[00:00:00] Hala Taha: [00:01:00] Yeah fam, if you've ever struggled with grief, loss, trauma, feeling stuck, or just the occasional bout of seasonal depression, then today's episode is just what the doctor ordered. My guest today is Ashley Lemieux. She's the founder and CEO of The Shine Project, the author of books like Born to Shine and I Am Here, And the host of the Healing Her podcast.

[00:01:35] Ashley is an expert on grief and trauma recovery and has devoted her life to helping others reignite the light within themselves. Today, she's going to teach us how we can all learn to shine even through some of life's darkest moments. Ashley, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

[00:01:51] Ashley Lemieux: Hey, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. 

[00:01:55] Hala Taha: Thanks for joining me today. So I'm going to just jump right into it. [00:02:00] For a lot of us entrepreneurs, our businesses grow out of something that we've struggled with in our own lives. And I feel like this has been especially the case for you.

[00:02:08] You've had a bunch of dark moments in your life. So why don't we start off with the first one that I learned about when I was researching your story. It was in your 20s. You unexpectedly became the mother of two children and then you had some traumatic experiences around that. Can you tell us what happened?

[00:02:25] Ashley Lemieux: Yeah. So in our mid 20s, I was actually building my first company also. We were newly married and we didn't have kids at all in our radar at that time. And overnight we became permanent guardians of two kids. And for the next four years, we were a family in every sense of the word and everything that we did revolved around raising the kids, giving them the opportunities that as a parent, you want them to have.

[00:02:57] And. All of us were under the impression that we [00:03:00] would be together forever, for always. And during the final steps of the adoption process, we experienced a very unexpected, contested adoption. And during that time, we ended up being in court for two years. I just remember the life inside of me. It felt like someone had taken a vacuum and just sucked it all out.

[00:03:25] We were in court all the time. Depositions, high stress, no one knew what was going to happen. And we ended up losing the kids. It's, I was actually on the other side of the country for work and it happened fast. I didn't even get to come home and say goodbye to them. And that was almost eight years ago now.

[00:03:47] And it rocked our world in a way that I did not know how to come back from, or if I even wanted to figure out how to come back from it, [00:04:00] to be honest. 

[00:04:01] Hala Taha: Can you help us understand how you ended up with these kids in your twenties and then Are they now back in your family or the court took them away and you just never saw them again?

[00:04:11] Ashley Lemieux: Yeah, so there's parts of our story that we just don't share all the full details of, but they were placed with us through someone we knew and we have not had contact with them since we lost them almost eight years ago. 

[00:04:28] Hala Taha: I'm so sorry to hear that. And I know that you guys decided to move after this happened.

[00:04:35] What did that teach you about grief when you decided to move? Were you able to run away from your grief?

[00:04:41] Ashley Lemieux: I wanted to. We were like, okay, what can we do that will help us not feel this way? This hell, this weight that feels like it has buried every aspect of our life. And it was really hard to be in the home that we had raised the kids in.

[00:04:58] All of our friends were [00:05:00] friends because our kids were friends from school. We're doing things in the community all together or sports teams and whatever. And my husband and I were like, if there's any shot of us making after this, we got to get away for a little while. So. We ended up moving to Nashville, Tennessee.

[00:05:18] I actually had had some employees there and everything about Nashville is very different than it is in Phoenix. And so we just said, peace out. Let's go. But then once we got to Nashville and settled in the adrenaline, you know, of a new city of new opportunities of the excitement of, okay, what are we going to explore?

[00:05:40] What is waiting for us here? Once that started to kind of wear off and the grief was still there, we were then like, okay, how much farther can we run? So we actually ended up packing carry on suitcases. And we went to Europe with pretty much no plans for almost two months, [00:06:00] hoping maybe that that would help ease the pain in that acute stage of grief when everything is just new and raw, and you don't know how to take your next breath.

[00:06:10] And, um, Again, after a while, that wore off. And so we found ourselves really having to dig deep of answering the questions, what is it that we want from our lives now? And how do we rebuild so that we can participate in our life and not just die? regret not living it because we were too sad. 

[00:06:32] Hala Taha: We're going to touch on this much deeper later, but you talk about this concept in your book called clarity mapping.

[00:06:38] So was this one of the first instances of you starting to get clarity around your life and what you wanted? 

[00:06:43] Ashley Lemieux: Yeah, so what was really hard for me, and I think a lot of people can relate to this, in whatever role you are in. Let's say you identify with your role of motherhood or as a wife or a partner or your role at work or whatever that [00:07:00] thing is that really shapes your identity.

[00:07:03] If that is taken away from you and is no longer a part of your daily world, You don't have to base your decisions around it anymore. Your actions aren't based off of doing that thing because it is gone. The lack of purpose that I felt in my life, no longer being a physical mother, is something that made it really hard for me to get out of bed in the morning.

[00:07:28] I didn't know how to focus my time and my energy anymore. It didn't matter at that point My business was running. It was okay for me to step away for a little bit. It did not matter if I got out of bed or not, there was no one I needed to feed breakfast to or to get to school or to bathe at night or to tuck in.

[00:07:51] And I stayed in bed for a long time until I got to the point where I was like, I have to figure out what my intention for my life is [00:08:00] now. And so I started with one simple question every single morning. And that question was, what is my intention today? Because today right now in this moment was all I could focus on.

[00:08:13] So that's when the concept of clarity mapping really started. I became a series of five questions that I answered every single day to help give me purpose and direction and clarity on who I was and what it is that I wanted to be rebuilding so that I could create tangible steps forward to start building that thing.

[00:08:37] Hala Taha: And one of those tangible steps was that you decided to have your own children. And so you and your husband started to try. for a baby and that led to another traumatic experience. Are you comfortable to share that with us? 

[00:08:50] Ashley Lemieux: Yeah, we waited, I think it was about four years after the loss of the older two kiddos.

[00:08:58] to feel like we were at a [00:09:00] place where we were ready to continue to try to grow our family. I didn't want to go back into motherhood feeling as broken as I felt because I knew that that would impact the next child that we were to bring into our family, and I had so much healing that I needed to do in order to be ready for that.

[00:09:19] So, We were so intentional about what the next steps of growing our family look like. And we decided the end of 2019 that it was time to grow our family. So that is when we moved from Nashville back to Phoenix. We were like, okay, We're ready to go back home. We want to be by my family. We want solid roots there so that when we have more kids, we're close to family and they get that experience of growing up around cousins, grandparents, aunts, and uncles.

[00:09:49] So we moved home and right when we moved home, we found out that we were pregnant and obviously we were so excited and it just felt like for the first [00:10:00] time in several years, we were going That there was this new breath of life being breathed into our lives again and that there was forward movement and the grief was still there, but also now there was joy and hope and an opportunity to keep living our lives.

[00:10:21] And I know no one likes to talk about this time, but I feel like 2020 was a great equalizer for all of us because we can say 2020 and everyone's like, yeah, that year freaking sucked for me. Right. And it sucked for all of us for various reasons. And for us, we moved into our home in March of 2020, the same week that the pandemic had shut everything down.

[00:10:44] And so that also meant that doctors. appointments when you were pregnant, everything kind of changed. And so it kind of felt scary for a moment to leave the house being pregnant. I got really sick one day [00:11:00] and we couldn't figure out what was wrong because I had felt fine. But then by the end of the night, I was screaming in pain.

[00:11:07] I couldn't get out of bed. I spiked a fever. I'd never felt anything like that. So my husband called the ambulance. They took me to the hospital. And immediately they check the baby, baby was okay, and I'm like, okay, I can get through anything if my baby's okay. And we found out that I had gone septic. I didn't really know what that meant, but I now know sepsis is a blood infection.

[00:11:31] So whatever infection you have enters your bloodstream. And it started causing kidney failure for me. So that had to be treated immediately because it's very life threatening. And in that moment, they told us, you're going to be admitted to the hospital for an indefinite amount of time. But today's also the first day that we are shutting down outside visitors.

[00:11:55] So your husband cannot come with you. You're going to have to come by [00:12:00] yourself. And I just remember feeling, that was the loneliest I think I have ever felt. And I remember being wheeled back, just like sobbing, saying goodbye to my husband, neither of us knowing what was going to happen. Later the next day, there was a moment where they called.

[00:12:15] a rapid response, which means like a whole team of doctors was surrounding me because I was really struggling breathing and everything felt like all the pain had just spiked and I remember looking at a tech who was giving a scan on my heart, an EKG, and I remember asking him, am I going to die right now?

[00:12:35] Because I felt like I was going to. And I knew that whatever was happening in my body, there was no way it was going to keep me and my baby alive. I just felt it in my gut that something was drastically changing right then. So after I was stable a couple hours later, I had them give me another ultrasound, and that's when they found out that we had lost our [00:13:00] baby boy.

[00:13:01] And I ended up delivering him alone the next morning. And it sent me again into this part of life where you're like, Well, I thought that. We had gone through the hard thing, right? Like I thought that this was our first step back of trusting life again. And now what am I supposed to do? And so that entered the next journey of really finding clarity again in my life for what does this look like now to move forward?

[00:13:35] Hala Taha: Well, thank you for sharing that with us. I know that's probably very difficult to relive. For other people who are in the moment feeling really stuck, that they've gone through a lot of pain, they had a lot of traumatic experience, maybe a loss. What advice do you have for them in terms of the steps to take next?

[00:13:56] Ashley Lemieux: I 

[00:13:57] think this is such a good question because [00:14:00] when we are in those moments, it really feels like we are the only one in those moments. Grief and trauma can feel so isolating and so the very first thing that I would say is that I'm so sorry and I want you to be able to know that. what you've been through, it can't be fixed.

[00:14:20] It's not supposed to be fixed. There's not a band aid that can be put on it. I think that there's platitudes that people like to say, everything happens for a reason or time heals all wounds. And I'm going to be the first one to say that none of those things are true. And so it's okay to feel exactly how you feel.

[00:14:39] The one thing that we know about grief and trauma is that most people spend their entire lives. avoiding the reality of the pain. And the one thing that if all of us did in this area of our life where we feel grief, that would change the trajectory of what we're able to do next. is acknowledgement. [00:15:00] We have to acknowledge what we've been through and also what it feels like inside of us.

[00:15:05] And it might sound so simple to say that. Having it be simple doesn't mean it's easy, which is why the majority of people never get to this place where they're able to acknowledge it. So if we can start there, then that allows us to have more freedom in acknowledging what has happened and the hurt it has caused us so that we can stop avoiding it and then create a plan that feels safe for us to heal and to be able to experience the world again in a way that feels safe so that we can create forward steps.

[00:15:43] Hala Taha: And I know that for you, you've shared your story on podcasts like this, on your own podcast, you wrote a memoir. How did actually sharing, like you were just alluding to it now, how did actually sharing your story help you heal? 

[00:15:58] Ashley Lemieux: I think that [00:16:00] for so many of us, we carry these stories. Sometimes they're so shame attached to it.

[00:16:06] Sometimes there's so much pain attached to it. What we know is that when our pain can leave our bodies, whether it's writing our story down and no one else even reads it, we know that that helps facilitate healing. So many of us suffer in darkness and our stories just need to be brought to light, to be acknowledged, to be received, to be validated.

[00:16:32] And as I've been able to share my story, what has been so beautiful and I think is the greatest privilege of the work that I do is that it helps give other people permission to share and acknowledge their stories. So I get so many stories sent to me by other women who have gone through really hard things.

[00:16:54] who are like, I've seen your story and it's given me courage now to be able to share [00:17:00] mine and walk through what that means for me. And what we know is that healing happens fastest in community. And so when we can create communities that understand each other and have shared respect and validation for the pain that other people go through, we're able to heal faster.

[00:17:20]   

[00:17:28] Hala Taha: you have created a whole business. around helping people with their grief. And as entrepreneurs, one of the best ways that we can start businesses is by actually solving the pains that we once had and providing those solutions to people who are in the place that we once were. So what steps did you take to become more qualified and become more prepared to take on the role to help other people with their trauma and grief?

[00:17:56] Ashley Lemieux: I love this question because part of my journey is [00:18:00] started even before I stepped into helping people more in their grief. I've had a personal brand online for, oh my gosh, it's probably been 14 years now before Instagram even existed and I had a blogspot. com. I've always wanted to be a writer. I've always wanted to help.

[00:18:20] move people through their emotions. So I was doing that even before these life experiences. But after these life experiences, you know, I wrote my first book and I was in the middle of my edits for my most recent book, I Am Here, when we lost our son, Jace. And after that, I really felt like my next steps in finding clarity for my life.

[00:18:45] I didn't know exactly what it was going to look like, but I knew that I needed to go back to school to get my master's degree. specifically in mental health and wellness with an emphasis in grief and bereavement. And that's probably the least sexy thing that [00:19:00] you could tell someone that you are an expert in.

[00:19:02] It's like, what do you study, Ashley? What do you teach on? Well, I teach on grief and bereavement. And everyone's like, there's nothing sexy about talking about that. But it is the one thing that I do. every single person in this world is going to experience at some point in their life. And my life experiences, I felt very much qualified me to help others.

[00:19:29] And I then wanted the paper, the education behind it so that I could take everything I had already learned and really just propel myself forward. So at the age of What was I, 34? I went back to school to get my master's degree, and what's funny about it is that about four weeks later after starting this intensive program, we got pregnant again.

[00:19:56] I ended up graduating and finishing with a [00:20:00] four month old. I was pumping at my graduation. It was the first time I had left my baby for any amount of time. And it was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but I knew that I needed that for myself and then to be able to help other people. 

[00:20:16] Hala Taha: I love that for you.

[00:20:17] I love the fact that you were able to do that even with a young child. You've been able to grow your career so successfully. Your podcast is very popular now. You've got two books. So it's awesome. And you actually started as an entrepreneur even before you started teaching other people about grief and being an author.

[00:20:38] You had a successful jewelry business, but then you pivoted and you decided you wanted Become an expert on grief. So how did you decide to make that change? What was the thought process behind that? You know, I've got a lot of entrepreneurs tuning in who are probably product based entrepreneurs and what kind of differences did you see between having a product based business to now having [00:21:00] more of like a personal brand?

[00:21:02] Business in an audience based business. 

[00:21:04] Ashley Lemieux: I had an audience during the time of my jewelry company. And I still was writing to them through blog posts, through Instagram. We would do meetups in person. I was speaking a lot. And something that all product entrepreneurs know is that it is a freaking grind. You are grinding so hard to meet your bottom line.

[00:21:28] We were doing shows all the time, wholesale trade shows, holiday trade shows. And when we moved to Nashville, I reached this point where I was like, this is isn't how I want to be spending the rest of my life. I want to be writing. And it's really hard to be founder CEO of a product based company that was on the trajectory that we were on, and then also be able to do the other work that I really wanted to do.

[00:21:56] And so I had to make some really difficult decisions. [00:22:00] But at the end of the day, what I've always wanted is to help people. So whether that was through jewelry or now through writing and podcasting and my personal brand. I knew that I had to make a pivot, so I started writing more, and my first step was getting a book agent, which, and I'm such a believer in when you are in alignment with that next step, sometimes things happen to help facilitate that step, so once I made that decision, I literally opened my inbox the next day.

[00:22:33] And I had a email from one of the top literary agents in the country asking me if I'd ever thought about writing a book before. And I was like, okay, if this isn't my sign for the next step, I don't know what it's going to be. But there also was this grief of closing the chapter on my jewelry business.

[00:22:58] We were sold in [00:23:00] large department stores like Hallmark and we had a large headquarters in downtown Phoenix. And so that also meant I felt like I had to let other people down because my course was changing. But looking back, I can't imagine not making that decision. 

[00:23:20] Hala Taha: That was going to be my next question because there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there tuning in that might not have a business that either fits their life goals, where they're feeling burnt out, they don't even like working on their business anymore, or their business is just not successful.

[00:23:35] It's not taking off, you know, 99 percent of startups fail, but a lot of entrepreneurs, we've got an ego where we feel like, well, we already put it out to the world. Everybody knows me for this. What are people going to think if I shut it down? I had a blog in my twenties that became really popular and I shut it down because I wanted to change paths.

[00:23:53] I wanted to go into marketing and all this other stuff. I wanted to go into corporate for a period of time and I'm an entrepreneur again, I have a [00:24:00] media company. But I shut down my company and everybody who worked for me, well, at the time I had volunteers, it was kind of a blog that I basically trained bloggers and we were all just young, just doing it for fun, you know, and so they were all mad at me and I lost all my friends and I felt a little ashamed, but I could imagine being older and having a real company with customers and products.

[00:24:23] That would be really hard. So I guess, how did you get over the shame of starting a company and shutting it down? 

[00:24:32] Ashley Lemieux: You know what's interesting? Is that when you hit rock bottom in your life, which for me was losing the kids. There's nowhere else to go but up. And so I think that I was in a place in my life where I was at such rock bottom that I just freaking didn't care anymore.

[00:24:52] And I had to do things to get the life back inside of me. I had to. I describe it as feeling like I [00:25:00] was dead, but I was alive. I was just a zombie through my life. And so at that point, honestly, I don't know if it's a good thing, but for that moment it was, because I don't know what else would have forced me to do this, but it was the only way for me and I had nothing to lose.

[00:25:18] And I think a lot of times we get afraid of hitting rock bottom or what if it doesn't work out or what will I do? And honestly, sometimes. It's the best thing because you finally make decisions off of what you actually want because you can't lose anything more than you already have. So that's what that looked like for me and And like I said, there was grief, there was sadness to it, and I also started to feel excited about something again for the first time in a long time, and so I just kept following that feeling.

[00:25:58] Hala Taha: And I feel like for other people [00:26:00] tuning in, what I want them to understand is that nobody really cares that much. We put all this pressure about what is everybody else going to think, what are my friends going to think, what is my family going to think, even people who are lawyers and doctors and who don't want to be lawyers and doctors anymore who are so afraid of making a change.

[00:26:17] It's like, yes, it's going to be hard in the moment. But as soon as you figure out the next thing and you've got the next thing to talk about and feel proud of, no one's even going to remember or care if anything, people are going to be inspired from you. And it's just getting over that initial hump.

[00:26:33] Ashley Lemieux: Absolutely. And I think we get scared of this idea of starting over. I've put in so much time, I've put in so much money, so much resources, I don't want to start over. But that destroys our next step when we look at things. like that. You're not starting over. You can't. You have so much knowledge now that has gotten you to this place.

[00:26:53] And so you get to now apply all of that into the next thing. And I think the place where we fail the most as [00:27:00] entrepreneurs is we stay in the wrong place for too long because our ego gets in the way of it. And we miss out on really what could take off for us and feel in just such alignment that would.

[00:27:13] Not only help us, but other people to be able to serve others more because we are on a path that actually is working. And so that's something now I actually help women in their own clarity maps in high level entrepreneurs, because this is one of the things I love so much is how do we help you pivot?

[00:27:33] When you are in this season of having no idea what to do next, how do you find that clarity and the confidence and the strategy to support it so that you can move forward? 

[00:27:45] Hala Taha: This is a great segue to talk about your latest book. So your first book was a memoir. It was called Born to Shine. And your next book is called I Am Here, and that's more designed to help others navigate their own experiences of grief and trauma.

[00:27:57] Clarity mapping is a big part of that, we're hopefully going to [00:28:00] dive deep into that later on in the conversation. But first, you say the biggest life lesson that has come to your life has been the phrase of three simple words, I am here, which is the title of your book. Why are those words so meaningful to you?

[00:28:15] Ashley Lemieux: They're meaningful to me because for so long, I didn't want to be here. And I did everything to try to avoid the feeling of being here, whether that was numbing out with social media or food or traveling or spending money or working too much or being in bad relationships, whatever that thing was to distract me from the other pain is what I latched onto.

[00:28:42] Once I got to this point, we were actually in Europe on one of our runaway escapades of trying to escape it. And I remember being in Milan and next to me sat a mom and a daughter and she had just lost her tooth. And she was about the age of the daughter [00:29:00] who we had lost in the contested adoption. And I remember watching the joy between the mother and the over this lost tooth.

[00:29:08] And I just started sobbing. Any composure I had left, it was gone. I wanted those own moments with this human that I loved so much that I knew I was never going to have again. And so I remember I got up from my spot and I started running towards this little apartment that we were staying at. And And it was as if someone put a brick wall in front of me and was like, stop, you can't keep running like this.

[00:29:38] You can't, you have to face these feelings. And I probably look like a crazy American tourist, which I totally was, but in the middle of this square there, I threw up my arms and I yelled, I am here. I am here. And I just started crying. And I just, that became this mantra for me that I still hold onto [00:30:00] of. I don't want to run away anymore.

[00:30:02] I want to be here. I am here. And so now what does that look like? And how can I support myself to be able to get through these things so that I don't keep running away from this life that I've been given? 

[00:30:16] Hala Taha: That's a really powerful story. I can just imagine you in the street just having that moment. And then now, years later, you've written a book with that title to try to help other people.

[00:30:27] Do you feel like entrepreneurs? deal with grief and stress differently than other people? Or do they have certain personality types that enable them to get over things more quickly, potentially? 

[00:30:42] Ashley Lemieux: something that is very common among entrepreneurs is that they're very high achieving people.

[00:30:49] They want to achieve. And one of the ways that we can cope with grief is called a maladaptive coping mechanism. So there's two types of mechanisms that we can use to cope. [00:31:00] Adaptive, which adaptive is something that is positive that actually helps. your grief, and the other is maladaptive, meaning it's not good for you, but we do it anyway because we don't know what else to do.

[00:31:10] One of the maladaptive coping mechanisms that a lot of us have, and a lot of entrepreneurs have, is work, and working too much. And so I see a lot of entrepreneurs who throw themselves even deeper into work to avoid their feelings, and they can become really successful from doing that, and it's something that the world praises, and we look at as a huge success, while meanwhile there can be these layers of emotions that are hurting them, that's driving this.

[00:31:43] really unsustainable work, but that can make it really, really hard to get to this healing place. Something else that's really interesting that we know is the difference between men and women, the way that we move through grief. So a lot [00:32:00] of men, and obviously when I say this, right, I'm not saying every man and every woman.

[00:32:05] This is just an average across the board. There's going to be people who don't fit into these buckets, of course. But what we know about men is that men often throw themselves into work. They talk less about how they are feeling and they want to spend more time in the action of staying busy. Whereas women, we want to talk about it.

[00:32:29] We want you to sit and listen and we want to talk about it because that's our way of processing, of retelling the story, trying to help ourselves understand what has happened. And so then if you are in a relationship where both of you are grieving so differently from the other, we can see a lot of marital or partnership conflict because of that.

[00:32:52] So I don't know if entrepreneurs, if there's a specific grief [00:33:00] style for entrepreneurs, but men and women for sure. But then for the group of entrepreneurs who we know just. love the work and the achievements, I would base my best guess on what I know about grief on they are probably a lot of them throwing themselves even deeper into work, meaning that they're not facing what is actually going on in their life.

[00:33:25] It's a dangerous combination. 

[00:33:27] Hala Taha: Yeah, and I can relate to that even for myself. When I started my business, I started it in 2020 and I started it while my dad was in the hospital battling COVID and I wasn't allowed to visit him and he passed away after a month in the hospital. It was the most devastating thing.

[00:33:45] I literally watched him die on Zoom and wasn't able to even see him until he passed away. And it was very traumatic. He was buried with his clothes on and his shoes on and his cell phone. It was like just the most traumatic thing. [00:34:00] And for years I just worked and worked and worked. So I'm better now because I actually hired my business partner, Jason.

[00:34:11] And now I'm able to just have a life and everything like that. But for years, I really did just throw myself into work. 

[00:34:18] Ashley Lemieux: I'm so sorry to hear that. I didn't know about your father and. You opening up about that is so beautiful and so hard. And I think that where we are at now, going into 2025, a lot of people aren't realizing what happens around the fifth year of grief.

[00:34:37] So if we go back to 2020, we all had these moments where we're in a pandemic, but then we're all also experiencing these personal losses, the loss of your father, the loss of my baby, the loss of what other people have gone through, right? So then the past couple of years were like, I don't know how to cope and no one is teaching me how to cope.

[00:34:59] So I'm [00:35:00] going to do what I think is going to help me best. And because of my personality, because of what I want to build, I'm going to throw myself into work. And then you're like, Oh my gosh, this company I just started is doing well. It's growing, it's great, and you can kind of run on that adrenaline high for a moment until you start reaching these achievements that once the novelty of it starts wearing off, you can find yourself in this place of, I accomplished what I wanted to.

[00:35:30] I thought that this was going to feel differently than it does. And that is a very common feeling that a lot of entrepreneurs find themselves in is I won the award, I hit the financial goal, I have the growth of the company. I thought that I was going to feel differently than this. What is wrong? And what is wrong is, is that we have this grief that can't be pacified by these [00:36:00] external validations in our lives that we think are going to pacify them.

[00:36:04] And so now as we head into 2025, which is five years after this major traumatic event for most people in the world, year five is the year where you take a pause and you start really looking around and being like, where do I fit into life right now? And how do I want it to go moving forward? It's One of the first years that you really begin to take a breath because there's a little more time and space between now and then, but as a result of that, a lot of emotions can start coming up as you realize that your life has continued to move on.

[00:36:44] But emotionally, parts of you still feel like they are stuck in the past. And so, so many people right now are burnt out. They're burnt out on work. They don't know what to do next. And it's because we never gave ourselves the opportunity to [00:37:00] slow down and sit with our grief for as long as we needed to.

[00:37:05] Hala Taha: It's so true. And it's like so bittersweet because I'm so happy that I did all this. My company is going to hit eight figures next year. You know, like I built this crazy company. Yeah. Thank you. Like I built this awesome company and I have an awesome team and I love my life. To your point, there was a period of time where I was like, I can't just keep running on fumes and I need help.

[00:37:29] I need a business partner. I need to kind of delegate and have some balance. Cause you just can't do that forever. And I do think sacrifice is important, but you can't do it forever. 

[00:37:40] Ashley Lemieux: Yeah, it's not sustainable. So then how do we create a sustainable way? where we can build what we want and love it while also acknowledging what it is that we've been through.

[00:37:53] And what does that dance look like for my life? And what is it that I'm needing? And part of that, part of your gift of [00:38:00] grief that probably came was your ability to grow this company to what it is now. But now part of what might come next is, okay, I've built this. And so does that mean that there's a little bit more of a buffer for me to have some space and some resources to really make sure that I'm filled up inside so that my insides match all of my external accomplishments.

[00:38:28] And that's something that was really hard for me. Over the past couple of years, I remember I would tell my therapist, I'm a huge advocate for therapy. I'm like, everyone should have a therapist. So I love talking about it to just help people know it is so normal to go to therapy. But something that I would often tell my therapist is My insides don't match my outsides.

[00:38:49] Like what is happening around me, what I have in my life is so beautiful, but inside I feel like there's this just chaotic exhaustion [00:39:00] that never goes away. And it feels so out of alignment with everything that I see externally in my life. And I need those to start matching up with each other. And so my hope is that going into 2025, a lot of entrepreneurs are going to kind of hit this pause button where we can all get a little bit more in alignment.

[00:39:21] So that our insides match our outsides, but when that happens, moving forward, we are able to serve and grow even exponentially from what we've gotten to, to this point, because we're going to have the sustainability, the internal resources to be able to do so. 

[00:39:38]   

[00:39:46] Hala Taha: So one of the things that you talk about in your book is that we need to reframe our thoughts First, I want to get clarity on what thoughts actually are. Do you mean our current beliefs and like current thoughts or are you talking about memories or those two different things? [00:40:00] 

[00:40:00] Ashley Lemieux: Talking about our current thoughts.

[00:40:02] So what we know about our thoughts is we have somewhere around 90, 000 thoughts a day. And out of those thoughts, it's somewhere around 80, 85%. are negative. And the majority of those negative thoughts are reoccurring. So then these negative reoccurring thoughts that we have every single day are creating this belief system, this internal world, where if we say, I'm not good enough, or I'm never going to get out of this situation, or man, I make stupid decisions, or I don't like how I look in the mirror.

[00:40:39] Whatever those stories are, become truly what we believe about ourselves and the world around us. Now, of course, It is impossible to live in an internal world where we don't have negative thoughts. We're human. That's part of how our brain works is we assess danger and we try to figure out where we [00:41:00] fit into things and how we feel about things to try to keep ourselves safe.

[00:41:03] But what we can do is start acknowledging those thoughts. And then start reframing them so that we can create different habits and thought patterns that allow us to have a different internal world. So for me, that's one of the reasons I started using, I am here. And because I was just conditioned to be like, I want to leave.

[00:41:25] How do I get out of here? I want to escape. I want to escape. So then my belief had to be Come, I'm here. I'm here right now. I'm safe to be here. That was then. This is now. And really becoming your biggest advocate for helping yourself reframe your thoughts. 

[00:41:47] Hala Taha: So walk us through how we can keep tabs on what are the negative thoughts that we actually have.

[00:41:53] And then how do we uncover their positive roots? 

[00:41:57] Ashley Lemieux: I love this. One thing that I always [00:42:00] suggest to my clients that I work with is just for even if it's an hour out of your day, a whole day would be amazing. But even if you only had an hour, take out the notes app on your phone or have just a little journal with you.

[00:42:12] And anytime you notice that you have a negative thought come into your head. I just want you to write it down and I don't want you to have any judgment on it. I don't want you to judge your thoughts, right? Because then we can get into this cycle of, Oh my gosh, I'm so dumb for thinking that or what's wrong with me or no, we're just.

[00:42:30] I'm going to be observers of the thoughts that are going through our head. And once we have all of those down, what I like to then do is try to get to the root of where those thoughts came from. A lot of times thoughts that we have right now came from things that we heard when we were little. Things we began to believe about ourselves from when we were really small.

[00:42:54] Sometimes the origin of the thought doesn't even come from us. So if [00:43:00] you're able to sit with it and really be able to go back to the first time that you can remember hearing it or feeling it or thinking it, a lot of times you can bridge that gap and realize that that did not even come from you. So once we do that, being able to sit with, okay, this is what I believe.

[00:43:24] But this is what I would like to believe instead. This is my current thought, but this is what I would like to believe instead. And I keep it as simple as that and as gentle as that as we are working through these. and being able to write down what we would like to believe instead. Then being able to be mindful, whether it's then the next hour after that, after you have the thought come in, whether it's, I'm not good enough, being able to call it out.

[00:43:55] Okay. I understand that right now I'm believing I'm not good [00:44:00] enough. And I acknowledge that, but what I would really like to believe instead is X, Y, and Z. And that helps us create a pattern where we can help ourselves get out of this routine of having these thoughts that we don't even realize are happening.

[00:44:18] And we can stop them and call them out. And then we just gently tell ourselves what we would like to believe instead so that that becomes something that we begin to start thinking about. Does it take time? Of course it does. But after those two hours, I promise you, you are going to experience a shift in feelings that you might not have felt for a really long time and uncover thoughts that you might not even know that you have.

[00:44:46] Like you can reach the end of the day sometimes, a lot of my clients be like, I don't know why I feel this bad. I just do. I don't know where it comes from. I don't know. Why I feel so lost in the roles in my [00:45:00] life and we do this exercise and after an hour of them writing down everything they've been thinking, they're like, I didn't realize that I'm so hard on myself.

[00:45:10] I didn't realize that these are the things I'm consistently telling myself. So that's a really good place to start. 

[00:45:17] Hala Taha: And are there common thoughts that people have and. What would be the positive reframing? Just so people have examples. 

[00:45:27] Ashley Lemieux: One that is really common that I would argue the majority of people struggle with is, I'm not enough or I'm not good enough.

[00:45:38] So for that one, it's really important for us to do some work on where did this come from? When did I start feeling this way? Why did I start feeling this way? Did it come from me? Is this something I picked up on from someone else? And then being able to answer the question, well, what would it even mean to be good enough?[00:46:00] 

[00:46:00] In what areas of my life do I feel like I'm not good enough that I can begin to focus on? So one of the ways that I like to reframe I'm not good enough is I am enough for all of the needs that my life has of me in this moment. I am enough to take care of all of the needs that my life has. for me in this moment.

[00:46:24] And again, being able to find evidence, something about our brains that I think is really cool, is that our brains look for evidence that what we are doing is working. That's why journaling can be so powerful, because we need to see something is written down. So when we write down our thoughts and then what we would like to believe instead, but then kind of keep a log to see our progress of, Oh my gosh, today I only thought about this 10 times instead of 20 or whatever that is, it signals to our brain, Hey, this thing is working.

[00:46:55] This is a good path for us to continue to go down, which is another reason why I [00:47:00] recommend writing things down. Another one that's really common is anger and anger can show up in a lot of ways in our lives, especially when you're grieving because. Anger is easier to feel than sadness. A lot of times anger is a mask for sadness because we're too afraid to feel sad or we haven't been taught or culturally as some people aren't allowed to show their emotions or men versus women with gender and what's expected of us in the society.

[00:47:33] Anger can be something that masks a lot of other feelings. So something that I always think about with anger is what do I love so much that I'm trying to protect that is making me so angry right now because I feel like I've lost control of it. So for that one, I think that a lot of times the root for anger is actually [00:48:00] love.

[00:48:01] I'm angry that I lost my kids because I love them so much. I'm angry that this person hurt you because I have deep respect for you as a human being. Whatever that is, a lot of times it goes back to love. So if I can start reframing my anger, allow myself to feel it, but then understand it's coming from a place of love.

[00:48:25] How then can I fuel that love? Anger is needing action. It's signaling to us that there are alarm bells going off. We want to be in control of something that we can't. don't have control of, so then how can we take control to bring action to it? Who do you love? What do you love that's causing the anger?

[00:48:43] And then how can you show up for them? Or how can you be a part of that cause? Or how can you? use your voice to help them. So helping do that can help shift our anger to actually have action behind it. 

[00:48:57] Hala Taha: That's so good. So basically, whenever you're [00:49:00] angry, there's actually something that you love and you're really passionate about behind that.

[00:49:05] If you can figure that out and lean into the love part instead of the anger part, that's really great. 

[00:49:11] Ashley Lemieux: Yeah, and sometimes though, healing requires you to get pissed, right? There are people who probably have wronged you and you have every reason to be upset at it. You have every reason to just be so pissed off.

[00:49:24] And so I say, let yourself be pissed off. But at some point that has to move through you, otherwise the one who becomes the most affected by it is you. 

[00:49:36] Hala Taha: And sometimes it's a love for yourself, right? So it might be just pouring into yourself because you love yourself. How about trauma? How do you reframe thoughts and memories related 

[00:49:48] to trauma?

[00:49:49] Ashley Lemieux: I want to first explain the difference between grief and trauma, just so that everyone's on the same page. So you can experience grief without experiencing trauma. [00:50:00] So you can have grief, but there's no trauma attached to it. But all trauma has grief attached to it. Does that make sense? 

[00:50:08] Hala Taha: Kind of. How do you experience grief with no trauma?

[00:50:10] Like what's an example? 

[00:50:11] Ashley Lemieux: So me and you could go through the exact same situation. Let's say we were at the exact same event and something really bad happened. Based off of my life experiences, how I'm wired psychologically, my previous trauma, my previous grief, that event could be something that completely traumatized me.

[00:50:34] Whereas perhaps that event didn't traumatize you at all, but just gave you grief. So a person can go through the same exact thing. but not have trauma while the other person does have trauma. And so there's no definition of, well, this is what trauma is. This is what it isn't. It's your reaction. Trauma is your reaction to an event.

[00:50:59] So, as [00:51:00] you're trying to process through trauma, we all need different things. And this is where I say, you need the help of a professional. Because so often, our brains are like, if you broke your arm right now, where would you go? 

[00:51:14] Hala Taha: The hospital. 

[00:51:15] Ashley Lemieux: You go to the hospital. Like, no question. I'm going to go to the hospital.

[00:51:19] Well, if your brain is feeling this brokenness because of trauma. So often we feel shame and we don't get help, but we should also be going to a professional that knows how to help us be able to heal our brains. So there's things like EMDR, which literally helps you heal your brain. There's psychiatrists, there's support groups, there's places where you can feel safe to go get that help because it is really difficult to get through trauma on your own and a lot of times it's so hard to that [00:52:00] it carries with you throughout your whole life.

[00:52:02] I think right now a lot of people on, at least online, have been starting to talk more about generational trauma. and why things are passed down from one generation to the next. And it's because trauma literally physically changes your DNA. And when no one is taking a breath to be like, I want this to end with me, or how do I heal?

[00:52:25] Continues to be passed down through habits, through our reactions. Through what we then teach our children, how we teach, how we treat them. And so I always recommend professional help for trauma. 

[00:52:39] Hala Taha: Makes sense. And I agree. I think it's really important for everyone to try to heal themselves, especially in this fifth year.

[00:52:46] Like you were saying, we all went through stuff in 2020. And. By the time this airs, it's going to be right at the start of the year. So it's a perfect time to start thinking about this. So something else that you talk about in your [00:53:00] book is fear. Fear is something that I think a lot of entrepreneurs go through, especially we work in very uncertain areas most of the time, we don't really know what's going to happen next.

[00:53:12] So how do we reframe fear? What do we need to know about that? 

[00:53:16] Ashley Lemieux: I don't know about you, but for me, in entrepreneurship. Fear can show up in so many different ways, but I realize I'm not actually afraid of that thing happening. I'm afraid of something totally unrelated, but I have attached fear as the label to the current problem because it's masking something else that I just haven't dealt with.

[00:53:41] One of the ways, though, that can help us reframe fear is by doing the thing that we're afraid of. Our anxiety doesn't go away when we avoid the things that we're anxious about. Our fear doesn't go away when we avoid doing the things that we are [00:54:00] fearful of. In fact, it just continues to feed it, right? So a lot of times, we need proof, our brains need proof that it's not something we need to be afraid of.

[00:54:11] And we need confidence that it's something that we can handle or walk through or that if things really do go south, I have confidence in myself that I'm still going to be able to figure it out because that's what life is, right? No one's life goes exactly according to plan. That's not what life is. It's what we want it to be.

[00:54:32] But then when we find ourselves shying away from doing what we really want to be doing or really leaning into the areas of our lives that we know would light us up, but we are afraid of it not working out or us doing it wrong or losing everything, that fear just keeps getting bigger. So the only way that we can start reframing that is by taking action on the things that we're [00:55:00] afraid of.

[00:55:01] Hala Taha: And when it comes to action, a lot of people are afraid of failure, but as we all know, failure and growth kind of go hand in hand. You have this awesome quote, you talk about dirt as a fine place to start growing. I love that. So can you elaborate on what you mean by that? 

[00:55:17] Ashley Lemieux: I think that so many of us, we're afraid of getting knocked down.

[00:55:21] We're afraid of falling flat on our faces, but it is in that dirt when your nose hits the ground. The only way back is up, and a lot of times that is the best place for us to be able to really start our growing journey. I cannot think of one entrepreneur who has not experienced a significant setback or failure that then also helped them lead to the next steps of their career.

[00:55:56] How could you expect to [00:56:00] know exactly what to do if you never learned what not to do or if you never learned what didn't work? Of course, we have to fail and no one wants to feel it. But it's also in those moments where we can really get a jump start on, okay, I figured this out the hard way, and now I'm going to do X, Y, and Z and have a clearer path forward this way.

[00:56:27] Hala Taha: Honestly, I feel like people who are willing to fail, they're just so much smarter. I meet so many people and the most successful people that I know just go for things and they do it and it fails and it works and it doesn't work and they just keep trying and trying and trying and then they just get so much experience and they're such a well rounded, skilled person.

[00:56:47] And then you've got other people who are just They're afraid of making any sort of change. They stay in the same sort of mundane job where they don't learn anything new and then they're stuck and they don't really move in [00:57:00] life. 

[00:57:00] Ashley Lemieux: And they stay stuck and then the next year. Cause I hear from a lot of women who are like, I feel stuck here, but I don't know what to do.

[00:57:10] So I'm just going to stay here. And then a year goes by and you still feel that feeling. And to me, that's way more uncomfortable than trying something that doesn't work out so that then I can find something that does rather than feeling like I'm on this hamster wheel that's not getting me anywhere.

[00:57:28] And I know it's not getting me anywhere. I would much rather be the person that fails a million times. to figure out where I actually really want to be than the one who just feels like I'm stuck on Groundhog's Day every day that I wake up. Totally. 

[00:57:47] Hala Taha: And so I think a great way to close out this interview, which also ties to what we're just saying, which is figuring out what you want to do with your life, is learning how to do a clarity map, which you talk about in your book.

[00:57:57] So first off, tell us about the [00:58:00] five daily questions. You mentioned that you have five questions that you came up with years ago. What are these questions and how do they help us identify what matters before we move on to the next step? 

[00:58:11] Ashley Lemieux: So the five questions you can do in as little amount of time or as much time as you want every single morning.

[00:58:16] So the very first one is what is my intention today? The second one is why am I worthy? There are so many of us who, when things are going good in our lives. we can start sabotaging ourselves because we feel like we're not deserving of it. We are afraid of life feeling good again. We're not good enough to receive it.

[00:58:37] And so being able to sit with why am I worthy for this is actually really helpful to allow yourself to keep moving forward in a positive way in your life. The third question is, who can I serve today? Sometimes it's going to be yourself. This is a really good place to check in of, are there needs that I'm not meeting for myself?

[00:58:56] Or, how are my employees today? How is that stranger [00:59:00] behind me in the grocery store doing? What about my partner? When's the last time that we had a check in? That's a really beautiful place. to figure that out. The next one is what can I set down today or what can I let go of? You guys, we carry so much heaviness throughout our day, whether that's the fear, whether that's a responsibility for something that is completely off out of our hands, whether that's sadness for something that we can't control, but what can you just set down for that day so that you have energy?

[00:59:33] to do these other things. And then the very last question is, how does the truest version of me show up today? I used to ask myself, how does the best version of me show up today? But then I realized I would change my answer based off of, well, what is the best version of me? A version of a mom, or what's the best version of an employer, or what's the best version of a partner?

[00:59:56] And I realized my answers were based off of what I thought [01:00:00] other people needed and wanted from me. So I changed it and I now ask, who is the truest version of me today so that I can show up as her and lead from that place of authenticity? and give the world who I am instead of letting the world dictate who I am.

[01:00:19] So those are the five questions I start with.

[01:00:23] Hala Taha: Love that. So as we close out this interview, What should we be doing when it comes to making lasting change and working through grief, depression, trauma, loneliness?

[01:00:33] Ashley Lemieux: I love this. This is one of my very favorite things. I set intentions and I base my year and how I'm going to move forward based off of how I want to feel inside.

[01:00:44] And a lot of us haven't checked in internally for a long time. Like, how do I actually want to feel? Do I want more peace in my life? Do I want more clarity? Do I want to feel like love is driving my decisions? What is that feeling? And I write that on a [01:01:00] piece of paper. And then around that I draw four boxes for the different areas of my life for emotional development, spiritual development, finances, or business, and then my relationships.

[01:01:15] And in those four boxes, I then set intentions for each of those four categories that match my overall life intention. So that I can have a strategy in those four life areas to move forward in a way that's going to support how I am feeling right now in my life. And if that's something you want more of, we do a challenge about it.

[01:01:37] I talk more about it in my book and in my podcast, but check in with your feelings and then map out a life that supports your feelings instead of starting with your goals and that will help you feel more fulfilled once you bring everything to life. 

[01:01:53] Hala Taha: That's great advice. I think that's fantastic. So really just focusing on your intentions, not your [01:02:00] goals.

[01:02:00] So Ashley, I had such a great conversation with you today. I end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests. The first one is what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? 

[01:02:13] Ashley Lemieux: Ooh, this is such a good one. I would say invest in your mental health.

[01:02:18] There's that return of being able to really understand who you are and why you are how you are is going to profit you more than anything else in the long run and help you build a sustainable business. 

[01:02:34] Hala Taha: And this one can go beyond business and finance. What is your secret to profiting in life? 

[01:02:39] Ashley Lemieux: Oh, wow.

[01:02:41] This is a good one. Okay. I'm like, what is my secret to profiting in life? My secret is to create peace as my priority. 

[01:02:53] Hala Taha: We didn't get to talk about this. This is so important. 

[01:02:55] Ashley Lemieux: Yeah, being able to live with peace as my decision [01:03:00] maker and as the feeling that surrounds me, that has allowed me to profit in every area of my life more than anything else that I have ever tried to do.

[01:03:11] And so I base every decision off of, is this going to invite peace in my life, or is it going to be something that prevents me from feeling peace? And that's the thing, is pursuing peace to have a profitable life in all of the areas that you want to feel it in. 

[01:03:31] Hala Taha: And when you say peace, because I didn't get a chance to ask you about this, and I actually really love this.

[01:03:36] When you say peace, What is peace to you? 

[01:03:39] Ashley Lemieux: Peace to me is the feeling that can't be bought. It can't be mimicked by anything else. It can't be something that someone else gives you. Peace is this internal feeling that comes when you are in alignment with your life, with who you [01:04:00] believe your higher power to be and When you are able to make decisions that invite in more peace, whether that is setting types of boundaries, or whether that is letting things go that make you kind of feel chained, peace to me feels a lot like freedom, and there's a lot of things that can chain us that make us lose it, whether that's we feel chained to our job or to social media or to comparison or to toxic relationships or to these habits we just can't get out of the cycle of doing because they've just become a part of who we are because that's what helped us cope for a long time but now it's not serving us anymore.

[01:04:45] There's so many chains in our life that we can have that prevent us from experiencing more peace and so to me peace is something that you cannot receive from any other outside [01:05:00] source or thing. 

[01:05:01] Hala Taha: So good. I feel like that's my favorite advice from the whole episode. The whole conversation was amazing, but that really spoke to me in terms of making decisions based on what brings you peace and not.

[01:05:13] Is this going to bring me peace or is this going to make me feel unaligned? And it's so simple. 

[01:05:20] Ashley Lemieux: It's so simple. And honestly, you can make faster decisions and decisions that support you more based off of that answer of doing the gut check of, is this going to bring me peace or not? And that's how I base every decision now.

[01:05:35] And it's changed my life and my business and my family's life. 

[01:05:39] Hala Taha: Yeah, I love that. Ashley, this has been amazing. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do? 

[01:05:45] Ashley Lemieux: Gosh, thank you so much, first of all, for having me. And I would love to meet all of your young and profiters. you can come find me on Instagram at Ashley K.

[01:05:53] Lemieux. We love hanging out over there every day. You can also come and listen to my podcast. It's called Healing [01:06:00] Her. And if you are wanting, you know, more support on your journey, you can go to my website to see what that looks like at ashleylemieux. com. 

[01:06:08] Hala Taha: Amazing. Ashley, thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

[01:06:13] Ashley Lemieux: Thanks for having me. 

[01:06:18] Hala Taha: Yeah, bam. Well, that was such a deep and therapeutic episode with Ashley. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs, including yours truly, handle grief and stress by sinking our energies deeper into our work. And it might work for a while. You may even grow your company, hit your targets, achieve some great things.

[01:06:38] But still, such a strategy is not sustainable. We all know that. And we are really only delaying coming to terms with our pain and fear. As Ashley put it, grief can only be pacified by work or achievement. And at some point, you're going to have to confront that grief and give yourself the space to sit with it.

[01:06:57] You can't run a business on fumes or by [01:07:00] running away from your own problems. But one of the good things about success is that it can be a wonderful buffer. Having resources should give you the time and space you need to ensure that your internal development matches your external achievements. You just need to eventually take that time.

[01:07:16] And once you do take that time, you can start observing your own thoughts and reframing the negative ones to be less impactful. You can be open about your own anger and frustrations and even find a silver lining there. Remember that a lot of our anger comes from a place of passion and love, and you just have to figure out how to lean into the more constructive power of that passion.

[01:07:38] And sometimes this also means coming to terms with our failures, realizing that we've hit rock bottom and need to start over. I really believe that the best entrepreneurs have to fall flat on our faces from time to time in order to really succeed. But when you do, just remember that, like Ashley said, The dirt is a fine place to start growing.

[01:07:58] Thanks for listening to this episode [01:08:00] of Young and Profiting Podcast. If you listened, learned, and profited from this conversation with the insightful Ashley Lemieux, then please help us grow it by sharing with somebody that you know.

[01:08:10] And if you enjoyed the show and you learned something, then drop us a five star review on Apple, Spotify, CastBox, wherever you listen to the show.

[01:08:17] I want to hear from you. I love to read your reviews. I read them every single day and it makes me so happy to see them. So drop us a review. If you listen to the show, if you're new to the show, maybe you found me. from Funnel Hacking Live and now you're following the show. Welcome to the yap bam. I'm so happy to have you guys as new subscribers.

[01:08:36]  And if you prefer to watch your podcast and you like watching your podcast on YouTube, all of our videos are on YouTube. I do everything on video. I've got a lot more in person content.

[01:08:45] I just interviewed Mel Robbins in person, Gary Vee in person, so all that is on there. You can also find me on Instagram, at Yap with Hala, or LinkedIn. Just search my name, Hala Taha. I of course want to give a big shout out to my Yap production team. I have [01:09:00] an agency, Yap Media, and I've got the best team in the world.

[01:09:03] Thank you guys for all your hard work. This is your host, Hala Taha, a. k. a. the Podcast Princess, signing off.