I came to meet Ashlee through Sharon Balsamo. I didn't know anything about her prior to showing up at her door at our scheduled appointment but within minutes of meeting at her door we became friends and we dove into the deep end pretty quickly. We cover a variety of topics extensively and vulnerably and I believe this to be a model of an important conversation. It is certainly a heart to heart and I am a big advocate for all of us having more of those.

A couple of days after our interview I went out of town for a week to get a change of scenery and I wasn't able to transcribe this conversation before leaving. I also had some other things on my mind regarding this project and spent the time away thinking a lot about it. And then when I came back I went to Sharon's office and we had another very beautiful conversation and talked through some of my frustrations. In the end, I made the decision that I wasn't going to transcribe interviews in their entirety anymore. It's an arduous task and one I'm not sure is necessary. It's also my least favorite aspect of this process and has somehow been responsible for the flow of the conversations as I've been conducting interviews in a way that I knew I could transcribe. So, what you will see below is my first attempt at changing this process. The entire interview can be listened to as per usual, but the words below are a synopsis. If you are a regular reader, you will likely see some tweaks as I continue to work into this new flow.

I'd like to offer a big thank you to Ashlee for this powerful conversation and for her modeling sincerity and integrity and another big thank you to Sharon for helping me figure out some next steps. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to Ashlee.