We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ashley River a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ashley, thank you so much for making time for us today. We’re excited to discuss a handful of topics with you, but perhaps the most important one is around decision making. The ability to make decisions is a key requirement for anyone who wants to make a difference and so we’d love to hear about how you developed your decision-making skills.
I developed discernment through a lot of hardship that eventually led me to deeply and intimately know myself, my desires, my needs, and my truth, and then base my decisions off of those. Life is a series of choices that create our reality. Every day we choose our thoughts, our words, our beliefs, our relationships, our jobs, how we spend our days, how we show up for ourselves, what we consume, give, and on and on. I think learning discernment is one of the hardest but most important skills to learn, especially as a sensitive human. And especially as a woman as sovereignty in a woman has been something that is quite threatening and has been punished for generations and lifetimes. Even now, a strong woman in her clear knowing and power is often shamed or judged as we have yet to collectively heal our trauma with authority. And what is decision making but being in your own authority and will as a human.
I definitely had to work on clearing projections cast upon me by others to align with my own inner authority and free will. I had to learn how to choose from my soul, not from obligation or to please/not upset others. And I had to learn what my authority felt like in my body, and I learned it felt like desire. I call it “divine desire” as I consider it the seat of my own divinity and how god/my soul light speaks through me. When something is a yes, it feels good! Exciting! Juicy! Pleasurable! There is a magnetic pull towards it from my lower belly. When something is a no, I feel a pit in my stomach. I often feel immediately stressed, turned off, tired, or anxious when something is a no. And then once I understood what my inner authority felt like, I had to learn to not bypass my desire because of the fear of what others would think, how I would be perceived, judged, or even my own fears of failure or unworthiness. I eventually learned that choosing anything that was not a desire from within meant settling and choosing to believe I wasn’t worth what I actually need and desire. And when we settle, we don’t get to have the experience of being truly fed by life, and that malnourishment truly feels like death to me, because life is meant to be joyfully, miraculously lived!
A big catalyst for developing this discernment was through the initiation of my marriage and divorce. I chose “yes” to marry a partner that I didn’t actually desire to be with, and then found myself living in the middle of nowhere, with mysterious health symptoms, depressed, isolated, and separate from all that I had worked hard to create in life up until that point. I felt like I was losing myself and losing life force from my body daily. This called me to listen to myself in a deeper way.
Most humans make choices from a space of familiar/societal conditioning. They create from the will, beliefs, desires, needs, and voices from others, choosing in alignment with other people’s choices, not their own. This makes connecting to the true soul voice and authority of our souls very hard to hear, because our ears are oriented to voices outside of ourselves. And this is exactly what I did. We are quite literally told in our current culture that “marriage is a choice you choose every day.” That it requires compromise and sacrifice and effort to stay in union. And so I committed and dedicated myself to it from that conditioning, and it made me miserable. As a result, I sacrificed, I diminished my needs and desires, and I compromised to meet where my partner was at, what he needed and wanted to feel secure. Which was so far away from what I needed and desired. I compromised to move to a place where I was inaccessible to clients or community, compromising my career and need for community for the idea of safe love. I chose my marriage every day, and every day I lost myself more and more. Daily compromise became a soul-sucking death for me, and a way I continued to choose a life I felt I had no control over. A life void of all desires that were burning within me, a life that left me starving for more.
What is most interesting is when I decided to no longer compromise and choose my soul’s desires, my marriage abruptly ended. And my whole life changed. I began to align back with my destiny, no longer at the hands of fate that was written for me by other people. I realized I didn’t have to sacrifice anything, and my life could reflect my deepest, most juicy and vibrant needs and desires. I just have to choose carefully. Sacrificing was giving the power of my choice away to outside authority, when my inner authority is soulfully, and brilliantly designed to lead me towards all that I dream and desire in life.
The magic is, when you choose from your inner divine authority, from your soul, you will naturally receive everything you need. You will have more and more yeses come to you over the nos you are so used to choosing that end up depleting you and keeping you caught in the web of being the victim of your life, instead of the creator. You will realize that sacrifice is an illusion and suffering is only there to show you where you are not choosing your soul. But the path of destiny requires deconditioning our thoughts and beliefs, choosing a new reality with each choice. Choice is much more than thinking positive, picking well, and taking leaps of faith into what your soul is calling you into, because if the foundation of our choices are still being made from fear or conditioning, you can’t truly align with your destiny, because you are not actually choosing it fully.
We choose and create from our subconscious programming. Meaning, to align with our true will and soul choice takes time to unravel the webs woven around us from energies of fear, scarcity, control, and programming. And this is my daily devotion and the foundation of both my inner work and my work with my clients. It takes devotion, time, and yes, choice, to change our mind, clear our will, and align with pure, authentic, soul choice that grants us the power to weave our destiny over fate beyond our control. We must peel away, layer by layer, every thought, belief, and word that limits the expansive possibility of our soul. Any energy that diminishes the most fundamental truth we carry: that we are love. And from this space of clarity, soul union, love, and freedom, we choose what is true, aligned with our destined dreams and grandest desires.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I am an artist of life. A mystic, seer, 2x published author, soul guide, and bridge between worlds. I call my work soul midwifery as holding deep space for the birth of your soul light is my mission. I serve and guide others home to their inner flame of divine artistry to liberate their desires, truth, wisdom, and creative magic as an infinite soul. Think of me like your ancient, mystical, wise, starry friend holding a lantern through the dark night of your descent journey and towards the light of the heavens you are made of so that you may widen your capacity to birth new realities, hold more life, and show up fully expressed in your power, magic, and ancient mystery as you weave the web of your life.
My path in the work I offer began lifetimes ago, and this life has been a journey of remembering. I grew up witnessing, for witnessing life in all its cycles and how others interact in the realities we weave, in my opinion, is where we can extract the most profound teachings of this cosmic, creative human experience and remember who we really are. It’s like people watching on steroids. I study patterns, energetics, the frequencies beyond words, what is not being said, and what can only be seen through a set of cosmic owl eyes that discern illusions. It was my grandmother’s death as a teenager that awakened me to my gifts and catapulted me onto a path of divination and the oracular healing arts. It was then that I inherited some of the most pivotal tools for my path: a 35mm film camera, a vintage tarot deck and astrology textbook, and my grandmother’s powerful love forever imprinted in my heart.
After two years of formal art school, I went on to spend a decade deepening my studies in various forms of divination, psychic mediumship, energy healing, breathwork, Quantum Healing Hypnosis, past life regression, and plant spirit communication/earth shamanism with teachers, mentors, and guides, both in form and unseen. This path guided me to allow more and more of my authentic expression and how creation and the feminine force move through me in the most soul-aligned way. This led me to my unique medicine and to clearly hear my soul’s song.
In 2014, I began hand-weaving tattoos, and in 2016 I channelled my Soul Tattoo® modality of alchemical ceremonial tattooing as a bridge between soul and embodiment. Soul Tattoos was the birth of a new lineage of light weaving that catapulted me into a level of expansion, devotion, and service beyond what I could imagine at the time. This led to facilitating, teaching, and sharing transformation, desire-liberation, and soul essence expression through tattoo alchemy with thousands of people all over the world. In 2019, I signed with Sounds True and went on to write my book, Tending to the Sacred, and create my oracle deck, Messages from the Heart of the Divine, both released in 2021. And in 2022, I began writing my second book, which has brought out a radically different voice than my previous projects and I can’t wait to birth this book into the world.
Along my journey, I have transformed through a million deaths and rebirths as the feminine does to step into why I am here, following the voice of my soul to create, guide, and lead. I will continue to dream big, make art, follow my hunger, and dedicate my path to soul liberation because what we can create is infinite and needed. My desire is that through my work, I can help others align with their innate magic, soul light, flames of desire, ancient wisdom, and the way creation infinitely flows through them as a Divine vessel for life; The way we all know how to dream, attune to the infinite, birth, grow, grieve, and dance to the wild, mysterious rhythms of the universe; The way desire burns through our bellies as a pathway to anchoring down our grandest visions, seeds of potential planted within on purpose; The way that creation is our most natural design and grants us the power to weave the web of our lives. We all have a unique voice and creative expression to share, a medicine that may have never come to earth before but is needed more than ever. The greatest lesson you can ever learn is to allow for more of your soul to flow through you in all that you do. That is your healing balm to offer the world.
I currently reside in Los Angeles, CA where I offer private and group Soul Tattoo ceremonies, ceremonial tattooing apprenticeship training, Soul Regression sessions—both 1:1 and in group settings—as well as small group and 1:1 mastery mentorships through my offerings The Art of Conjuring and Soul Coronation. I also have a transformational online course that is a great start to my work! It’s called Remembering Your Way Home and it’s a self-paced journey using soul regressions, journaling, rituals, and more to connect to your true nature as a soul and sensitive, creative human. I also have a substack where I share writings monthly. You can find me on Instagram @iamashleyriver and all my offerings through my website ashleyriver.co
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
The three most impactful qualities or skills I have developed on my journey are trust, remembering, and devotion.
Life is mysterious. WE are mysterious. Here we are, these infinite beings of light with a vast soul’s history floating on a tiny rock in a galaxy in space filled with infinite universes. Our human experiences are so small in comparison to the vastness of reality. But trusting my own light, the mystery/the unknown, the nature of life, and anything else the mind would love to control, fix, and know, has been key to finding grace in the evolution of life, which is an intense journey! We are not here to control life, we are here to live it. And we live it by remembering that we are creators. By remembering that we are infinite. By unlocking memories of our soul’s history to remember who we are. By remembering we’ve done this a million times and all that we seek to know is within us, we just have to remember. And devoting to the light that we are. Humans have really disconnected from the flow and bounty of life because they stopped being devoted to love’s mystery. How can you show up in devotion to love and life daily? What does that look like for you? For a priest or priestess maybe it’s in prayer, lighting the altar candles, and ritual. For a mother maybe its deep presence with her children, singing lullabies each evening, and nourishing her loved ones. For an activist maybe it is devoting to their cause with passion and purpose, tending to their soul voice, and protecting others. Devotion to our cause will look different from person to person. For me it looks like cultivating a lot of space for pleasure, connection, and freedom. It looks like speaking spells to the sun and laughing with friends. It looks like being a stable, strong, loving force in ceremony with myself and my clients. It looks like tending to the altar of this life every day with my breath, my voice, and my heart. And it is this devotion that helps me to remember, and teaches me to trust.
Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?
Breathe! The breath is our most powerful tool and ally for liberation. When overwhelmed, it’s just a sign that we are at capacity, whether it be emotional capacity, or mental, physical, or energetic. And so we need a little stretching and recalibration to build greater capacity for life to flow through us, and our lungs are where life flows through us. I breathe every day as a devotional practice to life and creation. I breathe to release the burdens I am carrying. I breathe to liberate my voice. I breathe to clear the noise. I breathe to find my center. I breathe to regulate and repattern my nervous system. I breathe to change my mind. I breathe to cultivate peace. I breathe through transformation. I breathe to receive more of my light. I breathe because without breathing we can’t live! I breathe to build capacity to hold more life, experience more life, and anchor into my truth as more and more life flows.
Contact Info:
- Website: ashleyriver.co
- Instagram: @iamashleyriver
- Other: ashleyriver.substack.com
Image Credits
Ashley River
