PRIDE HIGHLIGHT: Ep. 62 Becoming the Messenger That You’ve Been Waiting For with Ashlee Marie Preston
Recovering From Reality
Dear Media, Alexis Haines
4.8 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 June 2022
⏱️ 95 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, I had a profound conversation with activist Ashlee Marie Preston. Ashlee is a proud black, transgender woman who is constantly advocating for LGBTQ+ youth and those who are struggling. She is now 8 years sober, and has the humility and kindness to share her story of recovery from childhood abuse, meth, prostitution and homelessness with us. Ashlee is now the messenger she has been waiting for her entire life, and I believe she is a messenger for all of us too. Ashlee grew up unsure of her gender identity in the conservative state of Kentucky. She shares her harrowing story of sexual abuse, being institutionalized as a child, and how her drug addiction began. She moved to California at 19, and found herself struggling to fit in. She was fired from her retail job for being trans and became homeless, without a shelter that would accept her and her trans identity.
On the streets, Ashlee resorted to sex work as a means of survival. She turned to substances to numb out and survive. It was finally Ashlee’s understanding of her relationship with God/universe, that brought her to the breaking point. She began recovery, and found her voice in activism through working with nonprofit organizations, and seeing how poorly people like her were being treated.
Everything that Ashlee thought made her broken and unworthy are now symbols of strength and beauty in her life. Without the work she’s done (in spirituality, sobriety, and service), she would not be helping people like she is today.
Ashlee’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ashleemariepreston/
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Produced by Dear Media
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast is a DR Media Production. |
| 0:07.6 | Hey, this is Alexis Haines and welcome to Recovering from Reality, |
| 0:11.6 | where I illuminate the messy and magical path of coming home to yourself. |
| 0:16.1 | Whether you're on the road to recovery, seeking self-care techniques for surviving the |
| 0:20.6 | capitalist machine, or just need a moment to remember that you're not alone in your loneliness, |
| 0:26.3 | we're serving up the ultimate truth. Your challenges don't define you, how you deal with them does. |
| 0:33.0 | So are you ready to recover from reality? |
| 0:39.2 | We have to get to a place where we can hold people accountable and hold them at the same time. |
| 0:45.0 | And that is my gift. That's my superhuman super hero power is that again, I had made that |
| 0:52.7 | commitment that I was going to lean more into the nuance instead of the noise. And so |
| 0:56.1 | now, how am I going to make that an actionable step? And so for me, that means holding space for |
| 1:03.8 | people that fuck up and they get it wrong and they say messed up stuff. And mind you, there's a |
| 1:09.8 | difference between, you know, shielding someone who's making excuses, but we know we typically know. |
| 1:16.1 | You can feel the remorse or if it's just like a half-ass apology. |
| 1:21.6 | There's this huge space. There's a wide aspect or between accountability and cancellation. |
| 1:29.1 | Happy Monday. I am still recovering from COVID. I don't know how long this brain fog is going to |
| 1:35.3 | last, but while it is, we are doing some self-care. And this week that self-care meant doing a |
| 1:43.6 | rerun of an old episode, which I've never done before, but I know is like a thing in the podcast |
| 1:48.8 | world. And when I was going back through my previous hundred plus episodes of this podcast, |
| 1:56.0 | which is crazy to me that I've put out not many episodes, I had a really hard time picking |
| 2:02.1 | which one I wanted to rerun. Would it be a solo episode, an episode with my mom? Would it be |
| 2:07.6 | Johan Hari or AJ McLean? But then I thought about Ashley. And since it is still Pride Month, |
... |
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