Motherhood, Visibility, and Reclaiming Your Voice {Part 8 of 8 Series: Eldest Daughter Turned Cycle Breaker} | Episode 34

In this deeply personal and emotionally charged episode of Wealth in Mothers, Ashley Crabb shares the truth behind her transformation—from a woman trying to make herself digestible for the world to a mother reclaiming her voice, visibility, and purpose.

Ashley unpacks the emotional cost of shrinking yourself to fit inside rooms that were never built for you. Through motherhood, rebuilding her identity, and learning to trust her own truth, she realized something life-changing: her story was never the obstacle—it was the work itself.

This episode is a powerful reflection on identity, motherhood, creativity, leadership, embodiment, and what happens when women stop performing and start telling the truth. Ashley explores the journey from fragmentation to wholeness, why mothers are starving for honesty instead of perfection, and how reclaiming your story becomes the ultimate wealth lever.

She also introduces Release & Rise, an intimate full moon experience designed for mothers ready to release shame, reclaim their truth, and rise into the fullest version of themselves.

If you’ve ever felt like you were “too much,” too intense, too emotional, too ambitious, too visible—or if you’ve spent years trying to abandon parts of yourself just to belong—this episode will feel like coming home.

What You’ll Hear in This Episode

•  Why your story is not something to hide—but your greatest wealth lever 
•  The emotional exhaustion of performing a life that isn’t aligned 
•  How motherhood awakened Ashley’s voice, truth, and creative power 
•  The danger of abandoning your gifts to stay accepted 
•  What happens when women stop fragmenting themselves to fit into different rooms 
•  The difference between performance and embodied leadership 
•  Why mothers are starving for honesty, not polished perfection 
•  The power of visibility, truth, and saying yes to your own life 
•  How authenticity creates magnetic leadership and ripple effects in community 
•  Why women were never made to shrink themselves to be loved 

About Release & Rise

Release & Rise is an intimate gathering hosted by Ashley Crabb and sponsored by Wealth in Mothers and The Yoga Place.

Held under the second blue moon of the month, this sacred experience invites mothers to release shame, reclaim their truth, and rise into embodied wealth and visibility.

•  Date: May 31 
•  Time: 5:00 PM – 7:30 PM 
•  Capacity: 13 mothers only 
•  Ticket Price: $31 

Get Your Tickets: https://www.itsashleycrabb.com/offers/eYHbnzr2/checkout 

If this episode resonated with you, share it with a mother who is ready to stop shrinking herself and start reclaiming her truth.

Be sure to subscribe to Wealth in Mothers for more conversations on motherhood, leadership, visibility, creativity, wealth, and embodied truth.

And if you’re ready to step into the next version of yourself, join Ashley for Release & Rise before tickets are gone.

RESOURCES + CONNECTION:

Find Ashley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsashleycrabb/ 

Download the Tell My Story Firestarter: https://ashley-crabb.mykajabi.com/opt-in 

Book a Vibe Check Call with Me: https://calendly.com/itsashleycrabb/30min 

Transcript

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I spent most of my life thinking my story was the part of me that I needed to hide. I needed to clean up. I needed to fix myself. I needed to become more digestible before I was allowed to be fully seen, before I was allowed to be fully heard. And during this journey, this journey of life, but this most recent chapter, I realized my story was never an obstacle to overcome. My story was the work. My story was the whole point. My story is my wealth lever. Welcome to Wealth and Mothers, the show where we rewrite the rules of success for women who are building businesses, creating wealth, and raising families all at the same damn time. I'm Ashley Crabbe, and this isn't a show about balance, productivity, or doing more. This is a space for mothers who know they're caring more than anyone acknowledges and who are ready to turn that into power, leadership, and wealth. Here we talk about what it actually looks like to create a movement inside the reality of motherhood. The invisible labor, the identity shifts, the ambition, the pressure. And the truth that none of it disqualifies you from wealth. It qualifies you for it. Because mothers don't need to shrink to succeed, they need to be seen. Let's get into today's episode. Release and rise, a full moon experience for mothers to reclaim their wealth. You have been silently carrying more than you were ever created to carry alone. You've been told by the world, by the noise, by the narrative handed to you before you even had words of your own. That your wealth is measured by what you produce, what you provide, what you prove. But wealth lives in you. It always has. On May 31st, we're gathering under the second blue moon of the month. 13 Mothers, one sacred space, our own truths. You are not here to prove your worthiness. You are here to claim your story as your wealth lover. This is not a workshop. This is not a networking event. This is a full moon experience designed to help you feel fully, unapologetically, and completely alive. Come ready to release. Come ready to box. The leaf Sun Prize is hosted by me, Ashley Crab, and it is sponsored by Wealth and Mothers and the Yoga Place. The event will be held on May 31st from 5 p.m. to 7:30. Tickets are available online. They are $31 a piece, and there are only 13 available. Make sure you get yours now because I cannot wait to see you under the blue game. After we moved back home and lived with my mom and moved again, and the boys were growing and we were, we were really rooted and living life. And I finally started to repair and rebuild the foundation of Ashley, where I finally shifted inside, where my creativity inside of me, the creation inside of me finally reemerged, finally became alive again. And in those moments where where I was present enough to recognize that I was in the becoming, I could not realize what it was at first. I couldn't even realize it until this journey that I've been sharing with all of you. I just knew I was no longer willing to hide. I was no longer willing to shrink, to be quiet, to silence myself or where I was going. My voice, my intensity, the way my brain works, the way I see things differently. My fucking truth was meant to be shared. My God-given gifts were meant to be shared. I was done waiting to be perfect in the eyes of anybody, any being around me. I was done making myself easier to consume. I was done living this half-assed life. And when I decided to do that, it was it was slow moving, baby. It was slow moving. We're talking four years. The boys are going to be four in about a month. And up until that point, what I think is so cool, by the way, is their birthdays in June, they're they're not Geminis because I planned it that way, but their birthdays in June, they're actually cancers. And my birthday's in December, and we're we're six months apart. And they'll turn four and I'll turn 34, and I'm a numbers girl. And I just think that's so cool and powerful. So for 33 years of my life, I spent so much energy trying to shove my full ass into spaces that were never built for me. These corporate spaces, social spaces, family roles, relationship dynamics, business, all of it, life, the mission, the divine purpose. I'm just constantly trying to figure out where I fit into this earthly narrative. How do I make myself fit here? How do I make myself easier for everybody else to understand? Right? Do I do I become less feral? Do I tone down the bold? Do I become this person who who doesn't share her thoughts and her beliefs and her values and her vision and her work because she's afraid of how other people are going to feel about it? Because she's afraid of how other people are going to understand or perceive it? Do I take that intense emotion that makes me too much? That that vibrant, feral, fierce fire inside of me, do I tame that? No, I said, fuck that. Motherhood, motherhood brought back that feral, bold, audacious little girl who is now a feral, bold, audacious mother whose roots started to grow along those boys inside my belly. And when we finally moved back home to Pennsylvania, when we finally all were here together and our roots were planted. And I could start building this foundation of a new foundation of four, but I could start repairing the original, right? Because when I got married, I did an addition. When I had these boys, I did an addition. But there's still this foundation of Ashley. And when I became a mother and I realized that I won, had to start repairing my own foundation and start repairing the relationships, the additions I added on and start building this ground up home with my new family of four. I wasn't going to do that softly anymore. I wasn't willing to do that softly because those two boys, the responsibility of raising those two magnetic, magnificent lights in this world. I realized how fucking dangerous it is for a woman to spend her entire life not just abandoning herself, but abandoning what she was created to do. Abandon what she was created to do. We are co-creators with this freaking world. We are co-creators with God, with the universe, with the world, with each other, women, mothers, we create life. On mission is creation. And when we abandoned that, when I realized how hard I was abandoning myself, when I could feel all of the years of that palatable Ashley who wanted to stay chosen, who wanted to stay accepted, who wanted to feel safe and protected and loved and valued and worthy and enough. Yes, physically exhausted, because if you have grown a human being and grown twins specifically and raised twins specifically, you know how physically exhausting it is and mentally taxing, even though it's the most fucking beautiful thing you've ever done. But my soul was exhausted. My soul was so tired because trying to perform this external societal narrative is suffocating. Trying to perform this narrative that everybody else is giving you, besides this clearly defined message that you're receiving, that's exhausting. In this chapter of motherhood, I decided, I severed the notion that I had to be someone else. I severed myself from this false narrative, Ashley, that I created. I decided I was no longer willing to be anyone other than me. I decided I was done listening to any other message than the message that was inside of me. I decided that I was no longer willing to accept this narrative that I had to stifle my creative ability, my ability to co-create. So in becoming more of myself and becoming the woman who listens to herself, who trusts herself, who co-creates in this life. When I decided that I was ready to be that woman, the woman that I've always been, the woman who is always here, just waiting, waiting for a spot at center stage. That is where I truly began to explode. You'll remember that I talked about being the ember and the wildfire. And for the last 10 months, I have been the ember who has been powerful and warm and heating up. And it's taken me until this moment to realize that I am finally ready to be the wildfire again. And not the wildfire of destruction, but the wildfire that provides the space and a path for creation, to create again, for rebirth, for regrowth, for a new life, for a new chapter. And so when I decided to finally be the woman that I was created to be, the mother, the wife, the daughter, the sister, the friend, the businesswoman. When I started the journey 10 months ago, my writing exploded. My poetry became alive. My speaking started coming from me. That's where the fire comes from. It wasn't until this moment where I didn't ignore the strategy or the branding, but I stopped trying to ignore the truth. And the more honest I became, the more magnetic everything became. And it shocked me at first. And it was so hard to hold at first because I've been so accustomed to not receiving, to not knowing how to receive. Because I know I'm not the only one, because I know so many mothers believe that if people fully see us, if the beings around us fully see us, they'll reject us. They won't understand us. They will perceive us in the wrong way. And what I found is when I told my truth, my raw truth, the more alive I became, and the more alive women around me became. When I became more alive, I saw the aliveness in all of those around me. And I started embodying a present, wealthy woman, a present, wealthy mother, a present wealthy leader, a woman, a mother who doesn't have to prove herself. And the more I started seeing that and embodying that, the more other women, other mothers started seeing, feeling, hearing, and embodying that. And I finally was able to realize the fact that rooms shift when I show up. And I started realizing, wow, Ash, your voice was never supposed to stay small. You were never supposed to question yourself. You were never supposed to hold this anger and resentment and fear and doubt. Your life wasn't meant for this. The life you are creating with your family wasn't meant for this. And when you when you have a realization that is so big, when you finally start listening, when you finally start saying, Show me, show me, give me clarity, give me the ability to be discerning and honest and true and loving. Show me only the truth. It is scary because you see some things you don't want to see. And because being visible means other people see you. Being willing to be visible means people really see you. Because you can you can try to show this polished, curated version of yourself. You can try to show the strategically packed version of you. But at the end of the day, there's nowhere to hide inside of that narrative. The truth comes out in that storyline. And there also comes a point where hiding behind that narrative is more painful than the break and becoming visible. That's the point I hit. And so I started saying yes to the things that terrify me. And for so long, I really believe that the yeses I was saying yes to were meant for me to say yes to. And every time I started to say yes to what was right in front of me, what was just beyond my reach came right behind it. And the more I became Ashley, Ashley Nicole, Plazon's motherfucking playson's crab, I do not recommend making your last name your second middle name. Keep it, keep your maybe main, ladies. But when I'm assigned to show up as Ashley, no less. The shift didn't just happen in me, the shift started happening in everyone around me. The ripple effect was in effect. You know, I thought leadership was always having all of the answers. Leadership was never questioning yourself. Leadership was always being polished, composed, fully healed. I know now that leadership, leadership looks like truth. Leadership looks like embodying the woman that you say you're gonna be, and you know you're meant to be, every single day, even on the days that it's hard. Leadership looks like a woman, a mother willing to fully stand inside herself, her own life, instead of trying to escape it, instead of trying to make the screenplay look like something else. When I realized that all of me, all of the hats that I've been fragmenting myself as, all of these different Ashleys, I was trying to show up as in every single room that I walked into. I was trying to make a certain part of me fit into the certain room that I was in. And that fragmentation cost me in work, in my friendships, in my marriage, in my in my whole life. Because you can't keep that narrative straight when you're trying to fragment so much of yourself. And the more and more I realized that I was created to be this whole ass awesome person, when I stopped fragmenting my life and motherhood and creativity and leadership, my story, when I stopped fragmenting my story, when it all became me, when it all became the mission, the same thing. My truth. And that's the part of expanding. Expanding doesn't happen just because you have all the answers, just because you don't ask questions. Expanding happens when you realize that your truth, when the truth is finally allowed to breathe, when you when you accept the fact that nothing is perfect, that no one has all the answers, and that we're all doing today for the very first time. It's like it's not that anything doesn't matter anymore. It's not that I don't care because I actually really dislike both of those sentences, but it's like I was finally, I was finally enjoying the sun on the shore. I wasn't I wasn't floating on at sea, I wasn't sinking, I wasn't tethered to this this darkness. I wasn't in this darkness of the womb or the darkness of the tomb. I was in the light. And I was soaking it in. And when I started to soak it in, my work started resonating so deeply with the women around me. My mission started resonating and being heard and seen and felt and shared more and more. Not because I had some perfect methodology, not because I had some perfect framework, some perfect plan, but because mothers, women are starving for honesty. We're starving for truth. That's what we are hungry for at our table. And baby, that's what I'm gonna serve up every fucking day. Because I've been the woman who is hungry for someone to say, you don't have to amputate the pieces of yourself to belong. You do not become smaller to be loved. You do not become quieter to be enough. You do not become less powerful to be worthy. You don't change any part of you that doesn't need to be changed. Just in order to make other people comfortable. That doesn't mean that you don't show up. That doesn't mean you don't change your own narrative. That doesn't mean that you don't take radical responsibility and radical freaking action. You want to know when another woman is speaking from this performance persona versus this embodied woman. You can feel that difference. I've always been able to feel that difference. And I've always tried to stop the projection of my magnetic light. Because I use to create from performance. And I'm not going to sit here and act like I'm still not nervous some days, that I'm still not questioning myself some days, but I know that the answer is here. I know that the answer is inside of me. So the flip, the switch is that I create from truth. And the truth is I trust myself and I trust the plan. I trust the narrative of the universe. I trust God. Those energies are so different. One drowns you, one sinks you to the bottom, and one expands you into a frickin' light beam. You see, it's not that I've been trying to fit inside rooms. I fit in any freaking room. It's that every frickin' can't hold me. Every freaking room doesn't deserve me. And I wasn't just made to be in rooms. I was made to create rooms, whole freaking homes, a village from the ground up. That's me, baby. Deciding that I'm finally willing to do that for me, for my family, for the mothers that I know are fucking ready. Once I stopped asking for permission to share this message out loud, to share my message out loud, my vision, got so much bigger. The net, the net that I could fish with got so much bigger. This wasn't just about a book, being a published author, speaking opportunities, podcasting. It wasn't just about the conversations and the community and the connection and the collaboration. It was about all of it having a fucking purpose and me finally cleaning it, finally claiming my story. None of this feels random anymore. None of me feels random anymore. None of me feels like an accident anymore. It doesn't feel earned. It feels alive. It feels like every single chapter of my story that I've lived was written to be here. The feral little girl, the eldest daughter, the reckless martyr, the cycle breaker mother. The woman who is repairing, rebuilding, adding on to herself, to her narrative, to the movement in real time. All of her is here with me. All of her has always been with me, ready to shine. And so now when I speak, now when I show up, it's not just a theory. That's why my story has always meant to be my work. That's why our stories have always meant to be the work. My story, my life, my voice. It's impossible to separate from the mission. And for the first time since starting my business, I'm no longer trying to separate them. I'm no longer trying to separate myself. I'm no longer trying to hide the woman I've always been, the woman I am right now, and the woman that I continue to become outwardly to all of you. If this episode resonated with you, share it with another mother who is on a mission, who is building something real. This is how we change the conversation by making sure women like us are seen, heard, and pain. And if you're ready to step into your next level of visibility, leadership, and wealth, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss what's coming next. You can also connect with me on Instagram, TikTok, my newsletter, where I share daily thoughts and conversations around motherhood, identity, and wealth. I'll leave you with this. You are not behind, you are not too much, and you do not need to choose between your family and your success. You are the woman who gets to have it both. I'll see you in the next episode.