Nonprofit Founder Ashley Sandahl Finds her ‘Tribe’ in Saluda
Photo Credit: Ashley Sandal
By Meg Hale Brunton
“Why can’t people talk about that stuff?” asks Ashley Sandahl, founder of Excuse Us While We Succeed. After having her first child, Sandahl found herself being discouraged by other women to talk about the challenges she encountered as a mom, like balancing work and motherhood, and experiencing postpartum depression. “I don’t want to have to sit in a room and pretend that everything is going great. I wanted to be able to talk about that and let other people know that they are not alone.” Longing for a space where women could ‘be real’ with one another, she created the nonprofit Excuse Us While We Succeed as a way for women to network on a professional level, and connect on an honest level.
Born in Massachusetts, Sandahl utilized the freedom and gumption of her twenties and early thirties to frequently move all over the country, working in restaurants, and making time for snowboarding, horseback riding and mountain biking. Somewhere in there, she also got her certification as a wine sommelier. “I would just blow in the wind,” she recalls of that period. “I just love to travel and see things.” When it came time to settle down, Sandahl sought out a funky, dog-friendly, foodie town in the mountains. In 2017, she found all that she wanted and more in the town of Saluda, North Carolina. “I fell in love with Saluda,” she says, “I feel like I was meant for this town, like I’ve just been waiting my whole life to find this amazing little mountain town of my dreams.”
Sandahl worked as a bartender and wine rep in Asheville, but later enrolled in real estate school and got her license in 2020. At first, she found the real estate industry to be cold and cutthroat. Then, she joined Looking Glass Realty as a luxury listing agent and found that their firm had a community-oriented, family environment that was much more positive to work in. “I wish every realtor could be in a situation like this,” Sandahl says. “It should never have been about competition, especially among women.”
Having a child shortly after moving to a new town, Sandahl found it difficult to connect with people for either work or a social life. Naturally, the COVID 19 pandemic only made things harder, and more lonely. Knowing that other women had to be experiencing the same challenges she was encountering, Sandahl wished there was a place for like-minded women to get together and discuss ways that they could help one another. “In a world where men are still trying to rule, we need to stick together and be able to lift each other up,” she says. “The original idea for the group was to create the tribe with a women’s networking group.”
Sandahl began planning a networking event for professional women at Earthly Minds Art Gallery in Saluda, called Excuse Me While I Succeed. She thought it would be a small, simple Saluda gathering, but the event drew an attendance of over thirty women. It grew to a full-scale entrepreneurial women’s event, complete with live music, food and a keynote speaker. Seeing that she wasn’t alone, Sandahl updated the name to Excuse Us While We Succeed (EUWWS) and began taking steps to convert the group to a nonprofit organization. “Having this group changed my life, for sure. I made so many amazing friends. It was truly life-changing” she says. Through some of her EUWWS contacts, Sandahl connected with the Mountain Page Theater, where she became facilitator, website manager, and ticketmaster, as well as one of the leaders of the theater’s afterschool program. Last November, she even played the lead in their production of “Mary Poppins.”
Through the group, WNC women were able to help each other on a professional level, but Sandahl wanted to help them on a personal level too. EUWWS began hosting events that focused on women’s wellness, artistic expression, education, and emotional wellbeing as well. “Anything where we can get women to feel more empowered and excited, healthy and happy to be alive,” she says of the group’s focus. This March, EUWWS will host an empowerment and health event, with free massages and facials in the women-owned wellness space above Thompson’s Store in downtown Saluda. In the future, Sandahl hopes to begin utilizing the group to fight for necessary changes to issues like maternity leave, affordable housing, and other challenges facing women. Her dream is to buy a large plot of land to build a village of small, affordable homes for single moms. “I want to do so many things, but where do I find the time to do it?”
“We have 90,000 jobs we’re supposed to be doing at all times,” Sandahl says of women’s roles. “Society just assumes that women are going to take care of it.” She goes on to say that it can be hard for women to be candid with one another, because of societal pressures to appear perfect all the time, and that women need a safe space where they can be true to themselves. To further her efforts to encourage authenticity among women, Sandahl created the EUWWS podcast with co-host, entrepreneur Brittany Bettini. The podcast did an entire season on women’s issues, inviting women to share their stories of motherhood, and interviewing other successful women.
Sandahl says that one of the key lessons that she has learned from her experiences with EUWWS is that women have to create their own definition of success based on what is most important to them. She acknowledges that there are a lot of judgmental people that define success as having a lot of wealth, a new car, and expensive shoes. For herself, Sandahl wants to continue fostering her own independence, and growing her relationships in her mountain town. “My heart is very full,” she says. “I don’t have a million dollars lying around, but I feel successful. I have a beautiful daughter, a great career, and just a great little town.”
For more information on Excuse Us While We Succeed, visit their website: https://www.excuseus.org/
