Transcript Interview Episode with Asha McLaughlin
[00:00:00] Laurin: Welcome to the Curiously Wise Podcast. I'm your host Laurin Wittig This podcast is all about women supporting women, mind, body, and spirit. It's a place where we will honor celebrate and share women's natural and experiential wisdom through curiosity provoking conversations, shared stories, and tips
[00:00:26] we've all gathered along this journey. I invite you to join in the fun as we uncover the unique wisdom, we each carry within us. Ready? Let's get curious. Hello, friends and welcome to the Curiously Wise Podcast. I'm so happy to have you here today with us. And I am excited to bring one of my dear friends and this amazingly wise, creative, exceptional woman who came into my life a few years ago and was part of my Wise Women Circles, where I originally met her.
[00:01:06] And now I'm very glad to call her my friend. And I want to introduce you to Asha McLaughlin. Asha welcome. I'm so, so excited about with this conversation we're going to have, but first I would really love it if you would just introduce yourself, tell us what you want us to know about you.
[00:01:23] Asha: Well first, I just want to say thank you so much, Laurin. This is such a delight to be here with you and spend time with your community. And I just want to say to the listeners that Laurin is one of my favorite people when I moved to this neck of the woods, which I am not originally from this area. She really stood out to me.
[00:01:43] And so I feel blessed to call her friend. I am originally a New Englander. I grew up in a family with all boys, lots of brothers. I was the only girl and I really think that that has a lot to do with how I turned out as a female and being obsessed and empowered by female spirituality, and divinity and female empowerment.
[00:02:11] I'm just realizing that, saying that about growing up in a house with the boys that it really did have an effect. I was a very creative, curious kid and they used to call me for going on 40. So I was kind of a big thinker and always trying to like move things along at a nice clip. And I think that came out of being curious and excited about the universe.
[00:02:33] I had some really interesting parents that were in some ways, a little bit conservative. I went to Catholic school and that kind of stuff, but they really did let me be me. And it wasn't always easy, but definitely I found my way and I'm very grateful for my nuclear family, even though I feel very different from them.
[00:02:55] It's hard. I can just ramble on and on, but I'm a very creative person. I'm a healer, I'm an intuitive, I'm a meditator, yoga teacher, health coach. I also run a business. For 35 years I've been a designer, art director, photographer. And I specialize in conscious intuitive branding.
[00:03:16] So helping people give rise to their dream with their voice, their vision and their forward-facing image to the world.
[00:03:28] Laurin: Yes, and you're really good at that. I did not realize Asha redesign my website a couple of years ago now. It was a process that I didn't really expect, but it was really empowering and really useful to me as I was looking to rebrand or bring a more professional way to my branding. Cause I had done it on a shoestring when I first set up my business and Asha took me through this whole series of questions and we played with words
[00:03:56] you wanted me to come up with these, you know, lists of things that were important to my clients or were important to me. And it was just, it was a really interesting process to go through because it was a way of looking at presenting myself in a very common way. I mean, I've had a website since websites were first a thing because I was in the book business at the time.
[00:04:15] And I did it myself because I'm a computer geek, but I had never had the branding or the art part of it, the design part of it behind it. it's really interesting. And I know that we're going to get to that later, talking about what you're doing now in terms of how you're bringing everything together.
[00:04:29] So let's start a little bit about there's some things that, you know, from your childhood, some aspects of you and you introduced us to your childhood. Those things that you can see the thread all the way through your life now. So that's kind of a nice way for us to go through the journey of your life how you came to be where you are now.
[00:04:47] Is there one or two things that you can tell us about that you remember from a child being a passion or a talent that you still see very present and important in your life these days?
[00:04:58] Asha: That's such a cool way to think about it. I can think of two things. Two things popped in my head right away. One is that I am a people person. I love people. I love talking to people. I love connecting with people. The other thing is that I'm a deeply spiritual person. And I knew this from the get go because I was
[00:05:19] very passionate at a young age about very bizarre things. Like I had mentioned to you earlier that I had this obsession with the country of Mongolia as a child. Growing up in a kind of conservative Catholic household, it was just weird. And I didn't quite understand that until years later when I recognized who Dalai Lama was and what Tibetan Buddhism was and the importance of Mongolia and that the Dalai Lama was from Mongolia.
[00:05:44] And you know, that I feel that I had a history in that tradition and I still do. It is not my specific spiritual path for this lifetime, but it is one that is so close to my heart and that I really resonate with. And I've lived a couple of times in Dharamsala, India and Somalia which is what I call the living Tibet of today.
[00:06:06] So those are just a couple things.
[00:06:08] Laurin: So I know that you went to, was it the Parsons School of Design?