Grammy-winning musical artist and author Ashley Cleveland joins The Echoes Podcast to talk about grit. Through addiction and recovery, heartbreak and healing, Ashley invites us into a story where surrender becomes strength, vulnerability becomes vision, and brokenness gives way to beauty. This is a conversation about faith forged in fire, and the quiet, astonishing power of telling the whole, unvarnished truth.
Episode Notes:
Production Team:
Written and produced by Marcus Goodyear, Rob Stennett, and Camille Hall-Ortega
Edited by Rob Stennett and Kim Stone
Executive Producers: Patton Dodd and David Rogers
Graphic Design Manager: Hilary Commer
Junior Designer: Lindsay Bruce
Content Creator: Alyson Amestoy
Staff Writer: Elisabeth Avila
Writer: Elizabeth Coffee
Funded by the H. E. Butt Foundation
Special thanks to our guest Ashley Cleveland for being vulnerable about her struggles and for talking with us about grit.
Camille Hall-Ortega: My grandmother, Laureen Loretta Simpson Tinel, was born in the Deep South, Pickens, Mississippi in 1930. She watched as the whites only school bus passed by her home. She made the trek to school on foot with her brother and sister each weekday. When she got older, she knew she loved helping others, so she decided to be a nurse. She applied and got into a nursing program states away.
She moved to complete the program, but it wasn’t long before the school told her that there had been a change. They could no longer accept her as a student because they felt the black students were bringing the school down. Undeterred, she returned to the South and decided to pursue a career in education. She studied at Rust College, one of the oldest historically black colleges, and she became an elementary school teacher. She had discovered her passion.
During her career, she taught at a pair of Memphis, Tennessee public schools, grade second, third, and fifth, and worked until retirement. My grandmother marched with Doctor Martin Luther King Jr during the sanitation workers strike, “Demanding that this city will respect the dignity of labor.” She sat at Mason Temple in 1968 and listened to Doctor King’s “I’ve been to the mountaintop speech the night before he was killed. “We’ve got some difficult days ahead, but it really doesn’t matter with me now because I’ve been to the mountaintop.”
She fought and clawed and overcame obstacles too numerous to name. My grandmother had grit. This sometimes seemingly indefinable quality that drives those who have it to persevere, to be courageous, and to pursue their desires with passion. Do you know someone that exhibits grit? Someone who reached what seemed like rock bottom and found what they needed to escape what others saw as insurmountable?
I’m Camille Hall-Ortega, and this is the Echoes Podcast. On today’s show, we’re welcoming Ashley Cleveland. She’s a three-time Grammy award winning musical artist who released nine critically acclaimed albums. She was the first woman nominated for the best rock gospel album Grammy, and she’s the only person to win the award three times. Ashley is also the author of a memoir called Little Black Sheep, which details her journey to rock bottom with alcohol and drugs and how she overcame it all.
We’re thrilled to welcome Ashley to the podcast today. I’m here with my co-host Marcus Goodyear. Welcome, Ashley.
Ashley Cleveland: Thank you. Good to be here.
Camille Hall-Ortega: I can just say just hearing a little bit about your life and all you’ve gone through and your accomplishments, I probably could have a million questions for you, but we’ll keep it to just a few for today. I’m wondering first about your memoir. You wrote a memoir about your life, and you didn’t set out to do that initially. In fact, you described a number of people who pushed you and encouraged you to write about your life, including by the way, Olga Samples-Davis, has been a guest on our podcast. I’d love to hear about that situation and about the people who encourage you to sort of get out of your comfort zone.
Ashley Cleveland: It wasn’t like people were banging on my door saying, you have got to write a book. So, but, Olga, and you know this, because you’ve had her here, her personality and her her light counts for about 20 people. So, you know, I just saw myself strictly as a songwriter. And I’m such, I love books so much. I’m such a devout reader.
I just thought nobody needs another book, certainly not from me. And it just also felt daunting, just the the idea of it. But, you know, Olga just kinda hounded me for a couple of years. It, then, it was just really a process of surrender. You know? I kinda surrendered to the Lord first. I just said, if I actually have something to say, you have to give me the first line. If you give me the first line, I think I can find my way in. And and I felt like He did that. So that was one step.
And then I, you know, I found an agent who, when I gave her my first chapter, acted like I hadn’t given it to her, just kind of rolled her eyes and didn’t say anything. And then she left me a message a couple of days later and said, “Hello, Ashley. This is Kathleen.” She said, “Well, when you handed me your chapter, I thought, great, just what the world needs, another memoir.” She said, “But then I read it and I loved it.”
So send me another chapter. So things like that kept happening where I just, you know, if at any time I had gotten a hard no, I just, I don’t know that I had the confidence to keep going with it, but I just, doors kept opening.
Camille Hall-Ortega: Well, I’m very curious because we alluded to it in the intro, but of course your memoir captures a lot of tough times in your life. Been through a lot of hard things. I’m wondering if you can tell us about some of the obstacles that you experienced in your life.
Ashley Cleveland: Well, to me, it’s kind of, the memoir is around, recovery from fairly severe addiction and then coming to faith and a very kind of unusual, colorful family, southern family. So and all of those things kinda came to play in my own story. I just think, I was born in the South in Knoxville, Tennessee. I was born to two alcoholic parents who, on the surface, were very accomplished and beautiful and were decidedly performance oriented. So it was hard to tell. Like, from the surface, you couldn’t tell anything was wrong. But I, you know, there was a whole lot that was wrong, and I think I just felt it more than anything. But children are so, you know, they tend to absorb the feeling of a household and blame themselves sometimes. At least I did.
And so, you know, eventually my family was something of an alcoholic dynasty, so it was definitely in the blood. You know, late in my teens, I kind of picked up the mantle and put it on, so. And started drinking and using. But I also, it’s a funny thing. It’s like, you know, at the same time I discovered music and there, you know, I was kind of the scapegoat of my family and scapegoats will often act out the pain and suffering of the family, you know, in sort of attention grabbing ways.
I got a lot of attention, but over time it became pretty negative attention. And I just had a hard time finding any value in myself. And then I picked up, you know, somebody taught me like five guitar chords, and I realized that I had a gift for playing music and singing. So, playing music and particularly playing other people’s songs who were all older than I was and had more experience, it was a vehicle for, for a lot of the hardship in my family. And, so that was a gift to me.
But also, you know, simultaneously, once I hit the end of my teens, you know, I was in bad shape drinking and so, you know, they say in the rooms of AA that, you know, on some level drinking kind of kept us alive until we were ready to get sober, which sounds so bizarre.
Camille Hall-Ortega: Wow.
Ashley Cleveland: But in a way it’s true. It’s like the destructive behavior is kind of how you keep yourself on the planet. But I would say for me, was music and drinking.
Marcus Goodyear: I love this idea that you were singing songs from other people. In your book you talk about how you try to fill your head with voices that aren’t your own, and you talk about specifically memorizing scripture. And when you’re writing a book though, that is vulnerability that’s coming from you. How, was that difficult to do? And, I mean, you were sharing both your stories and the stories of those around you. What was that like?
Ashley Cleveland: That’s a really interesting question, Marcus, because here’s the thing, This is just me. I have no problem being transparent. I’m almost transparent to a fault. Like, I could definitely leave a few things out. You know what I’m saying?
Marcus Goodyear: That’s a superpower.
Ashley Cleveland: But vulnerability is really hard for me. So there’s an element of, you know, it might even be borderline exhibitionism. I don’t know. You know what I’m saying? Kind of like, don’t mind telling people the truth of my life, but vulnerability to me is something else. Is putting yourself in a place where you risk love or rejection.
Camille Hall-Ortega: Or judgment.
Ashley Cleveland: Yeah. And I’m sure people did judge me, or do judge me, you know, for putting my story out there. But at the same time, that for some reason didn’t feel vulnerable to me. And also, by the time I wrote the book, I’d been sober a good little while. And it was shocking to me, the stigma that remains.
And I mean to say remains, because to this day-
Marcus Goodyear: That’s surprising.
Ashley Cleveland: It is surprising because people look at drug and alcohol addiction through a moral lens. Still. You know, like, if you were a better human being, you wouldn’t be behaving this way. They wouldn’t say it in so many words, but it’s still kind of there. They don’t put it in an illness category, a straight up they put it in a different category. It’s funny, now I’ve experienced it generationally in my family, like I’ve experienced it with my parents, and with myself, but also with my oldest child. The power of the disease can take your breath away. Like, it is the big dog in the room if it’s active, and overcoming it is not really an option, not for me.
Camille Hall-Ortega: Yeah. Yeah. But now you’ve talked about how you got, you said you got sober and of course you’re sober now. Can you take us along for that journey a little bit of, you know, at the end of your teens, you said, you know, highly addicted. And how did, how did you get sober?
Ashley Cleveland: I got sober because prior to getting sober, I got pregnant and I wasn’t married to my daughter’s father. And, you know, I’m not going to say I was alone because my family really stepped up for me, but there is still a loneliness when you realize you’re kind of in this on your own. And also, I knew that I was in bad shape. And I also knew I didn’t have the slightest idea how to parent or be a mother. I just didn’t know.
And I knew I’d grown up in a family where there were really severe challenges. And so I was pretty terrified to have this baby, but I was also terrified not to have it. I had grown up in a family that went to church, but even that is complex, especially in the South where it is much a social construct as it is anything. You know, it’s where it’s your status in the community where you go to church. And maybe you’ve had an encounter with the living God, and maybe not.
But surrendering to God with this pregnancy was like the beginning of, I don’t know how to do this. And I thought He might kill me.
Marcus Goodyear: You thought God would kill you?
Ashley Cleveland: Yes. Everything was on the table, because I realized I didn’t know who I was dealing with. And I thought I was just a crummy excuse for a person, you know?
Camille Hall-Ortega: Oh, that would be a really dark place.
Ashley Cleveland: Very dark. Very dark. And I’d done some very dark things. And I, you know, I was kind of a crummy excuse for a person at that, you know, I mean, I think we all carry so much darkness and light in us, you know, we’re all of the above. And, you know, when I had her, I had a c-section and my mother came into my recovery room and I happened to just be the only person having surgery that day in this little hospital in Northern California, so I was in there by myself and I’m laying there and I don’t know what’s happened. I just saw her very briefly, and they put a little hat on her. And my mother comes in and says, she is so beautiful. She’s perfect. And I said, perfect? And she said, oh, yeah, she’s just doing great.
And then my mom left, and I’m sitting there laying there thinking, “How can that be? How can she be perfect?” It just didn’t even make any sense to me. And I felt like that was my first experience of the God that I feel that I belong to now. That, you know, it’s almost like He kind of pulled back the curtain and said, See, I’m not who you think I am.
Camille Hall-Ortega: Oh, that’s so powerful. That’s so powerful. Yeah.
Ashley Cleveland: Yeah. And I wish I could say, I never drank again, and I got sober as soon as- it was another two years. But the thing is that I left the hospital knowing two things. I knew I was loved, and I didn’t know why. But that love just, I kept coming back to, I think, whoever God is, that He loves me. And so I was able finally to surrender. I guess that’s a very long winded answer to your question about how did I get sober? I finally just said, I cannot do this.
Marcus Goodyear: So is grit something that’s born out of surrender?
Ashley Cleveland: So people think grit, I think this is a really interesting question, because people think grit is like a will to survive, and it can be, it is. But also, our illness or our behavior in our illness is often described as self will run riot. So for me, to surrender takes an enormous amount of courage. And to stand down and not think that I know- Like, I was my own best counsel, which was horrible. Like, I wasn’t fit to counsel an inanimate piece of furniture, like, let alone me.
Camille Hall-Ortega: Gosh, there’s so much there to unpack, but I know you have spoken about your faith you’ve said, you were in a dark place and you overcame these obstacles and you talk about how God has used the brokenness. Can you tell us a bit more about how you see good coming from those obstacles and how God has used your brokenness?
Ashley Cleveland: One of the things I do now is spiritual direction. And I go to this monastery in Kentucky where I go for my own silent retreats, but I also lead silent retreats. And it’s a, it is a passionist convent. And, the nuns are all cloistered. They devote their lives to praying for people and also to connecting with Jesus in his suffering and death.
Their whole life is devoted to- And so you go and every painting on the wall, every bit, every statue, all the iconography, it’s all pretty bloody. It’s all around the passion. And yet, and so we got to meet them once, and they were so joyful. And they were kind of, they were funny and kind of, they were, you know, they were kind of rascally. And that really connects with that whole idea of grit.
Like, I just think a lot about the call to meekness. And people think that’s kind of like a wimp or a victim or a baby or whatever you want to attach to that. But to me, that’s the strongest posture that there is. Which is such a picture of Jesus who had all the strength in the world and yet chose to set it aside and to let other people do to him what they did. And I think in my brokenness, like He identifies with me in my brokenness because of his brokenness.
And I identify with other people in their brokenness because I’m a broken person. And it’s not always perfect. Like, I can get judgy just like anybody else. But I know that whatever compassion I have, whatever meekness and willingness to decrease and take the lower rung, you know, to stand down with people, that is because of that. That is because of the brokenness in me.
Marcus Goodyear: Yeah, that is so interesting to think about this idea of, it feels so obviously Christian, but it hadn’t really occurred to me that grit is coming from a place of humility.
Ashley Cleveland: Yeah.
Marcus Goodyear: That strength comes from humility, which is kind of the obvious Christian way I think of this. But it makes me wonder if sometimes what I think of is when I’m not having grit or when I don’t have perseverance, it’s because my ego is getting in the way. And then…
Camille Hall-Ortega: Well, for us as Christ followers, yeah, it would be that you’re trying to do something in your own strength. God tells us that He would get the glory, right? That it’s through him. And so there’s this strength in admittance of our weakness.
Ashley Cleveland: Yeah. When I finally went, you know, I got hospitalized a couple of years later. And the first go around with me, I started recovering in 1985, but then, you know, I still kind of, I still had enough of a rebel yell in me to where I did it my way. I thought, “Well, I’ll do this part, but I won’t do that part. And I’m going to do this, but I won’t do that.” And, “I know best.”
And so when my husband and I got married, he’s not, he’s not an addict. So I just, you know, that crazy thinking started up in my head where I thought, oh, I’ve had so much therapy and recovery stuff and church, and I bet you I could drink. I bet you I could drink moderately And so right, you know, with an addict’s talent for timing, I relapsed right before we got married, and, drank off and on for another six years. And that time I was trying to prove I could do it, like, and be like other people. You know, but that was, I’m really fortunate I got through that. And the great thing about that was I realized that I wasn’t like other people. Like, for me, even when I was controlling it, even on the days when I could keep it together, it was all I ever thought about. It was like this constant plotting and scheming.
Like I had two drinks yesterday, can I have three today? Just that kind of nonsense going on. It was like a full length series in my head and it never ever ended. And then at that point, once again, I felt like the Lord just said, “Why don’t you give that to me?” And I totally had gotten myself back into a place where I said, “I cannot face this world without a bottle. I can’t do it. It’s too harsh of a place.”
But once again, I knew who I was dealing with well enough. It’s not like I totally know the Lord at all, but I knew that He had done so much more for me than I could have ever hoped for that I just said, I can’t do this. I don’t even want to.
But if you want to, you can give me the willingness. And the great thing about that for me was when I went back into the rooms of AA, I went on a very ordinary day, like no disasters had happened. I was not being driven by pain and misery. It was just I got up one day and thought, I’m going to go to an AA meeting. And something had shifted in me where I thought, “I’m just going to follow every suggestion and I’m just gonna do what they say do,” which is not my nature, and I don’t even like it, but I’m gonna do it anyway.
You know, that was almost twenty eight years ago, so it was good.
Camille Hall-Ortega: Yeah, beautiful. There’s so much to unpack that you shared, but what really stood out to me was your discussion of story and the importance of story. And I know we have an archive clip that we’d love to play. Marcus, will you tell us more about it?
Marcus Goodyear: There was a very good storyteller who used to come to Laity Lodge named Madeleine L’Engle. She wrote a book, a wonderful little science fiction book called A Wrinkle in Time. And she came starting in, I think the 70s and just came out to the Lodge. The Lodge is our adult retreat center, which is sponsored by the H.E.Butt Foundation, which sponsors this podcast. And she is talking with us in the Great Hall, where speakers speak, where you yourself, Ashley, have spoken at Laity Lodge. And she’s talking about story.
Madeleine L’Engle: Because we’re human and finite, there are things we simply are not going to understand and that’s all right. It is all right also to ask the questions that don’t have answers. As people have always told stories rather than answered questions as they’ve searched for truth. Our ancient forebears sitting around the campfire at night told the story of their day so that they would know what their day meant. What was the truth of the mammoth hunt or the roar of the cave line or falling in love?
And bards and troubadours throughout the centuries have, have sung the story of the day so that people would know what their day is about to give meaning to the events of human life. I believe that we we read stories. We go to the movies in order to find out more about the endeavor of all of us to be human.
Ashley Cleveland: Oh, I’m with her all the way. Well, because I’m a storyteller, you know?
Camille Hall-Ortega: That’s right.
Marcus Goodyear: You’re a troubadour.
Ashley Cleveland: I am. And to me, living the questions is so, so much more interesting than trying to nail everything down with an answer, you know? And it just makes the space broader. To me, it’s the story that gives us the opportunity to see other people and to see other perspectives. And, you know, whereas if I’m telling you something factually, you may be interested, you may not, especially if it’s not how you see it.
But if I tell you a story and all of a sudden something catches you, then we may have something to talk about. You know, if I bring it into the spiritual direction realm, a lot of times, you know, people come to spiritual direction- Well, now it’s sort of, it’s sort of entered the consciousness of a lot of people of faith. Some people come-
Marcus Goodyear: More mainstream?
Ashley Cleveland: Yes, a little more, not totally, but much more than it used to be. But some people come for curiosity, but most people, if they’re gonna commit to that and come, they either have a relationship with God that is meaningful to them and they want to go deeper, or they had a relationship and they think somehow they’ve lost it and they don’t know why. Or their faith, a lot of times, especially like, I feel like we’re kind of in a sea of change culturally. A lot of people come because the faith of their childhood, they’re leaving it and it terrifies them. Or because they don’t know where they’re gonna land.
Don’t know if they’ll have any faith at all. Like, those are huge questions and such big concepts. But if you bring them into their day or their week and just talk about just the rhythms of their life and just support them as they, you know, you just, you figure, hopefully I’m asking good questions, but when they start to see the presence of God in their lives, that changes things.
Camille Hall-Ortega: I love this clip because it makes me think of this, the notion of storytelling as sense making.
Marcus Goodyear: Right.
Camille Hall-Ortega: That people are sharing stories and telling stories to make sense of things that don’t make sense, didn’t make sense before. But I love what you brought in also, Ashley, where you said it’s also a way of finding commonality and I think that’s beautiful. We talked quite a bit about your struggles with addiction, but I read a note that you wrote to your fans and supporters years ago about the obstacle of losing your voice. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
Ashley Cleveland: So around eight years ago, my voice just completely started failing on me. And, you know, and I’d only ever had one career. And, you know, I had jobs before that, but I think I was fired from every single one of them. So, I mean, not a promising employee, let me tell you that right and so, nor did I want the jobs. So I think for me, it was beyond devastating. So I started seeing all these vocal coaches. I had disasters on stage, like a bunch of them. So it just became the place that I had felt most comfortable and most happy being suddenly became dangerous to me.
Then, you know, it’s like the worst thing that can happen for a musician or a singer is to tense up. So that’s, so over time, that’s how I fell into spiritual direction. Like when I first, when somebody first suggested that I look into it, wasn’t even sure I knew what it was. So it wasn’t like a burning desire, but I had this tiny little yes in my soul where I just thought, I don’t know if this is right for me, but it is something I want to learn a little more about. And then, you know, I was working with all these coaches.
So, you know, over time I ended up with this pastoral job, becoming a spiritual director, the Lord opened up all these new avenues in my life. And then I kind of figured out how to sing again in in the voice that I have now. So it kinda gave it all back to me, which is so sweet.
Camille Hall-Ortega: Yeah. But it’s more overcoming. Right? But more surrender. I think it’s surrender.
Ashley Cleveland: You have to accept, like I don’t have all the facility and all the bells and whistles I used to, I don’t have the range, but I still have the emotion and the power. And so my thing was, I’m not going to do it unless I can start to have fun again. And I’ve started to have fun playing again. Then as soon as I figured out I could do that, it’s not like I’d let my agent go a while ago. But then the phone started ringing and people started booking me. So I thought, well, I guess I can do this.
Camille Hall-Ortega: There’s a beauty in that pivot, right? And it harkens back to us talking about God making something out of brokenness. It’s making me think of what I mentioned in the intro about my grandmother. She had a fascinating life. But yeah, just early on she was faced with being told no.
And for reasons out of her control, right? Where she’s going, I got accepted into this school. And now you’re saying, I’m guilty by association because of the color of my skin. And so I’m headed back from California back to the South, right? So I think we are seeing this through line, to me, I will say, of the grit that you exhibit.
And I think it’s this beautiful thing of what you’ve said, surrender, of kind of the art of the pivot, the amazing passion that you have, and the drive. And so I I think it’s beautiful. And the fact that you’re able to share your story to encourage others is huge.
Ashley Cleveland: I mean, what an idea that no has possibilities to it. You know?
And I love that story about your grandmother. I mean, you know, we only live our own stories because that’s what we know, but I just think, God, that was such a brutal no. And so you just think, me, I might’ve just lay down and taken it, but she didn’t and just saw the possibility elsewhere. And I really think that is very much the mark of how the Lord has worked in my life.
Marcus Goodyear: Camille, when you talk about your grandmother, I have to say that there’s kind of this dark side to grit if it’s misused. Not in the way you’ve talked about it, Ashley, but this sense that had she not overcome, it would have somehow been her fault.
Camille Hall-Ortega: Like a mark on a person. That’s such a great point. Like a mark against a person. Yeah. And in our work, we see, you know, we have our community engagement work that a lot of it takes place in San Antonio.
Ashley, I’m sure you’ve seen some of that work. And we talk about safety nets and about people being born in different zip codes and how their outcomes are associated with just the zip code that they live in, that they might have a decades difference in life expectancy because of the opportunities that are varied by the place they live or by the color of their skin or by the businesses that surround them as they walk to school. We certainly can acknowledge that there’s so much at play here. Ashley, we have covered a lot of things, but I have to say, I’m very curious. You have spoken about your spiritual advising, but I wonder you are still producing music.
And I know I’ve gotten to read about you and your husband’s work. I’m wondering, what’s on the horizon for you? Is there anything that we could look out for?
Ashley Cleveland: Well, you know, I’m not sure I’m going to continue recording. That ship may have sailed for me, but my husband’s very busy. He’s producing and recording. But between church work and being in school and traveling and speaking and playing, I’ve got as much as I can deal with. But I have found my favorite thing right now is writing sermons.
Camille Hall-Ortega: Yeah. I’ve gotten to listen to a couple of those, because they’re live-streamed.
Ashley Cleveland: Thank you for listening. Oh my gosh.
Camille Hall-Ortega: I knew from your memoir that you write beautiful prose. Obviously we know you have beautiful song lyrics, you write beautiful prose, but your sermons are lovely. I encourage people. We’ll put it in the show notes. Encourage people to go give it a listen, yes.
Ashley Cleveland: That’s so nice. Well, I, it’s so fun. It’s like another way to get lost in writing. You know? All I ever wanted was to live a creative life, you know?
So I feel like whatever I’m doing, as long as that’s there, I’m having a good time on some level. And it does feel very meaningful to me. Like, I’ve always sort of been an outlier in the church world. So now to be up in the middle of everything is kind of hilarious and very unexpected to me. But it’s been wonderful too to be part of a body and to really get to know the body, you know, writ large, also individuals, and to get to be part of their lives and their families’ lives in a way that’s meaningful.
And, you know, I think I’ve been good for them, but I know they’ve been super wonderful for me.
Camille Hall-Ortega: Ashley, I think that’s a great place for us to wrap up. We’re so grateful to have had you on the show today. Thank you. Thank you for your time.
The Echoes Podcast is written and produced by Marcus Goodyear, Rob Stennett, and me, Camille Hall-Ortega.
It’s edited by Rob Stennett and Kim Stone. Our executive producers are Patton Dodd and David Rogers. Special thanks to our guest today, Ashley Cleveland. In addition to the Echoes Podcast, we welcome you to subscribe to Echoes Magazine. You’ll receive a beautiful print magazine each quarter, and it’s free.
You can find a link in our show notes. The Echoes Podcast and Echoes Magazine are both productions brought to you by the H. E. Butt Foundation. You can learn more about our vision and mission at hebfdn.org.
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