For SELF magazine on World Mental Health Day 2025, I wrote about the thing almost nobody talks about: what happens after you get help for depression. The long, unglamorous middle — the part where you're medicated and in therapy and still, sometimes, barely holding it together.

EssaysAshley WombleJune 29, 2026Mental IllnessComment

What My Brother’s Suicide Taught Me About Why People Take Their Own Lives

Crushed after the suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, I wrote this essay for Women’s Health to help myself, and others, make sense of our loss.

EssaysAshley WombleJune 9, 2018Suicide, Depression, Grief

The Women's Strike Didn't Represent Me

After the Women’s March organizers proposed an international strike for women, I wrote an essay for Bustle on why this protest fell short of true advocacy for women.

EssaysAshley WombleMarch 3, 2017Advocacy

What I Learned Pretending to Be Homeless

I took part in a New York City’s annual homeless count hoping to understand my brother, who lives on the streets, and shared my experience in an essay for Salon.

EssaysAshley WombleFebruary 16, 2011Homelessness

The Homeless Brother I Cannot Save

Almost immediately after this essay was published in Salon, people began to contact me with similar stories, many wondering what advice I could give. I didn’t know much at the time, but the steady drum beat of inquiries led me to research and write my book, Everything is Going to be OK.

EssaysAshley WombleJuly 28, 2010Homelessness, Sch, Ja

Gimme Shelter

Published in an online magazine The Morning News in 2009, the first essay I wrote about my brother’s experience with schizophrenia is the only one he would ever read.

EssaysAshley WombleAugust 3, 2009Schizophrenia, Jay, Mental Illness

Articles & Essays

I write about the topics I was raised to not talk about for national magazines and websites.

Don’t tell my grandmother.