I had a plan for turning forty.
I wanted to walk into forty strong. I have Sjögren’s, an autoimmune condition, and through my thirties the flare-ups kept knocking me down. So I went gluten-free and dairy-free, and I started getting them under control. I hired a personal trainer and worked out three times a week. I went from 165 pounds to 135, just five pounds from where I was before my first baby. I felt really, really good.
I had also wanted my own company for years. So that January, I took a course on AI. I wanted to understand what was coming, and I wanted to build something of my own.
Then, at the start of that summer, surprise. I was pregnant. I was happy. So were my girlfriends, because every one of them got pregnant that same year. The big fortieth birthday trip was off.
The season that followed was hard. We had just moved, and I did not know anybody. My job did not transfer. The pregnancy made me sick most of the time, and after my son was born, the flare-ups came back. So did something most people never talk about. Postpartum depression gets the headlines, but postpartum anxiety and postpartum OCD are real too, and I lived through more than one of them.
People would tell me, “But you look so healthy.” They had no idea what was happening inside my body.
Here is what I have learned about myself: when life stops making sense, I build. I could not control my hormones or my immune system. I could control what I did with the hours I had.
With my third baby, the nights ran on a loop. Feed him every two hours, and sometimes every hour during cluster feeds. Hold him upright. Watch the clock. Start again. Around 2am, those were exactly the hours I used to scroll.
Then one night, I realized something simple. I was already awake. I was already holding him. So I stopped fighting the window and started working inside it. I started talking. I said out loud the ideas I had been carrying for years, and I let AI help me shape them into something real.
Then my sister-in-law, Dr. Liz Moyer, asked me a simple question: “What is your workflow? What is your tool stack?” Liz is a leadership coach, a Doctor of Strategic Leadership, a Major in the U.S. Air Force, and the founder of Buffalo and Banyan. She wanted to bring me on her podcast. Two days before she asked, I had privately wondered whether I even had a method.
So I challenged myself: could I write a book in 24 hours?
It took me about 30. I talked it out through feeds, naps, and late nights, played it back, and kept going. Not perfect. Not polished. But real. A month later, a neighbor asked how I was making children’s books with AI. When people ask you the same question more than once, it is not random. It is a pattern. That book became Stop Scrolling. Start Creating., and Liz wrote the foreword.
She said it best: “AI will not replace your story. It cannot replicate what you have survived, what you love, what you uniquely carry. But it can help you get it out of your head and into the world.”
That habit turned into a method, and the method turned into books. Ten of them. The body I planned for did not show up at forty. Something else did: proof that I could build, even in my hardest season.
If you are in a hard season right now, here is where I would start:
- Get answers. If your body feels wrong and you keep hearing that you look fine, ask your doctor about a full workup. For autoimmune symptoms, that often means a rheumatologist. If you just had a baby and something feels off in your mind, call or text the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 1-833-852-6262. It is free, and it is open 24 hours a day.
- Take back one hour. Pick the time you usually scroll, and use it to say one idea out loud.
- Build one small thing. A page, a plan, a post. Something with your name on it.
Women deserve better care after birth, more understanding of autoimmune conditions, and more flexibility at work. I am not waiting for someone else to fix that. If nobody is going to solve it for us, why not me? And honestly, why not you?
Stop Scrolling. Start Creating., is for the woman who had a plan, and then life happened. You are not lost. You are overloaded, and nobody handed you the right tools.
As Liz wrote, “You were made to create. Now go do it.”
Get the book here: https://www.amazon.com/author/ashleydaniellebarbin
Hit reply and tell me: what is one idea you have been carrying around that you have not written down yet?
With Gratitude,
Ashley Danielle
P.S. Curious how you use AI right now? Take my free AI self-check at https://ashleydaniellebarbin.com. It takes about ten minutes, and your results show up right on the screen.
P.P.S. If you are a busy professional or parent who wants smarter systems and stronger leadership, follow my sister-in-law, Dr. Liz Moyer. You can find her at https://lizmoyer.com and on YouTube at @drlizmoyer.
Find me on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, and YouTube at @AshleyDanielleWrites. On X, I am @AIWritingByAD.
