Shift Talk

Content Note: Cursey words throughout and mentions of Burt Reynolds, blue balls, and baby-making.

I sit down with film professional and writer Ashley Allen — who writes under her maiden name, Hudson — to talk about growing up in a late-’90s New York film family, spending nearly twenty years in production, and now returning to writing while navigating motherhood. Ashley’s credits include work as a script supervisor and writer’s assistant on Gotham, Louie, I Know This Much Is True, and Sirens.

We trace her Hudson-side artistic lineage and her path through the industry: PA work, camera department, and then script supervising, which she describes as a surprisingly conceptual, detail-obsessed craft. Independent films like Kids (1995) shaped how she thinks about storytelling, and learning technical roles built her confidence in a gender-imbalanced industry — eventually pulling her off set entirely and into writers’ rooms, a shift that also made trying to get pregnant more manageable.

Ashley talks candidly about a difficult IVF journey, choosing it over certain career opportunities, and what matrescence has actually meant for her: love expanding in one direction while boundaries have to expand in the other. That includes the rage that can show up during a daughter’s threenager era, therapy, ADHD, the work of repairing after losing her temper, and the gap between cultural expectations of motherhood and the real thing — even inside a genuinely equitable partnership. We also get into Me Too’s ripple effects, gender dynamics on set, and her advice to her younger self: find yourself first, and don’t give your power away.

You can find Ashley on Substack at Ashley Hudson - Ashes & Earth.

00:00 Welcome to Shift Talk

00:35 Meet Ashley Allen

01:34 Choosing the Hudson Name

02:13 Creative Lineage and Pressure

03:56 What Counts as Art

06:14 Breaking Into Film

07:44 From PA to Script Supervisor

10:00 Off Set to Writers Room

10:57 Choosing Motherhood and IVF

12:36 Matrescence and Identity Shift

15:03 Motherhood and Structural Inequity

16:27 Me Too and Gender on Set

21:47 Hypersexualized Culture Talk

23:00 Disappointments and Mom Rage

28:57 Gentle Parenting Critiques and Boundaries

32:15 Repair and Real Parenting

33:26 Advice to Younger Self

34:32 Closing and Subscribe

If you, too, wanna laugh with a bestie about her long gone days of majoring in arts and smoking pot, let’s connect. Subscribe to Mothershifting and share with a friend.

In the meanwhile, this librarian recommends:

📰 The Confidence Gap

by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman (The Atlantic, 2014)

This 2014 zinger which we briefly mention in the convo pitches that the gap between women’s competence and their advancement isn’t a competence problem at all — it’s a confidence problem, and confidence gets built by acting, not by ruminating until you feel ready.

And this podcast guest recommends:

📚 This Time Tomorrow

by Emma Straub (Public Library, Bookshop, Amazon)

“A novel about Alice, a woman who unexpectedly time travels back to her teenage years in New York City. She gets a chance to step back into with her adolescent self and have more time with her beloved father, who is sick in the present day. It’s a story about grief, gratitude, reflection and love. I fully ugly cried at the end in the best way.”

🎧 Normal Gossip

created by Kelsey McKinney and Alex Sujong Laughlin (Website, Apple, Spotify)

“This podcast created and hosted by Kelsey McKinney tells entertaining, anonymous stories about people’s everyday gossip.and ridiculous drama about friendships, relationships, family, and social situations. It’s funny, lighthearted, and makes me feel connected to everyone’s shared experiences of insanity and humor.”

🖼️ Colossal

(Website)

“An online magazine that explores contemporary art, design, photography from around the world. Everything from street art to high end installations. I set it as my home page and I love opening my browser and seeing some sort of work of genius.”

🍼 Production Notes: This episode was edited during baby’s second day at preschool. Please send tissues. 😭

Content Note: This episode contains brief discussions of pregnancy loss.

In this conversation, I interview Caitlin McCollister—a Nashville-based licensed clinical social worker, former educator, and mother of three—about seeking meaning, professional achievement, and the cultural landscape around motherhood. Caitlin traces her early spiritual curiosity in the Bible Belt, her philosophy and religion studies, and Buddhist psychology training in India, then reflects on taking nearly eight years to complete clinical hours after her 2018 graduation, reframing it through therapy and Carol Dweck’s Mindset as integration rather than failure.

We discuss matrescence, baby blues, isolation, and the grief of identity change even with desired births, emphasizing that empowerment during birth shapes whether experiences are metabolized as trauma. Caitlin shares her experience attempting surrogacy for a friend—the extensive legal/medical process and two losses that deepened her compassion for infertility, IVF, and miscarriage—alongside a call to restore ritual, connection, and systemic support for disenfranchised reproductive milestones.

00:00 Welcome to Shift Talk

00:32 Meet Caitlin McCollister

01:29 Growing Up a Seeker

04:45 Taking the Long Road

10:15 Matrescence and Baby Blues

15:32 Empowered Birth and Trauma

17:54 Surrogacy and Loss

21:22 IVF Grief and No Rituals

25:03 Ritual, Religion, and Culture

30:43 Moana, Mom Rage, Interbeing

32:38 Closing and Subscribe

Up Next: Fired Up: Confessions of a Mom Addicted to Productivity

If you, too, are a lifelong seeker, let’s connect. Subscribe to Mothershifting and share with a friend.

In the meanwhile, this podcast guest recommends:

📚 Women Who Run With the Wolves

by Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Public Library, Bookshop, Amazon)

“A well-timed, old book from my mom’s shelf in the ‘90s that needs to be kind of back in the consciousness right now. It offers a look at reclaiming the power of being a woman.”

📚 Mindset

by Carol Dweck (Public Library, Bookshop, Amazon)

“This is a pretty specific kind of niche recommendation around looking at how our idea of what it means to be successful can enhance and hinder what we dare to try to do.”

🍼 Production Notes: Baby makes a milk-seeking cameo at 24:45. Enough said.

The world isn’t exactly clamoring for another podcast. I made one anyway.

This is a little teaser I whipped up, with brilliant intro music from composer Jason Staczek of Cinotonic lending his talents.

Meltdowns and diaper blowouts permitting, I hope to launch the first episode next week and around once a month thereafter. You can expect to hear from people and professionals helping themselves and others navigate life’s many shifts — and the s**t that comes along with it.

Episodes will be short enough for your school drop-off but long enough to go somewhere, edited — to paraphrase Hitchcock’s definition of drama — to represent life “with the dull bits cut out.”

Come for the commiseration, stay for the book recommendations (because: librarian).

Up Next on Shi(f)t Talk: The Seeker Shift with Caitlin McCollister

Subscribe now so you don’t miss an episode. I promise they’ll be more talk of shift than shift. Well, hopefully.

🍼 Production Notes: This post brought to you by a mom who navigated today’s literal s**t via a car trunk diaper change in the preschool parking lot.