In this opening episode of multi-part series on Builders of a Better World, Ashlieya shares the tender, raw story of growing up in survival mode with a father she once saw as a “monster,” and the long inner journey that followed. After nearly twenty years of estrangement, she begins to question the narratives she told herself as a child: Was her past really as dark as she remembers? Is she destined to become what hurt her? Or does she have the power to write a different ending?

Together with interviewer Neff, Ashlieya explores:

• How childhood trauma, addiction, and family dysfunction shaped her sense of identity.
• The crossroads between victimhood, villainy, and choosing a heroic path.
• Her years‑long process of emotional work, nervous system healing, and spiritual practice that led her to ask for true understanding of forgiveness.
• A profound meditation experience in which she first feels her father’s and grandmother’s humanness instead of only their darkness.
• Why she no longer identifies with a “tragic story,” even though she lived through genuinely traumatic events.

This episode is part 1 of a multi‑part series about the same pivotal event: meditating on, then visiting, her father after two decades of no contact. It sets the emotional and spiritual groundwork for the later episodes, where she will sit across from him, hear his own story of woundedness and wrongdoing, and discover a deeper, more embodied form of forgiveness.

Episode 1 is for anyone who has ever feared “turning into” the people who hurt them, who feels defined by their past, or who wonders whether it’s possible to honor the truth of what happened without carrying it as their identity forever.