Ashley Strahm was 16 when she was accepted to college — so young that her immigrant parents had to use Parent PLUS Loans to pay for what wasn’t covered by her scholarships. Now a writer and content strategist, Ashley reflected on the effect of student debt on her life and her decision-making as an adult, as well as her family’s pursuit of the American Dream. Ashley thoughtfully shared with Nikki her long-term financial strategy, her hope for future generations and her desire to address the systemic oppression student debt perpetuates.
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Transcript –
Nikki Nolan: Welcome to the podcast. It is so good to have you here.
Ashley Strahm: Thank you for inviting me. I am thrilled to be here. This is a topic of conversation in all of my personal circles. So it’s kind of cool to get the opportunity to kind of immortalize it in this way. This is awesome.
Nikki Nolan: So let’s just jump right into the deep end. How much student debt do you have right now?
Ashley Strahm: I’ll start with introducing myself so I can contextualize how I got all of this debt. I am Ashley Strahm. And I’m a writer and content strategist. I live in Durham, North Carolina, and currently, I owe around $42,200 to SoFi, which is a private company I consolidated within 2018
I kept my loans federal until then because I was afraid of losing income-driven repayment or forbearance benefits, which again, would just be a repayment plan set up based on how much money I was actually bringing in, which I thought would be pretty reasonable in my twenties to kind of have as an option.
I was really afraid of having my student loan payments obviously become so exorbitant that I couldn’t afford to pay for them. My loans started off as Parent PLUS loans. So yes, they were administered via the federal government, but I couldn’t actually have them in my name. My parents took them out for me when I was first admitted to college, at 16 because I was too young to borrow on my own. And each of them had about an 8.5% interest rate. So I originally took out 60K for college, which was only half of what I would have needed had I not gotten an academic scholarship that covered 50% of my tuition. And then over the course of, I guess, six to eight years, it ballooned to over $82,000, which was when I consolidated and started kind of vigorously paying them off. So here I am.
Nikki Nolan: Before we get into your full story, which I’m super excited to hear, what has been the impact of student debt on your life?
Ashley Strahm: I just recently wrote a piece about this on Medium, because I just kind of felt this story was welling up inside of me in so many different aspects of my life. I’ll say this very specifically, student loans are my main source of anxiety. I’m seeing a therapist now and kind of walking through it, but I can probably trace every anxious thought I have had about my future to the fact that thousands of dollars of my hard-earned money are being siphoned away every month. And that’s not to say that I didn’t at all know what I was doing. I skipped kindergarten when I was five, I was zooming through school, was always about a year and a half younger than all of my peers, and knew I’d be going to college. I was accepted at the age of 16. So I was always kind of ahead of the game. Always knew I was going to go to college. I always knew it was probably going to be expensive. I always knew that my parents probably wouldn’t be able to pay for it and knew that student loans might be a part of my story. What I wasn’t prepared for and the impact that I think it’s had on my life thus far, is this idea that you can prepare and you can research and you can turn over every rock and you can apply for scholarships. You can get scholarships. Half of my college was paid for, and you can still find yourself in a hole that you can’t crawl of. And that is so anxiety-producing. Cause you think to yourself, wait a second.
I’ve done everything that they’ve asked me to do. I’ve made friends with people who went to college before me to have them spell it out. I have had conversations with financial planners. I have talked to my parents. I’ve talked to my grandparents about financial decision-making. I mean, I was on it when I was younger.
But I’m still thousands and thousands of dollars in debt. And it, I can’t, I can’t emphasize enough how much of a burden that kind of is to the psyche. It’s just a lot.
Nikki Nolan: It is such a heavy burden. And I think that people who, who don’t have student debt don’t necessarily have that understanding of, how heavy it is. And you were being responsible, you had the information and yet in the system that we live in, people have to take out loans to be able to go to school, unless you are somehow magically born super-rich. It is ridiculous that we have this upward mobility tax on people. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s really unfortunate and a lot of things need to get fixed.
Ashley Strahm: Absolutely.
Nikki Nolan: I want to hear more about you. It seems like an amazing journey that I, I want to go on.
Ashley Strahm: Absolutely. Yeah, no, thank you for giving me the opportunity to share it. Well, I guess just a little bit into that introduction that we just had, if it sounds like I’m a very cerebral kind of meticulous detail-oriented person, it’s because I am. My cultural paradigm is that I grew up the child of Caribbean parents with Bob Marley and Barry White, playing on our record player. Lots of dogs and neighbors in our front yard. We had lots of summer block parties. I grew up in South Orange, New Jersey, which is about 15 minutes outside of New York by train. And I kid you not I’m probably going to write a piece about this called the most beautiful street in New Jersey.
Cause that’s honestly how I felt it was. I have my parents from South America, our next-door neighbor was a biracial couple with a biracial child. We had three gay couples, all of whom had either adopted children or were, kind of broadening their family in these different ways. Just this beautiful, blended mosaic of people from all different walks of life.
That’s how I grew up and I very much grew up kind of under this pursuit of an American dream that my parents came to America to get. So there really wasn’t any sort of question or doubt that I would be going to college and trying to kind of broaden this spectrum of building generational wealth because they came here, they bought a house, they had two kids.
They were both from families, huge families of eight. I have tons of cousins and my parents very specifically said we’re going to have two, we’re going to be done. We’re going to send them to college. And then hopefully, the generation that comes after them will be well-equipped too, kind of take that baton and run with it.
So it’s within that context that I kind of develop my sense of self, this idea of why not me? I’m a black woman or a black girl at the time. I’ve got tons of different friends from all different walks of life. We’re all gonna do great, fantastic, incredible things. So this idea of limitless possibility and college just being a stepping stone to something awesome.
It was just kind of you know, the way my life started. But a pivotal moment in my life was when I was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 16. So just as the ramp to my future was taking off and I was applying to colleges and writing college essays, I was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer called angiosarcoma. And the oncologist who delivers this news to me, I kid you not, to see this person just flipping through charts and being like whoa, this does not compute, but yeah. She said that this angiosarcoma is typically cancer that affects older white men. It never almost never appears in young black females, which was kind of a shock and a surprise to everyone.
So, during the middle of my senior year, when I’m about to go off to college, I’m kind of stuck with this huge, healthcare labyrinth. And I watched my parents kind of navigate exorbitant medical costs, on top of private high school tuition that I had asked them to contribute to.
Basically all through middle school, and kind of in around eighth grade, again, the meticulous me was acing all of my classes and I didn’t feel challenged. I’m wasn’t sure if I was going to get into a great college if I just went to a public high school. Should I apply to this private all-girls school in a very affluent neighborhood?
And they said, sure. So we kind of had those payments going on and then also cancer care and treatment going on. So after I got into Elon, oh my gosh, and back in 2008, Elon was only $30,000 a year. I know I’m saying only, but I mean, this is a significant cost saving to what people are probably paying for college right now.
But I got a partial, 50% scholarship to go there and I just needed, essentially a student loan to cover the rest, which was about $15,000 a year. And so lots of dinner conversations, my beautiful parents and my dad saying, let me basically give you a portion of my 401k. Maybe we could pay for it that way. And I don’t know where this otherworldly wisdom came from, but I told him I was young and I could always pay my loans back, but he wouldn’t always be able to work. And obviously, I wanted him to enjoy his retirement with my mom. I mean, they’ve earned that right after 30 years of marriage, I was oh gosh, we can’t do this 401k thing.
So we went with federal Parent PLUS loans. It seemed like something that everyone was doing. And I’ve got to say, Elon was wonderful. I played lots of rugby there and enjoyed friendships and working at my school paper. And it was around then that I was like ah, man, maybe being a journalist is kind of the wonderful merging of this a curiosity that I had as a child, but also my desire to write.
And then I got a job on campus. It was my first job ever. My parents your job is to learn. So I’d never really had a formal job before then. But that really helped to kind of cover the cost of some of those, late-night runs to get milkshakes and things like that.
While I was at Elon, I got internships and kind of networked my way into a job with Teach for America. That was my first job out of college. And I earned $27,000 a year, gross, as a teacher. And I remember moving to rural North Carolina. I paid $500 a month in rent and I also paid $500 a month for my student loan.
I never missed a payment, I started as soon as I graduated. And so there are a thousand bucks, right? Just putting a roof over my head and also kind of paying off this debt. And so I really was living off of probably just a couple of hundred dollars just to cover my basic living needs that the first year.
And so I cried a lot that the first year out of college. I did have a job, which I was super relieved about because if I wasn’t employed, I couldn’t pay my loans back. But it really wasn’t enough to live on. So similar to you a little bit, Nikki, been listening to your podcasts. I, right after that formative first year of not really being able to make ends meet, started to chase the money.
I realized that being a reporter and working for a newspaper, that dream needed to die because it wasn’t enough for me to live on. I knew that working for the New York Times in 2008, when the economy was completely tanking was out of the question. So I’m really grateful for my foresight.
I kind of sold out early, went into marketing. I knew that it didn’t matter if I loved to study, I had to kind of pick a major that was going to be fruitful financially. And I’m really glad that I did. And so now, four jobs later, I went from teaching language arts to underprivileged kids, which appeals to the soul. Right? That’s the spirit work that you want to believe that you’re willing to do, but with student loans, kind of strangling you. I started working for basically a tech company in healthcare. That’s where I am right now. And now I make over six figures. Which is pretty much unheard of for anyone working in marketing.
I feel very, very lucky to be able to bring home that amount of money. But the financial moves that I’ve kind of made to get to the point where I now only owe air quotes there, $44,000 is that my husband and I bought real estate in Durham, North Carolina, which is a super burgeoning market three years ago.
And we’re able to sell that house at a pretty substantial gain. We paid off his student loans, which he brought into our beautiful marriage. He owed $30K. We paid off the car. And then bought a second home with a large down payment from the sale of our first. And so now we have some pretty substantial equity in our house, but we are applying Cody’s entire salary to my loans and we’re just living off of one income right now.
So we have made pretty substantial progress in the last two years, but we’re also paying close to three grand a month, to kind of chip away at the iceberg. So here we are.
Nikki Nolan: My God. That’s amazing. So when did you decide to shift your strategy? Tell me a little bit about your student loan strategy and how you sort of got to this place where you are.
Ashley Strahm: Yes. Oh, that’s huge. So again, I want to say that I had a clear head about all of this, but literally, it was heart palpitations in the middle of the night. Not being able to sleep, watching my student debt grow as I was paying almost a quarter, if not closer to a half of my take-home income every month. I was like, am I insane?
How is it possible that I’m paying all this money every month? So I got super friendly with the FedLoan folks. I mean, they knew my name. They had a full check-in with them once a month. I was so I’m paying first $450, then $550, then $675 then over $1000. I just kept trying to bump up my monthly payment. And then of course, when tax time came around, I was throwing whatever refund I possibly had back at that. I was making payments every two weeks, as opposed to every month doing anything that I possibly could to affect the principal. And in the beginning of my student loan journey, my parents took out the loans in their name. Which had always weighed super heavily on me. I was oh my gosh, here are these super sacrificial, beautiful immigrant parents who have done everything for me. And now they’re going to take a credit hit because they have $60K of debt in their name.
So I paid on their behalf, every time the bill came to them, I cut a check or I wired the funds and I paid my loan payment. And then, it always kind of wore on me that these loans were in their names. So at some point, I wanted to assume this debt on my own and have it in my name so I could feel good about the fact that they could do whatever they wanted with their hard-earned money.
And we talked about that and my parents didn’t really care, but it mattered a lot to me. And so it was that coupled with a balance that was growing, despite me never missing a payment, that drove me to be like, okay, what’s the cost-benefit analysis here with keeping my loans federal and keeping this 8.5% interest rate, which essentially meant every payment that I was making half was going to the principal and half was going to interest.
I wasn’t covering any ground. But I was super scared about if something happened to me and I need to just take a break for my student loans, I can’t do that with a private company. So I really had to think long and hard about this. This was probably three years into my marriage, my husband and I were kind of like oh my gosh, well, what if something happens politically? And they forgive everybody’s student debt once you consolidate? You’re still going to be on the hook for thousands of dollars. And I just told him, I was honey, I can’t like this anymore. I need the loans to be mine. I want to take them off my parents’ back. And if we wait for someone to get into an office to repay these loans, I will basically pay triple the cost of my college education, by the time I’m 35 and still have more to pay. I can’t, I can’t wait.
So we went with a private company. SoFi is, the company. And now my interest rate is 5.75, which has already saved me thousands. And so what I did was I essentially went from a $695 payment to a $2,695 payment. And that’s what I pay every month. I did a lump sum payment during COVID, — all of my stimulus money went to my student loan.
We didn’t see a cent of that money, but that was huge. I mean, it really helped to kind of lower my balance. So this is kind of the thought process behind that.
Nikki Nolan: Wow. That’s, that’s, thank you for taking me through that. I really appreciate it.
Ashley Strahm: Sure. Sure, absolutely. It’s important that we talk about the unique burden that first-generation college students have, especially those born to immigrants. Because I think, people are having a lot of conversations around is it fair for folks to get their debt forgiven? People knew what they were getting into when they signed on for all of this debt, why would you make such a terrible financial decision if you knew you couldn’t pay for it?
And I think what’s really important in terms of just my cultural paradigm in my background is my parents in particular, came to America with a very distinctive picture of what it would take to create an American dream for themselves and their children. Education was always a part of that plan. And I think the American dream to a certain extent still does require some sort of higher education for you to be able to make a living. I mean, that’s just a cultural norm that I feel we’re still very much steeped in.
Ashley Strahm: So it’s kind of this, no matter the cost, we need to pursue this for the good of our children and for the good of our children’s children. So I feel this understanding reinforced the idea that college was kind of the only way my parents immigrating here was worth it. So it very much felt their dream for me became my dream for myself.
And you’ve got like millions of kids out there probably thinking the same thing. So we know that black women carry a disproportionate amount of debt. And I think it’s probably due to the immense burden that women of color carry to make sure that positive futures are available and feasible for their families.
So I think it’s kind of this idea that yes, some people probably dream of going to college in terms of just a goal or general pursuit. But I think for folks, black and brown folks in particular, it’s far deeper than that. It is the culmination of dreams and hopes and wishes and hard work and sacrifice for a lineage and ancestry that makes it very hard for you to kind of look at this as an objective investment to make.
It’s really an investment that many, many who came before you kind of paved the way for you to be able to do, which is, important context to have.
Nikki Nolan: Yeah, I have a few episodes with black women, that,has a really similar thing. It’s that, that parental pressure, but, the way that you put it, I don’t know if I’ve necessarily heard anyone say it that way, that the pressure is really coming from trying to build up that generational wealth that really has a lot of systems at play that are working specifically against people who are black and brown. That just makes the burden of student debt so much, that much more. The politicians and the people who are in charge of this system need to make systematic changes. This is not something that is an individual responsibility. This isn’t on the individual in terms of responsible or not. This is a problem that has been caused by the system. So-
Ashley Strahm: Absolutely well said, Nikki. Well said.
Nikki Nolan: It makes me so angry. Is there anything else that you want to cover that’s in your story? I want to make sure that we get your whole story out.
Ashley Strahm: Yeah, no, I, I really feel we covered it. I wanted be very specific about the idea that I had a pretty idyllic childhood. And I feel I, for all intents and purposes, am kind of a financial unicorn and I feel it’s because I kind of had all these seeds planted for me pretty early on.
Ashley Strahm: I’ve invested a pretty significant amount in my 401k. I have a Roth IRA, I own my second home now. I have significant equity in that home in a ridiculous market. So I know obviously, my home is probably my most lucrative asset at this point. I’m in a dual income, no kid, marriage.
I’m not intending on having any children. These are all very specific moves that I feel I’ve made to make sure I, and my family, including my husband are financially stable. But there are probably more people like me out there that are making significant life choices around their student loans, like bringing another life into the world. I’m already basically paying for a Montessori education for a child that doesn’t exist. I might as well be paying for private school tuition, right? For a sixth-grader. That’s how much I am paying.
So there are so many ways in which my life probably could have been different. Had I maybe started out, in a different financial place and it’s really due to this, one, a decision around, around college and, and that’s, again, it’s just kind of something that I’m going to have to live with, but I do think it should be a part of the context in the dialogue.
When we talk about people who have assumed this debt, that they are probably taking on some pretty significant risk, and are very cognizant of the effects on their future lives that previous generations probably didn’t have to contend with.
Nikki Nolan: I know you bring up this really good point about children and stuff that as well. Do you, and, and feel free to dodge this question, if it’s too personal, but for me personally, I didn’t have, I didn’t, I decided not to have children. I’m 36 and I’m like, do I actually want kids now? I don’t have student debt and it’s so complicated. And if I didn’t have the burden of student debt, I don’t think I would have been at this place where I have to negotiate with that. Do you feel your student debt has sort of led to your decision of I don’t think I can have children or that I don’t want children or was it just, you just don’t want children?
It’s totally okay if you don’t, that’s your choice.
Ashley Strahm: Oh my gosh. Oh, I’m so glad that this is a conversation that people are having people, not just women, just people are having. It is a multi-layer decision actually that my husband and I have made to not have children. What I mean, I’ll just say this and I won’t go down the political rabbit hole too far, but I think 2016 was an awakening on multiple for us in terms of the true historical context of our country.
I think, again, speaking from an immigrant perspective, I think a lot of people are very surprised to hear a black woman says actually I wasn’t steeped in this overarching historical knowledge of racism in America. These were lessons my parents didn’t teach me mainly because they didn’t know.
And because they were so dead set on assimilating and trying to help us assimilate to a culture that they felt was a better opportunity for us. They weren’t really questioning the ways that we were being systemically oppressed. And these are lessons that I’m now learning in adulthood that is nothing short of breathtaking.
How did I not know this? ‘m learning along with lots of other allies from different demographics about the context of just being black in America. So, the thought of, you know, and my husband, a white man from the Midwest, so, I mean, not that it matters, but our child would be perceived as a black person in America.
And I think that’s just a lot for me to process. And I’m not sure that we are really willing to take that on. But that aside, that kind of identity situation — they said, yes, student loans. And the fact that I’ve essentially spent over a decade, not really investing in a college fund for an imaginary child.
I mean, I would have to basically start when my debt is paid for. And then just fast forward to when this kid is ready to go off to college, what would I even say? I could not in good conscience, encourage my child to go to college. And then what happens to my child? My brown child in America who has no degree if they choose not to.
How do I support them? What is the world going to think of them? What opportunities will be available to them? Yeah, no, I think until we can support mothers, just in working and being able to continue to bring in a salary and then also raise a family at the same time. And then their spouses, obviously, just being able to support them in those endeavors.
I just don’t feel there’s enough of an infrastructure for me to bring a child into the world now, and I’m a little, I’m a little sad about it. But at the same time, I think I’m a product of my environment and I can’t really blame myself for just reacting to the cards that I’ve been dealt.
Nikki Nolan: Oh, yeah. I heard the most amazing quote the other day. And it was other countries have safety nets. America has women.
Ashley Strahm: Right. That is so right.
Nikki Nolan: Yeah. And until we change the system, that is, that is America, the birth rates are going to continue to decrease. I don’t know what they expect.
Ashley Strahm: Right. Yeah, absolutely.
Nikki Nolan: Is there any sort of thing that I didn’t cover that you want to cover? I think you covered some, but is there anything that you want to talk about?
Ashley Strahm: Oh, just about debt. Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of funny, just in reflecting on a lot of this stuff, my dad would say. Cause my dad right after college, I was kind of, I would probably say borderline having some panic attacks about having to pay off this mountain of debt. And he would just sit me down over breakfast and be like, debt is a part of the American story. Right?
He was convinced of this. He was like, you know, our mortgage. Most people can’t afford to pay for house cash. This is just your burden to carry and it’s okay. You’re not alone. There are tons of people who’re going through this. You do not need to stress out about this. And I think in retrospect, yes, that was a father kind of doing what he could to kind of help his daughter kind of navigate what he never did. Neither of my parents went to college. They have no idea what it’s like to be paying, this imaginary person out there in the ether, the government, or whoever it is. But there’s bad debt.
There’s the debt that you take on so that you can keep a roof over your head, but then there’s the debt that you’re kind of a slave to. Years and years after the original balance has been paid. And I feel now, I’m probably coming up on $130,000 that I’ve already paid. I took out 60, but I will probably wind up paying closer to 150 in a couple of years, once all of this is done and the interest is totaled up.
So that’s almost, that’s multiple times more than I originally took out. And I’m sitting here wondering, why aren’t there no interest loans? I would have taken out the $60,000 and I would have paid it back, but why do I need to pay thousands and thousands of dollars more?
Not even to my university, right? It’s not like Elon gets to benefit from me paying for a new athletic field or for other programs that other first-gen college kids me get to benefit from. I would have no problem, contributing to that. But I just think it’s kind of hilarious, my private school that I went to high school at and Elon, I get all of this mail from aren’t you happy alumni?
Will you give to the alumni program? And I’m like, I would love to. I would love to contribute to your institutional programming, but sorry, not sorry. I am busy paying a private company thousands for an education I got a decade ago. So no, you’re not going to get any extra checks from me.
Nikki Nolan: So what advice would you give your younger self, knowing all this amazing knowledge that you’ve gained so far?
Ashley Strahm: Oh, that is so, it’s kind of funny. I feel we’ve now kind of amazing new space where people are willing to talk about the things that bother them, mental wellness and mental health is now a part of just the vernacular of everyday life. I’m a nineties kid.
I believe I’m pretty progressive, but I’m super inspired by the up-and-coming generations because they’re having conversations that I didn’t even know how to have when I graduated in 2012, but that would have been really beneficial for me.
Yeah. Pretty much struggling with anxiety around this very huge financial decision I made when I was too young to vote. So I would probably tell younger me to breathe and to not doubt yourself. I think younger me was very obsessed with making the right moves, with not letting my parents and my future self down.
And I could not believe that all my hard work wasn’t leading me to dig myself out of this hole, that of my own making. So there’s a lot of blame and a little bit of shame on that. So I would probably tell her not to be super hard on herself. And, just kind of be cognizant of the fact that she’s doing exactly what she should be, but there’s a larger system to your point at work that’s prohibiting her progress and that’s what systemic oppression is. I think my experience with student loans has been the most acute way I’ve learned how systemic oppression works. It’s a super unifying oppressive experience that I’m having with you. I mean, we come from entirely different backgrounds, but we know acutely what this experience is and we know what it has cost us.
And I think something you said in your podcast that I just thought was so riveting was you went to the bank and you had, no, you were thinking about repaying your debt, in two months or so, you’re going to make your final payment in another couple months and you went to the bank and this person tells you- oh, you’re paying or accruing, I don’t know how much it was a certain amount of interest every day if you wait to make this final payment. And you were like, screw that, let’s take care of this today because I’m not paying another cent! I was like, yay Nikki!
Nikki Nolan: It’s so wild. That blew my mind that I didn’t understand that it was accruing daily. I don’t know. It makes sense, but oh my God.
Ashley Strahm: I love you. I love how you’re no, today is the day. I’m not walking out of here if I can do it. And my husband and I honestly we get into, they’re not even arguments, they’re just impassioned conversations about how much interest, we lay our head down on our pillow every night and I’m oh when I wake up tomorrow, there’s going to be more than I owe.
And it is so visceral, just devastating, you know? And I told him, I want to pay this off. Let’s just wipe out our savings account, just do what we can, let’s just pay it off. And he was like, and what? Have no money in case, we get into a car accident or one of us breaks an arm.
And he’s you’re, really in another place about this. And I’m yeah, I feel it’s been 10 years. Probably five years too long. I’m ready for it to be over.
Nikki Nolan: Is there anything that you want to promote?
Ashley Strahm: Oh, promote. I just feel like world peace, we should just like promote. I feel what I want to do is just remind folks that there’s a larger struggle underway, and it’s kind of a struggle to acknowledge and atone for the systems that have, and continue to oppress vulnerable communities, especially black and brown ones.
So in every way, I just urge folks to not just get caught up in kind of the political framework or the political kind of caveats of student debt is just kind of an issue. And maybe you think of it as a linchpin in a broader kind of context and try to just kind of educate themselves on ways that they can dismantle these policies that have kind of put us here.
And I think it’s really important to kind of just walk alongside folks that are living with these barriers to full and robust lives because that’s what they are. There are obstacles to people achieving their best life and their best selves. It is an impediment to people living their fullest life.
I mean, if you really think about people just kind of waking up every day, it’s kind of, I guess maybe even in a way, I don’t want to be hyperbolic about it, but having to struggle with a chronic condition or a chronic illness, it’s something that is perpetually and chronically a part of your daily lived experience.
We’re talking about that in the context of student debt. But again, in my experience, anyway, student debt is a microcosm of a larger experience of oppression in America. And I think we’re kind of at an inflection point where we should really be considering how we can either affect change in that kind of arena or just be allies to people who are.
And I write a little bit about identity, family, culture, and love on Medium. So feel free to read some of my pieces where I discuss more of that here, but, yeah, I guess I just kind of want to promote shared understanding and yeah all that good stuff.
Nikki Nolan: If they want to find you on Medium, what, how, how would someone find you?
Ashley Strahm: Yeah, I think you could just search Ashley Strahm and all my stuff will pop up.
Nikki Nolan: Awesome. I will link to that in the show notes as well..
Ashley Strahm: Thank you.
Nikki Nolan: Thank you so much for being here. This was a lovely conversation. This is the end.
Ashley Strahm: Thank you, Nikki. I know why, why is it the end? I feel I talk about student loans, at the nail salon, when I’m getting my hair done, with my family. Now, with you. It’s just, it’s good to get it off your chest. It’s super cathartic to be here. So thank you for having me.
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