EP. 228 — Redefining Motherhood with Ashley James

Jameela: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of I Weigh with Jameela Jamil, a podcast against shame and good grief do we deliver that this week. I think this is the most candid episode or at least one of the most candid episodes that we’ve ever done and it was just such a breath of fresh air and my guest was so so excellent.

Her name is Ashley James. She is a known and loved TV personality in the United Kingdom for anyone who isn’t familiar with her work, but but up until recently, I don’t think she’s ever really been given the chance or the platform to be taken seriously for her thoughts and opinions because she’s incredibly pretty and has been known more for her aesthetic than her massive, beautiful brain. And I’ve been noticing her lately as she debates on television over huge subjects to do with the kind of culture wars and feminism and trans issues and poverty and all kinds of different things. And I think she’s just such a wonderful communicator and, and very refreshing [00:01:00] in that she’s not trying to humiliate anyone. She just comes ready, organized with fact. The way she delivers her information is is a precision strike. She’s incredibly well informed. She’s calm. She’s composed. She’s kind. And I think a good example for what we need to see more of when we talk about these hugely sensitive issues. And so I invited her on this podcast this week to talk about one of the things that she speaks most beautifully about alongside the other things she speaks about wonderfully, which is motherhood.

She speaks about motherhood in a way that is so candid, it genuinely takes my breath away. And I mean that in a way of, in the form of awe, because she speaks publicly the way that my friends who are mums speak privately to me and she carries no shame around the difficulty of motherhood, the fears of regret, the, uh, the feeling of having to mourn your previous life, the fact that it’s not just all fucking roses and daisies and teddy bears and joys and smiles. She [00:02:00] really goes into the true journey of the hardship that some people experience. Now, that’s not everyone’s story, but it is a fucking lot of people’s stories, and I think a lot of women don’t feel like they’re allowed to speak about it. And that’s so ridiculous given the fact that I think at least 95 percent of the women that I’ve met have said similar things to me silently, almost under their breath, almost whispering because they’re so scared someone might hear them.

So all of these women are out here experiencing these universal things to do with their emotions and their experiences and also the physical undertaking of creating a human being with your body and what that does to you and and how that can go on to affect your sex life and your relationship, all these different things. All these people are having this universal experience and feeling like they can’t talk about it, and Ashley James, my guest, is here to really chuck that out of the fucking window. And she does such an excellent job of both letting us know how much she loves her life and her children, [00:03:00] but also talking so freely about all of the things that are so fucking challenging.

And, and you can feel how much self respect she has built up in herself for having overcome the challenges of motherhood the way that she has, and every one of you should be feeling that way. And so this is a great episode if you are a mom, or if you’re about to become a mum, it’s slightly terrifying in some ways because it’s so honest, but also that’s what we need to fucking hear because one of the biggest problems I think Ashley had is the fact that nobody told her how fucking hard it can be sometimes. Um, but also if you don’t want to have children, you’ll find this episode quite reassuring, but most importantly, you will be armed, the way that I now am after speaking to Ashley, as to how to better support your friends who are mums. And that is a, a big part of my life, something I really care about. I really want to be that figure for my friends. I want to be that figure of support because I don’t want to have children. I want to be able to give that nurturing instinct of mine to them [00:04:00] because mothers really are the unsung heroes of society. And so we get into the weeds of it. As I said, it’s brutally honest. It’s fucking brilliant. And she’s just so excellent at communicating exactly what it is that she wants to say. And so I hope we see more of Ashley James on our TVs and in our interviews and podcasts and in our newspapers because I really do think that we need more people like her out there in the public sphere to inspire young women and young people of any gender. As to an alternative way to have difficult conversations. But for now, this is the excellent and unapologetic, Ashley James.

Ashley James, welcome to I Weigh. Hello, how are you?

Ashley: I’m good, thank you so much for having me.

Jameela: I’m so happy that you’re here. Now, you and I have known each other probably for [00:05:00] about 10 years. I guess, sort of around the time we met, would have been just before I left for America, so we’ve never gotten to know each other really well. So my entire relationship with you has mostly been parasocial, and watching you go through all these different iterations in your career. And I’ve always known you to be very beautiful. I’ve always known you to be very charismatic. But it’s only really been in the last few years that I have started to, to see this other side of you that I feel like either the media made you hold back or maybe you held back because in the same way that I would have done at the beginning of my career, but you have become such an amazing voice for women and such a gracious and eloquent debater on topics of social justice, and it’s been a real joy to watch you take center stage as a voice of reason, um, in the nightmare that is television and like pundit space talking about the kind of culture wars on [00:06:00] telly. So before I get into that, how are you? How have you been?

Ashley: Do you know what? Good. I feel like, yeah, we met 2014 in a pub garden in the Edinburgh Fringe. And I think, well, probably both of us, we’ve just been on a journey finding our voices in quite a public and scary space. So, yeah, I feel, I don’t know, I feel better than ever, actually. The more I talk, the more I speak up, obviously, the more it welcomes hate and negativity. But I feel, you know, much more empowered, and I feel like once you find your voice, it’s very hard to lose it, much to the annoyance of lots of people.

Jameela: Yeah, I can imagine. But I also imagine it’s nice to finally be taken seriously for your brain rather than just only be seen as, uh, something beautiful to look at.

Ashley: Do you know what? It’s interesting. So thank you for saying that, but I never really I never considered myself to be a beautiful person and I never really, I never really felt like a [00:07:00] beautiful person. It was never really something that was said to me until my teenage years. So I think, you know, when suddenly boys started paying me attention, I was kind of like, what, me? Because I was this like quite dorky, not very popular person, and then suddenly that kind of felt like, collateral a little bit. I was like, oh, I’ve suddenly got social currency. This is great. Um, I didn’t really know how to navigate it and I still don’t feel it myself, so even though I appreciate, you know, that, yes, I am, I, I don’t feel it. At school I very much felt like my teenage years were spent being told, if you want to be taken seriously, you know, don’t dress a certain way. Don’t look a certain way. Women have a choice. Beauty or brains. Which one are you going to pick? And I very much was desperate to be taken seriously. So I shunned all femininity and I suppose became a bit of a misogynist myself because I was taught very much that if you embrace anything feminine and you embrace beauty over brains then, you know, that’s all very trivial and it’s [00:08:00] a waste of talent. So I very much came into this industry thinking that I would be taken seriously. And then suddenly it was like the opposite. If you want to make it in this industry, you have to go beauty, dress sexier, get your boobs out. And it was all just very confusing. And as someone that’s very ambitious and determined, I was trying to like always stick to my gut and not necessarily do things that didn’t feel right, but be like, this is all very confusing. So I think it’s just been a journey of trying to find my voice that I feel like got very lost in the tabloids and what’s interesting to me is people forget if you’re in the tabloids you don’t write that stuff. I didn’t choose for that narrative about myself and I remember reading certain stories being like, bloody hell even I don’t like me, and I am me, but how can you read all of that stuff and like someone, and it had a real impact, not only on my self esteem and on my [00:09:00] confidence, but also on my ability to date in a healthy way. Because I noticed that there was this real pattern that anytime I was linked to anyone, and sometimes there was truth behind it, and sometimes there wasn’t, it would be like Ashley James, so-and-so’s rumored fling. It was always like I was kind of introduced as someone’s bit on the side or someone’s fling. And the rumored fling annoys me because it’s like, how can you be someone’s rumored fling? You’re either that fling or you’re not. And I realized very quickly that if I wanted to be successful and if I wanted to be taken seriously, I almost had to keep my dating life super private, which I’m happy to do. But it also meant I allowed men in a way to like, let me be the secret because I was so desperate for it to be kind of very, very secret. And I remember a brand wanted to work with someone who was like a really strong feminist and my agent put me forward and they were like, “Oh no, she’s not a feminist.” And I was like, “What do you mean I’m not a feminist?” [00:10:00] And I was so fascinated by women’s literature at university. I studied it in French and English, like, how am I not a feminist? And they were like, “Oh, well, you know, you see everything that’s written about her in the tabloids.” And I was like, “That is so unfair.” So I’m being punished and I’m not a feminist because other people write stories about me.

Jameela: How did you find your voice and what impact has it had on you finding it and sharing it with everyone?

Ashley: I think probably the reason lots of us find our voice. is not even willingly because you can only tolerate so many things happening before you start to be like, hang on a minute, this isn’t fair, this isn’t right. And also realizing that the more you maybe stay silent on things, the more maybe you let injustice happen to other people and people who might not be as strong as you vocally. So I think that when you start to speak up, I remember the first time I kind of used my voice, I wrote this blog post called, I think it was called something like, [00:11:00] “Bittersweet Birthday Blues.” And it was the first time I’d really put pen to paper and it was all around my mental health and how I felt like I hadn’t, I wasn’t as successful as I, I wanted to be at that point in my life and I felt all of these different things and I remember my agent calling me up being like, “What are you doing? Have you not heard of smoke and mirrors?” And I, and you know, I think now oversharing and being very honest and vulnerable is a bit more acceptable, but back then.

Jameela: Beyond acceptable, it’s now a currency all of its own online.

Ashley: Yeah. Which I think is a good thing if it’s authentic and as long as people are in a space where it’s safe and comfortable for them to be open and vulnerable. Even though I was told at the time that that wasn’t the right thing to do, and I think I did end up taking it down. I, off the back of it, got a, a column with the Metro, which was about depression, and again, it was, it was just after Peaches died.

Jameela: Peaches Geldof.

Ashley: Peaches Geldof. Yeah. And I remember messaging Fifi about it and chatting to her. [00:12:00] And then I wrote a lot about mental health. And I, I found that the more I started to use my voice, even very timidly, the more I started to sort of find my tribe of people, and the more I started to not feel isolated and like a freak of nature from my own mental health battles. And so I think when you have a voice and when you feel comfortable to share whatever it might be, it might be, you know, about piles and prolapse or it might be about like feminist issues or it might be about sexual violence whatever it is that you start to use your voice for you find that, I guess you find strength in that voice and you find that people kind of gravitate towards you as a sort of safe space. And I think that’s a really nice thing and actually the more I, the louder my voice got almost like the the happier and stronger that I felt and feel even though it does sometimes get really exhausting and feel like you’re walking uphill at all times.

Jameela: A hundred percent.[00:13:00]

It’s, I think the reason you caught my eye in particular is because you speak in a way that I don’t see a lot of people speak anymore online. There is a patience and, uh, with which you speak and you speak with this just sort of, precision strike accuracy. You’re well researched and you are very calm and you don’t try to humiliate your opponent in a debate and we are in such a moment of smackdown culture where everyone is trying just to silence each other or just to win a debate and that should never be what we’re teaching young people is the goal of trying to understand one another. That’s what debate is supposed to be. It’s not supposed to be a win and a loss. It’s supposed to be about coming to a common understanding and being able to, you know, share your differences of opinion in order to arrive at that common understanding of something.

And [00:14:00] even the people that I watch you debate with online definitely seem to come at you with, um, quite a tense energy and you just stay very calm and composed. And I was wondering where that comes from. Is that something you have to make an effort to do?

Ashley: No, so a lot of people don’t know this, but I’m actually from a very small working class town in the northeast of England. And I won a scholarship to a boarding school, so they have to let a certain number of working class kids in every year, and that was me. So I very quickly got my accent bullied out of me, kind of ended up in this completely bizarre, like, completely different world, basically. I remember I was the only girl, but bear in mind, this was when I was seven upwards, so at seven to twelve, I was the only girl in my year without a title. And I’ve got all these letters that I used to write my parents every Sunday, that I’d put, Lord and Lady, this, Duke and Duchess of this, because I had such a complex that they didn’t have a title and I always was acutely aware from such a young age [00:15:00] that I didn’t quite fit in and that I had to really change myself to be accepted. But then I’d go home and I’d find the same. Suddenly everything that was normal and acceptable at school was seen as like very other at home. And I think that’s A) what gave me quite low self esteem because I never just felt like I could be myself or that myself was enough, but that’s a whole story for another day. But it also put me in to very different classes and systems that I gained a lot of different people’s perspectives. You know, my parents are politically, sadly, the polar opposite of me in every sense. And, um, there has been a lot of conflict. I won’t lie, especially after the Brexit vote, but it’s kind of taught me that shouting at people that they’re wrong and you’re right doesn’t really get you very far in a debate and I’ve really noticed like the ramping up of culture wars and even a lot of our newspapers that we have here in the UK, like you can barely even call them [00:16:00] newspapers, they are so unbelievably biased and it’s not really a surprise that you’re seeing race riots in the UK because when you look at the narrative that people have been fed for so long, it was always going to boil over into something. And so I think when I try and talk, and actually I did a horrific station, if you can even call it, I won’t call it a news channel, but a TV station for a while, GB News, which lots of people told me not to do because it’s incredibly right wing, quite poisonous. But I thought if I can learn to debate and hold my own and be calm and not get angry, and not tell people that they’re stupid or wrong. And if I can put myself up to debate against all the people that I would only see in a nightmare, you know, like the Farages and the Lawrence Foxes, and it took a real toll on my mental health doing it, but I did it for a year. And I really think it kind of, like, taught me what the other perspective is, but also how to manage, how to handle myself when I’m either feeling attacked or [00:17:00] when I’m trying to debate something that I feel like is not even an unreasonable thing to want to be a voice for social injustice, but, um, yeah, I think that kind of taught me a lot about being the other voice, I guess, and trying to navigate that in a way, because I think a lot of people make the mistake of getting frustrated and then taking that out on whoever’s interviewing them and then I think you lose your audience. And so I always try to think with everything I do, there’s no point in changing the minds of people who already have your opinion, so what do people who don’t have your opinion want to hear? And they don’t want to hear people shouting at them that their opinion’s wrong. So I try to do it in a very researched and stat heavy way, because you can’t argue with facts and you can’t debate facts. And also I get great pleasure out of people underestimating me and especially some people that I will come up against. I think I love being underestimated. I love people thinking like, “Oh here’s some stupid bimbo gonna talk.” And then I can like attack them with [00:18:00] facts and I get a buzz off that.

Jameela: Fair enough. One of the things that has also massively caught my eye about you has been the way you speak about being a mum. It is more raw and relatable than almost anyone I’ve come across, and bear in mind I’m quite new to the mum space, and it’s only because my mates are now becoming mums that I’m now following other mums to try and understand uh, somewhat what they’re going through so that I can be some kind of support. And, uh, so many people, uh, whenever I’m looking for guests on the podcast, bring you up specifically in this area in particular, because they found your voice so reassuring because you’re so blunt about the brilliant, uh, things about being a mom, but also the massive reality checks and wake up calls and hardships that we don’t talk about in society and you’re not afraid to really go there. First of all, how would [00:19:00] you describe your experience with motherhood? How are you finding it right now?

Ashley: Right now, great, but it’s been like an absolute rollercoaster, but the most unstable rollercoaster, like the rollercoaster that you’d see and be like, that doesn’t look safe. That’s, that’s really how motherhood has been for me that now I’m like, okay, I found a good one. We’re going steady. But yeah, it’s been like, it’s been a lot. And you know, I became a mom in lockdown, so I’m, I’m sure that doing pregnancy and lockdown in a very isolated, weird space had a big part to do with quite a bad start, but also I never wanted to be a mom. And I think this is also why I’ve been really honest about it because I was, I was always determined to be child free and I never actually made a conscious decision not to be child free. I just got pregnant and then thought, well, how bad can it be? I don’t know. It’s weird because it just felt, it’s really hard to describe it. When I got pregnant, it felt like fate. And so I kind of just, [00:20:00] went with it. For years, when I said I don’t want kids, people would be like, “Oh, you’re going to regret it. You’ll change your mind. You won’t live a happy and complete life.” And the thing that’s so funny about that is I worked really hard at learning to be happy and learning to be live an authentic, happy life for me. And when, just before lockdown, I’d been single for six years. The first few years, I definitely felt like a failure and I felt all of those social and societal expectations and pressures, but the last three years, so from when I was 30 to 33, I lived such a great life. If I, I get DJ, um, gigs around the world, I was doing TV. If I, if it got too much, I’d just go away. I lived this very like happy, spontaneous, very carefree wildlife. And all the people that were telling me I would regret it. I didn’t envy that life. I was kind of looking at them being trapped at home. I’ve never really been a homebody. And I was like, I mean, everything that you’re going through sounds horrendous, if I’m honest. And I’d go around to my friend’s houses and be overstimulated by the sounds of like [00:21:00] baby TV. And I’d hear about all the arguments that they were having with their partners and like the whole thing I was just like, that is a big fat no for me.

But when people were like, well, you’ll regret it. When I did get pregnant, I was just like, well, how bad could it be? Turns out really fucking bad. Sorry, can we swear?

Jameela: Of course you can.

Ashley: Okay. Yeah. Really fucking bad. And do you know what? I think it does, I think this rose tinted, very misogynistic view that a woman can’t be happy and complete until she has a husband, and a baby does such a disservice to women because I think that’s when people feel like, well, what’s wrong with me? Why is this not enjoyable to me? Why do I, like, am I losing my mind? And I remember I would Google in the night, is it normal to regret motherhood? Does anyone else regret motherhood? And then you feel so guilty for even having these thoughts. And now that I’ve been through it, I realize how, how normal it is. And I kind of just wish more people could be honest about how hard [00:22:00] it is without having to caveat everything with, but of course I love my child. Yeah, no shit. You can love your child, but like things can also be hard. And I think things can be so hard because you love them so much because if you didn’t love your child, you’d just leave them on the street, like it’s hard because you love your child and so it’s like self sacrifice to the absolute core.

Jameela: Yeah, therein lies the conflict, yeah.

Ashley: I don’t know, I realised that even before when I was child free and when I considered myself this real feminist, I was actually subconsciously incredibly misogynistic about mums because I’d say things like, “Oh, I don’t want to be a mum.” Even when I got pregnant being like, oh, but I’m, I’m not one of those mums that’s going to wear maternity clothes as if every person who had come before me was like, this is it for me now, I’m going to wear milkmaid clothing. Like, you know, everyone has this sort of negative image of a mum, and mums are so negative, mums are so negative. All you hear is mums complaining, probably because they’re doing 90 percent of the emotional labour, and probably because they’re trying [00:23:00] to work as if they don’t have children and have children as if they don’t go to work and you literally can’t win because everyone is judging them but meanwhile a dad walks past and everyone’s like, “Oh my god what hands, what a great dad look at him just walking there with his child.” His child could be screaming or on an iPad, no one cares, if a woman does exactly the same thing they’re like, “Lady of leisure, not even working.”

Jameela: Whenever A$ AP Rocky and Rihanna are out and about in town, all the comments are just, why is she not at home with her kids? It’s never, why are they out not with their kids, or why is he out not with his kids? It’s a fascinating couple of like, where they’re both at the sort of, you know, I mean obviously she’s the most successful woman in the world, but they’re both very popular, and they’re both at the top of their industries, and they both have the baby, and they’re the same age. It’s, it’s only the fact that she’s a woman that leads to that narrative, and it’s fucking maddening to watch.

Ashley: And there’s a real lack of compassion as well, because if you are at home, there’s no, like, even if you complain or if you say, I’m [00:24:00] struggling, everyone’s like, “Well, don’t have children if you didn’t want, like, you shouldn’t have had children then.” It’s like, really? Because when I said I didn’t want children, you all told me I would regret that, so at what point are we allowed a little bit of compassion or understanding or are we just always in the wrong?

Jameela: And, and your case is not, from what I understand, one of postnatal depression because you really loved the first six months of being a mum. We were in lockdown, so it was kind of, you know, you have that FOMO of being out and living your life. No one was out doing anything. We were all at home and you were in this sort of very sweet love bubble with your baby, right? It was once the world opened back up that things got hard.

Ashley: Yeah. It’s almost like this weird Stockholm Syndrome, I guess, because you’re living this completely different reality. So, you know, before lockdown, traveling around the world, DJing, suddenly all my DJ gigs got cancelled, Tommy moved in because of lockdown, and then I came out of lockdown and everyone else’s, else’s world went back to normal and I was still stuck at home and I was worried about my [00:25:00] career. Um, I was breastfeeding. Alf was a really tricky baby that I just couldn’t leave him. I remember even 10 months in, me trying to get away for an hour felt like a real achievement. It wasn’t, it wasn’t like that at all with Ada, my second baby. Um, yeah, and I remember at the time, giving birth both times, not the actual birth, but that first six months is the closest thing that I will ever experience, I think, to like, heaven or euphoria or, you know, that kind of real drug rush. It was like every day, even though it was tiring and hard, I was like, this is just amazing. I felt so at one with my body. I had so much respect for myself. It sounds like so wanky to say, but I felt like mother nature came and kind of like, crowned me and I was just this like earthy person that I didn’t even know existed inside me and then after six months, I think the reality of the physical challenge, I’m not talking about [00:26:00] bouncing back or body image from an external perspective because I think that’s what everyone jumps to when you talk about postnatal, but I had a really bad traumatic birth and I was stitched up incorrectly and all this things that I put down to recovery, like pain, um, prolapse, piles, like all of the things. Six months in, I was like, am I ever going to be healthy again? Is my body ever going to work again? And suddenly Alf became not just like a newborn that would like sit and sleep and you can do whatever you need to do, like something that actually is entertaining, but I still had stuff to do and I started to feel really depressed, and started to really think like what the hell have I done like all the reasons that I would look at people and think that’s not the life I want is now my life and it got really bad because I felt so guilty to voice it and also I think at the beginning people are quite [00:27:00] mindful of postpartum depression like people will look out for you, they’ll check in on you, but a few months in people are like when, like when do we get our friend back or when do we get someone back or what you still can’t leave them? Or if you’re tired just give him to someone else and sleep, like, so I think the kind of empathy wears thin. And I remember one of my friends being like, “Oh, how’s Alf?” And I started talking about him and I literally just saw her eyes glaze over and I was like, Oh no, she doesn’t care. That was just a polite question. So I was like, anyway, yeah, yeah, he’s fine. And then she was like, so what else is new? And honestly, my brain was like crickets. I was like, think of something else, think of something else, think of something else. And I was like panicking, and I was like, “I’ve got nothing. Oh my God, I’m that person. I’ve got nothing for her.” And I was like, there literally isn’t anything else right now. And I was so depressed feeling like that. And I realized, you know, when people are like, “Oh, don’t be one of those mums that only talks about the baby.” I was like, Oh my God, they only talk about the baby because that is literally all they have. Because like, you know, whether it’s [00:28:00] sleep deprivation or whatever it is, it’s like your whole, everything is about keeping this human alive. And you’re, you know, lots of us are not going back to work. I was trying to do bits, but even when I would try and go back to work to not be seen as a mum, it almost reinforced me being a mum. So I went on the Jeremy Vine show, and Alf came into the green room, and then, you know, he got upset while I was on air, and then I ended up breastfeeding, and then I was suddenly like, oh, my God, now I’m breastfeeding on TV. And I wanted to be like Ashley, like the brains and the non mum, and now I’m being like Ashley the mum breastfeeding on TV. And it was almost like this self fulfilling prophecy that the more I didn’t want to be a mum and the more I was pushing myself to do things, the more people were seeing me as a mum and I really can’t describe just like the spiral that I went into.

Jameela: All of my friends have described it as a sort of, like a mourning period for their old life. Obviously they’re so excited for their new life and this new completely, like, ethereal journey. But there is, there is [00:29:00] this mourning that, like, women are sort of shamed out of saying, like, even you being like, “I didn’t get to go on holidays, I didn’t get to be a DJ, I didn’t get to do, you know, all the fashion parties and stuff” like, will be seen in almost like on a kind of knee jerk basis by even women as like, “Oh, we didn’t get to go to your DJ gigs.” And it’s like, no, that’s someone’s someone’s life and identity and social life, and they get cut off from their network

Ashley: And career and earning.

Jameela: And earnings and independence and all of these different things that get taken away from you. It’s completely valid to fear losing those things or to mourn losing those things. And to also have those to like God bless you for voicing out loud the concern of like, shit, was this a mistake? Because I think it’s so much healthier to say it out loud and then hear it and then pro most likely go, no, it wasn’t a mistake, but Jesus fucking Christ. It’s taken a sledgehammer to my life because I think when women suppress that fear, then it just ping pongs around inside their head and grows [00:30:00] bigger and bigger and bigger. That voice becomes louder and louder and louder because you don’t let it out. And I think it’s so much better and healthier to be able to say, sometimes it feels like a fucking mistake. Even though there’s such a big mummy market, such a big mummy industry, there’s so little true information because mums are so shamed about telling the whole truth, and that’s why I think it’s very revolutionary what I see you do. You also talk about, again, aside from, and I would like to talk about the, you know, the snapback phenomena age that we seem to be in still after like 15 years, but before then, like, you’ve spoken about postpartum incontinence, like all these different things that I never see anyone talk about, never mind someone who also has a career in fashion and modeling. And so, did that feel scary to speak about? And can you speak about that now for anyone else who might be silently struggling with this thing where they don’t even want to tell their partner because they feel [00:31:00] embarrassed about it?

Ashley: Yeah, so I, I also just want to really quickly say that one of the biggest snapbacks that I received when I talk openly about the fact I felt regret or that I didn’t enjoy Alf, all of these things are, what’s he gonna think when he sees that? And I just wanna say to people like, hopefully if he ever decides to become a parent, he will have empathy and understanding for what his partner might go through.

Jameela: Mm-Hmm. .

Ashley: So I think that’s a really important thing to say, like, I’m sick of always having to caveat everything with like, but I love my child, but I’m really grateful. It’s like we, we are allowed to feel all of those things, and we shouldn’t have to caveat. On the postpartum recovery, I I did all the courses in the house because it was lock down, but you know I did like the hypnobirthing and I read some books and I like to be quite well researched and my understanding of postpartum recovery was very much that six weeks later you go get a physical check and they will tell [00:32:00] you if everything’s fine. And in most cases, you’ll be fine. I’ve run marathons, I’m pretty healthy. I’ve never had any like major issues. So I was like, great, six months. Then I’ll be able to go six weeks. Sorry. Then I’ll be able to go back to running. And I knew I didn’t care if I could fit in old clothes or not cause I’d done a lot of work on body image. And I don’t think that being bigger is bad, and when I’ve been at my smallest, I haven’t been my happiest, so I’ve already unpicked all of that. So I wasn’t worried about it from a body image perspective, but I just thought it was like six weeks tick back to running, back to normal. And it’s up to you if you want to bounce back or not. What I didn’t understand was exactly what that postpartum recovery might look like and also that you can be healthy and you can do all the hypnobirthing but you are still not guaranteed a straightforward birth. And I think that’s a really toxic, irritating thing that I find when people are like, “Oh, you only hear about negative birth stories.” [00:33:00] And I always say like, “But don’t you think people would want a positive story?” Like nobody wears that like a badge of honour, like maybe if we were all more open about the negative, I don’t even like the word negative, but like traumatic birth stories, maybe then we can push for healthcare to improve and get better so less people have to,

Jameela: Which by the way, I dunno if you heard, but it’s only because it’s gone so viral on TikTok the discussion about how horrifically agonizing putting an IUD in is,

Ashley: Yeah.

Jameela: That now, for the first time ever, the medical industry is considering reassessing the process of putting in an IUD. It’s only from women coming out and sharing their experience about how horrific it was that led to such a viral conversation that now the medical industry is finally taking note, us sucking it up and suffering in silence only hurts us. It might make other people who don’t have to go through the same thing more comfortable to not have to hear about it. But it’s only via us being incredibly vocal that actual change is even being considered, which is fucking wild, [00:34:00] but well done to all of those women. Sorry, please continue. I just wanted to add that in.

Ashley: Well, I was going to say, you know, lots of people do these kind of pregnancy courses and you go with your partner and I didn’t do them, but what happens is when it comes to talking about what happens down there. And again, if there’s an expression that I cannot stand, down there. Like, we don’t call our arms our over theirs, we don’t call our heads our up theirs. Why is there so much shame around the female body that we can’t even say, like, vulva? Even in a medical perspective, when we’re talking about childbirth. So anyway, they’re like, “Okay, ladies.”

Jameela: By the way, by the way, my dad laughed so much when the doctor said vulva in front of him when my mother was pregnant with me that he had to be excused from the room for laughing so much they could hear him laugh all the way down the corridor. He was 48.

Ashley: Well I’m glad he enjoyed the birth.

Jameela: Yeah, insane. 48, just heard the word vulva fucking lost it. Sorry, carry on.

Ashley: Yeah so they say like, “Okay ladies we’re gonna talk now about what [00:35:00] happens down there. So if the gentleman would like to go get a cup of tea,” What in the 1940s is going on? Sorry, shouldn’t partners know what’s going on down there? Because they’re going to be the ones that are hopefully going to like support and aid the recovery, but also don’t they need to kind of know that potentially they’re not going to get sex for a while. I mean, you’d like to think that they would know that, but you know, I, I even, I think I have a very progressive relationship and I even felt that pressure, you know, six weeks came, eight weeks came, three months came, six months came and I was still like, oh, I just don’t think I can have sex. And I remember saying once to Tommy, like, I’m really sorry. I just, I like, it’s just really painful. And he was like, you know, I was in the room, you know, that I’m scared as well. I don’t want to hurt you. And it was the first time that it kind of dawned on me that men weren’t just cavemen because I feel like the whole narrative is around bouncing back and not letting yourself go for your partner. And I don’t know, no one had explicitly said that to me, but I guess it’s [00:36:00] just what I’d absorbed culturally.

Jameela: I don’t have a single friend who isn’t terrified that they’re going to take too long to be able to have penetrative sex and then their partner’s going to want to leave them because they already don’t look the way they did before the pregnancy and so they’re already so full of insecurity and they feel like their partner’s always seeing them on two hours sleep and at their grumpiest and worst and then on top of that they can’t even have sex. The anxiety that that adds, the cortisol levels that that adds on top of everything else women are going through, it’s definitely something that is, I mean, I’m aware of it and I’m not even a mom. It is just a sort of, like, unspoken narrative that exists throughout that you understand from when you were a teenager onwards.

Ashley: It’s sad, isn’t it?

Jameela: It is so sad.

Ashley: So first of all, when I went for this six week check, which I was so excited about because I was like, “Yeah, now I’m going to get back to everything.” They checked the baby and then just asked me some tick box questions [00:37:00] about my mental health and then it was like, okay, cool. And I was like, do you not want to check anything? And they were like, no, unless you’ve got any concerns. And I was like, yeah, I’ve got a big fucking concern. I’m concerned about the fact that I was ripped from my front to my back and you’re not going to tell me that that’s okay now? Like, I was just like, okay, but so I didn’t get the check, but I was like, do you know what? I’m healthy. I should be fine. And I started running. And it was actually a female pelvic health physio who I’d used because I had pelvic girdle pain in my pregnancy, and she kind of reached out being like, “Ah, can you just come see me before you start running again?” And it turns out that I had a rectocele, which is basically a prolapse, like a back passage prolapse. So if I’d have carried on running, and this is also the thing that annoys me so much about this bounce back pressure on women, that it would have been dangerous because my insides were literally falling out of me, and I had no idea. It wasn’t like as obvious as you might think it would be when you try to imagine it, if [00:38:00] you want to imagine it. And so I think this whole, like, bounce back thing, or this pressure around bounce back, and even the fact that every interview I do, they’re still like, “Do you feel pressured to bounce back?” So, the narrative is still there, even if they’re not expressi explicitly saying you have to. It really angers me because it’s not what’s safest for women. And actually, loads of other countries, especially Scandi countries, France, they offer pelvic health physio as a standard after giving birth, which makes sense. I shouldn’t have had to pay, and I’m very privileged and lucky that I was in a position to do that, but how many women aren’t in that position and are like trying to bounce back because that’s what society’s telling them to do.

Jameela: And they’re so misinformed.

Ashley: And they might be damaging themselves.

Jameela: A hundred percent. I remember, um, walking, um, up Runyon Canyon, which is like a very steep hike road in LA. And we saw a mother and her partner [00:39:00] um, running with their pram uphill. We were walking slowly down, it was probably fucking boiling outside. And you could see from the baby that was a newborn. That baby could not have been more than two or three months old. And this woman’s got a waist trainer on and she and her partner are both running at pretty much the same speed, given that he hasn’t just made a human and pushed out of his body. And I was like, fucking hell, how is that? How, how can that be safe to push yourself like a fucking athlete, like uphill on a cra on honestly one of the craziest gradients you’ve ever seen while pushing a pram? And there was a sort of panic in her face. And it was that clear panic, like it was, it was very clear from the waist trainer and the from the aesthetic fiddle that like she, she had this fear that she has to get back to that original body. And that’s such dangerous misinformation. No shame on her. She’s just a victim of our society. But my God. The fact that we aren’t being [00:40:00] really informed about that is crazy.

Ashley: I would love to see happen that after someone gives birth, you get carried around and grapes fed to you for a whole year. You don’t even have to move. If you want to go somewhere, just like men, big burly men, they just come and carry you around like this and feed you grapes, feed you whatever you want. And for a year, you’re just like, what an amazing body, like that body is a miracle. Let’s all worship that body, you know, like Greek Aphrodite, like praise be to that body because that body has brought life. And then after that, I don’t know, free healthcare, maybe free physio, maybe just check that your insides aren’t falling out. Maybe give people like a full body check and maybe that could be included as part of healthcare, just as a thanks for continuing the human race. That would be nice.

Jameela: 100%. And you know what you were talking about briefly there about the fact that when it’s time to talk about what’s happening in your female reproductive system, men are often sent out of the room or men aren’t in those meetings because we consider it embarrassing for the woman, for [00:41:00] her partner to even know what’s going to happen, quote unquote, down there. That’s a huge problem. It’s a huge problem. And, you know, I was just on the phone with a friend yesterday who was telling me that her partner just really doesn’t get it. He really doesn’t get it. He’s a feminist, he’s very progressive, he’s a very kind person, he’s very like 50 50 on all the parenting, but 50 50 doesn’t even make sense given what she’s been through and has to go through. There is no such thing really as 50 50 in child care when a woman is still recovering from this insane thing that she’s done. And it’s because we are protecting men from this information, because already, even if they knew all the information, they’d still never really be able to fully empathize, because until you actually experience it, you can’t imagine. But we have to find a way to communicate to men exactly what this is like. At the very least I think for nine months they should be carrying around a sack that gets [00:42:00] heavier and heavier and heavier on their front so they can feel what that does to your back and your body and how exhausted you are. But um, I don’t know what we do about making sure that men understand this information about quite how much damage is done.

Ashley: I think it needs to just be in school, like a much more, you know, in the same way that we learn about periods and ejaculation. It’s like, and this is the female body and these are things that can happen after childbirth. And this is important for recovery. And it’s almost like this matter of fact thing, because even learning about it when you’re pregnant or when your partner’s pregnant, it’s quite scary. You know, you don’t want to think about the worst case scenarios in birth, but if it’s just a matter of fact, and people know about it, and there’s no, like, shame and taboo around it, and, I mean, Tommy learned very quickly. It was literally unavoidable for him to learn what happened to me, because also, because, you know, they stitched me up incorrectly. I basically have fecal incontinence, which is when you shit yourself. I actually would have loved to have seen if, um, because I was really scared cause we lived by Battersea Park [00:43:00] and we’d always walk around Battersea Park and there would always be pets because various people live around there. And I was like, I’d love to see, like, the misogynistic, um, headlines if I had actually visibly shat myself, like how they would, like. Ashley James flaunts her pins as she displays her postpartum body just six weeks after giving birth with a poo in her hands. Do you know what I mean? Like, how can they? But I remember saying to Tommy, like, I just felt disgusting. I mean, and obviously it wasn’t my fault and it’s a med, it was a medical error and in the same way that if you had a knee operation and something happened, you’d be able to talk about that matter of factly and that, I think that’s what made me want to speak up because it felt very unfair that something happened to me out of my control. And yeah, it was like, “Shh, don’t scare people. Don’t talk about it. Don’t, ooh.” But we should be able to talk about these things. And also so many people have prolapses and don’t know. So many people have, um, I can’t remember the official term, but essentially tummy gap. And then they go back to doing sit [00:44:00] ups and it’s your muscles basically are separated. And the more you’re doing sit ups, the more you’re kind of like ruining your core. And our core is so important for so many things. And especially as we get older, that’s what keeps us up and in, basically. And it just feels so unfair that they’ve decided that anything to do with women’s health is TMI and taboo, because how fucking convenient that we should just suffer in silence and almost accept that once we’ve had a baby, well, that’s our body ruined, so that’s just our sacrifice to the patriarchy. You’re welcome.

Jameela: What was the reaction from your followers when you were talking openly about the incorrect stitching and the prolapse and the incontinence?

Ashley: I think, um, overwhelming. I think whenever you talk about birth, you always get the, like, uh, stop being negative and stop scaring people. But when you talk about prolapse and incontinence, the amount of people who are like, this is what I think I’ve had, this is what I’ve had for years. The doctors told me that prolapse isn’t a thing. The, um, incontinence, I think it’s [00:45:00] sort of a myth. You know, once you’ve had kids, don’t go on trampolines. And it’s kind of seen as this thing that just happens, but actually there is a cure. Um, you know, you can do things to improve incontinence, whether that’s at the extreme with prolapse and incontinence there’s surgery, or whether that’s basic things like pelvic health, pilates, and lots of people don’t know, so I think a lot of people just basically accept that their body’s broken and don’t do anything and the amount of women who um got in touch who gave birth even 14 years ago who were like, “Wow I’ve just been diagnosed with prolapse because you said that,” and it’s actually it’s it’s it’s amazing the more you talk about these things the more that you can help people, but it’s also just really sad that it’s just not a better known fact and that you have to push for yourselves, um, and advocate for yourselves.

Jameela: God fucking bless you. God bless you for having these conversations because even the messages that I’ve gotten about you, whenever I’ve posted one of your debates, [00:46:00] I, you know, online about something could be even something unrelated like trans issues, or the cost of living crisis, or racism, etc. overwhelmingly the messages I get are how helpful you’ve been in making women feel less crazy about their experience of being a mum. And, and so I’m happy that those messages are also getting through to you because it’s genuinely life affirming and life changing when someone feels so fucking alone and so fear of shame, they’re already shaming themselves and they’re so afraid of external shame and it’s so appreciated. Do you feel comfortable talking about the impact that being, being a parent has on your relationship? Or is that a sacred space that you wish to protect? Because I want to be really respectful, you already share so much.

Ashley: Um, not at all. I think, I mean, obviously from a, from a, if you want to talk about sex, um, as a starting point, I, after Alfie, had this, [00:47:00] um, thing where anytime I would try to have any form of, I don’t even want to say penetrative, like putting a tampon in, so obviously sex, any, just any form of, like, penetration, I was just in so much pain. And I had a bit of a fear of hospitals after the birth, which I’ve worked through since, but I decided to go to a private gynecologist that somebody recommended. Um, again, total privilege that I could do that. And he is one of the top gynecologists in the UK. He’s retired now, but he was like, it’s not stitches. So that was a huge relief. It’s nothing there, so it’s all in your head. And I was like, this was at 22 months postpartum so bear in mind, we hadn’t had sex for over a year. So, you know, he’s a very attractive man. We got pregnant in lockdown. Like there was a very physical relationship there. And so not only were we sleep deprived, exhausted, I was shitting myself, like all of those other things going on, I was also in pain. And sometimes I would try and like, push through it and not tell him [00:48:00] because I just craved for both of our sakes, for like, some of our relationship to resemble what it was physically, and then he’d be like, “Are you crying?” And I was like, “Yeah,” and he was like, “Oh my God.” He’s like, “I don’t want to do this.” And so then I was like really trying to figure out like, am I just gonna be in pain now for the rest of my life? And even, you know, tampons, I don’t think they’re great, especially now we know they’ve got lead in them, but sometimes you do need a tampon.

Jameela: And arsenic.

Ashley: So I’d like to think, I love period pants. Um, I would always tramp in a period pant, but just sometimes you need a tampon. So I was just like, I need to fix myself. I’m in my mid thirties. I could live till I’m a hundred. I’d like to think that this is not it for me now. And so when he said, you know, it’s just in your head, I was like, that’s cool, but how can I get it out of my head? And it was just sort of like seen as this like crazy woman syndrome. Like the, and, um, I went to go see the pelvic health physio. And she was like, oh, I [00:49:00] think you just have vaginismus, vaginismus, vaginismus.

Jameela: Vaginismus, yeah.

Ashley: Something Meghan Trainor, um, spoke about and then it got twisted in clickbaity articles around the world but um, yeah, she had it and it was the first time I’d ever heard anyone else talk about it. And again, when someone talks about it, it’s very validating when you feel like you’re, you know, this like total isolated freak. And, um, it took her, I’m going to say, two minutes to fix it. And it was like this internal massage that she did, and what I didn’t know is that when women go through any form of sexual trauma, so whether that’s, you know, rape or, you know, childbirth, if it’s a bad childbirth, we hold all our tension in our, in our pelvis and the pelvic muscles. And so sometimes it can, it can basically just spasm and kind of what’s the word I’m trying to find. It goes into, like,

Jameela: Contracts?

Ashley: It stiffens, yeah, so it just stays tight like that, so obviously any kind of [00:50:00] penetration, it’s going to hurt because your muscles are like, tense. So she did this really simple massage and that was it, done. So that was 22 months of my life where I kind of could have, it just been avoided, had doctors known about quite a simple cure.

Jameela: I was telling you over the phone that I’ve never had a baby, but I’ve had significant um, and, uh, very continuous sexual trauma in my younger years. And that led to years of issues with vaginismus that I didn’t know and I was told again was just in my head or just a choice I was making and I just needed to relax or I just needed marijuana, or I needed this, that and the other and none of it, it’s never been suggested to me that there was actually a doctor who could help me with it. It was always just like I need to

Ashley: I’m going to put you in touch.

Jameela: Yeah, I want to put everyone I know in touch because so many of my friends still struggle with this, whether it’s because of sexual trauma or because of, um, of birth trauma and they have no idea. I had no idea until speaking to you that there’s actually a [00:51:00] cure and so now I want to get that number from you and then blast it across everyone I know.

Ashley: Also really important to say, by the way, for anyone in the UK. Pelvic health physios are available on the NHS. You will have to like, advocate for yourself, you know, go to the doctor, explain what’s going on and push for it, but you can see a pelvic health physio on the NHS if you’re not in a position to go private, so.

Jameela: Never even heard of that till you said it over the phone. Didn’t know there was a pelvic health physio, nor do any of my friends who’ve had babies, so it’s insane. So we were talking about the sex element, but I also wanted to ask you about the emotional toll that motherhood can take sometimes on the relationship because that seems to be the thing that’s coming up the most with all of my friends is the, you know, the sledgehammer it takes to the actual relationship because there is this imbalance that one of you has witnessed, has gone through this thing that the other one might have witnessed but can’t really relate to.

Ashley: [00:52:00] Yeah, I, do you know what, I think it’s um, it’s interesting that any of us are really surprised that our relationship would take a hit when really it’s a bit like having a second job that you don’t have a choice to call in sick from like every, any free time you have, you suddenly don’t have any more for at least those like early year periods because you’re up through the night. Everything’s transactional. Like, what time do you finish work? Because who’s going to pick up the kids? Or, are you doing the lates? What if, like, at the moment, Ada’s waking up all through the night, so we take it in turns, or we’ll be, like, discussing like, there’s nothing sexy about logistics. And so, of course, it has an impact on your relationship. And I also think that, you know, for lots of my friends, their partners suddenly want to take up golf. And I might know if they take up golf, like divorce, because it is the most selfish thing that they could do, that not only are you with them all day, because you’re on maternity leave, so you don’t get any [00:53:00] adult stimulation, but they want to like, take up an 8 hour hobby one day of the weekend, no! No, like it is selfish. And if the shoe is on the other foot, and this is what I say to all my friends. And one day I need to realize that there is a pattern of people around me that get divorced and I need to sometimes tone it down. But I will say to my friends, if it was the man who sacrificed his career for the year and was doing the same old mundane stuff day in, day out, and their bodies were like healing and if they were breastfeeding, and then suddenly we were like, we’re just gonna, you know, go play golf for the weekend, is that alright? Because I just have a life as well, you know um, we, it, it just wouldn’t be tolerated. So there is, even in very equal relationships, I think like a big societal expectation difference. And Tommy and I have definitely had really hard times where we’ve been like, what are we doing? Do we even like each other anymore? Like, because we’re just at each other all the time. And I think we’ve learned really well what our strengths and weaknesses are. [00:54:00] So I’m very good on lack of sleep. I can do it. I don’t enjoy it, but I can do it. Tommy is like Jekyll and Hyde. So we know it’s probably just, you know, he’s great at other things. I’m terrible at washing clothes. Don’t know why. It’ll take me about five attempts putting the washer on. I just forget about it, so he, he can handle that. And, you know, it’s trying to like figure out our strengths and also just kind of accepting it’s okay if we don’t have what we had before, because we will have that again. But we need to be like a team in the two job hustle and separate rooms that people find that controversial. Honestly, I wouldn’t be with him if I still shared a room with him. I love my own space and I don’t want to get woken up by anyone. I don’t want anyone to steal my duvet. I don’t want like just, you know, when sleep is a priority, no one’s getting sexy under the covers.

Jameela: Do you ever sleep in the same room, or do you always sleep in your own rooms?

Ashley: No, I think he would like the idea of moving back in at some point, but for me it’s a hard no.

Jameela: Forever, do you think, [00:55:00] or just not right now?

Ashley: Yeah, I think forever. Like, I’ve got all my, I don’t have a shared wardrobe, I like he likes to go to bed early, so he goes to bed, like, I’m gonna say nine ish. I used to, like, try and be on my phone, even under the duvet, and he’d be like, “Turn it off!” And I like to kind of stay up late, I like to watch something, and I just felt like I couldn’t do any of that, and then he is one of those, like, freaks, who wakes up in the morning and puts all the lights on. I’m like a slow waker upper. And this way, we both get to live life how we want. And when people say, “Well, what about your intimate life?” It’s, I’m sorry, no parent even sharing a room is having sex every night. I do not believe it. And there are ways that you can be affectionate with each other, like giving each other a kiss in the morning, holding hands. Like we, we make an effort to like,

Jameela: Yeah. Also the bed still exists, you can still shag in them, but you just sleep in different rooms. Um, James and I sleep in the same bed, but we have, and again, it’s a huge luxury to have two bedrooms even in your, in your flat, but we’ve got [00:56:00] our own separate bedrooms for our stuff and instead of having a guest bedroom, we were like, fuck the guests. We need two separate wardrobes, two separate spaces to go into when the other one’s annoying the other one and somewhere just to just exist in your own, um, spousal living that means having to be on top of each other, which is obviously in a cost of living crisis, inevitable for most people, but we’re in a small flat, but just having even these two small rooms away from each other, it grows the love. Because you’re like, oh, I haven’t seen you in a few hours, hello, or I haven’t seen you all night, good morning. But no, we, yeah, unless, unless we’re working on different schedules, we share the same bed. But I’m such a huge advocate for having your own bedroom and your own space for your own shit. Because it just creates so, so much of a fight. Like, he loves to take his clothes off and just leave them wherever he was standing. And I don’t care, because it’s not my room. It’s not my room. I don’t have to see it.

Ashley: I’m the, I’m the messy one.

Jameela: It looks like the invisible man was a stripper. You know what I mean? It’s just like, which ghost came in and stripped across the house? Haha. Um, whereas I love to tidy all of the time, so [00:57:00] it’s perfect. It’s perfect. Um, and so you’ve now made the choice that you are done having children. You did a really funny video recently saying, considering having another child, and then you sort of slapped yourself as if to try and knock yourself out of it. You, um, you feel as though this is it. You’re good.

Ashley: Yeah. The shop is shot. Like, I’m, I’m done. I didn’t even want any kids. I’ve got two. Happy days. So amazing. Um, I’m getting like bits of myself back. So I love, there’s this two times, uh, two things actually, so anyone struggling in motherhood, there’s a term called matrescence which is this amazing saying that kind of saved me when I was in like very dark times after Alf, and that’s basically like the kind of, I guess, the adolescence of motherhood. So anyone that’s struggling, just look up the term matrescence, but also knowing that

Jameela: Wait, what does that, I really don’t know what you mean, sorry.

Ashley: So matrescence is basically the kind of, the idea that when you have, uh, I really should just look at the definition online, but when [00:58:00] you, um, become a mum, kind of like the old you dies, and you go through this adolescence of motherhood where your whole identity and everything is being questioned and shifted. And then you kind of, like, find yourself again, so you come out of the adolescent stage, and it really helped me because all that kind of worry and regret and your relationship changing and everything that you’re going through, which is all completely invisible to people, makes sense when you understand that term. So anyone in that early stage of motherhood.

Jameela: Yeah. I imagine that’s about as insecure and unsure as you do feel during your adolescence that, that makes so much sense and it must be really debilitating to go through that later in life.

Ashley: Yeah, and they say, um, when people transition, they have like a trans adolescence as well because it’s like learning how to be that other person the first time. So, um, it’s really good, but also flamingos lose their pink when they have children. And they say that basically it’s so difficult and so hard [00:59:00] that the color literally drains from them. And then a few years later, they get their pink back. So I’m in the chapter called getting my pink back and it’s really nice because actually lots of the things that I miss so much from my old life I can do again. I can go see my friends, I can’t go on spontaneous trips and I can’t go traveling. But I did say to Tommy recently because we really, I think with relationships you just have to be so honest about how you’re feeling, and I was like I just want to be on my own and it’s not you I don’t want anyone else. I just dream of going away on my own and he was like do it then so I think I’m just going to go somewhere for a week by myself because I get so overstimulated now. And that’s another thing with not having him in my space. I was like, I just wanna be left alone. And it’s not surprising because I was single for six years. I could, I could be on my own and I could dip in and out of like socially. And, um, yeah, the, the shot is shot, I’m not going through pregnancy and birth and all of that again. [01:00:00] But I feel very happy and grateful and I wish I could tell old me that was worrying about regretting it all that it would all be great and I’ve got two little legends and I get to DJ. And actually my priorities have shifted so much that actually it’s like my old life but better. But if I hadn’t have had kids, I would have also been happy and complete, and I think that’s a really important message because often we’re told that we’ll regret it but I truly believe like my life as a single person was happy and complete and my life now is happy and complete and overstimulated but just very different happy and complete lives whatever the hell happy and complete memes anyway.

Jameela: And for anyone who’s not following Ashley online, I do just want to reiterate it’s, it’s not all doom and gloom and the really hard parts of motherhood. It’s just the healthiest ever dose of it that I’ve seen. There’s also loads of the loveliest footage of you with your family and the way that [01:01:00] you talk about the way that you love them and the way that you all make it work together. Um, it feels like you are just presenting a very rounded reality of being a woman, uh, in its entirety and you don’t profess to be perfect, and you have had to grow up in front of other people the way that I have, and, uh, so much criticism and speculation comes with that, and I just, I just want to say that it’s been such a pleasure to, to get to know you, even just parasocially, it’s been such a pleasure to become aware of you and see how much you have grown and how, how, and I feel that we’re all really lucky to get to see this side of you that was held back for such a long time. And thank you for, for using your skills to speak about not just issues of things that you’ve experienced, but also things that you haven’t experienced. You get terrorized online when you put your head above the parapet. And I know from experience how uncomfortable that is, especially with the British tabloid and how much they hate women, they viscerally hate women. They hate [01:02:00] women so much that there’s a rumor that the Daily Mail used to have, um, obviously every morning all magazines have an editorial meeting. But they used to refer to the editorial meeting, um, as the vagina monologues because the editor at the time referred to every single woman that they were writing about as a cunt. This cunt. That cunt. Who’s this cunt dating now? Has this cunt lost any weight yet? And that’s the sort of hatred that permeates the entire British media. And so, God bless you. We don’t really know each other, but I, promise I will always be here for you if you need me.

Ashley: Thank you, and the feeling is very mutual.

Jameela: May women who dare to speak up, um, always protect each other. Um, but lots of love, and I’m sure that I, you know, you will come back to talk about many other interesting things, but thank you for having this very candid conversation with me today. It was a breath of fresh air.

Ashley: Thank you for having me.[01:03:00]

Jameela: Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode. I Weigh with Jameela Jamil is produced and researched by myself, Jameela Jamil, Erin Finnegan, Kimmie Gregory and Amelia Chappelow. And the beautiful music that you are hearing now is made by my boyfriend James Blake. And if you haven’t already, please rate, review, and subscribe to the show. It’s such a great way to show your support and helps me out massively. And lastly, at I Weigh, we would love to hear from you and share what you weigh at the end of this podcast. Please email us a voice recording sharing what you weigh at iweighpodcast@gmail.com.