Conjuring Shameless Self-Confidence feat. Ashley Trabue
I'm excited to welcome Ashley Trabue — artist and stellar human all around — for a soul-nourishing conversation about the transformative power of embracing our body through art. We journey from self-criticism to self-appreciation to reclaim our own narrative. Get ready for a delightful blend of wisdom, humor, and raw authenticity that will leave you inspired and ready to embrace your own luminosity.
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Mentioned:
Ashley Trabue is a queer, multi-disciplinary artist and educator. You can find their work here, on IG @ashleytrabue, and at Luminous In Taos as our guest retreat co-host where you can become a work of art.
Join Natalie Miller and Ashley Trabue for a week of soulful exploration and connection at this summer’s Luminous In Taos in New Mexico. Embrace your luminosity and reclaim your narrative – it's time to shine!
Make Magic:
Through artist self-appreciation, we can experience a profound personal transformation, a shift in our self-perception, and foster healing and connection to our inherent beauty.
Transcript: Conjuring Shameless Self-Confidence feat. Ashley Trabue
Natalie Miller: The culture asks us to look only with a critical eye, and not just a critical eye but a hypercritical eye, right? Like, it's flaw-finding. And to flip that, and to look with an artist's eye and with appreciation, ,like looking for the beauty rather than looking for the dimple or the wrinkle or the whatever, right, or seeing the beauty in the dimple and the wrinkle [laugh], right?
Ashley Trabue: Exactly, because, I mean, we see it in nature, and we're stunned, right? [laugh] Like, it's really just because we've been brainwashed to look at it on ourselves, and see it as a flaw, so that we will go buy, you know—
Natalie Miller: Yeah, all the things.
Ashley Trabue: —the cold treatment, the whatever, yeah.
[Music]
Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here.
Hello, my friend. What a fun episode I have for you today. My guest on Mind Witchery is Ashley Trabue. Ashley is a queer multidisciplinary artist and educator. She is also my collaborator in this year's Luminous in Taos retreat. She is also my portraitist. [laugh] I love Ashley's work, I love Ashley's art, and I had the incredibly empowering, humbling, upleveling experience of being painted by Ashley this year in all of my naked glory.
So we talk about that. We talk about the retreat. ,But more than that, we talk about how and why it is so healing, it is so revolutionary, it is so world-changing when we show ourselves, when we celebrate our bodies in a world that is hell bent on constraining and confining and erasing our bodies.
So here is me and Ashley talking all things getting naked and art and beauty and confidence. I hope you love it, and I hope it inspires you to consider coming to join us in New Mexico this summer.
Natalie Miller: Ashley Trabue, welcome to Mind Witchery. You have spent as much time with my naked body this year [laugh] as probably as my partner has. [laugh]
Ashley Trabue: [laugh] Oh my god, I'm honored. [laugh]
Natalie Miller: [laugh] And that is because, of course, I'm getting painted by you. So, listener, sweet listener, what Ashley and I are talking about today is about the power of representation, the power of your, my, our nakedness, and about how when we can come into a more loving and bright and empowered relationship with our embodied selves, with our naked embodied selves, that we get to just unlock this incredible luminosity and magnetism. I'm going to say magnetism, Ashley.
Ashley Trabue: I totally agree. And I can feel it in your energy, right? [laugh] Like, there is this effervescence, this vitality that we connect with when we connect with our nakedness without shame, with love and—yes.
Natalie Miller: So this is something that you have been doing like very on purpose, focusing on offering nude portraiture, nude sketching for a while. So how did that begin?
Ashley Trabue: I mean, the origins of it go back to me in my early 20s. My body had healed from an eating disorder, but I was still very much caught up in this modality of seeing myself as flawed right through this beauty culture, white supremacist, thin-based ideology that our culture pushes. And I stumbled into a figure drawing class in this little neighborhood that I lived close by to in Nashville. And I went to a session, and then I went to another [laugh] session.
And each time, they like rotated the models, it was different bodies, and I just fell in love. Over time, drawing these women and men and people gave me a new way of witnessing the body, seeing different parts, different facets of the body, seeing it with appreciation, seeing the inherent beauty, the dignity. And I just fell in love with the practice.
So I was just drawing and painting naked people for my own fun, and healing. And then a couple things happened. I started inviting people in to work with me, and just pose. Like, it was literally just wanting to have more of a conversation, right? This figure drawing class, like, you would go and sit down, but you wouldn't talk to the person. I wanted to, like, I wanted to learn about them. And so, people started coming. And then people started like writing in, and being like, "Hey, if I come and do this, can I pay you to keep the portrait?"
Natalie Miller: And, like, what happens is not just a picture. It's not just like, in the end, art comes out, right? Like, what did you find that maybe even surprised you about what happened through this?
Ashley Trabue: I mean, it surprised me in the early days, but it still continues to just like—it's like any kind of thing where, you know, watching the sunrise never really loses its magic. The thing that surprised me was people would come in, and they would leave. Like, I'm expanding my [laugh] body right now, because they would leave like with so much joy.
And, like, one woman came in, and she like went and ran a marathon after. And she was like, "I had no idea how I was [laugh] going to feel after, but I feel ready for this marathon. [laugh] Like, I'm just ready to take on the world." They report seeing themselves in a totally different way, feeling totally different about themselves.
Natalie Miller: Well, if you don't mind, I will read actually something that someone, one of your clients said [laugh] about you, because I really resonated with this, actually, as now I am one of your clients. She said, "The painting you did of me hangs on my wall across from my bed. It is the last thing I see when I turn off the lights, and the first thing I see when I wake up each morning. Days when I struggle, and crawl into bed to hide, I lay there looking at it. I see something so beautiful and strong. I see myself on my best days, and I'm amazed that you could completely capture me in a way no photograph has. I have shorter sad days now, because art is healing. Art of yourself is pure magic." How does that feel to hear that, Ashley?
Ashley Trabue: I mean, there's a part of me that feels humbled and just so delighted, like, that I get to—because I resonate with that. There were so, so many years of my life where I was taking photos of myself on my weight-loss journey [laugh], and taking photos of myself to conceptualize what to change, what needs some like [laugh] extra oomph or less fat or whatever. And my own experience of painting my body or photographing myself, it resonates because I also know it to be true that when I can see myself through the lens of art, it hits differently. And then when I look in the mirror or when I look down at my body, it also hits differently. It's retraining me.
Natalie Miller: Yes, it's retraining. I mean, I was thinking as you were talking at first about going to the figure drawing classes, it's like our culture—and this is a lot capitalism, and then of course all the other isms that you mentioned, right, but a lot capitalism, because capitalism wants us to buy shit. Capitalism wants us to spend money. The culture asks us to look only with a critical eye, and not just a critical eye but a hypercritical eye, right? Like, it's flaw-finding. And to flip that, and to look with an artist's eye and with appreciation, ,like looking for the beauty rather than looking for the dimple or the wrinkle or the whatever, right, or seeing the beauty in the dimple and the wrinkle [laugh], right?
Ashley Trabue: Exactly, because, I mean, we see it in nature, and we're stunned, right? [laugh] Like, it's really just because we've been brainwashed to look at it on ourselves, and see it as a flaw, so that we will go buy, you know—
Natalie Miller: Yeah, all the things.
Ashley Trabue: —the cold treatment, the whatever, yeah.
Natalie Miller: I do want to talk a little bit about my experience with this whole process, because it was shockingly empowering for me, actually, I mean, like, revelatory in, like, it revealed a lot to me, and then it's also just been so incredibly powerful. So you want to just tell us about that project?
Ashley Trabue: The Take Back Your Body project?
Natalie Miller: Yeah.
Ashley Trabue: Well, that was just the name I gave to essentially this body of work and inviting others in, because it felt like it needed a name. There's a fabulous quote by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, where I was like, oh yeah, this is it, you know. It's just about taking back not only your body but your vitality and your life.
Natalie Miller: So I think I saw it as part of Take Back Your Body, and I was really interested. And then you did this thing where, like, you could get art with Ashley or art from Ashley. You can see I say "with" because now I'm like because we do it together. [laugh]
Ashley Trabue: [laugh] [0:11:53] yes.
Natalie Miller: But you get art from Ashley for a whole year. And then in this particular like thing, you were like, "Oh, and one of your arts could be the Take Back Your Body." And I was like, "Sold. Done. I'm going to treat myself to that. That sounds amazing." And I had told you, "I want one of my things in my Savor subscription, I want it to be the Take Back Your Body." And you were like, "OK, cool. Like, all I need is a selfie from you. Like, we'll do a session, and then I need a selfie from you, and then we'll go, right?" Yeah, I couldn't take that fucking picture [laugh], like, I really—and it's not that I didn't have any sultry selfies—because I did have some.
But you know what I realized is that unless they were like specifically for my partner, just like I'm on vacation or whatever, I hadn't really invested any energy and time in portraying myself since before the pandemic. And for me, like for many people, the pandemic was really fucking rough on my body. I had frozen shoulder. I had chronic headaches. I gained weight, you know. And also I'm 46 now. My body is really shifting and changing. And it's funny [laugh], like, I felt fully comfortable with you. I didn't have any qualms about sending you a picture. What I had qualms with was being with my own naked self. Like, I didn't want to do the shoot.
Ashley Trabue: Yeah, I get it. What was coming up for you there, like, either the felt sensation, the emotion, or the stories? What was it?
Natalie Miller: It's fascinating, isn't it, that like if I am going to send my partner a little nude, I'm like, OK, snap. Here you go. Right? That was like whatever. But there was something about doing it for me, and knowing that I was kind of declaring this is worth making into art. I was just like, oh, I don't know.
There's also this thing where you, Ashley, you're so intentional about helping your—I'm going to say subject, I guess, because you don't feel like an object. You feel like a subject. You feel like, yes, I'm part of this. I get to be subjective in this. You're so intentional about saying, "What is the vibe you're going for? What are you getting to know in yourself? Like, what do you want this process to help you to understand? What is this revealing to you?"
Like, it was so that vibes component, the energetic component, I was really clear on what I wanted to convey, and what I wanted to feel. But it was surprisingly challenging for me to—I don't know if it was to access it or to give myself permission to access it, right, like, to really spend an hour posing, and moving, and giving myself that appreciative attention.
Ashley Trabue: I completely understand. I mean, I just relate as a fem, right, to this idea that it can be easier to give to someone else than to receive that myself.
Natalie Miller: Yeah, I think there is something about that, like, declaration of, "I'm beautiful," or that declaration of, "I'm art, like, I'm a work of art, actually." You know, I'm a pretty fucking confident person, so I was fairly shocked to uncover that. So you and I had a coaching session together, and you helped me so much in that coaching session. I honestly don't even remember exactly what happened.
But I know in the end, I had a plan and a strategy [laugh], and I know I was, like, I was feeling really ready. I do know part of it was just feeling really seen and understood by you. Like, I really got that. In those situations, like, what do you say? Do you know? Like, what did you say to me that was so magical that helped me to change my mind? [laugh]
Ashley Trabue: We did a little visualization, right, where you did a little time-traveling, and connected with an elder version of yourself.
Natalie Miller: Oh.
Ashley Trabue: And I didn't really—I facilitated that, but I didn't—you were talking to you. Your elder self, I think, gave you coaching. [laugh]
Natalie Miller: Yeah, that sounds right. See, that's the best fucking coaching right there—
Ashley Trabue: Absolutely.
Natalie Miller: —thank you very much. Yes, OK, I remember that, yeah, yes, the elder self. And, of course, right, like, isn't that the thing? Can't we all say, if I could just go back to my 30-year-old self, 25-year-old self, 18-year-old self, and be like, "Honey [laugh], you're glorious"? [laugh]
Ashley Trabue: Yes. I can't tell you, I access that all the time. And I'm like looking in the mirror, and starting to get like, eh. I'm like, "Woah, bitch. [laugh] Like, yeah, let's just teleport to like 85-year-old self, and truly see ourselves through her eyes."
Natalie Miller: Yeah.
Ashley Trabue: Oh, and the shift is immediate, you know? [laugh]
Natalie Miller: Immediate, yeah, it was so good. The other tip that you gave me that was so helpful is you invited me to move for the camera, so to put on the video, move my body, and then find like stills, find frames of that video that felt like they expressed what I was looking for. And, of course, I mean, I don't know if any of you are kind of like smiling to yourselves, thinking about the, like, setting the timer on your phone, and running and [laugh] like [0:18:21] So I did that. I just turned on the video, and I found a place with beautiful lighting, and I moved for the camera.
And then I was surprised that in the like second or third video, I was like, "Oh, look, there are some frames. There are some stills." And that, of course, always makes me think of that line in Ani DeFranco's Evolve song [laugh] where she says, "It took me too long to realize that I don't take good pictures because I've got the kind of beauty that moves." That's definitely resonant for me.
Ashley Trabue: Oh, I love it. That's exactly it. When I do in-person sessions, I like to have—you know, I have a Montessori background—I like to have a tray of like objects that invite different sensory experiences. Because whether it's movement, whether it's holding a rock, whether it's tasting this little like witchy-made tincture that's meant to evoke a certain essence, you know, it's like when we are connecting with our sensory bodies, that helps to create that safety, right?
Natalie Miller: Yeah.
Ashley Trabue: And it's that same thing of like when the more we associate that being seen, especially being seen naked, with safety, right, we're just building new neural pathways. We're just [laugh] conjuring a new reality for ourselves, right?
Natalie Miller: Oh my gosh, being seen with safety, with appreciation, with an understanding, because I think this is the other thing that happens with art, right? It's like the understanding is I'm going to try to capture the essence here. And that, Ashley, that is what you did in my portraits. Like, I really resonate with what your clients said that I read. They feel like me. This feels like me even more than it looks like me. And it does look just like [laugh]—I'm like, yep, that's me. [laugh] That's me and my naked self. Oh my gosh, just extraordinary. I'm sure you get that a lot.
Ashley Trabue: I do, yeah, and it's just a delight because, you're right, we are so much more than our bodies, but certainly our body is like this symbol of our time here on Earth. And, yeah, it's a gift to get to sit in someone's energy, and just appreciate it, and then to hold it back as a mirror, right? I mean, you understand this as a coach, right? That's like the biggest gift. And it's certainly coming through us, but it doesn't really feel of us, right? Like, I think that's that humility piece of, like, I'm delighted. This brings me great joy. And I've played a part, but it's also like bigger than me. It's co-created with you.
Like, it's just this yummy cauldron of elements coming together that I really do believe is creating change, right, not only in ourselves in the way that we show up in our lives but in the lives that we touch. I mean, I just see it as kind of mending this one little part of the tapestry that's rippling outward, and just creating waves of healing. That's the hope.
Natalie Miller: No, absolutely. And let's talk about that part, because I really have talked so much about the personally empowering and healing aspect of this. But there is of course also a political, a communal aspect of this. And, actually, you write about that in an essay on your Instagram, and the essay is called The Power of Nudes in Defense of Literal Naval Gazing. And in this, you say like, "Listen, representation matters. And so when the nude bodies that we're seeing are all the photoshopped, cropped, and sculpted, and Ozempicked [laugh] and, like, right, the bodies that capitalism deems worthy of being seen, when that's all we're seeing, then that's all we're seeing, right?" So will you read just a little part of that essay for us?
Ashley Trabue: All right, here it is. "Art-making gave me a whole new language through which to see others' bodies with curiosity and care, regardless of their shape or size, race or age. And finding inherent respect and beauty within the subjects I was drawing began to not only impact how I saw others but ultimately how I saw myself."
Natalie Miller: Yeah. It's like this personal is political, and the political is personal, right?
Ashley Trabue: Yeah.
Natalie Miller: Like, when we do this for ourselves, it does ripple out. And, Ashley, by helping us do this, by helping so many of us differently embodied people do this, you're a big fucking rock in that pond [laugh], like, rippling out and out. It's majestic.
Ashley Trabue: Yeah. And it's fun [laugh], like, it's fun, right? It's fun to find the thing where you're like, "Oh yeah, this can give me life, and have an impact."
Natalie Miller: Yeah. I don't think any of this is news to the listener of Mind Witchery. We know, don't we, we fucking know. We know we live in a fat-phobic, like, world obsessed with light skin and snatched waists and blah, blah. We know. We know that we live in this world. And, at the same time, I think it's easy to underestimate how much it affects us. Like, think about it. Like, how much time do we spend thinking about how we look? I wrote a Sunday Letter about it, like, a couple weeks ago. And I had a huge res…people were just like, "Yes." The first line of the letter, I was like, "I'm giving a talk in a couple weeks, and I'm thinking as much about what I'm going to wear as what I'm going to say."
Ashley Trabue: I remember that I was one of those responses, because it was just like, yes, you laid out all the multitudes of conflicting, contrasting messages.
Natalie Miller: Right. And I think sometimes we think like, "Oh, it shouldn't matter so much, right? Like, I'm vain if it matters so much. And I know this is patriarchal bullshit. I know this is white supremacist bullshit, right?" But it does actually have an impact and an effect, right? Like, when we don't feel at home in ourselves, when we don't feel comfortable in our skin, when we are looking at our literal bodies with this critical eye all of the time, of course it takes a toll.
And especially if, in our work, which for so many of us we do, we need to be visible, we need to stand on stages, we need to stand in front of rooms, we need to show ourselves, it's this undermining like pull. And I'm going to tell you [laugh], because I don't think I even realized how much I had it until I went through that process with you, and the difference that I feel from then to now is enormous. I just feel in much deeper integrity with myself.
Ashley Trabue: There was a therapist, a client that I had, who went through the process, and she spoke to that. She called it an emotional corrective experience. So an emotionally corrective experience is when you have some sort of relational trauma. And the person who perpetuated that harm against you is looking at you, and saying, "I see you. That happened, and it sucked, and now I've got your back. I'm here. What can I do?"
And she said that—exactly like you're saying—seeing yourself, witnessing yourself, holding yourself in this different regard has offered some sort of—and I'm putting words in your mouth perhaps—but like it's offered you some kind of repair, where you are now engaging differently. You're hearing the voices or you're seeing the—right? Because you mentioned going to speak on the stage, and noticing [laugh] all of the different lenses and voices offering feedback about how you looked.
Natalie Miller: Yeah.
Ashley Trabue: And I know, right, we know that even just noticing them, and having awareness of them, is the very first step, right, and tending to them, and to eventually reclaiming them; not to force these parts away but just to say, "Hey, I see you." [laugh]
Natalie Miller: Yeah, totally. I also really do resonate with what so many of your clients have said, in that, like, I see myself differently now. I do see myself more appreciatively, which makes me feel different in my body, which makes me feel different in the world. Like, I do not think it is any accident that after I did my photo shoot, and sent you the photos—which, by the way, was so amazingly easy to do. I was just like, "Here I am, Ashley." I knew that you would just receive them with so much respect and care, which you did.
In the months after that is when I finally decided to do my business coaching and mentoring program, which I had been kind of like holding as a possibility for a while. But I really think that there was something about that experience about sort of saying like, OK, here I am, and I am a work of art, and I am worth this appreciative attention. It's that integrity piece. [laugh] I don't know how to describe it. It's kind of bizarre actually, right?
But there's something about integrating that that made me feel strong enough to say, "Well, here's a next scary step I've been wanting to take. I trust myself to take it. I trust that we are all together in here." Right? Like, there was this little part that was a little bit left behind, but now she's, like, she's welcomed back into the fold, and so we can do this hard thing. We can do this intimidating thing.
Ashley Trabue: How has it felt now in the cohort that you're leading? What is your—?
Natalie Miller: Oh my gosh, it's like total complete dream come true. Like, it's what I've been wanting to do for a long time, and/but there was a lot of, like, just healing. And I had to really get very clear on what my relationship with that work was going to be, because it was going to be different actually than anything I'd ever quite practiced before, and certainly different than anything else I see out there in the world, right? So it was going to be very, very uniquely mine, right? And so that's why I think also this experience of like, "yep, this is me" [laugh] was so super, super empowering.
I really can never thank you enough for how impactful—I haven't even chosen my painting yet, because they're so beautiful. I can't. [laugh] I'm like, Ashley, how much for all of them? How much for the whole set? My daughters, by the way, my teenage daughters are—I think as they are often with me, they are a bit appalled. [laugh] I said, "Where do you think we should hang it?" And they were like, "We can tell you where you shouldn't hang it." [laugh]
Ashley Trabue: [laugh] Well, where are you not allowed to hang it?
Natalie Miller: Exactly.
Ashley Trabue: Where is off limits? [laugh]
Natalie Miller: Exactly, yeah, pretty much a lot of places, according to them. But, at the same time, I know that they're seeing this, right? They're absorbing this, just like so many of us absorb watching our mom never take off her cover-up at the beach, or never get in the pool. So many of us watch our mom pinch her rolls in the mirror. And, like, my kids are not seeing that. They're seeing a woman who is like, "Which nude portrait of me should we hang in the living room?" [laugh] And they're like, "No." [laugh]
Ashley Trabue: Oh, I'm obsessed. Yeah, what a radically different presentation. What a radically different option.
Natalie Miller: Ugh. Could you imagine if you could have one of these of your grandmother, like, in the style of like baroque, like, Renaissance? Like, what would we do to have it?
Ashley Trabue: Oh my gosh, yeah, that would just be amazing. I think I need to, like, paint this now. [laugh]
Natalie Miller: I know.
Ashley Trabue: Like, "Grandma, what would you have looked like?" Yes, let's do it. Amazing.
Natalie Miller: A family heirloom, like, yes, look at, like, behold this gorgeousness that like birthed us all.
Ashley Trabue: That's right. Oh my god, oh, I love it.
Natalie Miller: I know.
Ashley Trabue: I love that for them, and their disdain and annoyance right now.
Natalie Miller: [laugh] I know.
Ashley Trabue: Oh, that's so powerful.
Natalie Miller: It is really good, yeah. So, OK, so, Ashley, so let's, like, we buried the lede a little bit here because, of course, people can come and work with you. They can come to your website, which is in the Show Notes, and it's your name, right, ashleytrabue.com.
Ashley Trabue: Yep.
Natalie Miller: Yeah. So people can come and do that. But, really, where we would love to invite you is come to New Mexico with us, and get in on this—
Ashley Trabue: Yeah.
Natalie Miller: —get in on this, because this year's Luminous in Taos, the experience of peak luminosity is you get to sit with Ashley for a portrait-drawing session. So, Ashley, do you want to just describe a little bit, like, your vision for how that's going to go?
Ashley Trabue: I mean, I'm so excited for the whole experience. You would come in, maybe in a little fabulous robe, and we would sit. And you would keep your robe on, and we would just like have some tea, and we would chat about what's drawn you to this, what maybe you want to receive from this. We would like do a thermometer check on like your relationship to your body as of late, like, just kind of it's a love story. Catch me up on how you two met [laugh], and like how things are going.
Natalie Miller: [laugh] I love it.
Ashley Trabue: And then we would talk about, yeah, what you want to feel and remember when you see this portrait on your wall. When you're running through your house, busy getting ready for the day, and then, oh, you see the portrait, what's the emotion you feel? What's the story or message that you want to come to your mind? And we'll just kind of sit with those vibes, and we'll chat. And then when you're ready—you're also welcome to start in your robe, right—we'll maybe put on some music that resonates with you.
I might have a little tray of—I have ADHD, so I like to fidget. You know, we might have some rocks. I might have a witch make me a tincture. Like, we'll have some little options for you to kind of get into your body. We might do a little breathing or a little meditation. It's quite personalized, right, depending on where you're at, and what you need. But when you feel ready, I'll just start sketching. And, like I said, maybe I'll just start sketching you in your robe. We'll do a couple short poses just to warm up. You're welcome to just move around, right, and I can do some gestural drawings.
And then once you feel free, I often have clients, right, start maybe with a little bit of clothes on and, as we warm up, and you gain comfort and safety, bear it all or as much as you want. And then we might do a couple of longer poses, maybe 15, 20 minutes, capturing your essence, capturing your form. And then you can look at them. You can take in all the drawings, tell me which ones resonate, and then we can decide on, you know, do you want this to be a colorful painting? Is this a dark and moody painting? Do you love just the drawing? Maybe it's just like a drawing in pink, or a black and white drawing.
You know, you kind of give me some notes. And I take all this information, all these drawings, all these notes, at the end of the week, back to my studio in Portland, Maine, and I make some fucking art. I make more fucking art, you know? [laugh]
Natalie Miller: Yeah. And you bring it to like life because also, my friend, Ashley will know you because that experience is happening at the center of this delicious cake of a retreat to the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, which was an artist colony in the early 20th century. I mean, Georgia O'Keeffe was there. OK? So it's a magical place.
I will be offering coaching every single day. And, if I do say so myself, my coaching at Mabel's House is life-changing. I see it year after year. There's some kind of alchemy between the way that I lead experiences, and ask questions, and that place on the planet. I don't know. It's just magical. So this powerful experience that you're having with Ashley is happening inside of a warm envelope [laugh] of support and treats and spaciousness.
My retreats always have a very spacious schedule, so there's a lot to do, and there's also totally time for you to take a nap. And there's also totally time for you to be like, "Ashley, I think I want to give you a selfie instead of be naked in front of you. So I'm going to go in my room, and I'm going to do that." Right? There's so much space. Luminous is all about you connecting with and feeding your light, your glow. And I am so excited to have this incredibly potent offer at the center of it. Like, it's—I can't wait.
It makes me want to get up and jump around, actually, [laugh] because I'm just—I just know. I know how evolutionary and powerful it's going to be. Oh, because also, by the way, you're doing it with a bunch of other badasses who also want to grow into this kind of thing, right? So we're all in it together.
And we often include a hot air balloon ride in the retreat, and that will be an option in this one. And oftentimes in the beginning, we're like, "Who wants to go in the hot air balloon?" And like half of the people are like, "Not me." And then midway through the retreat, those half of people are like, "Fuck it. If they're going, I'll go too." It's like the best kind of peer pressure. It's like, you know what, we can fucking do this thing, and it's really exciting. So that's how this thing is going to go, and we would love for you to come with us.
Ashley Trabue: Oh my gosh, yeah, I'm so excited. And come on, let's get naked in Taos or, you know, let's [laugh]—
Natalie Miller: Let's get as naked as we want to be—
Ashley Trabue: There we go.
Natalie Miller: —Taos, right, and naked in our bodies. And then also, like, let's really see ourselves differently, because that's so much about what it's about, right, is seeing ourselves with an appreciative eye, seeing more of the beauty that moves through us, like, seeing more of our parts, and reconnecting to them. It happens year after year, and it happens so differently for different people. You can go to nataliekmiller.com/LIT, L-I-T, Luminous in Taos, LIT, and just read. Read what people say. Watch the videos of what people say about the retreat generally. You can also read a little bit more about Ashley's process. And go and check out Ashley's website to read about Shameless. Ooh, say a little about Shameless, actually.
Ashley Trabue: Well, first of all, I just want to say I'm so fucking excited to be involved and to contribute to this; just delighted. Shameless is a community-engaged art project, where women, non-binary folks, queer folks, are invited to send in a self-portrait, and a self-portrait that exudes a sense of shamelessness, a self-portrait where they are celebrating a part of themselves that maybe historically they've hidden or felt shame around. And they're invited to co-create with me.
So, in this iteration of the series, I am stitching the portraits into raw canvas, which is a tradition in my personal matrilineal line. And then you have the option as the collaborator to buy your portrait if you want. Otherwise, it will go into my shop. And I can't tell you, there are so many people in my audience who aren't ready to take and to have art made of their own body but love collecting it. And so whether or not you choose to receive it yourself, it's going to go and make a ripple and an impact in the world in other people's homes. And it's just fun and delicious.
Natalie Miller: Oh, it's so good, yeah. And as you go and you read about Take Back Your Body, you read about Shameless, you'll get a sense even more about Ashley's approach, and her ripple effect. And, listen, maybe you'll come to New Mexico with us. That is our deepest best hope. We so want to [laugh] hang out with you, and maybe you'll do Shameless. If nothing else, get your phone, and take some naked selfies.
Like, get your sultry—or it doesn't even have to be sultry. Listen to me. Listen to me. I'm in sexy mode now because, listen, since the portraiture, I am on fire. [laugh] I'm feeling very hot all the time. So mine are sultry. Yours do not need to be. They can be whatever you want them to be. They can have whatever vibe you want. But, yeah, like, to see ourselves, to see ourselves differently—
Ashley Trabue: Yeah, that's the most important thing. And we—you're right—everything is filtered through us, through how we see ourselves.
Natalie Miller: Yeah.
Ashley Trabue: [0:43:08]
Natalie Miller: Everything is filtered through us, through how we see ourselves. And, as you know, right, like, how we see ourselves affects how we show up in the world, how we show up in a room, how we price our services. It shows up everywhere. It's worth attending to. We are worth attending to.
Ashley Trabue: When you were speaking earlier about the appreciation, I could not help but think of all of the other times you've spoken of appreciation in relation to value. And of course we're invaluable. Of course we could never possibly increase our value, because we are just inherently valuable, but we can increase how much we believe in our value, right?
Natalie Miller: Yeah.
Ashley Trabue: That's what we're doing.
Natalie Miller: OMG. Ashley, you're showing your Mind Witchery listenership there [laugh] because I do, I do, right, because, yeah, like one connotation of the word appreciation is to like see with more loving eyes, or something like that. Another connotation of appreciation, another meaning of it is to increase in value. I definitely felt that aspect of the appreciation, in my experience with you, like, for sure. And I think it continues to build as I continue to represent myself to myself, and a few lucky other viewers, right [laugh]—
Ashley Trabue: Yes, compounded interest.
Natalie Miller: —exa…[laugh] in what is now, like, it's like a part of a practice for me, and it's just delicious. And if you—if it's speaking to you, like, get on in. Get on in. We still have spaces available for July. So July 21st to 27th, I believe, is when it is, and you can learn more at my website, nataliekmiller/LIT. Go to ashleytrabue.com for sure. Also, probably they should follow you on the 'gram, Ashley, because I love what you post there. What is—I don't know what your handle is.
Ashley Trabue: The same thing: ashleytrabue.
Natalie Miller: T-R-A-B-U-E, Ashley Trabue. So, yeah, come. Come get some of this Cinnabon, because it's very delicious, this Ashley and her work. So thank you so much for being here, Ashley. Cannot wait to hang out in New Mexico for a week this summer.
Ashley Trabue: Same. Oh my god, thank you for having me. Like I said, I love Mind Witchery. It's a hoot that I'm actually on it, and just delighted to join you here today, and so fucking excited to join you in New Mexico. Thank you again.
Natalie Miller: Yes. OK, everybody, you should come. Thank you so much for listening, and till next time.
[Music]
Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world.
Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time.
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