Ashley C. Ford joins to discuss her memoir “Somebody’s Daughter,” capturing a complex childhood shaped by family secrets, incarceration, and resilience.
Ashley C. Ford joins to discuss her memoir “Somebody’s Daughter,” capturing a complex childhood shaped by family secrets, incarceration, and resilience.”
Debbie Millman:
In 2017, Ashley C. Ford published an essay with the title, My Father Spent 30 Years 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, 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 C. Ford, welcome to Design Matters.
Ashley C. Ford:
Thank you so much for having me, Debbie. I’m so excited to be here. Years of listening to this podcast, and years of hoping you’d be on it.
Debbie Millman:
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.
Ashley C. Ford:
Ne of the things that makes me happiest, that’s one of the best things I’ve ever done in my life.
Debbie Millman:
Well, thank you. You definitely changed my life. Now I have goosebumps 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.
Ashley C. Ford:
Ooh.
Debbie Millman:
I understand that you’re quite the yacht rock enthusiast.
Ashley C. Ford:
Oh, yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Well, first of all, I didn’t even know what rock yacht meant, and I had to ask Roxanne, my wife, about it. I’m like, “What’s the [yak 00:01:38] rock enthusiast?” I couldn’t even say it. So first, for my listeners that also might not know, can you describe what yacht rock actually is, and what are some of your go-to tunes?
Ashley C. Ford:
This is an age-old question, Debbie, what actually is yacht rock? I have never been able to come up with a definition that really makes sense. It’s more so that I’m just throwing out artists, and I’m like, “That’s yacht rock, that’s yacht rock.” So, Kenny Loggins, to me, is the king of yacht rock, also, the sultan of soundtracks, and Christopher Cross. Would you know who Christopher-
Debbie Millman:
(singing).
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
(singing). Ooh, the girl can sing.
Ashley C. Ford:
Not really, but that was my jam. You know what I mean? That’s yacht rock. Robert Dupree. Even James Ingram is the rare token Black dude of yacht rock. It is a very smooth… somewhere between rock and pop and R&B. You’ve got strong melodies, but it’s usually being sung by White dudes with full beards and Hawaiian T-shirts, 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 stuff like that, but I couldn’t, really. And so I listened to the radio. And if you were a kid in the early 2000s, 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 were soothing, was soft rock radio. And right here in Fort Wayne 97.3 Soft Rock was my station. And I would just listen to it for hours, and there’s just a ton of yacht rock. It’s [inaudible 00:03:55].
Debbie Millman:
So did you make up the term yacht rock?
Ashley C. Ford:
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 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, “This is what I’ve been into. This is what I like, yacht rock. And-
Debbie Millman:
Yacht rock.
Ashley C. Ford:
… that feeling has just never gone away. I love it to this day. Most of the records I own are yacht rock, it’s just… it’s my favorite.
Debbie Millman:
Who knew you could listen to Design Matters and get a pretty substantial history of yacht rock from Ashley C. Ford. Thank you. This is like a whole new genre for me. Today, 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.
Ashley C. Ford:
Thank you.
Debbie Millman:
It is quite a feat. Your memoir follows the arc of your early life. So I really want to just dig right in.
Ashley C. Ford:
Right.
Debbie Millman:
When you were four years old, 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.
Ashley C. Ford:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Debbie Millman:
What kinds of things were you doing back then?
Ashley C. Ford:
Oh, so many things. I had a steady routine for the first time in my life, which I found very soothing. I 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 aftercare, and 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 “supposed to happen”.
Ashley C. Ford:
On top of that, 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 sew clothes 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 are in the house, and I was just out there, doing whatever. And that felt so powerful.
Ashley C. Ford:
I felt powerful when I was on 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, that I didn’t have to share with anybody. It made me feel, I think, like a person. That’s when I started being like, “Oh, I’m a person. I’m a human, all by myself.”
Debbie Millman:
Four years old is around the time we start to actually remember things. Was probably quite good for you that you had that experience-
Ashley C. Ford:
Oh, yeah.
Debbie Millman:
… to be able to rely on-
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
… 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?
Ashley C. Ford:
Oh, man. They were usually stories from the books I read, that I would then turn around and make them about me. [crosstalk 00:08:14].
Debbie Millman:
So she also taught you to read, right?
Ashley C. Ford:
She did.
Debbie Millman:
Didn’t she teach you to read at five?
Ashley C. Ford:
She taught me-
Debbie Millman:
That’s young.
Ashley C. Ford:
… to read, and she very quickly found out that I had a very… what we called 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 start saying what was happening on the page almost exactly, 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 introduce me to her friends, and then be like, “Watch this.”
Debbie Millman:
Oh.
Ashley C. Ford:
“Tell her about tell her about the Bible.” And I would just stay in there, like a recording, and start saying passages, verbatim, from the Bible. And these old ladies would be like, “Oh my God.” They would be so happy and so excited that I could do that. And so it made me want to do it more. And that’s just something that continued throughout my life. I love memorizing things.
Debbie Millman:
Was this one you thought that Billy Ray Cyrus was Jesus?
Ashley C. Ford:
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. You could see him perform at award shows. My grandma is also a huge fan of celebrity culture, and Hollywood and-
Debbie Millman:
She got range.
Ashley C. Ford:
… television and film. She really did, she really did. And so we watched all the award shows every year. We watched all of them; the Oscars, the Grammys, everything. She wanted to watch all of it. And Billy Ray Cyrus was performing Achy 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.
Debbie Millman:
I want to go back in time just a little bit, given that at this point, you’re only four or five. You were actually even younger, around a year old, if that, when your father went to prison.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
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.
Ashley C. Ford:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Debbie Millman:
What’s your memory of first actually meeting him?
Ashley C. Ford:
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.” 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 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 that gate opening, 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 visitation room.
Ashley C. Ford:
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 at that time, I was already in a place where I’d been 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 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. Just being there, and having this moment that felt so unfamiliar but so good, bust made me want to never ever, ever let him go.
Ashley C. Ford:
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. I didn’t know what it was like to walk into a room and have someone light up because you walked into the room. And I want it that, bad, but I didn’t even know it was available to me, I don’t think, until I saw it with my dad.
Debbie Millman:
Your father wrote you letters regularly from prison, and he told you how beautiful you were, and how much he loved you. What did you think of those letters?
Ashley C. Ford:
For a long time, I would say until I was about 12 or 13 years old, I felt like those letters were because my dad saw the 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-
Debbie Millman:
Yep.
Ashley C. Ford:
… was all of these good 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. I wanted somebody to stick up for me with other adults. I just wanted somebody 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, he would just show up.
Debbie Millman:
You didn’t write back frequently, and you’ve said that you didn’t know how to catch someone up on your entire life.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
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?
Ashley C. Ford:
I think there are two things going on in why I didn’t write my dad back, and what I thought was going on in his imagination. At first, I thought it was this just inherent thing. This is my dad, he… I am made from his blood and bones. You know what I mean? That’s my father and so that’s why he can see me, and that’s why he knows me better than everybody else. And then 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 can’t love this version of me?
Ashley C. Ford:
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 through his eyes, in a certain sense, without having to see them through my own, which are warped and marred by insecurity and abuse, and all of those things. It felt dangerous to write back, the stakes belt so 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?
Debbie Millman:
In thinking about that, I wonder if you felt so secure In his continuing to write, that you didn’t have to write, just to keep up your end of the bargain, which I think is a pretty interesting way of looking at the dynamic.
Ashley C. Ford:
Oh, yeah, for sure.
Debbie Millman:
He kept writing, no matter what.
Ashley C. Ford:
I had never really been pursued. I had never had somebody… I never believed that I could make a mistake, or turn away, or isolate or whatever, and have somebody tried 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 to do so, not because they-
Debbie Millman:
Oh, Ashley.
Ashley C. Ford:
… wanted to find me, and not because they wanted me to actually be part of their life, or anything. 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 of me that did really want to like stretch that out, and did want to see like, “Okay, well, what if I don’t write you back for a year? What if I don’t write you back for two years?”
Debbie Millman:
Oh, you’re testing him.
Ashley C. Ford:
What then? What’s it going to take for you to give up? And he just never did.
Debbie Millman:
Your family was very secretive about why your dad was in jail. Did you think he was in jail for murder?
Ashley C. Ford:
I did, for a little while, because I couldn’t imagine what else would have put him in jail for so long. One thing that my family did try to impress upon me and my brother was like, “Your dad was not a guy who was out here in the streets,” so to say. 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. It’s terrible. 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. To me, there are so many reasons why a person might get murdered. And it is not ever excusable to murder, but things happen all the time. I just thought there could have been so many things that happened, so many things that went wrong, so many momentary lapses in judgment that led to that moment. But what my dad actually did, that’s not… you can’t mistakenly do that.
Debbie Millman:
Right.
Ashley C. Ford:
You can’t be… you know what I mean? That’s intentional.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah.
Ashley C. Ford:
There is control-
Debbie Millman:
Yep.
Ashley C. Ford:
… there. And I think that’s what was terrifying to them to have to tell us, was that somebody that made that kind of choice, who was that closely related to us.
Debbie Millman:
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.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
This book is as much about her as it is about your dad.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
You’ve described experience was 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 from somewhere within mama, and did the latter’s dirty work. Ashley, were Where did mother’s rage come from?
Ashley C. Ford:
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 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 pains in her body. And I got to tell you, knowing my grandmother, 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. And my mother went from being a 22-year-old married woman, a mother, to suddenly being a single 22-year-old with two kids under three. Like-
Debbie Millman:
Wow.
Ashley C. Ford:
… that. In Reagan’s America. Okay?
Debbie Millman:
Yeah.
Ashley C. Ford:
So we also have to understand that at this time, the… 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 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 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? I don’t think my mom has ever truly recovered from that time in her life. I don’t know how she would have with no help. Maybe some help from her family. But therapy? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And now, we look at that, and we go, “That’s trauma.”
Debbie Millman:
That is trauma.
Ashley C. Ford:
Everybody needs to be in therapy. Right?
Debbie Millman:
Yeah.
Ashley C. Ford:
But back then-
Debbie Millman:
Yep.
Ashley C. Ford:
… nobody was thinking about that. And so 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 of power, instead of a strengthening of a bond and a relationship. And so because of that, and for other reasons, we just don’t have that foundation, my mother and I.
Debbie Millman:
She often beat you-
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
… when you were young, and the punishments were severe.
Ashley C. Ford:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Debbie Millman:
And you’ve written how when you next did something bad, you learned 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 that point, have an innate sense of badness?
Ashley C. Ford:
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 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 protect my badness. I have to not let anybody see that, because let me tell you what I’m not going to sign up for, another whooping. I’m not signing up for that ever again.
Ashley C. Ford:
Because I didn’t trust myself to really understand what would get me in trouble, and what 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 going to leave out of the equation, because I’m not sure whether or not that’s going to get me in trouble.” And that makes you terrified of being a human being, it makes you-
Debbie Millman:
Yes.
Ashley C. Ford:
… terrified of having feelings, expressing feelings, and I was terrified of all those things. And so it’s sometimes wild to me… When I think about my childhood, and I think about growing up, I wonder like, what… did my mom look at me, and think like, yeah, this is a totally normal kid, 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 dig her. And then she comes home, and I’m like, “Who is this?” But I don’t know if she didn’t have the time or inclination to dig that deep.
Debbie Millman:
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 there was no hiding my badness from anybody who got too close.” And then you 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, 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.
Debbie Millman:
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, 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 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 your future self?
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Are you okay?
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
I’m sorry if I-
Ashley C. Ford:
No, no, no. Don’t apologize for making me feel things. I like feeling-
Debbie Millman:
Okay.
Ashley C. Ford:
… things. It’s okay. It’s okay.
Debbie Millman:
Okay.
Ashley C. Ford:
The reason why that makes me so emotional in this moment, just so you know, is because I struggled with depression, and I still struggle with depression, and I’m in that place right now, a little bit like that, sort of-
Debbie Millman:
I’m sorry.
Ashley C. Ford:
… 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.
Debbie Millman:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
Ashley C. Ford:
And I wrote that, because I felt so alone at that 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 me to go away, and that was a lie. 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, “relinquish any of her power”, 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.
Ashley C. Ford:
So people would invite me over, and she would say, “Well, you can’t go there today.” And I would be like, “Why? They invited me over.” And she would say, “They don’t really want 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 I’m in this place right now, is because I’m realizing that like, oh, that’s what I’m struggling with right now.
Ashley C. Ford:
That’s the thing for me right now, is that I’m having this desire 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 hints to let me know that, and I’m just not picking them up, because I’m not smart enough to pick them up.
Debbie Millman:
Well, I can tell you, 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.
Ashley C. Ford:
It’s so odd.
Debbie Millman:
I know, it’s hard to take it in and to-
Ashley C. Ford:
Right.
Debbie Millman:
… believe it, but as somebody who can give you 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.
Ashley C. Ford:
It’s odd, because I know that, too. I do, in my brain.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, it almost doesn’t help, but-
Ashley C. Ford:
I know that.
Debbie Millman:
… yes, I get it. You just don’t believe it, and I hear you.
Ashley C. Ford:
It’s so hard sometimes to believe it. Yes, I started back then, trying to protect my future self from the inevitable disappointment of love and loss, which turns out, you will never get away from. There’s no-
Debbie Millman:
Nope.
Ashley C. Ford:
… 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 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, work through it, to the other end.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah.
Ashley C. Ford:
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 myself to do at that time is to just 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, 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 practiced this way longer. So, still working on it.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, yeah. I was reading some of my old journals from seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth 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, just writing it like it’s normal like, “Daddy took me to the park today, and daddy said I was a burden today.” And using that word is something that I’ve also come very, very close to trying to obliterate. But unless you go through it, you can’t obliterate it.
Ashley C. Ford:
It’s hard.
Debbie Millman:
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.
Ashley C. Ford:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Debbie Millman:
First, you did it to sort of… very casually, no one knew that you were just 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-
Ashley C. Ford:
Yep.
Debbie Millman:
… you could possibly imagine after school to avoid going home for as long as possible.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yep.
Debbie Millman:
I can’t help but wonder what our lives would have been like without that solace and support. 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.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah, I was the manager of the boys’ tennis team.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, my God.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, my God.
Ashley C. Ford:
But I don’t play tennis.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah.
Ashley C. Ford:
I don’t even watch tennis.
Debbie Millman:
I don’t even watch a basketball. I don’t either. The lengths that we went to, to try to feel protected and useful.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yes. Varied lengths. I realized that a lot of the things that, at home, made me difficult at school made me useful.
Debbie Millman:
Right.
Ashley C. Ford:
And I just wanted to be useful, I wanted to 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.
Debbie Millman:
Right. A helper and a pleaser.
Ashley C. Ford:
A helper and a pleaser.
Debbie Millman:
Yep.
Ashley C. Ford:
And I was that for a while, until I burned out, because you will, on that, really hard. And my life 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 to do with me, 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-
Debbie Millman:
Right.
Ashley C. Ford:
… 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 displeasure and love 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.
Debbie Millman:
In a healthy relationship-
Ashley C. Ford:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
… absolutely. In fact, you need to have both in order to really test the strength of the relationship.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yes, yes.
Debbie Millman:
From the time 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.
Ashley C. Ford:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Debbie Millman:
And even if you hated the way your mother spoke about protecting yourself, you are made properly afraid by her warnings and protecting your body, and that became the number one goal. And by the time you went through puberty, you felt like your body was betraying you. You went through puberty very early, nine years old.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
How did you manage the feelings about your body betraying you by these changes that people were noticing, and the idea that your mother was terrified about somebody taking advantage of you for that very fact?
Ashley C. Ford:
I just cried in secret a lot, 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, 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, there are people who you’re not supposed to talk to, there are people who you’re not supposed to hug, they’re 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 Anger.
Ashley C. Ford:
I grew up with my changing body, with sexuality, desire, all of those things, only being discussed in anger. It was only… “You better not come in here with no babies. I know you better not do this, you better not do that.” Probably, the most reasonable thing my mother ever told me about sex was she gave me three rules when I was around 16, where she said, “If you’re going to 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 wear a condom, and be on birth control.” And she said, “and if he’s getting his, you should be getting yours.”
Debbie Millman:
Wow.
Ashley C. Ford:
That there’s no-
Debbie Millman:
Wow.
Ashley C. Ford:
It’s not just-
Debbie Millman:
That third one, I was not expecting, though.
Ashley C. Ford:
But she was very clear, it’s not just supposed to be him. If he’s getting his, you should be getting yours, too. Those three rules actually set me up to have, for the most part, really positive sexual relationships and experiences over the course of my life. But initially, it was all fear, it was all anger, it was like very clear lie. When I was around 11, my mom put a two-liter 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 intercourse gets this big-
Debbie Millman:
Oh my God.
Ashley C. Ford:
… and once it’s inside, spikes come out.
Debbie Millman:
Oh my god, Ashley.
Ashley C. Ford:
Listen, by this time, I was already an avid library kid. I knew that that wasn’t true. I’d read every book-
Debbie Millman:
Oh my God.
Ashley C. Ford:
… about sex and sexuality that I could get my hands on in 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 terrifying. It was obviously terrifying.
Debbie Millman:
Oh yeah.
Ashley C. Ford:
It messes with a 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 was around 15 years old, their reaction was to look at me, suck their teeth, and shake their heads.
Debbie Millman:
Oh my God.
Ashley C. Ford:
Like, “Oh, that’s too bad.” Because people are going to, “Your breasts are really big, that’s too bad. People are always going to be looking at them, people are always going to be trying to touch them.” And I remember them leaning over to my mom and being like, “She’s too cute. She’s too cute. 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 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.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, Ashley. Now we get to a really, really difficult subject. When you were 13 years old, you were raped by a boy-
Ashley C. Ford:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Debbie Millman:
… ostensibly somebody you knew, and was supposed to have cared for you. You were raped by a boy in the shed, in your backyard.
Ashley C. Ford:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Debbie Millman:
Despite your mom’s hope that you could come to her, you told no one.
Ashley C. Ford:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Debbie Millman:
Why?
Ashley C. Ford:
I was convinced that if I 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-
Debbie Millman:
Okay.
Ashley C. Ford:
… 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 of say, “Hey, I can’t be around-
Debbie Millman:
Of course.
Ashley C. Ford:
… you anymore.”
Debbie Millman:
Yeah.
Ashley C. Ford:
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 be mad at me. And that felt totally reasonable and feasible with 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.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, she did say she would if-
Ashley C. Ford:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
… if that ever happened to you.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
Yep.
Ashley C. Ford:
And a little quick math let me know real quick, I only have two parents, one of them’s already in prison. I’ve got three younger siblings. What are we going to do if my mom kills this boy, and then we have no parents? What are we 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 because you got hurt? That was my logic at 13 years old. Minimize the hurt, let it just only hurt you. And that didn’t work out.
Debbie Millman:
No, it never does.
Ashley C. Ford:
Because it never does.
Debbie Millman:
Did you consider going to a guidance counselor, or any type of counselor for yourself to-
Ashley C. Ford:
My-
Debbie Millman:
Even if you just confided in someone that would never tell your parents?
Ashley C. Ford:
The middle school guidance counselor, who I had become close to, and talked to you about things had, right before all this happened, been arrested for sleeping with one of my peers.
Debbie Millman:
Jesus Christ.
Ashley C. Ford:
So I didn’t really feel like I had a place to go-
Debbie Millman:
Yep.
Ashley C. Ford:
… to talk to anybody about what had had happened to me. I didn’t tell anybody until… I had a best friend in band named Brett.
Debbie Millman:
Brett.
Ashley C. Ford:
And Brett was the first person I told. My band director, Mr. [Caffee 00:46:56], at the time… Band camp was this amazing time. It was this amazing time, obviously, for bonding for the band, but it was also this amazing time, because Mr. Caffee was really serious about talking to us about loving ourselves, and about putting love in the world, and being kind and compassionate. Mr. Caffee is probably one of the first adults I ever heard talk about vulnerability. And he used 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.
Ashley C. Ford:
I 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.” 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. Which is wild, for a 14-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 hand on his chest, and him just holding me for the whole bus ride back to our school, and just telling me, “I’m sorry that happened to you. I love you, and I’m sorry that happened to you.” Nobody-
Debbie Millman:
That’s a good man.
Ashley C. Ford:
… taught him how do that.
Debbie Millman:
No.
Ashley C. Ford:
And I’m so lucky that I had people like that around at that time.
Debbie Millman:
The boy that raped you was in the shed with one of his friends, who watched the assault.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Have you ever confronted either of them?
Ashley C. Ford:
No. No. What’s interesting is that years and years later, literal decades later, I got a Facebook friend request-
Debbie Millman:
No.
Ashley C. Ford:
… from that boy. Not the boy-
Debbie Millman:
Oh God.
Ashley C. Ford:
… who watched, but the boy who did it.
Debbie Millman:
Raped?
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah. And I accepted it because I wanted to know, like, what is this? What is this? Who are you? Who are you now? And I’m combing through his Facebook page, because I, first of all, wanted to make sure he didn’t live anywhere near me. I also wanted to know like, who’s in your life? Do they know this about… just all of these feelings about this moment, and 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, “Oh, this is bad. What 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 that I’m terrified of but fascinated by. 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 shed? How did any of you?”
Ashley C. Ford:
And it just occurred to me that I had this moment, I had this like opportunity to confront him, to say something, and I 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. And so I just blocked him. And-
Debbie Millman:
Good.
Ashley C. Ford:
… yeah, that’s pretty much up.
Debbie Millman:
Shortly after your sexual assault, your grandmother told you why your father was in prison.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
And I know that your grandmother was a great woman, and truly loved you. But she told you in a rather flippant and unusual way.
Ashley C. Ford:
It was messed up.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. I never met your grandmother, but I liked her very much in the book, until that moment, but we all have our moments.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yep.
Debbie Millman:
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?
Ashley C. Ford:
She was upset with me, because I wouldn’t talk with her about an argument I’d had with my mom. And her reaction-
Debbie Millman:
Which was not unreasonable, given previous-
Ashley C. Ford:
No unreasonable-
Debbie Millman:
… reactions she had.
Ashley C. Ford:
… at all.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah.
Ashley C. Ford:
But in my family, there’s a lot of [ameshment 00:52:00] a lot of people not being able to understand that you can love somebody, and they can still be separate from you, they’re still a separate different person. That was hard for my grandma to, 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 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 sent it to me while we were eating bad food in a mall food court.
Ashley C. Ford:
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 going to be an issue. I can’t even let it show on my face that I’m 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 me how easy it was for me to just turn off, because I knew that 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 let my body go numb, and not feel it.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. Disassociate.
Ashley C. Ford:
But I didn’t realize at that… 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 my heart and of my body. That who I am, anything about me would be imperceptible, and it scared me how easy it was to turn off.
Debbie Millman:
How did you cope? In your private moments, when it was just you, how did you make sense of this in any way? You can’t. Did you integrate it into your psyche?
Ashley C. Ford:
The way a 14 year old does, which is, 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. Some people are externalizers, they can’t hold it in, and everything comes out, everything shows up in some way on the outside; in behavior, in the way they look like, the way they change their appearance, 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 hoping that what I had buried alive stayed dead, and it wouldn’t. It’s going to come back.
Debbie Millman:
Did the little correspondence that you had with your dad change at that point, after the assault?
Ashley C. Ford:
Yes. When I found out about the assault, I did not write to my father again for five years.
Debbie Millman:
Wow.
Ashley C. Ford:
We had a couple of phone calls in between then, but I didn’t write to him for five years after that, because I had questions I didn’t know how to ask. Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
I know that your grandmother told you not to tell your mother that she told you-
Ashley C. Ford:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Debbie Millman:
… about your dad. So you are also walking around now with a secret-
Ashley C. Ford:
Yep.
Debbie Millman:
… where you couldn’t get any comfort with-
Ashley C. Ford:
No.
Debbie Millman:
… from.
Ashley C. Ford:
No, wasn’t allowed to seek comfort, which is common. In my-
Debbie Millman:
Right.
Ashley C. Ford:
… in family, in my community. I think that 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.
Debbie Millman:
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 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’d like, “I’m fine.”
Ashley C. Ford:
Yep.
Debbie Millman:
And you knew that they weren’t, but you were not allowed to ask anything more than that.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah. It’s wild, because it’s like, that’s the inconvenience, that’s the burden.
Debbie Millman:
Right.
Ashley C. Ford:
It’s the secrets.
Debbie Millman:
Ashley, you didn’t think you were going to go to college.
Ashley C. Ford:
No.
Debbie Millman:
But after encouragement from Brett, who became your boyfriend, this kind man who comforted you on the bus, you apply to Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, and got in.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yep.
Debbie Millman:
And you attended, you changed your major six times.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yes, I did.
Debbie Millman:
What were the six major?
Ashley C. Ford:
Oh, man. Okay. So I came in, technically, with a public relations major, which I very quickly changed to apparel design and fashion merchandising major, which I then left to become a psychology major, which I then left to become a social studies teaching major, which I then left to become an English teaching major. And then I ended with a creative writing major.
Debbie Millman:
You realize that every major you’d chosen involved storytelling, and connecting to people-
Ashley C. Ford:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
… and “you gave up the ghost” and became an English major.
Ashley C. Ford:
I did, I had to. I had do.
Debbie Millman:
And you say in the book that this is when you felt like you were home.
Ashley C. Ford:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Debbie Millman:
And I was really struck by the term home, as prior to that, the notion of home seemed so fraught for you.
Ashley C. Ford:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Debbie Millman:
So this finding of yourself in this way felt really beautiful.
Ashley C. Ford:
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 me to understand that I’m my home. So I was always looking for a home that felt like the one I wanted. So I always had… for a while it was marching band that was my family, that was my home. And then when I’m in college, and I have these different majors, 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 were all leading me towards the understanding that I’m home, I am home. 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.
Debbie Millman:
Beautiful. After graduation, you desperately tried to pursue a “regular” career. But you’ve written that you were shit at any… your word, not mine.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
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 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 did you manage to overcome that depression at that time?
Ashley C. Ford:
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 have 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 the street from a library. Literally, my front door and the library’s front door-
Debbie Millman:
Your second home?
Ashley C. Ford:
… yeah, were just not far apart. And I had heard about this book called The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown. And I was like-
Debbie Millman:
Hmm, Brene.
Ashley C. Ford:
… I’m going to go check out this book. I got time to read now, 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 a mana, you know what I mean? Like, oh, if you just read this book, everything will be okay. But I will 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 of like, you do what you can, and you just don’t worry about what you want. As a matter of fact, the less wants you have, the better.
Debbie Millman:
That’s a fun life.
Ashley C. Ford:
Exactly. So I realized really quickly that like, I want things. Not necessarily just things, not 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 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.
Ashley C. Ford:
And so it was like, So what doesn’t make you feel like that? And I was like writing. Writing doesn’t make me feel like that. And I was like, okay, so where do you want to write? And I have been, for so long, so obsessed with the idea of, I want to write like, and things like that, that the idea of having specifics about where I wanted to write felt like it would hurt me. 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, “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 someday.
Ashley C. Ford:
I talked online about… I was on Twitter, I talked about making this list, and wanting to write more, and wanting to figure stuff out. And the editor-in-chief Indianapolis Monthly Magazine said, “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 rewriting it. It was 400 words. I was just flipping out about writing it. And I turn it in, they’re like, “Great.”
Ashley C. Ford:
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, 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.
Debbie Millman:
You got fired from all three of your jobs, and your car broke down. And so you were forced to listen to the universe at that point, and change whatever it was you were thinking for your life.
Ashley C. Ford:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Debbie Millman:
What did you make of that?
Ashley C. Ford:
I honestly believe that when you are on your path… not the right path. When you are in your path, certain things start to move out of the way for you, and things that are for you move on to that path for you, because they were already there, because that was already your path. And I think that when I opened myself up to new opportunities, when I opened myself up 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 Ashley would be good 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.
Debbie Millman:
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?
Ashley C. Ford:
Oh, man. So the job at BuzzFeed, I feel like, goes through so many things, because it’s… I had met Isaac Fitzgerald and Saeed 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 Saeed happens to mention that he’s looking for a writer for his vertical, and Isaac is immediately like, “Hello. Ashley, come on. This will work. We can really make this work.” And I thought we were all just talking, people say things, and it’s whatever.
Ashley C. Ford:
But I got back to Indiana, and Saeed 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 BuzzFeed in New York, and I started the following Monday. And it felt like a whirlwind. It felt like, how did this happen? Why did this happen? But it was also one of those things, where it was like you have the opportunity to go write full time for a company that’s doing well. Why not give it a shot and just see if you can do this and make this particular dream come true?
Debbie Millman:
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 you?
Ashley C. Ford:
Actually, he was already living in Seattle, and I was-
Debbie Millman:
Aha.
Ashley C. Ford:
… going to go live with him in Seattle, 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 I would want to live there full-time.” And all of a sudden, 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, I can’t do that. I can’t make that work. We’re already in Indiana and Seattle. Now we’re going to be in New York and Seattle, literally across the country from each other? I don’t think.” There was just no hesitation. There was no hesitation. He said, “Oh, well, I guess we’re moving to New York.” That quickly. And Kelly is my first experience of being loved boldly.
Debbie Millman:
Goosebumps.
Ashley C. Ford:
And so he just has always had this certainty about me, about his feelings for me, about the fact that he wants to be with me. And that sureness, that certainty has… I don’t even know how to describe what it means to somebody who grew up feeling like a burden and an inconvenience, to have somebody smart and funny and cute and kind, who looks at you and is 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. Maybe he’s been trying to get away, and now he’s like, “Oh, well, I just can’t come to New York. That’s the only reason. Sorry, bye.” And that’s not what happened. He was just immediately on board. But that’s Kelly. If anybody’s on my team, Kelly Stacy is on my team.
Debbie Millman:
That makes me happy. You deserve that.
Ashley C. Ford:
Thank you.
Debbie Millman:
So in the meantime, you’re working at BuzzFeed, you’re also beginning to submit your work to lots of publications, and were getting published. You wrote the piece for Refinery29, about your dad that went viral, you have written, since, for The Guardian, Elle Magazine, OUT Magazine, Slate, Teen Vogue, New York Magazine, Allure, Marie Claire, The New York Times, Netflix, Domino, 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 Podcast for Lovecraft Country Radio, Audible’s literary interview series, Authorized, you’ve been named among Forbes Magazine’s 30 under 30 in media, Brooklyn Magazine’s Brooklyn 100, Time Out New York’s New Yorkers of the year, and Variety’s New Power of New York. Ashley, I think it’s safe to say you have made it.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah, it’s wild. It’s-
Debbie Millman:
It’s amazing.
Ashley C. Ford:
… wild.
Debbie Millman:
It’s incredible and beautiful.
Ashley C. Ford:
Thank you.
Debbie Millman:
Congratulations.
Ashley C. Ford:
Thank you. Thank you.
Debbie Millman:
How and when did you get your book deal?
Ashley C. Ford:
I got my book deal in the winter of 2017. I finally finished my proposal, and my agent and I were sending it to editors at different publishing houses. I was 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 done with the proposal stage, and we ended up hearing from 14 editors.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. It was is a big bidding war for your book.
Ashley C. Ford:
It was wild. So it went to auction, and it came down to two publishing houses, both of whom I’d loved the editor, I’d loved the publishing house. There was 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 your book would be an Oprah book. And here’s what that means, and what it doesn’t mean.” Because they got to let you know that this does not mean you are Oprah’s best friend, y’all are going to hang out.
Debbie Millman:
Fair enough. Fair enough.
Ashley C. Ford:
But it does mean that she really likes this book, and she picks. And so-
Debbie Millman:
Wow.
Ashley C. Ford:
… I was like, “Okay. Now this just became a really hard decision.” But I ultimately went with Flatiron for a few different reasons, one of them just being how much I love my editor, Brian Clark, another one of them being the fact that when we went to meet Flatiron Publishing, the whole crew showed up to meet with me. Everybody from-
Debbie Millman:
Great.
Ashley C. Ford:
… marketing, the publishers, the executive editors, everybody was there to talk about their vision of my book, and their vision of what it would look like to publish my book, and that just made me feel really safe, and it made me feel really cared for, and that continued throughout the process, up until the book… Even now, I can’t even say just up until the book published. Even now. I have felt so-
Debbie Millman:
Yeah.
Ashley C. Ford:
… cared for.
Debbie Millman:
You did have an interview-
Ashley C. Ford:
I did.
Debbie Millman:
… with Oprah.
Ashley C. Ford:
I did have an interview [crosstalk 01:13:57].
Debbie Millman:
Ashley, you begin and end your book with the notion of your dad getting out of prison. But we don’t know what happens after. What is your relationship like with him now?
Ashley C. Ford:
Let me try not to cry. I have a really, really great relationship with my dad. One of the things we both realized is that a lot of the assumptions we were making about each other, when we were in connection, were real. 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 know him, and I get to sort of… I get to be friends with my dad, I’m also learning that all of the things that I had hoped were true about him in terms of his temperament, and also the way he feels about me, that all those things were correct, all of those things were right. My feelings were correct.
Ashley C. Ford:
And so now we can do things like meet each other for breakfast, or we go for walks, 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. We’re able to just 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 anger that I have about it not coming earlier, I am so grateful and so happy that I get to have it now, because some people never get it.
Debbie Millman:
Right.
Ashley C. Ford:
Some people never ever, ever get it, but I-
Debbie Millman:
Correct.
Ashley C. Ford:
… 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. Because I’m his daughter, and he loves me, and he’s always on my team, and 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.
Debbie Millman:
I know you asked him about his crime in a letter-
Ashley C. Ford:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Debbie Millman:
… and this is not in the book. And he responded by telling you that he had been 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 his own fear about his life, and his ability and capability, that he took it out on two 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.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
It’s a pretty remarkable realization.
Ashley C. Ford:
Yeah.
Debbie Millman:
It took a lot of growth.
Ashley C. Ford:
30 years.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. Do you see what he did differently now?
Ashley C. Ford:
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 of that, I know that I can’t forgive him on anyone else’s behalf. Right? I can-
Debbie Millman:
Yep.
Ashley C. Ford:
… 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. I can’t do that, because that’s not my right. It’s not my right. So even though, as a 34-year-old woman, I now get… I can look at the situation and be like, “Wow, this was a 20-year-old, very unwell man.” That adds context, that adds a little more reality to that situation, but it forgives nothing, it abdicates nothing.
Ashley C. Ford:
Because as my dad would say, living with the truth of what he did isn’t something that’s forced on him, it’s just reality, it’s just reality. He doesn’t live in that delusion, where somebody’s doing something to him, somebody is 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 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. And yeah, it fills out the picture, but it doesn’t change the colors.
Debbie Millman:
You 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 we can be open 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 read your book?
Ashley C. Ford:
No. And she won’t.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. I can understand why. What is your relationship like now?
Ashley C. Ford:
The same. It’s not really changed. Me and my mom have not had like a quarreling relationship since I was probably like… since I was a teenager, maybe, some of the time in college, very little. Because my 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 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 relationship settled into a plateau. So we’re not close. We love each other, but we’re not close.
Ashley C. Ford:
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 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, 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.
Debbie Millman:
Ashley, I have two last questions for you. Number one, will there be a movie adaptation of Somebody’s Daughter?
Ashley C. Ford:
I don’t know. I own the film rights to the book, and… You know what it is, I have good taste. I have good taste, and if you’re going to 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. It’s not going to be What’s Love Got To Do With It. But also, this isn’t a [inaudible 01:23:08]. So you need somebody who can deal with the source material, and hold on to it in the way that it needs to be held on to in a project like that.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah. It’s such a visual book, you can’t help but visualize everything that’s happening as you are reading. So I could 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?
Ashley C. Ford:
That’s so wild that you say that. I have no idea. I haven’t been doing a lot of on-camera interviews in a while. 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-
Debbie Millman:
You need [crosstalk 01:23:59] your own talk show.
Ashley C. Ford:
Maybe-
Debbie Millman:
Ask Ashley.
Ashley C. Ford:
… someday.
Debbie Millman:
It has to happen. So-
Ashley C. Ford:
It would be a dream, it would be a dream. [crosstalk 01:24:07].
Debbie Millman:
That has to be one of your future next steps. So, putting it out there in the universe-
Ashley C. Ford:
Thank you.
Debbie Millman:
… because you would just be extraordinary.
Ashley C. Ford:
I’m open.
Debbie Millman:
Absolutely extraordinary to do that.
Ashley C. Ford:
I’m open.
Debbie Millman:
Ashley C. Ford, thank you, thank you, thank you for bringing so much truth into the worlds in such a beautiful way, and thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.
Ashley C. Ford:
Thank you for having me, Debbie.
Debbie Millman:
Ashley C. Ford’s latest book is The New York Times’ best selling Somebody’s Daughter. You can find out more about Ashley on her website, ashleycford.net. This is the 17th 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, we could make a difference, or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman, and I look forward to talking with you again soon.