AND/BOTH Podcast - Real Conversations, Shared Experiences, and the Community You've Been Missing

Lana Pummill started her business in 2019 charging twelve dollars an hour. In 2021, her marriage ended when the twins were three months old, and that business — scrappy and underpaid as it was — became the thing that made leaving possible. She said it directly: without it, she wouldn’t have had the financial means to get out.

She’s been building ever since. From her mom’s house. From the food bank line at six in the morning. Through a hail mary cold email that changed the direction of everything. In this conversation, Ashley and Lana talk about what it looks like to build a business when you’re starting from zero, why financial independence isn’t a luxury for women in hard situations, and what the pivot from survival mode to actual freedom looks like in real time.

In This Episode

• Single mom of four — a twelve-year-old, a ten-year-old, and boy-girl twins — and how that shapes everything
• Starting a business in 2019 for twelve dollars an hour — and the awkward conversation that follows when you undercharge for a year
• The marriage ending when the twins were three months old — and why having a business made leaving possible
• Living with her mom, going to the food bank at six in the morning — what the early years actually looked like
• The hail mary cold email — how responding to a newsletter got her in front of the right person at exactly the right time
• Why brutally honest networking lands with the right people — and why that’s the whole point
• The pivot from social media scheduling to cold pitching to consulting — and why the business keeps finding its own shape
• AI — the good, the cold, and why treating it like a rough draft is smarter than treating it like a shortcut
• Why you can’t outsource the human voice and what happens when you try
• The Water Llama hydration app and what it says about who’s actually designing these things
• The McDonald’s parking lot breakdown — an hour and fifteen minutes from home with four kids, a hundred degrees, and a car that wouldn’t start
• What the freedom she built the business for actually looks like now — and why consulting is getting her closer
• Her long-term goal: building something for moms who are financially stuck and need a way out
• Why you have to figure out you first before the tools and platforms can help

Quotes From This Episode

“If I wouldn’t have had my business, I wouldn’t have had the financial means to get out of the marriage that I was in.”

— Lana Pummill

“I was at a food bank at six in the morning because I couldn’t get groceries.”

— Lana Pummill

“It all comes down to whether you still believe in it or not. If you enjoy what you’re doing, ’cause I really do love what I’m doing.”

— Lana Pummill

“Treat it like your rough draft.”

— Lana Pummill (on AI)

“You have to figure out you first. And then you can go apply the tools and platforms and all that stuff.”

— Ashley Blackington

Find Lana

• LinkedIn: Lana Pummill
• Website: lanapummill.com

Connect with Ashley:

Website: https://www.ashleyblackington.com

Podcast website: https://www.andbothpodcast.com/

Dovetail® App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dovetail-app/id6744341822

Instagram: @mydovetail.app

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyblackington/

Lisa Avila spent fifteen years in the wine industry, left to do migrant Head Start and advocacy work with families the system was failing, quit when COVID made the impossible impossible, and built a business strategy and nonprofit strategy practice on the other side of all of it. She works mostly with women. The question they all arrive with is the same one she had to answer for herself: now what?

In this conversation, Ashley and Lisa talk about the nonprofit trap — the idea that wanting to make an impact means you have to be a martyr about it — why women who help people deserve to make real money doing it, what it’s like to be sandwiched between kids and aging parents at the same time, and what the next right step looks like when you’ve spent decades outpouring and finally have some space to ask what you actually want.

In This Episode

• Mom of three boys, fifteen years in the wine industry, migrant Head Start director — how Lisa got here
• The COVID moment that made her quit — and why her boss didn’t understand until she had kids of her own
• The nonprofit trap — why women who want to make an impact keep being told it has to be unprofitable
• Why you can make a lot of money and still help people — and why we need to stop acting like those are opposites
• The golden handcuff — when the organizations saying “we support women” require them to be nonprofits to qualify
• What migrant Head Start actually looks like — and what happens to student records when families move across the country
• The political reality of advocacy in a conservative agricultural town in California
• Red cards, rights, and what’s changed for immigrant families since COVID
• The Panini generation — being sandwiched between kids and an eighty-one year old mother, in perimenopause
• Three boys 17, 19, and 20 — what it’s like when two come home from college for the summer
• The client going global with her nonprofit — four years from a Facebook group to international impact
• The client who sat on her cancer journey poems for seven years and finally published them
• What the “now what” looks like — the question every woman Lisa works with is asking
• Non-negotiables: a bath every night, coffee, a walk, girlfriends who keep it real
• The airstream barbecue and dive bar tour — her plan for empty nest life

Quotes From This Episode

“Why can’t we make a lot of money and still help people? There’s nothing wrong with that. Why do we have to wear our heart on our sleeve and be martyrs?”

— Lisa Avila

“I’m not putting it out there that I only work with mothers, but it’s just this energy we’re drawn to — this now what.”

— Lisa Avila

“I was checking boxes for decades. Just outpour, outpour, outpour. And what did it get me?”

— Lisa Avila

“Your impact can’t just be outpouring. It has to be self-sustaining. Otherwise that’s how everyone flames out.”

— Ashley Blackington

“I am physically hot and I am pressed for time and patience and all of the things.”

— Ashley Blackington (on the Panini generation)

Find Lisa

• LinkedIn: Lisa Avila
• TikTok: @LisaAvilaCo

Connect with Ashley:

Website: https://www.ashleyblackington.com

Podcast website: https://www.andbothpodcast.com/

Dovetail® App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dovetail-app/id6744341822

Instagram: @mydovetail.app

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyblackington/

Lindsey Elliott spent seventeen years at a leading outdoor footwear brand — starting junior, ending as Global VP — and two months ago she left to build Product & Presence, her own company focused on brand visibility and public speaking coaching, with a particular soft spot for helping women show up in big rooms without the weight of everything they were never supposed to be carrying in the first place.

In this conversation, Ashley and Lindsey, who have been friends since University in Halifax, talk about what it looks like to leave a twenty-year career, why the safety net you build yourself is the only one that’s real, how partnership and parenting look different when there are no predetermined roles, and why making your kid breakfast every morning might be the best metric for success nobody talks about.

In This Episode

• How Ashley and Lindsey met — Lyle House, Halifax, a hockey stick, and Grey’s Anatomy every Thursday
• Twenty years in the outdoor industry — from retail footwear buyer to Global VP
• Why Lindsey chose entrepreneurship over the next big corporate role, even when the big roles were available
• The career coach she dismissed for years who turned out to be right about everything
• What transition looks like when you have a twelve-year-old watching how you handle it
• Product & Presence — what it is, who it’s for, and why public speaking is at the center of it
• Why the only safety net that will ever exist is the one you build yourself
• Women and financial independence, why self-care needs to include financial acumen
• Being the primary financial provider in a same-sex partnership and what happens when that changes
• How the absence of predetermined gender roles changes what partnership and parenting actually look like
• The woman who couldn’t get out of her own head before a keynote and what Lindsey did about it
• The backpack of garbage nobody asked for and why it shouldn’t be in the room when you’re on stage
• The lacrosse kids running summer camps instead of stocking shelves and what that says about what’s coming
• Making breakfast before getting after it and why that’s the whole point

Quotes From This Episode

“The only safety net that will ever exist here is the one that I create for myself.”

— Lindsey Elliott

“Success is not linear. And that’s not bad — it’s just important to acknowledge.”

— Lindsey Elliott

“If I get to make my son breakfast and put him on the school bus, and then I get to put in a day that’s as long as it needs to be — I’m good with that.”

— Lindsey Elliott

“There are no predetermined gender roles. So you define whatever that relationship looks like in the capacity that makes sense for you both.”

— Lindsey Elliott

“You’re not building the airplane while you’re trying to figure out how to fly the thing. Plane’s done. Pass the peanuts.”

— Ashley Blackington

Find Lindsey

• Website: productandpresence.com
• LinkedIn: search Lindsey Elliott

Connect with Ashley:

Website: https://www.ashleyblackington.com

Podcast website: https://www.andbothpodcast.com/

Dovetail® App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dovetail-app/id6744341822

Instagram: @mydovetail.app

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyblackington/

Laura Danger got laid off five days into her maternity leave. Then she opened a birthday card that said best mom, best wife — and realized she couldn’t remember the last time anyone asked if she was doing okay as a person. That stack of moments became No More Mediocre, her book about the mental load, the nag paradox, and the care work that holds everything together while remaining completely invisible.

In this conversation, Ashley and Laura talk about the Truman Show moment that cracks open the life you thought you wanted, why the nag paradox is a loop you literally cannot win, what sitcom syndrome is doing to households across the country, and how a garden club in Chicago became something much bigger than anyone expected.

In This Episode

• Laura’s Truman Show moment — laid off on maternity leave, a birthday card that only named her roles, and 2020 doing the rest
• What the mental load actually is — and why the emotional thinking work definition matters
• Weaponized incompetence — what it is and how it shows up in real relationships
• The nag paradox — the corrosive loop of directing and executing, and why doing it yourself only makes it worse
• Sitcom syndrome — how couples comedy on TikTok normalizes dynamics that can be genuinely toxic behind closed doors
• Why high-achieving women often can’t separate their anger at the system from the person right in front of them — and what to do about it
• The career rug pull as the new midlife crisis for men — and what that means for conversations about equity at home
• What the 2026 Equimundo State of the World’s Fathers report found — and why it’s haunting
• Linchpin exhaustion — why Ashley couldn’t snowboard freely because of what it would cost her family if she got hurt
• Why believing in equal roles leads to less conflict even when the division of labor isn’t equal
• Zone defense parenting — and why taking the average over time beats snapshot accounting
• The garden club that became a care network — free plants, seed libraries, and neighbors who know each other’s names
• No More Mediocre the book — and why the audiobook is specifically designed to listen to while you garden

Quotes From This Episode

“I felt bamboozled. I really thought I could change things or just work really hard and this would get better. And it didn’t.”

— Laura Danger

“I can’t die because I have knowledge that nobody else has. I know the schedule.”

— Laura Danger

“The nag paradox is that corrosive relationship loop where one person takes direction and the other directs.”

— Laura Danger

“It’s not just a garden club. It’s a full-blown care network.”

— Laura Danger

“I am here, I am wearing the name tag, I am doing the thing. But that doesn’t mean it’s my responsibility.”

— Ashley Blackington

Resources & Links

• No More Mediocre (book): available everywhere books are sold — audiobook recommended
• Libro FM (supports local bookstores): libro.fm
• Instagram: @thatdarnchat
• Substack: search Laura Danger
• Equimundo State of the World’s Fathers 2026: equimundo.org
• Fair Play by Eve Rodsky — mentioned as companion resource
• Drained by Leah Ruppaner — mentioned in conversation

Connect with Ashley:

Website: https://www.ashleyblackington.com

Podcast website: https://www.andbothpodcast.com/

Dovetail® App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dovetail-app/id6744341822

Instagram: @mydovetail.app

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyblackington/

Becky Selbie is a London-based psychotherapist who specialises in motherhood and maternal mental health — and she has a gift for taking the frameworks she uses in her therapy room and translating them into language that actually lands in everyday life.

In this conversation, Ashley and Becky cover a lot of ground: matrescence and why the word matters so much, the rule book that high-achieving women carry into motherhood that starts working against them the moment they get there, the mums who look like they’re coping but feel like they’re failing, the difference between motherhood and mothering, and why the inner critic telling you you’re not good enough isn’t your voice — it’s the noise of a culture that has never held mothers in the regard they deserve.

It’s one of those conversations that leaves you seeing yourself differently.

In This Episode

• How Becky came to specialise in maternal mental health — giving birth and thinking “how has nobody prepared me for this?”
• Matrescence — why the word matters, where it came from, and why it took 50 years to reach mainstream language
• The moment Becky heard it for the first time and ran downstairs to tell her husband
• Sharing the concept with her mother — who had her first child in the 1960s and was prescribed tranquilizers for what was actually matrescence
• Why high-achieving women struggle in motherhood more than others — and the rule book that explains why
• Mums who look like they’re coping but feel like they’re failing — and what the swan metaphor gets exactly right
• The “tab open” metaphor — why you never feel fully disconnected from your children even when you’re away from them
• Not loving every chapter — and why that has nothing to do with how much you love your kids
• The problem with parenting content on social media — theory without context, and who pays the price
• Why Becky’s clinical supervisor said “well, she will” when a client was terrified of messing up her kids — and why that was the most freeing thing she’d ever heard
• Motherhood vs. mothering — the doing versus the being, and why we’re graded on the wrong one
• The inner critic is the patriarchy — and why turning down its volume is the whole point
• What fills Becky’s bucket: creativity, building community, and the retreat she’s planning for mums

Quotes From This Episode

“Not loving motherhood doesn’t mean that you don’t love mothering. Just because you don’t enjoy bits of motherhood, there is no connection to how you feel about your kids.”

— Becky Selbie

“The inner critic is wrong. The inner critic is the patriarchy — it’s society, it’s all those messages about what motherhood should look like. And it’s nonsense.”

— Becky Selbie

“Motherhood is the doing. Mothering is the being — the relationship, the love, the knowing them inside out. But we’re graded on the doing.”

— Becky Selbie

“Even when you’re away, there’s a tab open all the time in your head. It’s just that as they get older, the tab gets smaller.”

— Becky Selbie

“Don’t compare the back end of your business to the front end of somebody else’s.”

— Ashley Blackington

Connect with Becky:

• Instagram: @_motherway_
• Website: motherway.co.uk

Connect with Ashley:

Website: https://www.ashleyblackington.com

Podcast website: https://www.andbothpodcast.com/

Dovetail® App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dovetail-app/id6744341822

Instagram: @mydovetail.app

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyblackington/

Katie Schlott spent 20 years in innovation — running experiments, iterating, testing what works. So when she realized her professional network had quietly gone dark during the years she was deep in parenting, she did what any good strategist would do: she designed an experiment.

Day raves. Pop-up dinners in strangers’ homes. Perfume making fundraisers. Online Slack communities. Wonder Woman dinners. A volunteer board for women’s health research. She tried all of it, wrote about it for Inc Magazine, and then came back on AND/BOTH to talk through what she actually found.

The conversation covers the new rules of networking, why smaller rooms build realer connections, how parents in particular need to rethink the whole model, and what happens when you decide to build the community you can’t find. Plus Costco. A lot about Costco.

In This Episode

1. Why Katie ran a networking experiment — and what the traditional model was missing
2. The day rave, the pop-up dinner, the perfume fundraiser — what each one taught her
3. The Old Girls Club and Society of Working Mothers — online communities built on realness over résumés
4. Wonder Woman Dinners — strangers become friends in under two hours, and why it works
5. “Tell me something Google doesn’t know about you” — the opener that changes everything
6. Why funny is sticky and vulnerability gets built through shared experiences
7. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, build it — Brilliant Failures, Brilliant Mothers, Mama Palooza
8. Joining a volunteer board for women’s health research and what that unlocked
9. Why big conferences are often the least efficient use of a parent’s limited time and energy
10. Managing your network based on energy levels, not just calendar availability
11. What happens when you let your network go dark — and how to rebuild authentically
12. How to be direct about what you’re looking for instead of hoping the room delivers it
13. Networking with teenagers at home — and the season-by-season nature of connection

Quotes From This Episode

“If you think you’re an N of one, you’re actually an N of 100. Just start it.”

— Katie Schlott

“Funny is sticky. Vulnerability is created in moments where you’re actually having fun with people.”

— Katie Schlott

“I want to join communities that thrive on real life, not résumés.”

— Katie Schlott

“Every single founder said: just pick one thing, just start with one. Don’t be overwhelmed, just get the ball rolling.”

— Katie Schlott

“The smaller rooms are the best. Everything that follows from a small room conversation — the email, the introduction, the follow-up — none of that ever comes from a big conference.”

— Ashley Blackington

Resources & Links

Connect with Katie on LinkedIn

Read Katie's lnc. Magazine article on "The New Rules of Networking"

Check out her consultancy and read ALL her articles (Fast Company, Inc and Business Insider)

Buy the magical Costco totes that she uses to keep her cart contents tight!

Connect with Ashley:

Website: https://www.ashleyblackington.com

Podcast website: https://www.andbothpodcast.com/

Dovetail® App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dovetail-app/id6744341822

Instagram: @mydovetail.app

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyblackington/

Kristin Smith has spent 20 years helping new families survive the hardest weeks of their lives. As the founder of Well Supported Family — a team of over 200 postpartum doulas, newborn care specialists, and nurses operating across 12 states — she’s built the modern village that most families desperately need and almost nobody has access to.

Now she has a two-month-old of her own. An adopted son she got the call about while she was standing at an elephant orphanage in Kenya. He came home through the NICU. And for the first time, she’s on the parent side of everything she’s built — learning what it feels like to need the very support she’s spent two decades providing.

In this conversation, Ashley and Kristin talk about the postpartum care gap, the different paths to parenthood, what actually happens in those first nights home, and what it looks like to practice exactly what you preach.

In This Episode

1. How Kristin started — a postpartum doula at 19 after having her daughter with almost no support
2. Growing Well Supported Family from a private practice to a team of 200+ across 12 states
3. Why postpartum care in the US is so inadequate — and what it would take to fix it
4. What in-home newborn care actually looks like and how it’s tailored to each family
5. The RV team, the travel team, and how they reach families in almost every state
6. NICU babies coming home — the adjustment nobody prepares families for
7. The call from Kenya — a failed adoption, four days into a trip, at an elephant orphanage
8. Three rounds of IVF and what that experience gave her as a provider
9. Being on the parent side for the first time — and convincing herself her own baby was broken
10. Why adopted babies don’t get the postpartum support they need — and the rude awakening that followed
11. The philosophy at the heart of her work: build children into your life, not your life around them
12. What’s next — expanding into mental health support and more states

Quotes From This Episode

“You can have a wound inside your body the size of a basketball, and it was attached. Just because nobody sees it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.”

— Kristin Smith

“I don’t believe parents should build their life around children. I believe they should build children into their lives.”

— Kristin Smith

“I was at the elephant orphanage when this baby was born. That feels so symbolic.”

— Kristin Smith

“I was convinced he was broken. I’m a professional. What is he doing? And then someone said, he was four weeks early. You’re expecting a lot right now.”

— Kristin Smith

“It’s not just giving them the break they need — it’s helping them learn to build a life with their child.”

— Kristin Smith

Resources & Links

1. Well Supported Family: wellsupportedfamily.com
2. Baby Care Classes: available via wellsupportedfamily.com
3. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube: @wellsupportedfamily
4. Find Kristin on Facebook: Kristin Lee

Connect with Ashley:

Website: https://www.ashleyblackington.com

Podcast website: https://www.andbothpodcast.com/

Dovetail® App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dovetail-app/id6744341822

Instagram: @mydovetail.care

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyblackington/

Sam Kelly was making a Saturday morning to-do list for her kids on a Friday night when it hit her. She’d just spent a year teaching her husband not to rely on her to notice what needed to be done — and here she was, about to hand her children the same broken script. She dropped the marker, went to bed, and the next morning introduced her family to Notice and Do.

Two years later she has a book deal with Harper Collins, a viral online platform, and a method that’s helping burned-out mothers around the world finally get their families off the sidelines. In this conversation, Ashley and Sam talk about the mental load, the burnout loop, intergenerational cycle-breaking, and what it actually looks like to teach kids — including neurodivergent ones — to be a real part of the family team.

In This Episode

1. The Friday night moment that sparked the Notice and Do method
2. What Notice and Do actually is — and how it differs from a chore chart
3. The Big Three — Sam’s daily structure for kids of any age or ability
4. The learning ladder — why perfection isn’t the point and every rung counts
5. Teaching neurodivergent kids to notice — and why it works even when nothing else has
6. The five cycle-breaking conversations — age-appropriate language for mental load, burnout, and equity
7. Why rage cleaning is never really about the messy kitchen
8. The burnout loop — quarterly mommy meltdowns, putting your head down, and repeat
9. Why self care isn’t enough — and why supportive care needs to be the new conversation
10. What it’s like to teach an adult partner versus teaching kids — and why those are completely separate things
11. The full circle moment: how Notice and Do liberated Sam enough to write the book
12. How to approach this when your kids just don’t care — and why that’s actually fine
13. What she hopes the next generation looks like when this work takes hold

Quotes From This Episode

“Mental load is a whole family issue. Whole family issues require whole family solutions.”

— Sam Kelly

“Supportive care needs to be the new self care. Who is caring for the mom?”

— Sam Kelly

“It’s not about the messy kitchen. It’s about what that mess is triggering underneath — feeling taken for granted, feeling lonely, feeling unseen.”

— Sam Kelly

“This pain ends with us. This ends here and now.”

— Sam Kelly

“Notice and Do liberated me enough to create this book. And if it can liberate me at that level, it can liberate anyone.”

— Sam Kelly

Resources & Links

1. Notice and Do (Harper Collins, pre-order now)
2. Instagram: @samkelly_world
3. Audio course: available via Sam’s Instagram link
4. Request at your local library and indie bookstore

Connect with Ashley:

Website: https://www.ashleyblackington.com

Podcast website: https://www.andbothpodcast.com/

Dovetail® App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dovetail-app/id6744341822

Instagram: @mydovetail.app

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyblackington/

Amanda Timonere spent a decade at the top of the clinical world — chief clinical officer of a multi-state mental health and substance use treatment center — before becoming a mom and realizing she wanted to do something different. Not because she couldn’t do the job. Because she was missing time with her kids and because she saw a gap in care for mothers that she was uniquely positioned to fill.

Now she runs Zenful Mamas, a private practice and coaching platform built around perinatal mental health and the concept of matrescence — the neurological and psychological transformation of becoming a mother. In this conversation, Ashley and Amanda talk about what that transformation actually looks like, why so many women arrive at motherhood completely unprepared for it, and what it means to break the cycle of the blueprint you didn’t know you were carrying.

In This Episode

1. What matrescence is — and why most mothers have never heard of it
2. The neurological reality of what happens to our brains when we become parents
3. How Amanda’s own anxiety through pregnancy and postpartum led her to this work
4. Walking into motherhood with a generational blueprint you don’t know exists
5. Why women — especially high-achieving women — resist asking for help
6. The difference between therapy and coaching, and how Amanda decides which one a client actually needs
7. Her 12-week program “Rewrite Before You Repeat” — and what it’s designed to do
8. Navigating the relationship between new parents and grandparents when parenting philosophies clash
9. Why the women who appear to have it all together either have a lot of help or aren’t telling the whole story
10. The AI dependency conversation — what it means for mental health support and clinical training
11. Solo parenting a two and four year old while running a practice — what that actually looks like
12. Her vision for Zenful Mamas as a hub for maternal mental health — therapy, coaching, breathwork, Reiki, and more

Quotes From This Episode

“We’re walking into motherhood with a blueprint that we don’t even know exists.”

— Amanda Timonere

“It’s not a matter of weak or strong. There is a neurological change in our mind that’s happening and it’s so far beyond our control.”

— Amanda Timonere

“Preventative care is the best care.”

— Amanda Timonere

“Having kids is like holding up a mirror to yourself. It’s like everything is exposed and we’re figuring it out.”

— Amanda Timonere

“There’s no prize at the end of the day for doing it all perfectly. There’s never going to be a medal ceremony and someone will be the valedictorian of motherhood.”

— Ashley Blackington

Resources & Links

1. Zenful Mamas: zenfulMamas.com
2. Instagram: @zenful_mamas
3. Zenful Mamas Inner Circle — low-commitment monthly groups for nervous system regulation
4. 12-week coaching program: Rewrite Before You Repeat

Connect with Ashley:

Website: https://www.ashleyblackington.com

Podcast website: https://www.andbothpodcast.com/

Dovetail® App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dovetail-app/id6744341822

Instagram: @mydovetail.app

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyblackington/

Betsy Cornwell saw a gap — artist residencies she qualified for but couldn’t access as a single parent — and instead of waiting for someone else to fill it, she built something herself. She crowdfunded the purchase of a historic 1906 knitting factory on the west coast of Ireland, turned it into a residency and retreat space for other single parent artists, and then wrote a memoir about how all of it happened.

In this conversation, Ashley and Betsy talk about coming out of an abusive marriage, what it means to write honestly about hard things as a mother, the gap between the writing life you imagine and the one you actually have, and why the accomplishment Betsy is most proud of isn’t her New York Times bestseller or her university teaching post — it’s being a single mom.

In This Episode

1. How Betsy became a single parent and why she found herself proud to be one almost immediately
2. The gap she identified — artist residencies she qualified for but couldn’t access because of caretaking logistics and finances
3. The castle that didn’t work out, the pivot to the knitting factory, and why this place ended up being a better fit
4. What crowdfunding a house actually looked like — including the 2am moment when everything came down to the wire
5. Why she gives residency recipients a cash childcare stipend rather than on-site childcare — and what that trust means
6. The Smith College Friday Tea tradition and the online community that supported her through the most isolated stretch of her life
7. Writing about emotional abuse — “he never hit me” — and why that makes some readers deeply uncomfortable
8. The ethics of writing a memoir as a parent: how she handled writing about her son and his father
9. Why mother’s silence is not the solution to the complexity of women telling their stories
10. Writing Ring of Salt on the edge of a bathtub — and what that says about the art you can make in the life you have
11. Raising her son in an Irish-speaking region of Ireland — and what she’s observed about life in Ireland versus the US
12. The “keep it alive” approach to creative practice for caregivers
13. What she hopes happens when someone comes to the Old Knitting Factory and gets to breathe for the first time

Quotes From This Episode

“The accomplishment I’m most proud of is being a single mom. And I think that will always be true.”

— Betsy Cornwell

“I don’t think the brunt of all that complexity should be borne through the simple solution of mother’s silence. That is not right to me.”

— Betsy Cornwell

“The book that I could write is the book that I could write in the life that I have.”

— Betsy Cornwell

“Have you kept your art practice alive today? It’s just about keeping it alive.”

— Betsy Cornwell

“We’re kicking the bar down the road and wondering why our toe hurts.”

— Ashley Blackington

Resources & Links

1. Ring of Salt (memoir): available at any bookstore or via oldknittingfactory.com
2. Old Knitting Factory: oldknittingfactory.com
3. Support the residency on Patreon
4. All books including YA novels: betsycornwell.com
5. Friday Tea on Substack: find Betsy on Substack

Connect with Ashley:

Website: https://www.ashleyblackington.com

Podcast website: https://www.andbothpodcast.com/

Dovetail® App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dovetail-app/id6744341822

Instagram: @mydovetail.app

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyblackington/