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April 26, 2022 86 mins

Today, an episode from another podcast we think you'll like: Design Matters with Debbie Millman from the TED Audio Collective. Each week Debbie sits down with an exceptionally creative person to explore how they design the arc of their lives. In this episode, Ashley C. Ford joins to discuss her memoir “Somebody’s Daughter,” capturing a complex childhood shaped by family secrets, incarceration, and resilience. To hear more of these intimate conversations, including one that just released with Abbi Jacobson, find and follow design matters with Debbie Millman wherever you're listening to this. 

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Speaker 1 (00:16):
Pushkin Hi everyone. Instead of a regular episode today, I'm
really excited to share an episode from another podcast I admire.
It's called Design Matters with Debbie Millman. Each week, Debbie
sits down with an exceptionally creative person to explore how
they designed the arc of their lives. And all of

(00:39):
the interviews you'll get this personal, intimate look at how
these people have built their art from their own personal
experience and how their creativity hasn't turned shape who they
are as people. They're deeply intimate portraits and I think
you'll enjoy it. In this preview, you'll hear Debbie in
conversation with Ashley c Ford, who discusses her memoir Somebody's Daughter,

(01:04):
capturing a complex childhood shaped by family, secrets and resilience.
To hear more, including a new episode with Abby Jacobson,
find and follow Design Matters with Debbie Millman wherever you're
listening to us. In twenty seventeen, Ashley c Ford published
an essay with the title my father spent thirty years

(01:26):
in Prison Now He's Out. Her father had gone to
prison when she was only a few months old, and
the essay describes how they got to know each other again.
The essay was the seed of the book she would
eventually write. Earlier this year, Ashley published her memoir called
Somebody's Daughter. It is about family secrets that shape her life,

(01:49):
but it's also a beautiful book about hope and resilience.
Ashley joins me today from Fort Wayne, Indiana to talk
in depth about this remarkable book. Ashley sefd Welcome to
Design Matters. Thank you so much for having me Debby.
I'm so excited to be here. Years of listening to
this podcast and years of hoping you'd be on it.

(02:14):
For those that might not know, Ashley has a very,
very very significant place in my life as she is
the person that ultimately introduced me to my wife. So yeah,
just a little disclosure before we get started. One of
the things that makes me happiest. That's one of the
best things I've ever done in my life. Well, thank you,
Oh you definitely changed my life. Now I have goose

(02:36):
bumps before we've even started. So Ashley, before we really
get into the meat of the interview, I found something
out about you that I was really surprised about. I
understand that you're quite the yacht rock enthusiast, Oh, yeah. Well,
first of all, I didn't even know what rock yacht meant,
and I had to ask rock Sanne, my wife about it.

(02:56):
I'm like, what's a yak rock enthusiast? I couldn't even
say it. So first for my listeners that also might
not know, can you describe what ya rock actually is?
And what are some of your go to too? This
is an age old question, Debbie, what actually is yacht rock?

(03:17):
I have never been able to come up with a
definition that really makes sense. It's more so that I'm
just like throwing out artist and I'm like, that's yat rock.
That's yat rock. So Kenny Loggins to me is the
king of yacht rock, also the Sultan of soundtracks. And

(03:38):
like Christopher Cross, Okay, would you know Christopher saying YEA
takes me away? Always heard it could be Yeah, that
was not really, but that was my jam, you know
what I mean? That's yat rock. Robert Duprie, like even
James Ingram is like the rare token black dude of

(04:03):
yacht rock. It is a very smooth, like somewhere between
rock and pop and R and B. I mean, you've
got strong melodies, you know, but it's usually being sung
by white dudes with full beards and Hawaiian T shirts

(04:23):
is usually what's going on there, and I love it.
I think it comes from the fact that I grew
up in a time where lots of people around me
could afford things like CDs and you know, stuff like that,
but I couldn't, really, and so I listened to the radio.

(04:44):
And if you were a kid in the early two
thousands who listened to the radio a lot, your best bet,
at least for me to be able to hear things
that weren't distracting. But we're soothing with soft rock radio.
And right here in Fort Wayne ninety seven point three,
soft rock was my station and I would just listen

(05:09):
to it hours and it's just a ton of yacht rock.
So did you make up the term yacht rock? No?
I absolutely did not. Yacht Rock wasn't even a term
that I could recognize until I was in college, and
it was towards the end of college actually that I
saw that there was this series of videos on YouTube

(05:33):
that was called the History of yacht Rock, and I
was like, what is this? And it was essentially a
I want to say, like an improv group or something
like that, except they had made these skits that were
about like, how did yacht rock become a thing? And
they defined yacht rock by these artists and by the
smoothness of it and stuff like that, and I was like,

(05:56):
this is what I've been into, this is what I
like yacht rock, and that feeling has just never gone away.
I love it to this day. Most of the records
I own or yacht rock, it's just it's my favorite.
Who knew you could listen into design matters and get
a pretty substantial history of Ashley s Ford. Thank you.
This is like a whole new genre for me. Today.

(06:21):
I really want to talk about your extraordinary book, Somebody's Daughter,
which debuted on the New York Times bestseller list this
year and stayed there for quite some time. Congratulations. I
think it is quite a feat. Your memoir follows the
arc of your early life, so I really wanted to
just dig right in. Great when you were four years old,

(06:43):
you went to live with your grandmother and great grandmother
on a little farm in Columbia, Missouri, and you've said
that this was the first place you felt like your
imagination had no bounds. What kinds of things were you
doing back then, Oh so many things. I had a

(07:04):
steady routine for the first time in my life, which
I found very soothing. Pretty much knew what was going
to happen any day of the week. I knew I
had to go to school. I knew that after school
I had to go to an aftercare. I knew that
my grandma would pick me up from after care and

(07:24):
that we would go home. I knew on the weekends
we would go to the mall and we would see
a movie. I knew that there would always be dinner
and breakfast at a certain time. It was just very
soothing for me to have everything happen when it was
quote unquote supposed to happen. On top of that, you know,

(07:46):
it being just me and my grandma, there was obviously
a lot of attention for me. My grandma would read
books to me and just sit with me and talk
with me. My grandma taught me how to sew by hand.
She would give me little scraps of fabric and I
would learn how to thread my needle and so close

(08:08):
for my little dolls and things like that. Just being
able to go outside, especially on the weekends, whenever I wanted,
and just be around, and the adults were in the house,
and I was just out there doing whatever, and that
felt so powerful. I felt powerful when I was on

(08:30):
my own, my imagination, my brain. What I could see
when I closed my eyes, what I could make myself
see made me feel like a powerful person. And I
loved feeling that power. I loved feeling in control of myself.
I loved having thoughts and stories that were just mine

(08:53):
that I didn't have to share with anybody. It made
me feel, I think, like a person. Like that's when
I started being like, Oh, I'm a person. I'm a
human all by myself. You know, four years old is
around the time we start to actually remember things. It
was probably quite good for you that you had that experience,

(09:15):
oh yeah, to be able to rely on given the
subsequent events of your life. I know you told your
mother used to entertain your grandmother with your stories. Do
you remember any of the stories you told her? Oh? Man,
they were usually stories from the books I read that
I would then turn around and make them about me.
So she also taught you to read, right, she didn't

(09:35):
she teach you to read it? Fine, She taught me
to read, and she very quickly found out that I
had a very what we caught a weird memory in
that my grandma thought I could read before I actually could,
because I could just memorize the words of the story.
And so she would turn the page and I would

(09:56):
start saying, you know, what was happening on the page,
almost exactly like with the words, and she was like,
can she read? And it was like, no, I couldn't read.
I just remembered everything. For a long time, I had
memorized quite a few of the first passages from the
Book of Genesis in the Bible, and my grandma would

(10:18):
introduce me to her friends and then be like watch this, Oh,
tell her about tell her about the Bible. And I
would just stand there like a recording and start saying
passages verbatim from the Bible. And these old ladies would
be like, oh my god. You know, they would be
so having, so excited that I could do that, and

(10:40):
so it made me want to do it more. And
that's just something that you know, continued throughout my life.
I love memorizing things. Was this when you thought that
Billy Ray Cirius was Jesus? Yeah, for sure. I had
this massive crush on Billy Ray Cyrus because Achy Breaky
Heart had just come out and it was everywhere, and
he was on the TV, like you could see him

(11:03):
perform at award shows. My grandma is also a huge
fan of celebrity culture and Hollywood and tell rage, she
really did, like she really did. And so we watched
all the awards shows every year. We watched all of them,
the Oscars, the Grammy's everything. She wanted to watch all

(11:24):
of it. And Billy ray Ciris was performing Akey Breaky
Heart and he had that mullet, and I was like,
that's a man. Yeah, that's probably what Jesus was like.
And I totally thought that was true, that Jesus would
have looked like Billy ray Cyrus. I want to go
back in time just a little bit, given that at
this point you're only four or five, you're actually even younger,

(11:49):
a round a year old if that when your father
went to prison. And I read that as you were
growing up, you watched a lot of Westerns with your
grandmother and then would dream of your dad, who would
appear in your dreams riding a horse and wearing a
cowboy hat. What is your memory of first actual meeting him?

(12:12):
My memory of first actually meeting him happened when I
was around seven or eight. My uncle Clarence, my dad's brother,
reached out to my mom and said, hey, I would
really love to take the kids to see their dad,
and my mom was very much like, yes, yes, absolutely,

(12:35):
because my mom never wanted to keep us away from
our dad. My mom just didn't have the resources, the time,
or even really like the planning ability to be able
to get us there, so she was happy for them
to take us. And I don't remember a whole lot
about the car trip or getting there. I just remember

(12:59):
that gate opening. That like that gate where they put
you in and they close it behind you and then
they wait to open the one in front of you.
In the visit Citatan room, I remember that gate opening,
and I remember seeing my dad and I remember going
over to him and hugging him, and I remember that

(13:23):
like at that time, I was already in a place
where I'd been kind of warned about being friendly or
in any way physical with men by my mother, and
I had all this fear about being friendly and affectionate

(13:45):
or physical with men, and I didn't have any of
that with my dad. He put his arms around me,
and I expected to feel really weird about it, and
I didn't. I didn't feel weird at all. I just
felt loved and I felt warm, and that feeling made
me want to not let him go. Like just being

(14:07):
there and having this moment that felt so unfamil earlier
but so good, just made me want to never ever
ever let him go. The way he looked at me
made me want to never leave because I didn't know
what it was like at that point to be looked
at like that. You know, I didn't know what it

(14:28):
was like to walk into a room and have someone
light up because you walked into the room. And I
wanted that bad but I didn't even know it was
available to me. I don't think until I saw it
with my dad. Your father wrote you letters regularly from prison,

(14:50):
and he told you how beautiful you were and how
much he loved you. What did you think of those letters?
I thought that for a long time, I would say,
until I was about twelve or thirteen years old. I
felt like those letter were because my dad saw the

(15:13):
real me. He saw the real me, and the real
me actually was lovable, and the real me actually was beautiful,
and the real me didn't make people angry just by existing,
and the real me, you know, was all of these good,

(15:34):
best things, and I just wished he was there because
if he was there, there would be adult around who
could say, actually, Ashley is like this, Actually Ashley is beautiful.
Actually Ashley is smart and wonderful and funny. You know.
I wanted somebody to stick up for me with other adults.

(15:55):
I just wanted somebody who would who would be on
my side, is what I really wanted. And those letters
made me truly believe that there was somebody out there
on my side. And I thought if I kept believing
and wanting it bad enough, you know, he would just
show up. You didn't right back frequently, and you've said
that you didn't know how to catch someone up on

(16:15):
your entire life. As a result, you've written about how
the relationship existed in sparse correspondence and your imaginations. What
did you think of how he imagined who you were.
I think there are two things going on, and why

(16:37):
I didn't write my dad back and what I thought
was going on in his imagination. At first, I thought
it was, you know, this just inherent thing. This is
my dad. He I am made from his blood and bones.
You know what I mean, Like, that's my father, and
so that's why he can see me, and that's why
he knows me better than everybody else. Right. And then

(17:01):
it became but if I write him and I say
the wrong thing, if I write the wrong thing, if
I'm not who he expected me to be, What if
I ruin it? What if who I am and who
he imagines me to be are so different that he

(17:25):
can't love this version of me. So if I just
take me out of the equation, if I just take
the person who can't seem to communicate right, can't seem
to get it right, can't seem to do right. If
I just take me out of it, I can keep
getting the love from him. I can keep seeing myself

(17:46):
through his eyes in a certain sense, without having to
see them through you know, my own, which are warped
and marred by insecurity and abuse and all of those things.
It felt dangerous to write back. The stakes felt so

(18:07):
high because this person to me is my connection to
the good parts of myself. That's all I have. So
if I mess up that connection, what do I have
in thinking about that? I wonder if you felt so

(18:29):
secure in his continuing to write that you didn't have
to write, sort of just to keep up your end
of the bargain, which I think is a pretty interesting
way of looking at the dynamic. Oh yeah, for sure,
he kept writing no matter what. Yeah, you know, I
had never really been pursued. I never believe that I

(18:55):
could make a mistake or turn away or isolate or
whatever and have somebody try to come find me and
figure out what happened to me. I used to think
if I ran away from home, the only reason anybody
would look for me is because they were legally obligated

(19:17):
to do so, not because they wanted to find me,
and not because they wanted me to actually be part
of their life or anything. You know. But with my dad,
he was always in pursuit of my heart. He wanted
to know me the whole time. He wanted to love
me the whole time. And I think there was part

(19:43):
of me that did really want to like stretch that
out and did want to see like, Okay, well, what
if I don't rate you back for a year, What
if I don't rate you back for two years? What
it like? What then, like, what's it going to take
for you to give up? And he just never did

(20:03):
your family was very secretive about why your dad was
in jail. Did you think he was in jail for
from murder? I did for a little while because I
couldn't imagine what else would have put him in jail
for so long, you know, especially I knew, you know,

(20:23):
one thing that my family did try to impress upon me,
and you know, my brother was like, your dad was
not a guy who was out here, you know, in
the streets, so to say, like he was not somebody
who was in and out of jail. He wasn't somebody
who was in and out of prison. This was his
first and last offense. And it's terrible, rights, it's terrible.

(20:50):
But I knew that my dad had done something terrible,
that he must have done something terrible, but this kind
of terrible I didn't expect. I mean, like, to me,
there are so many reasons why a person might get murder,

(21:11):
and it is not ever excusable to murder, right, but
things happen all the time, like you know, like I
just thought, there could have been so many things that happened,
so many things that went wrong, so many momentary lapses
and judgment that led to that moment. But what my

(21:33):
dad actually did. That's not you can't mistakenly do that.
I can't be you know what I mean, Like, that's intentional. Yeah,
there's control there, and I think that's what was terrifying
to them to have to tell us, was that somebody
had made that kind of choice. Who was that closely

(21:54):
related to us. Yeah, we'll get to that in a
little bit. I want to talk a little bit more
about your early relationships over the course of your life,
your relationship that you've had with your mother has been
really complicated. You know, this book is as much about
her as it is about your dad. Yes, you've described

(22:16):
experience with her when she became unrecognizable to you, and
you've written about how there was Mama, the loving mother
we knew before whatever sparked her ire, and then there
was Mother who showed up in her place. Mother felt separate, somehow,
apart from our otherwise happy and harmonious existence. She rose

(22:39):
from somewhere within Mama and did the latter's dirty work. Ashley,
where did mother's rage come from? As I've gotten older
and talked to my family more, I know that my
mom has always had issues with anger, and nobody was

(22:59):
really surprised by the fact that my mom has issues
with anger, or that the book mentioned so many of
my mom's issues with anger, and that was even before
what happened with my dad. My mom was a very
angry young woman. She had some terrible like pains in
her body. And I gotta tell you, knowing my grandmother,

(23:24):
there's no way she showed very much compassion in those moments.
She was just not that kind of person. My mom
would have never seen an example, in my opinion, of
what to do with fear except turn it into anger immediately.

(23:47):
And my mother went from being a twenty two year
old married woman, a mother, to suddenly being a single,
twenty two year old with two kids under three. Like wow,
that in Reagan's America. Okay, yeah, so we also have

(24:13):
to understand it at this time the exact everything that
had happened to my mom that had been out of
her control, All of these are circumstances, All of this
is out of her control. Not only is that true
that she didn't make the choices that led to this moment,
it is also true that the country at that time

(24:33):
was demonizing women who fit the demographic of my mother's
life at that point, not enough money, no one to help,
kids needing help and assistance. That was all demonized. Why
would you need help and assistance? Why can't you just

(24:54):
do it yourself? Yeah? I understand you had a husband
and he was working and contributing, and now he's in prison.
But how is that our problem? That's not our problem,
that's your problem. So what are you going to do
about it? And I don't think my mom has ever
truly recovered from that time in her life. I don't

(25:16):
know how she would have with no help, you know.
I mean, maybe some help from her family, but therapy
absolutely not, absolutely not. And now we look at that
and we go, that's trauma. Everybody needs to be in therapy, right,
But back then, nobody was thinking about that. And so

(25:38):
I believe my mom has a lot of unprocessed anger.
I think she does not know where to put her
anger when it comes, and so it feels like it
belongs everywhere. And I think that she also grew up
in a time and in a culture where apologizing to
your children was unheard of, and it was a relinquishing

(26:02):
of power instead of a strengthening of a bond and
a relationship. And so because of that and for you
know other reasons, we just don't have. You know that
foundation my mother and I. She often beat you, yea,
when you were young, and the punishments were severe. And

(26:26):
you've written how when you next did something bad, you
learn to carry the secrets of your badness silently and alone.
There would be no more confessions. Whoever wanted to know
how bad you could be would have to get close
enough to find out, and nobody tried. Did you at

(26:49):
that point have an innate sense of badness? I did?
I did. I could not imagine why this person who
loved me so much would hurt my body so badly
if I didn't deserve it, if I wasn't bad, if

(27:12):
something about me and in me wasn't bad. And I
knew enough at that time to essentially decide, like, Okay,
clearly I'm bad, or at least there's some bad in me.
Something in here is bad, and I now have to

(27:32):
protect my badness. I have to not let anybody see that.
Because I'm telling you what, I'm not going to sign
up for another whooping. I'm not signing up for that
ever again. And because I didn't trust myself to really understand,
you know what would get me in trouble, and what

(27:53):
wouldn't Because I was a child and nobody was really
explaining that to me. I just thought, Okay, I know
that good is quiet, and I know that good is
doing exactly what you're told to do, exactly when you're
told to do it, and any other part of me,
I'm just gonna I'm just gonna leave out of the

(28:14):
equation because I'm not sure whether or not that's gonna
get me in trouble. And that makes you terrified of
being a human being. It makes you terrified of having feelings,
expressing feelings. And I was terrified of all those things,
and so it's sometimes wild to me. You know, when
I think about my childhood, I think about growing up,

(28:35):
I wonder like, what, like did my mom look at
me and think like, Yeah, this is a totally normal kid.
This is this is totally how normal kids act. This
is why I don't understand why so many people out
in the community seem to really like my kid and
talk about her bright personality and how much they really

(28:57):
dig her. And then she comes home and I'm like,
who is this? You know, but I don't know if
she didn't have the time or inclination to dig that deep.
I want to read one of the most powerful paragraphs
in your book and then ask you about it. You've
written this, there was no beauty in my badness, and

(29:20):
there was no hiding my badness from anybody who got
too close, and then go on to state this, My
mind was caught somewhere between extreme longing for love and
tenderness and the fear of being mishandled or misused. Even
as I was drawn to connect with the people around me,

(29:41):
I feared them, afraid of how much they might come
to mean to me and how terribly I would have
to mourn when they inevitably left me behind. At night,
I'd sit in bed and say to myself, everyone leaves,
You'll be okay. Everyone leaves, You'll be okay. I'd say
it over and over until I could picture them leaving,

(30:04):
until I could feel the tears on my cheeks. When
I cried, I thought I could feel some of that
inevitable pain, sparing my future self. I did not mind
getting hurt as much as I minded being surprised by
the pain. I wanted to see it coming. Not only

(30:27):
is that a remarkable paragraph, it is also just a
remarkable insight to have about your young self. Did you
feel that you were intentionally cutting yourself off from people
to try and control how much pain you were in
or could be in in your future self? Uh? Yeah, okay, yeah,

(30:55):
I'm sorry. No, no, no, no, it's I don't apologize
for making me feel things I like feeling. Okay, it's okay.
The reason why that makes me so emotional in this moment,
just so you know, is because I struggle with depression

(31:15):
and I still struggle with depression, and I'm I'm I'm
in that place right now, a little bit like that
sort of a hard, dark place, and it's okay, I'm
really okay talking about it because I feel better when
I am not pretending that it's not the case. And
I wrote that because I felt so alone at that

(31:41):
time in my life, and I had been taught, either
verbally or by example, that something was wrong with me,
and that I was unable to tell when people didn't
want to be around me anymore or when they wanted

(32:01):
me to go away. And that was a lie, you know.
It was something that my mom said to me because
she wanted me to be home more, and my mom
was incapable of saying I miss you and I want
you around more. So, her way of getting what she
wanted without having to quote relinquish any of her power

(32:24):
was to make me believe that the people out there
didn't really like me and didn't really want me around,
and that she could tell that, but that there was
something wrong with me, and I couldn't tell that that
was the case, so people wouldn't invite me over and
she would say, you know, well, you can't go there today,
and I would be like, why they invited me over?
And she would say, you know, they don't really want

(32:46):
you there. They're inviting you to be polite. Nobody wants
you at their house that much. Nobody wants you around
that much. And the reason why that makes me so
emotional that you read that part and that like I'm
in this place right now is because I'm realizing that, like, oh,
that's what I'm struggling with right now. That's the thing
for me right now, is that I'm having this desire

(33:09):
to isolate myself from people who love me and like
me and who want me around because I'm back in
a place of being afraid that they don't really want
me there and that they don't really like me, and
that they're giving me hint to let me know that,
and I'm just not picking them up because I'm not
smart enough to pick them up. Well, I can tell you,

(33:33):
as somebody who knows one of the people that cares
for you most in the world, very very intimately, and
a lot of other people that know you well, that
they love you deeply. It's so odd. I know it's
hard to take it in and to brave it. But

(33:54):
as somebody who can give you sort of empirical evidence
of this, I'm sharing that with you right now. This
is something that I know in my soul because I
hear it from others without you being around, without you
even knowing we're talking about you. It's it's odd because
I know that too. I do in my brain. It

(34:15):
almost doesn't help, but yes, I get that, and it's
you just don't believe it, and I hear it's so
hard sometimes to believe it, and you know, just yes.
I started back then trying to protect my future self
from the inevitable disappointment of love and loss, which turns

(34:39):
out you will never get away from. There's no way
to get away from it. There's no way to save
yourself somehow from the pain of it. The only thing
you can do, and I've know this now, is to
feel it, just like I'm doing now. Just feel it
and let yourself feel it, process it, walk through it,

(35:02):
work through it to the other end. And now that
I understand that fully, I'm a lot better about sharing
with people I love, making myself vulnerable with people who
love me and have shown me that love and who
care for me. I try to do that more often,
but it is always a struggle because what I taught

(35:25):
myself to do at that time is to just assume
that assume that I am an inconvenience, assume that I
am a burden. And it is really hard when you
practice that kind of thinking for years and years and years.
When you decide to start practicing something different, it's like, yeah,

(35:48):
that's you can tell that's the better choice, that's the
better option. But your brain and your body and your
mind are still like, yeah, but we remember this way.
This way is easier, we practice this way longer, so yeah,
still working on it. Oh yeah. I was reading some
of my old journals from seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth

(36:08):
grade and came upon several instances where I wrote Daddy
called me a burden today and I don't know what
to do, and several times like just just writing it
like it's a normal, like Daddy took me to the
park today and Daddy said I was a burden today,
And you know, using that word is something that I've

(36:29):
also come very very close to trying to obliterate. But
you know, unless you go through it, you can't obliterate it.
It's hard. Yeah, one thing that I was struck by
because I did this too, and it's such an unusual thing.
You stayed in school, you stayed after school as long
as possible to avoid going home. First, you did it

(36:52):
so you're sort of very casually, no one knew that
you were just sort of going from teacher to teacher
or classroom to classroom. And then you started to be
part of the clubs. And I did that too. I
was part of like every club you could possibly imagine
after school to avoid going home for as long as possible.
And I wonder, I can't help but wonder why our
lives would have been like without that solace in support,

(37:14):
Like I don't think I would have made it if
I hadn't been in the school plays and in mathletes
and in this writing for the school newspaper. And I
was the manager of the boys varsity basketball team, Ashley, Yeah,
I was the manager of the boys tennis team. Oh
my god, Yeah, my god. I don't play tennis. I
don't even watch play basketball. I don't either. The lengths

(37:38):
that we went to to try to feel protected and useful, yes,
varied lengths. I realized that a lot of the things
that at home made me difficult at school made me useful, right,
And I just wanted to be useful. I wanted to

(37:58):
feel useful. I wanted to feel like less of a burden,
less of an inconvenience. And the easiest way to do
that is to turn yourself into a helper, right helper,
and a police helper and a policer. And I was
that for a while until I burned out, because you
will on that really hard. And you know, my life

(38:22):
is completely different now because I can be honest with
people about how I feel and what I want to
do and what I don't want to do, what I
will do, what I won't do, and I am learning
not to take it personally however they react and realizing
that it doesn't actually, their reaction doesn't actually have anything

(38:43):
to do with me, like it has nothing to do
with who I am. They may not like a decision
that I've made, but somebody not liking a decision I've
made is not the same as me harming them. And
I have to be okay with that. I have to
be cool with that. And that's really hard for somebody
who grew up thinking that, you know, displeasure and love

(39:06):
couldn't live in the same place. Anger and love couldn't
live in the same place. Annoyance, frustration and love couldn't
live in the same place, even though they absolutely do
and always apt in a healthy relationship. Absolutely, in fact,
you need to have both in order to really test
the strength of the relationship. Yes. Yes, From the time

(39:28):
you were very young, your mother was very clear that
if anybody touched you or hurt you, she wanted you
to come to her immediately. And even if you hated
the way your mother spoke about protecting yourself, you were
made properly afraid by her warnings and protecting your body
and that became the number one goal, and by the

(39:48):
time you went through puberty, you felt like your body
was betraying you. Went through puberty very early, nine years old.
How did you manage the feelings about your body betraying
you by this? These changes that people were noticing, and
the idea that your mother was terrified about somebody taking

(40:13):
advantage of you. For that very fact, I just cried
in secret a lot, Like a lot, I was terrified
of my changing body. I was terrified because it was
another thing that was out of my control, and yet

(40:33):
it affected my life so much. Your relationships with your
friends change, your relationships with boys change, your relationship with
your family changes, because, especially like in my family, all
of a sudden, you know, there are people who you're

(40:54):
not supposed to talk to, There are people who you're
not supposed to hug. There are things that you did
two months ago that you're not supposed to do anymore.
And it's you don't know why everything is changing or
what it really means, because the people who talk to
you about it only talk about it with fear and anger.

(41:14):
I grew up with my changing body, with sexuality, desire,
all of those things only being discussed in anger. It
was only you know, you bet not come in here
with no babies. I know you better not do this.
You better not do that, you know, like probably the
most reasonable thing my mother ever told me about sex,

(41:36):
which you know, she gave me three rules when I
was around sixteen, where she said, if you're gonna have sex,
you need to a protect your heart, which means don't
be doing it with just somebody who don't care about you.
Do it with somebody who cares about you. Protect your body,
which means where a condom, and be on birth control.
And she said, and if he's getting his, you should

(41:58):
be getting yours. That third one, I was not expecting
that it's not like but she was very clear, it's
not just supposed to be him, you know, like if
he's getting his, you should be getting yours too, and
that actually those three rules actually set me up to have,
for the most part, really positive sexual relationships and experiences

(42:24):
over the course of my life. But initially it was
all fear, it was all anger. It was like very
clear lies. You know. When I was around eleven, my
mom put a two leader bottle on the counter and
she told me, if you ever have sex with a man,
I want you to know that the penis before sexual

(42:47):
intercourse gets this big, and once it's inside, spikes come out,
Oh my god, Ashley, I listen. But by this time
I was already an avid library kid. I knew that
that wasn't true. I had read every book about sex
and sexuality that I could get my hands on in

(43:08):
the library. So I was like, yeah, okay, that's not
what's happening. But the fact that they wanted me to
be that afraid of it was like terrified. It was
obviously terrified. It messes with the kid's brain to have
sex and a maturing body put to them that way.
When other older women would see my body when I

(43:29):
was around fifteen years old, their reaction was to look
at me, suck their teeth and shake their heads. Oh
my god, you know, like, oh, that's too bad, you know,
because people are gonna be oh, those your breasts are
really big, that's too bad. Like people are always going
to be looking at them, people are always going to
be trying to touch them, like, ah, she's And I

(43:51):
remember them leaning over to my mom and being like
she's too cute. She's too cute, Like that's not okay.
And I just tried to hide. I just tried to hide.
I tried to wear things that hid my body as
much as I could. I loved being in marching band
because it took up so much of my time. But

(44:11):
the thing I hated about marching band is that it
was hot. You had to wear shorts, you had to
wear tank tops and things like that in order to
stay cool in the summertime, and I didn't want anybody
looking at me. Weshley And now we get to a really,
really difficult subject. When you were thirteen years old, you

(44:34):
were raped by a boy, ostensibly someone you knew and
was supposed to have cared for you. You were raped
by a boy in the shed in your backyard. Despite
your mom's hope that you could come to her, you
told no one why. I was convinced that if I

(44:58):
told my mom what had happened to me, there would
be only one of two outcomes. One. I never thought
she wouldn't believe me, but I thought she might blame me,
So that was the first one. Because I knew she
didn't like this boy. I knew she didn't really want
me around this boy, which was part of the reason
why I was talking to this boy to like sort

(45:19):
of say, hey, I can't be around her anymore. And
I just felt like there was a chance she would
be so upset about the fact that it happened, that
she would be upset with me and like be mad
at me. And that felt totally reasonable and feasible with

(45:41):
my mom at that time, and since talking to my
mom from that time, she agrees totally reasonable and feasible
that I would have felt that way. The other thing
that could have happened two of two would have been
that she did believe me and she killed him. Yeah,
she did say she would if yes, that ever happened
to you. Yes, yep, And a little quick math. Lets

(46:06):
me know real quick, I only have two parents, one
of them is already in prison. I've got three younger siblings.
What are we gonna do if my mom kills this
boy and then we have no parents? What are we

(46:27):
going to do? And so I asked myself, can you
carry this? Can you just carry it on your own?
Can you just put it in that place where you
keep all your bad self, all your bad things? Can
you just stick it over there and not think about
it anymore so that you don't hurt everybody else just

(46:50):
because you got hurt. That was my logic at thirteen
years old. Minimize the hurt, Let it just only hurt
you and that didn't work out, because it never does.

(47:11):
Did you consider going to a guidance counselor or any
type of counselor for yourself too, my, even if you
just confided in someone that would never tell your parents.
The middle school guidance counselor who I had become kind
of close to and talked to about things, had right

(47:33):
before all this happened been arrested for sleeping with one
of my peers, Jesus Christ. So I didn't really feel
like I had a place to go to talk to
anybody about what had happened to me. I didn't tell

(47:55):
anybody until UM had a best friend in band named
Brett Brett, and Brett was the first person I told
my band director, mister Caffey. At the time, we used
to have these like band camp was this amazing time.
It is this amazing time obviously for bonding for the band,

(48:16):
but it was also this amazing time because mister Caffee
was really serious about talking to us about loving ourselves
and about putting love in the world and being kind
and compassionate. Mister Caffey is probably one of the first
adults I ever heard talk about vulnerability, and he used

(48:36):
to just talk to us about all those things and
about how important it was that we cared about ourselves
and cared about each other and things like that. And
I had left that first band camp, it was my
first time going, and I was sitting on the bus
with Brett and I turned to him and I was
just like, I have to tell you something, because it

(48:56):
just I realized how much that secret was eating me up.
I realized how much it was hurting me on the inside.
And I trusted my friend to hear this experience and
to love me through it. And he absolutely did, you know,

(49:16):
which is wild for a fourteen year old boy to
hear something like that and have them go, I'm so
sorry that happened to you, and put his arm around me,
and me laying my head on his chest, and him
just like holding me for the whole bus ride back
to you know, our school, and just telling me I'm

(49:39):
sorry that happened to you. I love you, and I'm
sorry that happened to you. Like nobody taught, you know,
And I'm so lucky that I had people like that
around me at that time. The boy that raped you
was in the shed with one of his friends who

(50:00):
watched the assault. Have you ever confronted either of them? No? No,
I am. It's interesting is that years and years later,
I mean literal decades later, I got a Facebook friend
request from that boy, not the boy who watched, but

(50:22):
the boy who did it raped. Yeah, And I accepted
it because I wanted to know, like what is this?
Like what is this? Who are you? Who are you now?
You know? And I'm like combing through his Facebook page
because I first of all wanted to make sure he

(50:43):
didn't live anywhere near me. I also wanted to know,
like who's in your life? Do they know this about? You?
Know what? Like just all of these feelings about this moment,
in all of these ways that I really deeply wanted
to hurt or punish this person for what had been
done to me. And I very quickly realized that like,

(51:06):
oh this is bad, but I'm doing right now this
is it's not helping me, it's not hurting him. It's
me becoming obsessed and obsessive about this person and about
this life you know that I'm terrified of but fascinated by,

(51:29):
because what's it been like for you? What's it been
like for you? After that day. How did you go on?
How did you reconcile what happened in that shit? How
did any of you? And it just occurred to me
that like, I had this moment, I had this, you know,
like opportunity to confront him, to say something, and I

(51:50):
was like, oh, but that would none of that would
help me, None of that would feel good to me.
In my mind, I'm thinking it would feel so good
to confront him, but in reality I would feel like
I was giving him something again, my energy, my peace,

(52:11):
And so I just blocked him and good, Yeah, it's
pretty much it. Shortly after your sexual assault, your grandmother
told you why your father was in prison. And I
know that your grandmother was a great woman and truly
loved you, but she told you in a rather sort

(52:32):
of flippant and unusual way. Yeah. I mean, I never
met your grandmother, but I liked her very much in
the book until that moment. But you know, we all
have our moments. Can you talk a little bit about
what she told you and how she explained it to
you and what that felt like at that moment. She

(52:54):
was upset with me because I wouldn't talk with her
about an argument i'd had with my mom and her
reaction to which was not unreasonable unreaction. Yeah, but you know,
in my family, there's a lot, a lot of a meshment,
a lot of people not being able to understand that

(53:19):
you can love somebody and they can still be separate
from you, like there's still a separate, different person. That
was hard for my grandma too, I think, understand or
to come to terms with. And so her upset with
me not wanting to talk about it turned into her
revealing that my dad was in prison for rape and

(53:44):
that is part of the reason why my mom is
so angry, and so I just need to go easier
on my mom. And she said it to me while
we were eating bad food, like in a mall food court,

(54:06):
and I know in that moment that not only am
I hearing this thing that I've been wanting to know
but also terrified to know, but I'm also not allowed
to emote. If I cry, that's going to be an issue.
If I get mad, that's gonna be an issue. I
can't even let it show on my face that I'm

(54:28):
having any emotional reaction to finding out that my dad
is in prison for rape, because if I emote then
I have essentially said that I can't handle it if
I have any emotional reaction, that means I can't handle
talking about hard things. And it scared me. It scared

(54:53):
me how easy it was for me to just turn off,
because I knew that, like for a long time, I
had had the ability to sort of turn off physically,
because if I was being hit, I needed to be
able to just like let my body go numb and
not feel it disassociate. But I didn't realize at that

(55:15):
until that point that I could also do that on
the inside, that I could shut everything down and relegate
myself to such a tiny tiny portion of my mind
and of my heart and of my body, that who
I am, every anything about me would be imperceptible. And

(55:38):
it scared me how easy it was to turn off.
How did you cope? How did you in your private
moments when it was just you? How did you make
sense of this in any way? I mean, it's almost
you can't. How did you? How did you integrate it

(55:59):
into your psyche the way a fourteen year old does,
which is like you try to find control. You make
excuses for people who hurt you, harmed, you failed you, whatever,
it is you just you try to eat it, you
try to make it yours. If you're an internalizer, you know,

(56:19):
some people are externalizers. They can't hold it in and
everything comes out, everything shows up in some way on
the outside, and behavior in the way they look, like
the way they change their appearance, like all sorts of things,
and all mine was on the inside. I don't think
I was coping. I think that I was burying and

(56:42):
hoping that what I had buried alive stayed dead, and
it wouldn't it's gonna come back. Did the little correspondence
that you had with your dad change at that point
after the assault? Yes, when I found out about the assault,

(57:05):
I did not write to my father again for five years. Wow.
We had a couple of phone calls in between them,
but I didn't write to him for five years after
that because I had questions I didn't know how to ask. Yeah, yeah,

(57:26):
I know that your grandmother told you not to tell
your mother that she told you about your dad. So
you were also walking around now with a secret yet
where you couldn't get any comfort with from No. I
wasn't allowed to seek comfort, which is common inn in
my family, in my community. I mean I think that,

(57:50):
you know, a lot of people grow up in families
where they are essentially taught that the cost of familial
love is denying whatever parts of yourself don't fit into
the existing familial structure. Yeah. Yeah, our family also kept
lots and lots of secrets. You were allowed to act
like something was wrong, but you weren't allowed to talk

(58:11):
about what it was. So somebody would be grouchy or
sad or down and you'd say, how are you what's
going on? They're like, I'm fine, yep, And you knew
that they weren't, but you were not allowed to ask
anything more than that. Yeah, it's wild, because it's like,
that's the inconvenience, that's the burden secrets. Ashley, you didn't

(58:33):
think you were going to go to college, but after
encouragement from Brett, who became your boyfriend, this kind man
who comforted you on the bus, you applied to Ball
State University in Muncie, Indiana, and got in ye, and
you attended. You changed your major six times. What were
the six majors? Oh? Man? Okay, So I came in

(58:56):
technically with a public relations major, which I very quickly
changed to an apparel Design and Fashion merchandising major, which
I then left to become a psychology major, which I
and left to become a Social Studies teaching major, which
I then left to become an English teaching major, and

(59:18):
then I ended with a creative writing major. You realized
that every major you'd chosen involved storytelling and connecting to people,
and quote unquote, you gave up the ghost and became
an English major. I did. I had to. I had to.
And you say in the book that this is when
you felt like you were home, and I was really

(59:40):
struck by the term home, as prior to that, the
notion of home seemed so fraught for you. So this
finding of yourself in this way felt really beautiful. I
did have a warped relationship with the idea of home
because my home was usually the place where I felt
least safe, and it took a really long time for

(01:00:03):
me to understand that I'm my home right. So I
was always looking for a home that like the one
I wanted. So I always had, like, you know, for
a while, it was you know, marching band, that was
my family, that was my home. And then when I'm
in college, you know, and I have these different Majors,

(01:00:24):
and I'm struggling because I feel like I don't have
a home. And then I find the English majors and
I'm like, maybe I have a home. And that was
all just these dots on a line that we're all
leading me towards the understanding that I'm home. I am home,

(01:00:45):
and if I feel good in here, and if I
trust what's going on in here, I don't ever have
to not be home. I don't ever have to not
be in a place where I don't feel like myself.
If I'm honoring what's going on in here, I'm home, beautiful.

(01:01:05):
After graduation, you desperately tried to pursue a regular in
quotes career. But you've written that you were shit at
any your word not minus. You were shit at any
job that didn't involve writing. And you could be asked
to do the easiest tasks in the world, but you
always got bored, depressed, or resentful because you would have

(01:01:27):
rather been writing. And at that time, you were living
in Indianapolis with two roommates, you were working three part
time jobs, you had almost no money. You felt so
deeply depressed that at night you would come home, crawl
into bed still wearing your clothes, slept and woke up
when it was time to go back to work. How

(01:01:47):
did you manage to overcome that depression at that time? Well,
first of all, those two roommates took really good care
of me for the little bit when I was falling apart.
They made sure I had food to eat and didn't
kick me out even though I didn't have my part
of the rent for two months. I also lived across

(01:02:08):
the street from a library, literally my front door in
the library's front door second or like just not far apart.
And I had heard about this book called The Gifts
of Imperfection by Brenet Brown, and I was like, I'm
gonna go check out this book. You know, I got

(01:02:29):
time to read now, you know, because my car broke down.
I got fired from all three of those jobs at
the same time, and it was just not going well.
I get this book and it changed everything for me.
I don't like to act like books are like amana,
you know what I mean, Like, oh, if you just
read this book, everything will be okay. But I will

(01:02:50):
say that what I needed to hear was in that
book at that time, and I started to understand that
there were certain beliefs I had about me about humanity
that were keeping me from being able to express myself
as a full human. I was caught in this thing

(01:03:13):
of like, you do what you can and you just
don't worry about what you want. As a matter of fact,
the less once you have, the better. That's a fun
life exactly. So I realized really quickly that like, I
want things like not necessarily, just like things like not

(01:03:33):
necessarily like a certain kind of car or whatever. But
it's like I want things. I want things in my life,
and I don't think I should have to be miserable
to get all of the things I want, or even
some of the things I want. And I started thinking about, okay,
so what if you could be honest with yourself right
now about what you want, be really as honest as

(01:03:55):
you can about what you want? What do you want?
And I thought, I want to do work that doesn't
make me want to die. I want to do work
that doesn't make me feel like I want to come
home and get in bed with all my clothes on.
And so it was like, so, what doesn't make you
feel like that? And I was like, writing, writing doesn't

(01:04:17):
make me feel like that, it's like, okay, so where
do you want to write? And I have been for
so long, so obsessed with the idea of, like I
want to write like and things like that that, like
the idea of having specifics about where I wanted to write,
felt like it would hurt me, Like, don't have specifics
about where you want to write, because it'll hurt you
when you don't get to do it. And I was like,

(01:04:37):
screw it. I don't want to be scared of disappointment.
Let me just make this list. I made a list
of all these places that I wanted to write for
some day, and I talked online about I was on Twitter.
I talked about like making this list and you know,
wanting to write more and wanting to figure stuff out.
And the editor in chief of Indianapolis Monthly Magazine said,

(01:04:59):
let's get lunch, and I said okay, And we got
lunch and she said, I can tell just from your
tweets that you can tell a story. I have a
small assignment for you. Will you take it? Yes? Absolutely.
I was writing it and like rewriting. It's four hundred words, right,

(01:05:20):
I was just like flipping out about writing it. And
I turned it in They're like great. And then I
go and get a magazine a month later and my
little byline is in there, and I'm like, I did it.
Oh my god, Oh my god, I did it. And
from there it just became like switching my view from

(01:05:41):
you know, how do I not get disappointed? To how
do I ask for what I want and what I
need and not take it personally when people say no?
And that helped me. You got fired from all three
of your jobs and your car broke down, and so

(01:06:03):
you were sort of forced to listen to the universe
at that point, you know, and change whatever it was
you were thinking for your life. What did you make
of that? I honestly believe that when you are on
your path, not the right path, when you're on your path,

(01:06:23):
certain things start to move out of the way for you,
and things that are for you move onto that path
for you because they were already there, because that was
already your path. And I think that when I open
myself up to new opportunities, when I open myself up

(01:06:46):
to wanting things that it scares me to want, that
those things inevitably show up on my path. And it
doesn't mean that it's like somebody standing there, going, hey,
would you like to write a movie? But it does
mean that suddenly those conversations start happening around me more.
Suddenly people who have been thinking to themselves like maybe

(01:07:09):
Ashley would be at this, or maybe she has a
good voice for this, I'm going to reach out, all
of a sudden they actually do reach out. One big
catalyst for moving into the life you have now was
getting a job in New York City at BuzzFeed. How
did that happen? Oh man? So the job at BuzzFeed,

(01:07:31):
I feel like goes through so many things because it's
you know, I had met Isaac Fitzgerald and said Jones
at AWP and years later we're sitting in a bar
in New York because I came there to visit a
friend for a weekend and said, happens to mention that

(01:07:53):
he's looking for a writer for his vertical, and Isaac
is immediately like hello, like Ashley, come on, like this
will work, like this will you know? We could really
make this work? And I thought it we were all
just like talking, you know, people say things and it's whatever.

(01:08:13):
But I got back to Indiana and said emailed me
and was like, hey, I actually think this is a
really good idea. Would you write something for me so
that I can get a sense of how we work together?
And I was like, absolutely, we worked on a piece together.
Next thing I knew, I had a job offer from

(01:08:33):
BuzzFeed in New York and I started the following Monday,
and it felt like a whirlwind. It felt like how
did this happen? Like why did this happen? But it
was also one of those things where it was like,
you have the opportunity to go right full time for
a company that's doing well. Why not give it a

(01:08:55):
shot and just see if you can do this and
make this particular dream come true. Your boyfriend at the time,
now your husband, Kelly, was planning on going to Seattle,
and eventually you were going to join him. But when
you got the gig in New York, he came with you.
Did that surprise? Actually he was already living in Seattle,

(01:09:16):
and I was going to go live with him in Seattle,
like that was the plan. And yes, it totally surprised
me that he was willing to move to New York
because at that time, Kelly had done an internship in
New York his last semester of college and He walked
away from that situation feeling like, I don't think I
could live in New York. I don't think that, you know,

(01:09:39):
I would want to live there full time. And all
of a sudden, you know, we're seeing each other and
I'm like, I got a job offer in New York,
and I was really really thinking that he would be like,
I'm sorry, like I can't do that, Like I can't
make that work. And we're already in Indiana and Seattle.
Now we're going to be in New York in Seattle,

(01:10:00):
like literally across the country from each other, like I
don't think, And there was just no hesitation. There was
no hesitation. He said, Oh, well, I guess we're moving
to New York, you know that quickly. And Kelly is
my first experience of being loved boldly ghostbus and so

(01:10:28):
he just has always had this this certainty about me,
about his feelings for me, about the fact that he
wants to be with me, you know, and that sureness
that certainty has. I don't even know how to describe
what it means to somebody who grew up feeling like

(01:10:50):
a burden in an inconvenience to have somebody smart and
funny and cute and kind who looks at you and
it's like, oh yeah, like you're I won. I won.
It's really sometimes hard to reconcile. And I think that
I thought going to New York a little bit was like,
oh maybe this is the out he needs, you know,

(01:11:13):
like maybe he's been trying to like get away and
now he's like, oh, well, I just can't come to
New York. That's the only reason. Sorry, by, And that's
not what happened. He was just immediately on board. But
that's Kelly. If anybody's on my team, Kelly Stacey is
on my team. That makes me happy. You deserve that.

(01:11:34):
Thank you. So in the meantime, you're working at BuzzFeed.
You're also beginning to submit your work to lots of publications,
and we're getting published. You wrote the piece for a
Refinery twenty nine about your dad that went viral. You
have written since for The Guardian, El Magazine, Out Magazine, Slate, Teen, Vogue,
New York Magazine, Alore, Marie Claire, The New York Times, Netflix, Domino,

(01:11:57):
Cup of Joe, and the list just goes on and on.
You've also taught creative nonfiction writing at the New School.
You've hosted numerous podcasts, including The Chronicles of Now for Pushkin,
the HBO Companion Podcas Hast for Lovecraft Country Radio, Audible's
literary interview series Authorized. You've been named among Forbes Magazines

(01:12:19):
Thirty Under, Thirty in Media, Brooklyn Magazines, Brooklyn one hundred,
Time Out, New York's New Yorkers of the Year, and Varieties,
New Power of New York. Actually, I think it's safe
to say you have made it. Yeah, it's wild. It's
incredible and beautiful. Congratulation, Thank you, Thank you. How and

(01:12:41):
when did you get your book deal? I got my
book deal in the winter of two thousand seventeen. I
finally finished my proposal and my agent and I were
sending it to editors at different publishing houses. I was

(01:13:03):
hoping to hear back from maybe like one or two
editors who had reached out and had interest in the
book before we were even with the proposal stage, and
we ended up hearing from like fourteen editors. Yeah, it's
a big bidding warfare, but it was wild. So it
went to auction and it came down to two publishing houses,

(01:13:28):
both of whom I'd loved. The editor I'd loved the
publishing house. There was, you know, very little difference between
the two except for one of those publishing houses says
and by the way, we gave the proposal to an
Oprah book, and Oprah really liked it and they would
be willing to sign on as the imprint. So then

(01:13:52):
your book would be an Oprah book. And here's what
that means and what it doesn't mean, right, because they
gotta let you know that, like, this does not mean
you are Oprah's best friend of y'all going to hang
out fair enough, but it does mean that, like she
really likes this book and like she picks and so
I was like, okay, now this just became a really

(01:14:14):
hard decision. But I ultimately went with Flat Iron for
a few different reasons, one of them just being how
much I love my editor, Brand Clark. Another one of
them being the fact that when we went to meet
Flat Iron Publishing, the whole crew showed up to meet

(01:14:34):
with me. Peep, everybody from marketing, the publisher, was the
executive editors, like everybody was there to talk about their
vision of my book and their vision of like what
it would look like to publish my book, and that
just made me feel really safe, and it made me

(01:14:54):
feel really cared for. And that continued throughout the process
up until the book pub I mean even now, I
can't even say just up until the book published, Even
now I have felt you did have an interview with it.
I did have an interview with Oprah. Actually, you begin
and end your book with the notion of your dad

(01:15:16):
getting out of prison, but we don't know what happens after.
What is your relationship like with him? Now, let me
try not to cry. I have a really, really great
relationship with my dad. Um. One of the things we

(01:15:37):
both realized is that a lot of the assumptions we
were making about each other when we weren't in connection
were real, Like they turned out to be true things.
Even as I learned about my dad and I learned
the truth about his life and his past, and I
get to I get to know him, and I get
to sort of, you know, I get to be friends
with my dad, I'm also learning that, you know, all

(01:16:02):
of the things that I had hoped were true about
him in terms of his uh temperament and all so
the way he feels about me, that all of those
things were correct. All of those things were right, My
feelings were correct, And so now we can do things

(01:16:23):
like meet each other for breakfast, or we go for walks,
you know, or we just sit around and talk for
a long time about all kinds of things, about everything,
And there's nothing I can't talk to my dad about.
There's nothing we can't discuss, like we're able to just

(01:16:44):
be really real with each other and really honest with
each other, and getting to have that relationship with a
parent at this point in my life. Even though I
have to deal with some of the angrier that I
have about it not coming earlier, I am so grateful
and so happy that I get to have it now,

(01:17:04):
because some people never get it right, some people never
ever ever get it. But I get to be close
to my dad just as I am. I don't have
to pretend to be or not be anything, and he
still treats me like the sun shines out of my ass,
like because I'm his daughter and he loves me and

(01:17:28):
he's always on my side. It's so weird to have
that now, but I'm so happy I have it. I'm
so happy. I know you asked him about his crime
in a letter and this is not in the book,
and He responded by telling you that he had been

(01:17:49):
a young, insecure, deeply afraid man, and he made a choice,
an inhuman choice, because he was not thinking of some
other people as human. And he goes on to state
that he was so wrapped up in his own pain
and in his own fear about his life and his
ability and capability, that he took it out on two

(01:18:09):
people who didn't deserve it, who had their own lives
and their own dreams, and he became a monster so
that he didn't have to become a man. Yeah, it's
a pretty remarkable realization. Yeah, it took a lot of
growth thirty years. How Yeah, do you see what he

(01:18:33):
did differently now? I can see it now with more
of his humanity involved. But the nature of the crime,
the effects of the crime, I understand intimately. And because

(01:18:56):
of that, I know that I can't forgive him on
anyone else's behalf right. I can forgive him for being
gone and not being there. I can forgive him for
the ways his absence has affected my life. But I
can't forgive him for what he did to those people.

(01:19:17):
I can't do that because that's not that's not my right,
it's not my right. So even though as a thirty
four year old woman I now geat like I can
look at the situation and be like, wow, this was
a twenty year old, very unwell man. That adds context,

(01:19:42):
that adds a little more reality to that situation. But
it forgives nothing, It abdicates nothing, because, as my dad
would say, living with the truth of what he did

(01:20:03):
isn't something that's forced on him. It's just reality. He
does live in that delusion where somebody's doing something to him,
somebody's forcing him to live in the past or something. No,
he made a choice and that choice is part of
his past and it always will be. So I don't

(01:20:27):
see it differently in terms of how I feel about
the severity or my ability to forgive. I see it
differently in that now I see who was actually there
and who was actually making those choices in the moment.

(01:20:48):
And yet it fills out the picture. But it doesn't
it doesn't change the colors. He wrote this about your
relationship with your mother in my dream of dream of dreams.
In my fantasy, one day, my mom and I will
have some conversation that breaks everything open and we will
realize that we can be honest with each other, and

(01:21:09):
we can be been with each other, and she will
give me the benefit of the doubt, and she will
understand that my need to talk about true things is
not an attempt to punish her, but an attempt to
connect with her. I'm wondering, has she has she read
your book? No? And she won't. Yeah, I can understand.

(01:21:31):
Why what is your relationship like now? The same? I mean,
it's not really changed. Me and my mom have not had,
you know, like a quarreling relationship since I was probably
like I mean since I was a teenager, maybe like
some of the time in college, very little, because my

(01:21:52):
mom only knows how to relate to me as my
provider in a lot of senses, and once she was
no longer providing for me in any way, she didn't
know how to talk to me. She didn't know what
to talk to me about. And that's when things got
hard in a different way. And I think that, you know,

(01:22:14):
we had to have some come to Jesus moments where
I had to stand up for myself. I really had
to stand up for myself, and once I did, the
relationships settled into a plateau. So we're not close. We

(01:22:35):
love each other. But we're not close, and the fantasy
of being close is one that I've essentially given up on.
I leave room in reality for the small chance that
at some point she decides she wants to do things differently,
and then we go about doing the work of doing

(01:22:57):
them differently. I'm totally open to that. But we're not there.
She's not there, and I'm okay with that because my
life is good. My life is really really good. And
the people who love me and can respect my boundaries

(01:23:18):
and can see me as I am and hold that
and hold me within that, they're all here, They're all around,
they are available and accessible to me. So because I
have what I need, I'm not waiting for her to
give me something different. Actually, I have two last questions

(01:23:41):
for you. Number one, will there be a movie adaptation
of Somebody's Daughter? I don't know, I own the film rights,
you know what it is. I have good taste. I
have good taste, And if you're gonna make a movie
out of my book, I would just like it to
not suck. I don't need it to be the best
thing ever. Okay, it's not going to be. What's love

(01:24:01):
got to do with it? But also you know, this
is an Aequila in the bee, you know, so like
you need somebody who can deal with the source material
and hold on to it in the way that it
needs to be held onto in a project like that. Yeah,
it's such a visual book. You can't help but visualize
everything that's happening as you are reading. So I could

(01:24:22):
see where it might be hard, but I look forward
to the possibility. All Right, My last question. You know
I want this, you know I want this. When will
you be getting your own television talk show? That's so
wild that you say that, I have no idea. I
haven't been doing a lot of on camera interviews in

(01:24:44):
a while, Like It's probably been a year or more
since I've done an on camera interview, and I'm starting
to miss it. I really am starting to miss it.
So I don't know. There's no plans, no tone talk show.
Maybe some Actually, I mean, it has to happen. It
would be a dream. It would be a dream that

(01:25:05):
has to be one of your future next steps. So
putting it out there in the universe beca you would
just be extraordinary. I'm absolutely extraordinary to do that. Ashley
s Ford, Thank you, thank you, thank you for bringing
so much truth into the world in such a beautiful way.
And thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.

(01:25:25):
Thank you for having me daddy. Ashley s Ford's latest
book is the New York Times best selling Somebody's Daughter.
You can find out more about Ashley on her website
Ashley cefd dot net. This is the seventeenth year we've
been podcasting Design Matters, and I'd like to thank you
for listening. And remember we can talk about making a difference.

(01:25:47):
We could make a difference, or we can do both.
I'm Jebbie Mellman and I'll go into talking with you
again soon. Design Matters is produced from the Ted Audio
Collective by Curtis Fox Productions in non pandemic times. The
show is recorded at the School of Visual Arts Masters
and Branding Program in New York City, the first and

(01:26:07):
longest running branding program in the world. The editor in
chief of Design Matters Media is Emily win H
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