I spent 30 days telling you what I learned from a $5,000 retreat I never even went to. But I never gave you the full story.

Today I am giving you the full story. And then we are putting it to rest for good.

This is not an episode about regret. It is not a cautionary tale or a warning or a confessional. It is the story of the most expensive yes I ever said — what it cracked open, what it cost, and why every single door that opened after it was worth more than the five thousand dollars I left on the table.

What This Episode Holds

• The full story behind the $5K investment — the yes, the unraveling, and the moment she finally said no and asked for her money back
• The woman who made that investment — desperate, still looking to other people for the answers, still not trusting herself — and the woman who came out the other side
• How postpartum entrepreneurship pulled her into a world of targeted noise and how she kept reaching for the wrong rope trying to climb out
• The moment she realized she had been trying to learn from someone whose life she did not even want
• What it actually means to say yes from a place of abundance versus yes from a place of desperation — and how to know the difference
• Why this investment, as painful and expensive as it was, is the thing that finally unlocked the chain keeping her buried underneath narratives that were never hers
• Peeling back the onion — why becoming is not about finding the woman you lost but about finding joy in every single layer of who you are

Who This Episode Is For

• The woman who has made an expensive decision and is still carrying shame about it
• The mother in the online business world who has been targeted, overwhelmed, and has grabbed every rope thrown at her trying to find solid ground
• The woman who has been saying yes from a place of desperation and is ready to learn what a yes from abundance actually feels like
• The woman who has been looking to everyone else for the answers and is starting to suspect she has had them inside her all along
• The entrepreneur who is done following someone else's path to someone else's life

Key Quote

"It was a full body yes in a desperate place. It wasn't a full body yes from a place of abundance and self-trust and self-knowledge and self-worth. I was still thinking that I was not worthy and enough and that someone else was going to save me."

You are not behind. You are not too much. And you do not have to choose between your family and the life you are building. Keep peeling back the layers. The woman underneath every single one of them is worth finding.

RESOURCES + CONNECTION:

Find Ashley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsashleycrabb/ 

Download the Tell My Story Firestarter: https://ashley-crabb.mykajabi.com/opt-in 

Book a Vibe Check Call with Me: https://calendly.com/itsashleycrabb/30min 

Welcome to the Crab Shack

I didn't plan this episode. I didn't plan any of it, honestly.

I didn't plan to be sitting in my garden in my hippie zero shoes recording my first episode in over a month and a half. I didn't plan to become the Christian education and youth and children's ministry director at our local church. I didn't plan for any of the shifts that have happened in the last ten months — the ones you may have already felt if you have been here for a while.

But here I am. Finally home. And I am so ready to bring you along.

What This Episode Holds

• Why Ashley has been quiet for the last month and a half — and what she has been coming home to in the meantime
• The shift that has been building for almost a year and what finally coming home to God, her husband, her kids, her community, and herself actually feels like
• How a feral, F-bomb dropping woman became a church director — and why that is the least surprising thing in the world when you know her whole story
• Letting go of the polished performance and showing up from the garden, from the wicker chair, from the real
• What the Crab Shack is, where this podcast is headed, and why the mission has never been more alive
• The truth about grace — why she is done declaring it and finally just living it
• What radical responsibility actually looks like when you stop trying to beat everyone else's narrative and finally come home to your own

Who This Episode Is For

• The woman who has felt the shift in Ashley and wanted to understand what changed
• The woman who has been keeping herself chained up while calling it discipline or loyalty or love
• The woman who is afraid to say the G word out loud but feels something pulling her toward it anyway
• The woman who is done with polished and ready for real
• The mother who is building something and needs to hear that none of it disqualifies her — it qualifies her

"I am not extraordinary. I am just an ordinary girl living out her extraordinary purpose. And we all have the power, the strength, the grace within us to do that."

RESOURCES + CONNECTION:

Find Ashley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsashleycrabb/ 

Download the Tell My Story Firestarter: https://ashley-crabb.mykajabi.com/opt-in 

Book a Vibe Check Call with Me: https://calendly.com/itsashleycrabb/30min 

The Eldest Daughter Series: A Peek Inside Every Episode

Eight episodes. One story. And this is your invitation to hear it all.

This mashup is a glimpse into each episode of The Eldest Daughter Series — a peek inside the moments, the truth, and the becoming that lives inside this body of work. If something in here stops you, if something lands a little too close, that is the episode calling you in.

The Eldest Daughter Series — All 8 Episodes

1. Awareness is Not the Work: How to Stop Watching Your Patterns and Actually Change Them
2. The Eldest Daughter: Where the Cycle Comes From
3. The Narrative She Was Handed and Carried Alone
4. The Wildfire and the Ember
5. How Losing Everything Became the Beginning
6. The Eldest Daughter Lie: Why You Can't Save Your Family
7. Motherhood Didn't Make Me Lose Myself - It Revealed Who I Really Am
8. Motherhood, Visibility, and Reclaiming Your Voice

What You Will Hear a Glimpse Of

• The moment Ashley stopped minimizing her dreams and shrinking herself so others could hold her more comfortably
• The truth of the firstborn daughter — the parentification, the perfectionism, the people pleasing, and the desperate need to finally be held
• What it cost her to carry the eldest daughter role for 16 years — the silence, the cycle, the recklessness, the destruction
• Packing three suitcases, moving across the country, and bringing every shadow along for the ride
• Losing her job when COVID hit and being forced — for the first time — to stop running and actually look at herself in the mirror
• The hardest conversation she has ever had: looking her mother in the eye and drawing the line in the sand
• What rebuilding actually looked like — therapy, coaches, shadow work, and finally learning the map of herself instead of punishing herself for not following the path right
• The moment she stopped being an audience member in her own life and stepped into the story she was always meant to tell

Who This Series Is For

• The woman who has been making herself smaller so the people she loves do not have to feel uncomfortable
• The woman who recognizes herself in the eldest daughter role and is ready to understand what it has cost her
• The woman who has been aware of her patterns for years but has not yet taken the step toward truly changing them
• The woman who is in the breaking right now and needs to hear that the rebuild is worth it
• The woman who is done asking for permission to take up space

Key Quote

"The feral little girl, the eldest daughter, the reckless martyr, the cycle breaker mother. The woman who is repairing, rebuilding, adding on to herself, to her narrative, to the movement in real time. All of her is here with me. All of her has always been with me, ready to shine."

Each episode lives on its own — start anywhere, or start at the beginning. Follow or subscribe so you never miss what comes next.

If something in this mashup stopped you mid-scroll, mid-commute, mid-whatever-you-were-doing — go find that episode. Your story is in there somewhere. And it is ready to be heard.

RESOURCES + CONNECTION:

Find Ashley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsashleycrabb/ 

Download the Tell My Story Firestarter: https://ashley-crabb.mykajabi.com/opt-in 

Book a Vibe Check Call with Me: https://calendly.com/itsashleycrabb/30min 

Join me as we go back to episode 20 for a memorable part of my story this week! Let's take a look back at it together:

This episode is for the moment when the story you’ve been telling yourself stops working—not because you failed, but because you’re being asked to become someone who can hold more.

Not more hustle.
Not more pressure.
More support. More truth. More wealth in its real forms.

This conversation is about the quiet identity shift that happens when you stop performing strength, stop martyring yourself, and finally allow yourself to receive the support you keep saying you want.

We talk about what it really means to manifest—not as wishful thinking or perfect routines, but as embodiment. As becoming the woman who can receive what she’s been asking for.

In this episode, we explore:

• The difference between wanting support and being willing to receive it
• How control, martyrdom, and “doing it all” quietly block abundance
• Why manifesting is about identity, not forcing outcomes
• How other women are essential to building sustainable wealth
• The way motherhood reshapes leadership, ambition, and support
• The identity shift required to move from survival into embodied abundance

This episode is for:

• Mothers who feel like they’re carrying everything alone
• Women who crave support but struggle to accept it
• Builders who are exhausted from proving their worth through burnout
• Women navigating wealth, leadership, and visibility after motherhood
• Anyone who knows she’s meant for more but feels stuck between control and trust

“In order to receive what you are asking for, you have to become the woman who can hold it.”

If this episode stirred something in you, here are a few ways to keep the conversation going:

Download the Tell Your Story Firestarter — a free guide to help you get your story out of your head and into embodiment, leadership, and action.

Book a 30-minute vibe check if you want clarity, support, or space to talk through what you’re building and becoming.

And if you’re here for community, stay close. This podcast is a room for mothers, builders, and leaders who are done doing it alone.

You don’t have to earn support by suffering.
You don’t have to prove your worth by carrying it all.

Wealth isn’t built in isolation.
It’s built in rooms. In relationships. In trust.

And you were never meant to do this alone.

RESOURCES + CONNECTION:

Find Ashley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsashleycrabb/ 

Download the Tell My Story Firestarter: https://ashley-crabb.mykajabi.com/opt-in 

Book a Vibe Check Call with Me: https://calendly.com/itsashleycrabb/30min 

You Don't Have to Choose: God, Spirituality, and the Permission to Have Both

I grew up believing faith had a strict set of rules. And for a long time, I fought the tension between the God I was raised to believe in and the spiritual woman I was becoming. The crystals on my desk. The angel cards. The intuition I couldn't ignore. The signs I kept seeing everywhere.

For years I asked myself — am I doing this wrong? Can I love God and still trust all of this?

And then something finally clicked.

What This Episode Holds

• Growing up in Lancaster County where faith wasn't just an activity — it was woven into everything — and the moment I first started quietly questioning it
• The difference between questioning God and questioning my relationship with God — and why that distinction changed everything
• How becoming a mother cracked open a whole new layer of this conversation — and forced me to figure out what I actually believed
• The moment it finally clicked: if God didn't want me to find Him in intuition, in nature, in synchronicities — He wouldn't have woven Himself into all of it
• Unlearning religious perfectionism and the version of faith that asked women to shrink, obey without question, and cage their spiritual gifts
• Why spirituality didn't pull me away from God — it brought me closer to Him

Who This Episode Is For

• The woman who loves God but has felt guilt around her crystals, her intuition, her angel cards, or her spiritual practices
• The woman who grew up in the church and has spent years trying to reconcile what she was taught with what she actually feels
• The woman who has been told her intuition is unreliable, her emotions are dangerous, and her spiritual gifts are rebellion
• The woman who is ready to stop justifying her relationship with God to anyone else

Key Quote

"God never asked women to shrink. The world did. Systems did. Culture did. But God gave you a spirit and a mind of free will that was big and brilliant and amazing — and He never told you to cage it."

If this one resonated, follow or subscribe so you never miss what comes next. This conversation is just getting started.

You are allowed to be the woman who prays and also pulls angel cards. Who believes in Jesus and the universe. Who feels God in church and in the forest and with her feet in the grass. Your spirit and your faith were never meant to compete. They were always meant to work together. You were designed to have both.

RESOURCES + CONNECTION:

Find Ashley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsashleycrabb/ 

Download the Tell My Story Firestarter: https://ashley-crabb.mykajabi.com/opt-in 

Book a Vibe Check Call with Me: https://calendly.com/itsashleycrabb/30min 

In this deeply personal and emotionally charged episode of Wealth in Mothers, Ashley Crabb shares the truth behind her transformation—from a woman trying to make herself digestible for the world to a mother reclaiming her voice, visibility, and purpose.

Ashley unpacks the emotional cost of shrinking yourself to fit inside rooms that were never built for you. Through motherhood, rebuilding her identity, and learning to trust her own truth, she realized something life-changing: her story was never the obstacle—it was the work itself.

This episode is a powerful reflection on identity, motherhood, creativity, leadership, embodiment, and what happens when women stop performing and start telling the truth. Ashley explores the journey from fragmentation to wholeness, why mothers are starving for honesty instead of perfection, and how reclaiming your story becomes the ultimate wealth lever.

She also introduces Release & Rise, an intimate full moon experience designed for mothers ready to release shame, reclaim their truth, and rise into the fullest version of themselves.

If you’ve ever felt like you were “too much,” too intense, too emotional, too ambitious, too visible—or if you’ve spent years trying to abandon parts of yourself just to belong—this episode will feel like coming home.

•  Why your story is not something to hide—but your greatest wealth lever 
•  The emotional exhaustion of performing a life that isn’t aligned 
•  How motherhood awakened Ashley’s voice, truth, and creative power 
•  The danger of abandoning your gifts to stay accepted 
•  What happens when women stop fragmenting themselves to fit into different rooms 
•  The difference between performance and embodied leadership 
•  Why mothers are starving for honesty, not polished perfection 
•  The power of visibility, truth, and saying yes to your own life 
•  How authenticity creates magnetic leadership and ripple effects in community 
•  Why women were never made to shrink themselves to be loved 

Release & Rise is an intimate gathering hosted by Ashley Crabb and sponsored by Wealth in Mothers and The Yoga Place.

Held under the second blue moon of the month, this sacred experience invites mothers to release shame, reclaim their truth, and rise into embodied wealth and visibility.

•  Date: May 31 
•  Time: 5:00 PM – 7:30 PM 
•  Capacity: 13 mothers only 
•  Ticket Price: $31 

Get Your Tickets: https://www.itsashleycrabb.com/offers/eYHbnzr2/checkout 

If this episode resonated with you, share it with a mother who is ready to stop shrinking herself and start reclaiming her truth.

Be sure to subscribe to Wealth in Mothers for more conversations on motherhood, leadership, visibility, creativity, wealth, and embodied truth.

And if you’re ready to step into the next version of yourself, join Ashley for Release & Rise before tickets are gone.

RESOURCES + CONNECTION:

Find Ashley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsashleycrabb/ 

Download the Tell My Story Firestarter: https://ashley-crabb.mykajabi.com/opt-in 

Book a Vibe Check Call with Me: https://calendly.com/itsashleycrabb/30min 

Motherhood doesn’t erase women. It reveals them.

In this deeply raw and transformative episode of Wealth in Mothers, Ashley Crabb dismantles one of the most dangerous narratives women are handed: that becoming a mother means losing yourself.

Instead, Ashley shares how motherhood cracked her open — exposing every inherited survival pattern, every identity she performed, and every version of herself she was never meant to carry forever.

This is a conversation about breaking cycles, grieving old identities, rebuilding self-trust, and discovering that the “lost” woman so many mothers search for was never actually gone.

Ashley explores the emotional reality of motherhood, survival mode, eldest daughter conditioning, nervous system exhaustion, entrepreneurship, identity shifts, healing, self-awareness, boundaries, and what it truly means to rebuild your life from the inside out.

If you’ve ever felt like motherhood unraveled you… this episode will help you understand why that unraveling may actually be your becoming.

This is not about perfection.
 This is about reclamation.
 This is about wealth in mothers.

•  Why motherhood doesn’t make women lose themselves 
•  The identity grief many mothers experience 
•  The difference between bending and breaking 
•  Survival mode, performance, and eldest daughter conditioning 
•  How motherhood forces self-confrontation 
•  Why healing requires letting old versions of yourself go 
•  The emotional reality of rebuilding after burnout 
•  Learning self-trust after years of self-abandonment 
•  ADHD diagnosis, therapy, shadow work, and nervous system healing 
•  The shift from surviving to fully living 
•  Reconnecting with the “feral little girl” within 
•  What true wealth in mothers actually means 

If this episode resonated with you, share it with another mother who’s ready to stop surviving and start rebuilding.

Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode on social media so more mothers can reclaim their voice, identity, and wealth.

Join Ashley’s “Release and Rise” Full Moon Gathering

A sacred experience for mothers ready to reclaim their voice, power, and inner wealth.

Only 13 spots available: https://www.instagram.com/p/DYNUtHmEZRF/

RESOURCES + CONNECTION:

Find Ashley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsashleycrabb/ 

Download the Tell My Story Firestarter: https://ashley-crabb.mykajabi.com/opt-in 

Book a Vibe Check Call with Me: https://calendly.com/itsashleycrabb/30min 

In this raw and deeply personal episode, Ashley Crabb dismantles the belief that returning home—or becoming a mother—will magically heal generational wounds.

After moving back to Pennsylvania while pregnant, Ashley believed she would be the one to bring her family back together. That her growth, her presence, and her children would be the catalyst for change. But instead of transformation, she found herself facing the same patterns, the same pain, and the same roles she thought she had outgrown.

This episode is a powerful reckoning with the “eldest daughter” identity, the martyr complex many mothers unconsciously carry, and the invisible labor of holding generational trauma.

Ashley shares the moment everything shifted—the line she drew in the sand, the boundary that changed her life, and the realization that healing doesn’t come from saving others—it comes from no longer abandoning yourself.

This is a must-listen for mothers who feel the weight of “holding it all together” and are ready to finally put it down.

Key Topics:

•  The illusion that moving home or becoming a mother will fix family dynamics 
•  The “eldest daughter” role and how it shows up in motherhood 
•  Martyrdom, victimhood, and the identity of being “the one who fixes everything” 
•  Invisible labor and generational emotional weight carried by mothers 
•  Assigning unconscious responsibility to children to “heal” a family 
•  The breaking point: realizing nothing changes if you stay in the same role 
•  Boundaries with family, addiction, and choosing self-respect 
•  The difference between saving your family vs. building your own 
•  Letting go of control and releasing what isn’t yours to carry 
•  Rewriting your identity as a mother and woman 

If this episode resonated, share it with a mother who feels like she’s carrying it all.
Subscribe to Wealth in Mothers by Ashley Crabb for more conversations that challenge the narrative of motherhood.
 

Leave a review to help expand this movement and amplify mothers’ voices.
 

Follow Ashley Crabb for deeper thought leadership on motherhood, identity, and generational wealth.
 

Take a moment to reflect: Where are you still trying to fix what isn’t yours to carry?

RESOURCES + CONNECTION:

Find Ashley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsashleycrabb/ 

Download the Tell My Story Firestarter: https://ashley-crabb.mykajabi.com/opt-in 

Book a Vibe Check Call with Me: https://calendly.com/itsashleycrabb/30min 

I didn't start because I thought I was ready. I started because everything around me stopped working.

When COVID hit, I lost my job on the same day Washington state shut down. Not as part of a layoff wave — just me, walking out of that building alone, arms full of my things, trying to hold my chin up. And for the first time in my adult life, I couldn't hide behind the hustle anymore. The income was gone. The illusion of control was gone. And what was left was me — finally forced to slow down and actually look at myself.

This episode is about what happened next. Not the clean version. The real one.

What This Episode Holds

• Losing my job the day the world shut down — and why it cracked me open in a way nothing else had
• How I had tied my entire worth, identity, and sense of control to my paycheck — and what happened when it disappeared
• The spiral that followed: more drinking, more numbing, more running from what I didn't want to feel
• The moment I decided — not in some big breakthrough, but quietly, dog-sitting for a friend — that this could not be it
• How I started The Crab That Can with nothing but a flyer, a feral little girl's energy, and a need to point my fire somewhere that wasn't self-destruction
• What it actually looks like to be destroying and creating at the same time — and why that messy in-between is the whole point

Who This Episode Is For

• The woman who has tied her worth to her work — and felt herself unravel when it was taken away
• The woman who is in the middle of the metamorphosis right now and can't see the other side yet
• The woman who has been using busyness, hustle, or control as a way to avoid feeling what's underneath
• The woman who is ready to rise — even if she is still matted and messy

"I was destroying and creating at the same time. And what I can see now is that what I was actually destroying while I was creating — I was destroying the old narrative while I was building the new one."

If this one resonated, follow or subscribe so you never miss what comes next. We are just getting started.

This is what it actually looks like inside the cocoon. Not the butterfly. Not the caterpillar. The part nobody talks about — the messy, contradictory, uncomfortable middle where everything is trying and failing and trying again. That is where you are becoming. And once you start breaking out, you cannot be stopped.

RESOURCES + CONNECTION:

Find Ashley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsashleycrabb/ 

Download the Tell My Story Firestarter: https://ashley-crabb.mykajabi.com/opt-in 

Book a Vibe Check Call with Me: https://calendly.com/itsashleycrabb/30min 

**TRIGGER WARNING: Brief discussion of SA included in this episode.**

There is a woman who has been holding everything together for so long that she forgot she was allowed to put it down.

This episode is for her.

Ashley Crabb gets raw about the years she spent living two lives at once — performing control while quietly unraveling, choosing chaos because it was the only language she had ever been taught. This isn't a redemption arc with clean edges. It's the story of what happens before the turning point. The part nobody talks about.

What This Episode Holds

• The moment Ashley stopped pretending — not because everything collapsed, but because the weight of holding it all finally stopped being worth it
• How an act of violation in middle school became the permission slip to stop caring for herself entirely, and how she carried that silence forward for over a decade
• The way distance never actually changes anything — because we pack our shadows right alongside our suitcases
• The particular kind of numbness that looks like thriving from the outside, and how COVID stripped away the last place left to hide
• How the knowing that she was meant to be a mother arrived not as an idea but as an instinct — and what she chose to do with that ember instead of letting it ignite another fire she couldn't control
• The She-Wolf tattoo, and the woman it represents: not rage for the sake of destruction, but instinct, strength, and the decision to build

Who This Episode Is For

• The woman who has been the chaos coordinator for everyone else while quietly burning herself down
• The eldest daughter who never got held accountable because she was too busy holding everything else
• The woman who ran — to a new city, a new relationship, a new identity — and couldn't figure out why it still followed her
• The woman who chose numbness because stopping meant feeling everything she had been outrunning
• The woman who is somewhere between the wildfire and the ember, and doesn't know yet that both of those things can live in her at once

Key Quote

"I get to be a wildfire and the ember. I get to be something steady. I don't have to be something that burns everything down just to feel in control and to feel powerful. I get to be something that builds."

If this conversation landed somewhere real for you, follow or subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss what comes next. The next chapter is already in motion.

You don't have to have the plan. You just need the moment — the one where you look at yourself and decide that the life you've been living is no longer worth the cost of carrying it.

That moment is not a finish line. It's a beginning. And you belong here, in the middle of it, figuring it out. Still messy. Still becoming. Exactly where you're supposed to be.

RESOURCES + CONNECTION:

Find Ashley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsashleycrabb/ 

Download the Tell My Story Firestarter: https://ashley-crabb.mykajabi.com/opt-in 

Book a Vibe Check Call with Me: https://calendly.com/itsashleycrabb/30min