Meet Ashley
November 25, 2019 2022-10-23 21:24Meet Ashley
Ashley Grant; Reiki Master & Founder of Soul Purpose Reiki
I look at my life and I think, how did I get so lucky? I have three beautiful children, an amazing husband and doing what I love in the place I love most. Truth is, it wasn’t luck at all – and the road here was downright ugly at times.
For almost all of my life, I’ve struggled with anxiety and intrusive thoughts (a form of OCD). As a child, and even as a teenager, I had no idea that it was anxiety that was keeping me up at night, or that it was OCD making me think our house might catch on fire with me in it. I had no idea that people shouldn’t worry about germs and being perfect and not going to hell. My anxiety and OCD was something that always seemed to be with me, perhaps that’s why it seemed so normal to me. That being said, it surfaced at different times in my life in different ways; sometimes it was never there at all, and other times like I couldn’t get away from it.
Overall, though, I felt like I was managing and half coping, slowly killing myself to be perfect and gain approval from those around me -that I was enough. In my head, I thought if I just kept pleasing everyone around me, doing what I should be doing, in the end I’d feel happy and no longer live my life with the worry and fear that I did. You can likely guess that that didn’t happen.
I appeared to have it all together. Recently married, being a teacher, and expecting a baby. All seemed like great things on the outside, when inside I was slowly losing my grip.
After the birth of my first child, I fell apart, completely and utterly apart. I did it very quietly and in my own head – perhaps making it, in a way, worse for myself. I felt so entirely alone with my awful thoughts and this new debilitating anxiety, and scared – so scared my baby would be taken away, that I kept my paralyzing fears to myself.
I could not speak of them, not even out loud to my husband, my rock, my best friend. I was completely alone within this deep and awful place that I wasn’t sure I ever saw a way out of. Then I discovered Reiki.
Reiki started a shift in me. This incredible tool helped me release my anxiety, cope with intrusive thoughts and step into my beautiful life – the real kind of beauty – not the picture of beauty I was trying to show the world. Am I cured? I don’t know exactly. What I do know is that I can be ME now because of this incredible tool. I can live my life fully, release the garbage that no longer serves me and deeply enjoy and appreciate this beautiful life. It’s because of the change reiki has made on my life that I am so passionate about reaching those who struggle with anxiety, depression, OCD and just the regular stresses we face in this wild, wonderful and challenging world.
