abusive marriage entwined with a gambling addiction and the financial deceit that nearly broke her.  Ashley's tale is not just one of survival; it's a masterclass in transformation—as she shares her incredible journey, we're reminded of the resilience within us all and the steps we can take toward healing.   This episode is a guide on how to turn your pain into purpose.  Her story offers a view from the other side of addiction showcasing her strength, love for her son, and passion for helping others.   

Ashley Malik, MSW, is not just a health coach; she's your go-to for healing from the inside out. Ashley specializes in creating family-friendly, anti-inflammatory meals for busy women. She teaches the importance of balancing nutrition and family life as a working mom without sacrificing family favorites at the dinner table. We talk about the benefits of anti-inflammatory eating with practicality, the brain health needed to stay on track with our health goals, and the unexpected joy found in the Family Fork, a free guide.

So tune in, and let Ashley's story inspire you to heal yourself from the inside out.
Connect with her on Instagram Ashley | Anti Inflammatory Weight Loss (@theashleymalik) • Instagram photos and videos or visit www.ashleymalik.com for more inspiration.  Grab The Family Fork here: The Family Fork: 7-Day Anti-Inflammatory Dinner Plan (myflodesk.com)

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome to the Sober Living Stories podcast. This podcast is dedicated to sharing stories of sobriety. We shine a spotlight on individuals who have faced the challenges of alcoholism and addiction and are today living out their best lives sober. Each guest has experienced incredible transformation and are here to share their story with you. I'm Jessica Stepanovich, your host. Join me each week as guests from all walks of life share their stories to inspire and provide hope to those who need it most. Welcome to another episode of the Sober Living Stories podcast. My guest today is Ashley Malik. She's a health and wellness coach with a master's in social work. She shares today how the trauma of an abusive marriage to an alcoholic addict destroyed both her physical and mental health. After leaving, she worked hard to heal from the inside out. This healing led her to her life's purpose as a health and wellness coach. Today, she teaches working moms how to heal from the inside out with nutritional strategies that are family-friendly. Get ready to be inspired as Ashley shares her story. Welcome, ashley, so happy to have you on the show today.

Speaker 2: 1:39

Thank you so much, Jessica. I'm so happy to be here today.

Speaker 1: 1:43

As you know, on this podcast we talk a lot about how our darkest moments have been transformed into some of the best moments of our life. You know you mentioned being in a traumatic marriage that had both physical and emotional hits to your wellbeing. Yet you're able to sit here today and enjoy great success as a health and wellness coach. So if you don't mind sharing your story from the beginning, of how you went from there to here and any lessons that you may have learned along the way, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 2:18

Thanks, jessica. Yeah, I've been thinking long and hard about how best to share the story and it really starts all the way back when I was in high school. I met a guy and I was a cheerleader and he was a football player and we just really had fun together. We dated through all of high school and we ended up going to college together. And you know, in college it was, we had fun and he drank a lot. But you kind of think like that's what you do at college, right, you get away from your parents and you sort of let loose a little bit and that all seemed normal. And then one day we were in a college that was not very far from Las Vegas it was like a three or four hour drive and one day his roommate invited him to go drive to Las Vegas for the afternoon. And life was never the same after that particular day.

Speaker 2: 3:16

What transpired in the couple of years after that is that my boyfriend at the time got so just involved in gambling and I think it served his heart a lot. He felt important and he had money and uh, but he wasn't a good gambler and so, um, unfortunately it just it continued to permeate into his life. We were obviously still dating at the time, and so he was gambling and drinking a lot. It got to the point where he was starting to steal things from me, from roommates, and a lot of times he would steal money, but he would also steal items that he could then pawn and get money for, and one day I think I was a junior in college I got a call from the president of the bank where I was banking and he said you have to go down here, it's an emergency. So of course, I'm terrified, but I drive down to the bank and, as it turns out, my boyfriend had been depositing empty envelopes into the ATM machine, saying you know, I'm depositing $500, but there was nothing in the envelope and he was doing this on my checking account. And so there I am with the bank president. The cops are there and they asked me you know, do you want to press charges? And I didn't know what to do. I didn't. I probably should have taken that chance to talk to my parents or something, um, but I decided not to press charges and throughout the next year and a half or so, uh, my boyfriend, he just continued to rack up debt. You know it would be he'd go to Vegas and lose $20,000. One weekend it was $80,000 on his parents' credit card, like it. Just there was just no, there was no stopping. So we kind of get to this point of graduation and I don't know.

Speaker 2: 5:21

I was raised to really like find the best in people and believe that people can sort of move through their lives through their experiences. And not that I wanted him to change, but I assumed that after he got out of college and we get steady jobs he's going to grow out of this right. I couldn't see either path forward and we did end up getting married, either path forward. And we did end up getting married, and for the first couple of years of our marriage I think gambling wasn't as big of a problem, but the drinking it was definitely there. It was drinking all the time, drinking. On the weekends there was a lot of drinking.

Speaker 2: 5:58

And then the gambling wasn't a problem until all of a sudden it was, and so he had started doing things like through his company that he was working for at the time, he started committing fraud and he was creating these fake invoices that he would get paid for and there was no work being done, but all of this money again was to support his gambling habit. So through this time I ended up getting pregnant and we knew that it was a boy and while I was pregnant we spent a Thanksgiving with his grandmother. I had watched sort of their generations of alcoholism in his family and his dad was a very active alcoholic. And when I was there for Thanksgiving with his grandmother she pulled me aside and she said Ashley, I do not want you to name this baby the fifth because my now husband at the time was, you know, his dad was the third, my husband was the fourth and so we have that in our family as well, yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:09

Yeah, and she said I don't want you to continue this legacy at all, and so that really, like I was already having a lot of doubt about staying married, but I'm like I've got a baby on the way. For the way I grew up, family preservation was very important and you kind of you worked at it, but you did what you could to to keep the family together. So we did. He got fired from a job that he was working at about a month before I was due with our baby and he got fired because he had wrapped up credit card debt on the um, on the company card, and so when I delivered um, he was totally unemployed. We were just crushing under debt that he had accumulated. And, like I remember, shortly after I delivered I went to buy groceries at the grocery store and my card was declined and I found out that he had completely wiped out my entire savings and checking account, like I had. I had no money. I had no money.

Speaker 2: 8:15

So for the next six years I did everything I could to sorry, to sorry. I did everything I could to try and make it for the sake of my son and it just it was like these daily violations of my safety and my security and the trust that I thought you were supposed to have when you marry someone. And my, my husband at the time, like he would pawn everything like nothing If it wasn't bolted down, he was off selling it. He sold my wedding rings. He sold our vacuum. I went to vacuum one day and you know we had one of those like Dyson animal vacuums I guess it's the money at the pawn shop and so he, just he started like continuous selling activities that really just violated trust. He took out a second mortgage, um in on our house that he forged my name. I didn't know anything about it.

Speaker 2: 9:15

Um, he threatened to commit suicide a number of times. Um, he got beaten up in a Las Vegas airport and I still don't know. You know, was it people he owed money to? I don't, I don't really know. Um, he did end up going to rehab for gambling and for for being an alcoholic. Um, he went twice and one of the activities when he was at rehab was to for myself and his family. We sort of sat and tried to tally up all of the money that he had spent gambling and we sort of got to a neighborhood of around a million dollars that he had, and that was all that we could account for. We're sure that there was more to it than that, um you go ahead.

Speaker 1: 10:02

You really hit on um so many things that take place in an addictive cycle. You know, and you know the denial of of his own disease, but also you being so close to him and wanting it to continue and work. Um, often, when people are next to ones that they love and they're seeing them struggle, there's a little sense of denial too, because you want to see it the way that you want to see it and you want to see it through, and so you had touched on trust and a lot of um. Alcoholism and addiction deals with um the importance of honesty, which is just not there, and because the the drive to continue doing what we do when we're active, it takes over that, so it's literally impossible. So you touched on so many feelings too, and I know that it's difficult to talk about this. So I thank you for sharing that portion and if you'd like to continue, that'd be great. But you hit on some very important feelings that are completely consistent with alcoholic and addictive behavior, which I'm sure listeners can completely relate to.

Speaker 2: 11:14

Yeah, yeah, and it just, it's so, it's so damaging because you don't, when you get married and you're creating a family, you just, or as human relationships, you just don't expect that that trust is broken over and over again.

Speaker 1: 11:27

And, too, just for listeners. You know, this is like an opportunity to see this from the other side, from our loved one's views, from not the addict or the alcoholic and recovery side, but from the person they're sitting next to and they're with. So that's another reason I just wanted to thank you for having the courage to come on, because it's very, it's an important message to hear.

Speaker 2: 11:50

Yeah, definitely, definitely, so, yeah, so I just, you know it's, the years kind of went by, I finally did file for divorce and it it began a journey, a very long journey of survival for me, and I sort of I thought I was surviving when we were married, but once I was on my own, um, it became very clear to me that survival was the only option, and really survival for my son. Um, you know, we did have a shared custody agreement, which I fought really hard not to have. That, but that's what we ended up with. And, um, there were just a lot of just continued incidences of, you know, my ex picking up our son while, you know, from school after he had been drinking. Um, you know, he took him gambling one time and left him in the car so he could go in and gamble, like just things that you think of, things you see on movies. I'm like how is this my life? I just can't even fathom that these things are possible. And taking care of our son, um, and meanwhile I'm trying to do everything I can taking my son to therapy, trying to get him involved in activities, create mentorship opportunities for him with other men that I felt were good, you know like father figures. And it through all of this.

Speaker 2: 13:16

What sort of was a big turning point is? My ex ended up in prison because he had done a very similar thing to another woman that he had been dating at the time. And I had to. I had to make some really hard decisions in those couple of years of our lives to decide whether or not to help my son have a relationship with his dad. And so we did drive. We would do a six hour round trip to go see him in prison for 90 minutes and that was a horrible experience. But my my ex had done a lot of manipulation to my son in saying you know well, your mom was doing this or your mom is making a problem your mom is making is creating all of this chaos. And when he was in prison I didn't want my son to think that I was the reason that he didn't have a relationship with his dad. So we tried to keep things going as best as I could.

Speaker 2: 14:16

But it was really hard and I think my son I know I took a big hit by what happened. My son's hit was even harder. He felt this massive sense of abandonment from his dad and it created a lot of anxiety in him that he still deals with today and struggles with of. You know, for a long time it was worrying, like, where's my dad? Is my dad coming home? And then it was like, is my dad in jail? Is my dad going to ever come? Like he just never knew.

Speaker 2: 14:45

And so the anxiety was crushing for him and he really struggled for a long time in his own path, in his own journey for healing and, you know, struggled in school and dabbled in drugs and just trying to numb his own feelings of how hard this was for him. But he, we worked really hard and we finally got him to a point where he graduated from high school. That was so important to me that he not get a GED. I wanted him to graduate and he did and he worked really hard to get there and he today he ended up going through the police Academy and today is a deputy sheriff and he has a wonderful fiance and wow, that's incredible.

Speaker 1: 15:31

He became, he went into law enforcement.

Speaker 2: 15:34

He went into law enforcement and it just. It's one of those moments where that's amazing.

Speaker 2: 15:39

Good for him Right as a family. My family has been behind me through this entire journey and what. What a turning point for him to take, what he went through and he is a much more, I think, benevolent police officer, because people have these journeys in life that lead them where they are. Um, and then the fact that he, that he's a dad now, too, to the sweetest, like squishiest little baby. He's an amazing dad and I've loved watching him grow into that piece of his life. And he, he still struggles. We both talk about it. I struggle too, and but we're at a place where we can start to heal and grow now, as opposed to feeling like we're just surviving.

Speaker 1: 16:27

Sure, and you talked about survival mode in the beginning and that you thought you were surviving, and then it wasn't until you left that you really understood what survival looked like.

Speaker 1: 16:36

I see so much of that when I get next to girls and women who are battling in custody, whether it was because of something they did or otherwise. I remember being in court for someone who was trying to get custody back of her son and there was 20 women in the rows supporting her because she had turned her life around. So, incredibly, this situation is different. But I commend you for your strength and resilience that you had as a parent to walk your son through that. But just seeing the outcome of his choices in becoming a father himself and then also to go into a career of law enforcement, it shows that you all did it and you did it well and whatever's to come of his relationship with his dad is for him. But he has the tools now and the life experience now to be able to navigate that, because you navigated it with him out of need and you're doing something similar where you're in a health career, which is quite incredible.

Speaker 2: 17:44

My belief is what happened that I internalized so much of what was happening the trauma, the fear, the stress, the anxiety. I didn't feel like I could take care of myself. I needed to take care of my son and that was my priority for so many years. And after a while my body quit and it gave up and I ended up having a lot of weight gain. I was 50 pounds overweight and I had thyroid issues. I had autoimmune diseases. I had anxiety, depression, like I. Just my body shut down completely and I felt I was at a point where I was like you know what I have. I have survived. I have grown so much from the experience that I went through, in what that marriage and that life and that season of life looked like. Um, and I put that same resolve towards myself and I thought okay, my son's okay where he is, my ex-husband is doing his own thing. It's time for me to focus on me. And so I really.

Speaker 2: 18:49

I took a deep dive for years into healing my body from the inside out and healing my gut health, which was ravaged from stress and worry, and which helped me heal my mental health. I lost 55 pounds, I put my autoimmune diseases into remission and have really clean blood work from all of that. And what I did is I took a lot of the tools that I used to create that healing for myself and turned it into a place where I could say I am ready to help heal other women. I am ready to help heal other women, and not everyone has a story as big or as grand as I do, but it is a huge gift for me to take what I've learned the resilience, the patience, the discipline and help other women to see that, whatever situation you're in, we can get out of it together and we can give you a healthy, happy life to live. And it's it, truly it's. It's like this is the work I've meant to. I was meant to do my entire life.

Speaker 1: 19:57

It means so much. Yeah, that's a really powerful message what you just said. So can you elaborate a little bit? Tell us what you do.

Speaker 2: 20:04

Yep, absolutely so. I work primarily with moms who are working moms, whether in corporate or working a full time job. I help them create sort of an anti inflammatory nutrition strategy that is family friendly but helps them to heal inflammation that's going on in their body, and for me, that was the types of food that I was eating was like a big change in how I felt about myself and in actually being able to lose weight, actually being able to reduce stress, because my body wasn't inflamed all the time, and so when I started eating anti-inflammatory foods, I had a nutritionist who said something to me. She's like well, you know, you just if you can like make your own bone broth and probably cook fresh liver three times a week, and I'm like wait.

Speaker 1: 20:58

I am working doing that bone broth and I was out like who has time in your own? That's what I meant, yeah.

Speaker 2: 21:07

No time. No time I'm like. I'm working 60 hours a week. I'm a single mom still at the time and working so hard to just like keep life going. I needed to cook for my son too, and so I started creating a way that I cook and prepare meals that allows me to eat what I need for anti-inflammatory but also allows a family to eat what they want to eat. So if we're making like hamburgers one night for dinner, for example, I can have a hamburger. I'm not going to have it on a bun. I'm going to have a bed of lettuce. I'm going to have it surrounded with lots of veggies and condiments that I enjoy. My family can have that nice whole wheat bun and the thick slice of cheddar cheese on top, but we're making the same meal all at the same time and we we don't have to like spend a lot of time or feeling altering it or yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:01

Altering sitting out.

Speaker 2: 22:03

Yeah, no, it's just. There's no deprivation, there's no uh feeling left out of what everyone else gets to do. We all eat at the same time, and so these are the plans that I have for women. And then I also have a program where I teach women exactly how to create these kind of meal plans for themselves.

Speaker 2: 22:19

And one of the things that I do that's very different is we work a lot whether you're in my group programs or as a private client we work a lot on mindset, because it is really the stories we tell ourselves about the food we're eating and our capacity and capability to stick to a meal plan that makes us feel good. It's all it, all up here in our brain. And we spend a lot of time working on the mindset to make it that appear in our brain. And we spend a lot of time working on the mindset to make it so that women recognize oh, I can do this. It might feel hard, it might feel clunky, but I can do this. And I get them over that hump where a lot of women stop at one point because they're like it's too hard, I give up. My plans. Help you to not have to give up. And then we work through the mindset to say I can continue and I can feel amazing.

Speaker 1: 23:13

We've recently had on quite a few guests who talked about sugar cravings or food addiction. You know, after they put down one like alcoholism, or you know I'm 18 years in with being alcohol free, but this year has been my year to look at my food and my choices and I really hit a rock bottom in the middle of this year. So I can relate to what you were saying, where your body just kind of broke down and a hundred percent that completely happened to me. So I right now am on kind of the rebuild of that, and so it doesn't matter how much sobriety you have or if you have a problem with alcohol or not or anything else. It's wanting healthier choices, making positive change and how to do that. So you talk a little bit about um implementing strategy where your whole family can eat, where you know a growing boy who's in high school may require tons of food but you want to give that to him, but you also want to sit next to him and eat your own meal.

Speaker 1: 24:16

And something else I'd love for you to touch on is oftentimes our emotions are are in direct relation to our food choices, like if I'm not, if I'm feeling terrible about myself. We're going through a difficult time. My energy is gone, I have nothing. We're going to go for something quick, we're going to go for something unhealthy and we're just going to play that card Like we don't care. And the truth is we do care. We just feel like we've lost choice.

Speaker 1: 24:42

So, speak to that. Speak to how somebody can make good choices or make that turning point in those different decisions, even if they're at a lower point in their life.

Speaker 2: 24:54

Yep, absolutely so. This is um. This has been a big piece for me in the last couple of years and I actually got a certification in mindset training because it was so impactful to me. We do we often think like forget it, like I'm feeling sad and feeling bad about myself and I'm low, I'm just going to eat whatever and screw it I will. You know, I'll try again tomorrow or next week or whatever.

Speaker 2: 25:21

And what's happening is that our brain is actually trying to keep us safe. Believe it or not, our brain is saying you know what? It's hard to make the good food choice right now. It's hard to feel this way. I don't want to feel this way, and so brain is actually just doing what it is supposed to do. It's helping you survive, it's helping you conserve energy and avoid pain and seek pleasure. That's the only three jobs brain has. And so if we can learn to harness our brain a little bit to say you know what brain? I know it feels hard to make a good food choice right now, but I also know that if I make a different food choice for something anti-inflammatory or healthy or not so destructive right now, I will feel better tomorrow. So instead of shaming ourselves. It's really helpful to give ourselves grace and say thank you, brain. I know you are trying to keep me safe, but I also know what is going to help me right now and I'm going to make a different choice.

Speaker 1: 26:28

So it's a very different way. It's like a programming, like a reprogramming but, you have to, you have to speak it, you have to say it, and then your, your brain, will follow suit. I've heard that so much.

Speaker 2: 26:38

It doesn't happen overnight, because we have thousands of you know points of data to say it doesn't feel good, it's hard, this is too difficult, I'm never, I'm not going to be successful. Like we have thousands of points of data that prove what brain wants us to believe. Like we have thousands of points of data that prove what brain wants us to believe. And we have very points of data that say but what would happen if I did make the right choice today? What would happen if I chose not to dive into like for me it's cookies? If I chose not to have six cookies and I just had one and I had a protein shake instead, how, like how much different would I feel?

Speaker 2: 27:12

So we have to build that body of evidence on the other side of what brain has to believe, and that's why it doesn't happen today. Tomorrow you can't just snap your fingers and say I'm going to make a better food choice today. It doesn't happen that way. To build that body of evidence. So it is, it's completely reprogramming, but it we so often fall into shame, and I don't want us to fall into shame. I want us to say thank you, brain. You, actually, you have held me, you have helped me to make good choices. You've helped keep me safe, but I'm going to make a different choice today.

Speaker 1: 27:48

Before we hit record, you did mention you had a couple of lessons that you learned from the experience that you went through. I don't think it's uncommon as we think for people to be in domestic situations that are very similar to yours. You are the first person that I've had on that did talk about gambling and money, but it is so comparable and similar to drugs and alcohol. It's the same cycle and having that in a marriage is so difficult because you have the trust factor that's just broken. So what are some lessons that you have learned from going through that, from coming out of it and then turning it around and making it your life's work?

Speaker 2: 28:29

Yep, I'd love to share that. So I have four different lessons that I've learned that I think come from my experience, that are really generalizable to anybody who's listening. So I think the first one is I recognized and it took me a long time to learn this but being in a relationship with an addict does not make you, as the person on the other side, any less smart, disciplined, capable. The addict has their life to live and that doesn't. That doesn't mean that you are at fault. It doesn't make you bad for staying or trying to make it work. I spent a lot of years in shame of feeling like I am so stupid, why didn't I leave? And none of those thoughts ever served me until I recognize I am still just as smart and capable and loving and disciplined my, my ex. That was his life to leave as an lead, as an addict, and and that doesn't change who I am.

Speaker 2: 29:31

Um, I think number two is the fact that there is a reason for what is happening and I, in all honesty, I'm not a very spiritual person or a very religious person. I am spiritual but not religious and I for a long time couldn't figure out like why, as we all on the other side and even as the addict, I think we often think like why is this happening to me? Why am I having to go through this? And what I came to realize is that the universe had a plan for me and for my son and for anyone else who was impacted by this. The universe had a plan and what I discovered is that I, like I, went through a journey that forced me to heal myself and now I get to heal others, and that is my life's work. And if I had not had this experience in my life I'll be it. It was long and hard and challenging and sad I wouldn't be where I am today. So trust that there is, there's a reason behind what's happening, even though you can't see it in the moment.

Speaker 2: 30:34

The third lesson I learned was it's when you want to leave a relationship. You get to decide when the time is right. So there were people in my life that really encouraged and pushed like you need to leave him and he's so bad for you, and this is terrible, and maybe it was the way that I was raised. My parents are amazing, but I I knew that in my heart of hearts I could not leave until I felt like I had tried and I had done what I could do as a human, as his wife at the time, as a mom. It's so important to find friends and a support system that when you say I don't know, I'm going to, I'm going to try again, we're going to try rehab again, we're going to try therapy, whatever it is that they say, I am behind you. I support you because if you have friends who are constantly telling you leave and don't be with that person anymore, you will not be able to tune into your own body.

Speaker 2: 31:33

And I what it did is that allowed me to walk away with zero regret. And then I think the last one is believe that you will get through it. You know, I used to read a lot of like stories and chat boards and message boards about women that had gotten out of their abusive relationships and I really genuinely felt like I am so glad for you, but that will never happen for me. And I had to work very hard to start recognizing back to like the first point, like I am strong, I am smart, I am capable, and what I eventually was able to do is lead myself to a place where I have I am married to a wonderful man right now who knows all of my baggage and handles it with loving care. I have two amazing kids. I have, you know, a grandbaby, who is just the sweetest, squishiest thing I did get through, and the way I was able to do that is to believe that there was something different for me, something more for me, that my life had purpose, beyond the experience that I was living through.

Speaker 1: 32:45

I know that you have a download and I'd love to share it with people and listeners, and I'm going to put it in the show notes and we'll talk a little bit about it at the end. But it's called the family fork, correct, yeah?

Speaker 2: 32:59

Yeah, so it's the family fork dinner plan and just a quick little backstory. The family fork is actually a move in chess, where I'm not going to pretend that I know the right pieces or the moves, but it's basically that like you accomplish a lot of um, like you tackle a lot of things all at once on the chessboard, and for me, the family fork dinner plan is a way to tackle all of the things in a very like streamlined, optimized way. So the plan allows you to cook three nights in a week but have dinner on the table for seven nights.

Speaker 1: 33:38

Oh, wow, that's so good.

Speaker 2: 33:39

It provides anti-inflammatory options Like that's the basis of all of the recipes. But then there's also a section on each recipe that shows you how to make it for your family. So you have a dinner plan and a recipe for every night of the week, but you only have a heavy cooking, like heavy cooking. I say like 20 to 30 minutes three nights a week. The other four nights a week you're sort of repackaging and repurposing some of the foods into different meals, but again, everything is based on anti-inflammatory eating, which is going to be good for our health our physical and mental health. And then there's the family-friendly option. So, like we talked about burgers, I know how to make a burger. For me that's gluten, dairy-free, but for my family they want that thick slice of cheese. We can do all of that together. So that plan allows you to sit down and have a meal with your family, spend less time cooking, but really support your own body with anti-inflammatory nutrition. That's going to make you feel amazing every day.

Speaker 1: 34:43

This part of your story. You know a lot of people looking at you. They may be like, wow, you know, like so amazing, she's got this everything together and so beautiful and like, oh, this, you know. That's why I love this podcast and I love the online world, where people are sharing their hearts, like things that are behind closed doors. They're putting it out there and they're just sharing it courageously. There's not one person that doesn't have a story, and so I really commend you for sharing that and putting that as part of your whole, because it really makes it come full circle.

Speaker 2: 35:25

There is so much benefit. You are so right, jessica, that we all have stuff and garbage that we have lived through and we have thrived from or maybe we didn't do it all that well, but we're still here today. There is so much healing in being able to share our stories. And once you do what like when I tell people cause I don't talk about this widely, but I don't hide from it this is a very significant part of my life. And when I tell people because I don't talk about this widely, but I don't hide from it this is a very significant part of my life. And when I tell people, I can tell they're either totally inspired and they think differently about the way they move through their lives and their challenges, or we actually have a connection, and I think that's how we met Jessica. We just had one little glimmer of something and we're like, oh, we have that in common. Sure, it'd be a better world if we all quit trying to be so like Instagram, shiny and you know we're not.

Speaker 2: 36:26

we're not perfect. We all have challenges. And what a warmer, more loving world If we can just be brave and share our story, because I guarantee when you do that, you will find somebody who says, oh my gosh, that happened to me too and we can talk about it. And then all of a sudden we have a really amazing relationship built right there because we have a shared experience.

Speaker 1: 36:48

Well, I thank you so much for sharing your story. I really appreciate you being on here and I wanted to just ask you to share where people can connect with you further.

Speaker 2: 36:59

Yep, absolutely, so. You can find me on Instagram at the Ashley Malik M-A-L-I-K, or online at ashleymalikcom.

Speaker 1: 37:14

Thank you for tuning into the Sober Living Stories podcast. If you have been inspired, consider subscribing and sharing with anyone who could use hope in their lives. Remember to stay tuned for more inspiring stories in the episodes to come. To view our featured author of the month or to become a guest yourself, visit wwwjessicastephanoviccom.