About

My story

I should probably start by saying what this space is not.

It is not a guide. It is not a blueprint. It is not a promise that if you follow certain steps, life will open itself neatly in front of you.

This is something simpler and, I think, more honest: it’s a place where I’m learning out loud.

My name is Ashika Mehta-Ombe, and I’m a mother of 3, a filmmaker in training, a lifelong wanderer, and a woman who spent most of her adult life moving so fast she forgot to notice who she really was.

Where I come from

I was born in Plymouth, England, to Indian parents who carried the weight and beauty of two cultures at once. Next stop was the UAE, where we lived for about six years. Every summer we’d go back to India to be with our extended family, and those years hold the fondest memories of my life. Between all the love of my aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins, there was food, culture, and smells I still try to replicate when I need to go back to a safe space in my memory.

When I was ten, we moved to the United States, and I grew up learning how to belong in rooms that didn’t always feel like mine. Our visits to India became less frequent after that, but the India that was carved into my heart would never leave.

By the time I was a teenager in America, I had already lived across three continents. I didn’t know it then, but that restlessness, that constant reinvention, would become one of the defining patterns of my life.

In college, I met my husband, a Nigerian-American man whose own story of straddling cultures mirrored mine in ways that surprised us both. We got married, built a life in New Jersey, and had all three of our children there.

I spent about fifteen years working in drug development operations. A career I was good at. A career that paid well. A career that looked impressive on paper. And for a long time, that was enough.

The move that changed everything

In 2021, we moved to San Diego. Then in 2023, we moved to Barcelona.

If I’m being honest, Barcelona is where I started to wake up. Not because the city fixed anything, but because the slower rhythm of life here gave me space to finally hear what had been quietly asking for my attention for years.

Who am I outside of my career? Who am I beyond “mom”? What would I do if I wasn’t constantly trying to keep up?

These are the questions this space was built around.

What I’m doing now

I’m still working. I’m at the office a few days a week, and the rest of my time belongs to my children, my marriage, and this slow, deliberate work of becoming more of myself.

I’m learning documentary filmmaking because I believe in the power of real stories told with care. I’m learning photography with a real camera, not just my phone, because I want to see the world more intentionally. I’m exploring fashion and skincare as a way to honour my body as it is, not as I wish it were. I’m traveling slowly with my kids and on my own, and writing about what I notice along the way.

None of this is polished. None of it is finished. That’s the point.

What this space is for

Rewriting Me is for any woman who has felt that she is running out of time and cannot find where she belongs.

If you are a mother, a daughter, a third-culture soul, someone standing at the edge of a life that looks good but feels unfinished, or simply a human wondering what all of this is for, I want you to know this:

You are not late. You are not broken. You are not the only one asking these questions.

I write about motherhood through every lens I carry, as an Indian woman, a British-born American, a wife to a Nigerian-American man, and a mother raising three mixed-heritage children in Spain. I write about midlife not as a crisis but as a kind of clarity. I write about the slow, imperfect work of choosing yourself without abandoning the people you love.

This space does not offer certainty. It offers company.

A note to you

I am learning to live among my memories rather than around them. To let food, culture, grief, joy, and longing sit at the same table without needing to resolve one into the other.

If nothing else, I hope these words remind you that belonging is not something we earn by getting it right. Sometimes, it’s something we find simply by telling the truth.

Take what resonates. Leave what doesn’t. Let it sit beside your own lived experience.

Welcome to my corner of the internet where I am Rewriting Me.