Baltimore
I found my way back.
I'm Ashli McCoy. A few years ago my whole life came apart in the space of a couple of months, and what I found on the other side of it was myself. Everything I write and teach comes out of that. Not theory. Not anything I read in somebody else's book.
Mom · Author · Coach · Advocate for women
How it started
It all came apart at once.
My baby needed a transplant. Before that, we lost our home. While he was recovering in the hospital, I was dealing with a cancer scare of my own. My mom and I parted ways. A few months later, my husband and I split. I took what was left and went to stay with my Granny.
I'm not telling you that for sympathy. I'm telling you because I need you to hear what came next.
I had been holding all of it together, and holding it together was costing me quietly. I was in a marriage that wasn't aligned with me, and I was being a woman who wasn't aligned with me either. When it fell, I could finally see it.
The cost of your new life is your old one.Something I learned the hard way
How I came back
At my Granny's house, I finally sat with my own stuff.
I journaled every single day. I talked out loud. I prayed. I read devotionals. I called my best friend and I talked to my Granny, and I read more in that season than I had in years.
That's when the patterns started showing themselves. Things I learned as a child and carried into every relationship I had, and I don't just mean the romantic ones. Ways I had learned to shrink to keep the peace. Things I had been tolerating so long that I stopped calling them what they were.
So I stopped. I built standards. I built boundaries. I got to know who Ashli actually was underneath everything she had been surviving. That's the work I teach now, and I don't teach anything I haven't lived.
How the books happened
Somewhere in all that journaling, I realized there was a book in it.
I sat on it for a long time. My story involves people I care about, and I didn't want anybody reading it and thinking I wrote a book to talk about them. That was never what it was. It was my healing, written down. Eventually I gave myself a deadline and finished it.
It could have been one book. I made it two because I was looking at two sides of one problem and each side deserved its own room. The Mind Reset is about renewing your mind. Triggered is about understanding why you react the way you do.
Here's the part I still sit with. These are not the first books I've written, and I barely marketed these. They moved anyway. Women message me and tell me it was written for them. Five star reviews. Steady sales I'm not pushing. I'm not standing here calling myself a bestseller. I'm telling you the difference wasn't my marketing, and that's how I know this is what I'm supposed to be doing.
What I do with it now
I wanted to do more with it than sell books.
On July 25 I put women in a room. She Returned was about goals, and about the fact that what stops us usually isn't outside of us. We say we don't have time. We say we need more discipline. Then we sit down and find out it's the patterns nobody ever helped us name.
So we named them. We talked honestly about accountability, we paired up with each other, and every woman wrote her goals down and said them out loud in front of somebody. We're checking back in on August 29. That part is the part most people skip, and it's the part that actually changes something.
I went through everything I went through so I could come back for myself. Now I get to walk other women through the same steps.
What I'll always tell you
The things I keep saying.
You're not healing. You're just tolerating more quietly.
Getting used to something is not the same as getting free from it. I know the difference because I lived on the wrong side of it for years.
What's stopping you is usually not outside of you.
It's rarely time or discipline. It's a pattern running in the background that nobody ever helped you name.
Healing is preparation, not the destination.
It clears the space. Then you have to decide what goes in it. Most people stop at the clearing and wonder why they still feel stuck.
Purpose isn't something you chase.
Mine found me in the middle of the worst season of my life. It gets revealed in relationship with God, and you're not behind for not having it named yet.
Off the page
A few real things about me.
I'm a mom first. Everything else on this page happened around that.
Baltimore is home and it shows up in how I talk. I'm direct. I'm not going to dress something up so it goes down easier.
I still journal. Every day. It's not a routine I recommend, it's the thing that gave me my life back.
I came out of design and retail, so I make my own flyers, decks, and workbooks. If it has my name on it, I probably built it at midnight.
Faith runs through all of it, including a Christian streetwear brand I run called AMEN Babe. Style and belief were never separate for me.
She Returned · Towson, MD · July 2026
If any of this sounded like you,
say something.
Send me a message on Instagram or an email and tell me what you're in the middle of. I read them, and I answer the ones I can.
Press, partnerships, and speaking: connect@therealashlimccoy.com