Ashley Hilmes
“Life has a way of working out the way it’s meant to.”
Introduction
My name is Ashley and currently I live in a beautiful home in the Back Bay of Boston with my husband Jeff, our two daughters Madison and Chloe, and our live-in nanny. I am the founder of Vega Vitality, a thriving medspa and wellness center that was recently named “Best MedSpa” by Boston Common Magazine.
I am incredibly grateful for my current circumstances and truly, I’m so happy and I love the life I’ve created. But it hasn’t always been this way and I recently realized that somewhere along the line, the details of my story have slowly become quiet parts of my past instead of defined pieces of my present reality.
Moving, changing careers, marriage, and the birth of my children are just some of my more recent evolutions that currently define me, but there are decades of life experiences with defining moments of their own that I desire to be known.
Because the truth is, long before Boston I was just a small town girl from the middle of nowhere, the firstborn to a couple of teenagers who were young and in love, and my family’s first home was in a unpresuming trailer park. In all honesty, I am incredibly grateful for the circumstances I was born into and truly, even then, I was so happy and I loved the life I was given.
So, while many may know me as a successful business owner and botox injector from Boston, there is much more to me than that.
Welcome to my backstory.
1983 - 1992
Chapter 1: Everything Was Going Great
My story really begins when my Mom and my Dad met in high school. My Dad was a sophomore, my mom a freshman, and not long after their relationship started, I was conceived. I was born a few months before my mom’s 16th birthday. After choosing to raise me, my parents continued to choose discomfort. I am proud to say they both finished highschool and both obtained bachelor’s degrees while simultaneously working to provide for their young, growing family. After my dad graduated from High School and while my mom was still a senior, they purchased their first home - a single-wide trailer that we would live in for many years. After a very full five years of life, our family grew, and my sister Nicole was born. Unbeknownst to my parents or the medical staff, she was born with life threatening cardiac abnormalities that resulted from rare chromosomal defects. At the ripe age of 21 and 22, my parents learned to care for a medically fragile baby while raising me and pursuing bachelor's degrees. My sister Marissa was born just before my 8th birthday and our family was complete. My parents bought a home in Spokane and we settled into the common rhythms of careers, school, and family life. Life wasn’t perfect, but it was good, and I was happy.
1995 - 2001
Chapter 2: When Everything Fell Apart
My parents may have been young and of course, that had its challenges, but because of their consistent model, I knew from a young age that we were a family that wholeheartedly faced adversity and valued integrity regardless of the circumstances we were in. In fact, at this point in my story my whole identity was wrapped up in overcoming circumstances and doing the right thing. My parents had lived that out and I followed their lead and as far as I was aware, we were doing it - we were beating the odds. So when my Dad’s affair led to the end of my parents' marriage, the rug was pulled out from under me and I completely lost my footing. Their divorce was the first time I actually saw them as failing at something. It rocked me. I didn’t understand till much later that my parents were humans, not superheroes and I didn’t yet have an identity outside of our family unit. I did everything to make them happy. I was happy with making them happy. But their divorce changed the way I saw them and it changed the way I saw myself. That motivation to “make them happy” ended with their marriage .And so began a major identity crisis in the midst of very fractured relationships with my parents. I started to ask the question “ Who am I?” If I’m not the girl trying my best to impress my parents, trying to be the teacher's pet, get straight A’s, or win a spelling bee, then who am I? Do I have to pretend to be someone I’m not? Who do I want to be? I spent these years exploring my options and the possible answers to these questions with very little parental guidance. I had a lot of supportive people in my life from teachers to coaches, family to friends, and yet, I was still floundering.
2001 - 2007
Chapter 3: Cute but Crazy
This was a fork in the road in my story. My relationship with my parents had significantly changed and my perception at the time was that they had abandoned me, but if you were to ask them, they were giving me space to figure out who I was. They trusted things would work out. They knew deep down, everything would be okay - not perfect, not easy - but okay. It would be at least another decade before my relationships with my parents were restored. In the meantime, I remained fearless in my life endeavors. I think this is the point in my life when maybe others would have gone to community college or just given up, but true to my being, I refused to be held back or limited by my circumstances. I still had the confidence instilled in me by my parents from my school aged years and truthfully, I wasn’t scared of failing. Like my parents, I learned to believe that life had a way of working out. What is the worst that could happen? I fail? Then what? I’d just get back up. What did I have to lose? My parents taught me to play the long game and to not get too caught up in the current hardship. So, that’s what I did. I applied to college and shortly after graduating high school, I moved into my college dorm room at Arizona State University. I left everything and everyone who made me who I was so I could find out for myself what I was actually made of and, that’s pretty much what happened.
2007 - 2013
Chapter 4: “You Made It!”
These years were full of adventure. After graduating from ASU with a Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing, I took my first nursing job in the cardiac ICU at Arizona Heart Hospital. When I wasn’t working, I was traveling. I worked, I traveled, I worked in order to travel, and then I traveled as a part of my work. In this chapter of my life, I traveled to over 50 countries. In doing so, I learned a lot about what I wanted from my life and what I didn’t. I volunteered frequently and vocationally, I moved around the states as well as internationally, I invested in some incredible lifelong friendships, and I went through my fair share of boyfriends (nearly as many as the number of countries I had visited). This was a season of incredible experiences along with transformative relationships and I experienced significant inner healing and reparenting along the way.
2013 - 2020
Chapter 5: Creating the Life I Want
One night while having a drink at a bar alone in Boston, I saw a flier advertising a 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training Intensive. On a whim (like many things I have done in my life), with the bartender’s encouragement, and permission to pay with two different credit cards, I signed up for the course that started the next morning. The training I received during those three weeks would essentially shift the trajectory of my adult life. After years of doing travel nursing where I would repetitively work 12 week nursing contracts and then travel till I ran out of money, I was offered a staff position in the cardiac ICU at Massachusetts General Hospital (consistently named one of the best hospitals in the US). Prior to the yoga teacher training, I had recently finished my last travel nursing assignment and hadn’t yet started my “real” job at Mass Gen. I was thirty years old and one of my best friends had recently gotten married and I could sense the previous chapter of my life coming to an end. I was at a turning point and I had a lot to reflect on from my past. Basically, yoga teacher training felt like rehab, and I didn’t even know I needed to go to rehab .Allow me to give you a brief summary of the experience. The first week, they tear you down. The second week, you marinade in the rubble. The third week, you pick up the broken pieces and start to recreate your life. In that time and space, I decided to stop the patterns I had been in with men, I committed to making choices from a place of love instead of fear, and I realized Jeff was the partner I wanted in life. I also decided to finally go to graduate school to become a Nurse Practitioner (after putting it off for years) and I started dreaming of building a business that blended aesthetics and wellness. These years of my life were a grind - professionally, financially, and relationally - but I was committed to creating the life of my dreams. So, that’s what I did.
2020 - PRESENT
Chapter 6: Living the Dream
In February of 2020, five years after I started Vega Vitality and right before the world shut down, my first daughter Madison was born and I became a mother. Two years later my daughter Chloe was born and nowadays you will either find me running a business that I love or spending time (often traveling) with the people that I love. True to life, there has been a fair share of hardship in these past few years as well, but at the end of the day I really believe I am living the life of my dreams. I am on a continuous journey of finding my center and grounding myself in the truth of who I am and when I’m the most grounded in my identity, that’s when I’m the most successful.
Conclusion
My story is still unfolding and it is far from over. I will continue to update my story as I walk into my future but as for today, I wanted to leave you with a few things I’ve learned along the way.
Everyone is on their own journey and that might not always fit perfectly into your plans. But just do the next right thing. Stay on your path. Care about people. Choose love and finally, trust the process. Why you might ask? Because what if it’s wonderful? Here is what I’ve discovered - life actually IS wonderful and we are all part of a greater story. So together let’s pick up the pieces of our past and with the golden thread of vulnerability weave together a beautiful tapestry to offer ourselves, our community, and our world. Thank you for reading my backstory.
Some of the greatest invitations we will have in this life will require our own discomfort. Get familiar with discomfort. Nothing is impossible if you are willing to be uncomfortable.
Make the right sacrifices and try to not make decisions out of fear or scarcity.
4. Believe that things are going to work out, not because the cards were dealt perfectly to you, but because you are a player in the game. We aren’t victims. We have choices and they are powerful.
5. There is always more going on than just what you are experiencing in this current moment. Play the long game and don't get too caught up in the current hardships. They will pass.
6. Be persistent, be dedicated, and push through your fears. When you feel anxious, go back to what you are good at and focus on that. The rest will come.
7. You Don’t know unless you try, but what is the worst that can happen? You fail? Then what? You get back up. What did I have to lose? Could I fail? Sure. but I knew there was more for me.
As I have picked up the pieces of my past and learned from my own story, I feel proud of where I come from and I can move forward in my life with courage and expectancy because I truly believe the best is yet to come. Thank you for reading my backstory.