Meeting Ashley
Pelipost's community includes people with every kind of story. We sat down with Ashley Martinez, a TikTok creator and former prison wife, to hear how she coped during her husband's incarceration and what she would tell someone just starting this journey. You can find her on TikTok at @ashllllllay_ashes.
Ashley's husband served two years and nine months of a six-year sentence. He was released on parole on September 9, 2021.
How sending photos helped
Ashley did not hold back on photos. She sent a lot of them. She explains that pictures gave her husband "a sense of freedom while being incarcerated," something phone calls could not fully replicate.
Advice for anyone with an incarcerated loved one
- Make trust and open communication the base of everything
- Say, often, that you are there and that you will be there when they come home
- Speak positivity into their life. It pushes back against the pull toward recidivism
- Remind them someone cares. Abandonment is the easiest story for the mind to write inside
The prison wives community
Ashley started her TikTok in 2020 after her husband was arrested in 2019. Her content caught fire quickly because it was honest and encouraging. Helping others kept her going, and the community gave her a place where she did not have to explain her life to be understood.
Reducing stigma
Ashley is passionate about this. Some things she wants people to know:
- Many incarcerated people are actively using their time to grow
- Certificates, degrees, trade skills, and new mindsets all happen inside
- Once a sentence is served, holding someone's past against them becomes its own punishment
- The system already makes reentry hard. Personal judgment piles on top of that
- People do change. Society has to let them
If you would like to share your own story with the Pelipost community, reach out to marketing@pelipost.com.