Somebody’s Daughter with Ashley C. Ford

Annmarie Kelly:

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[Music Playing]

I met today's guest over a spilled cup of coffee, we have a meet cute. Usually, I'm the one to knock over the drink. Last time, I went karaoking, the waiter brought my second Moscow Mule in a sippy cup after I jumped up for a Cyndi Lauper song and overturned my first drink onto the floor.

However, when I met Ashley C. Ford, we simply found ourselves staring at a table full of brand-new books that were quickly becoming soaked with someone else's coffee. I pulled a single Kleenex from my purse, not nearly enough to help much. And after the college-aged book seller was dispatched for paper towels, all Ashley and I could do was laugh.

I've heard stories that when Ashley C. Ford went out on tour with a panel of other speakers, the women would fight over who got to sit next to her.

Magnitude, gravitas, centeredness — I don't know exactly what it is, but Ashley has this capacity to look you in the eye and make you feel at ease.

There are times during this conversation today when I share uncomfortable stories about my own past because Ashley made me feel safe. That's what friends should do, isn't it? Make way for your truth no matter how difficult it is. I've decided I want to be more like Ashley when I grow up.

So, Ashley C. Ford is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir, Somebody's Daughter published by Flatiron Books. She's the former co-host of the HBO companion podcast, Lovecraft Country Radio, and the current host of Ben and Jerry's, Into The Mix.

She's taught creative non-fiction at the New School in Manhattan, served as Ball State University's writer and residence and will be teaching the creative non-fiction workshop at Butler University in spring 2023.

Ashley lives in Indianapolis, Indiana with her husband, poet and fiction writer, Kelly Stacy, and their chocolate lab, Astro Renegade Ford-Stacy.

Ashley C. Ford, welcome to Wild Precious Life.

Ashley C. Ford:

Thank you so much for having me here. I'm so much looking forward to talking to you about the book, about the world, about stuff …

Annmarie Kelly:

About representing the Mid-west. Because you and I are, we're in flyover states, but they can shut up about it and they can touch down.

Ashley C. Ford:

You know, as somebody who has spent quite a bit of time now in places that are not flyover states, the biggest difference that I can tell between us and those places is that here, we tend to be, “Yeah, you're right, it's not that great.” But then in those places, the parts that aren't great, if you say that out loud, everybody defends them anyway.

So, I'm starting to think that it's not that those places are better, it's just that the people there are a lot more defensive about those places, and that makes us think, well, they must be that way for a reason.

Annmarie Kelly:

I feel like when people come to visit us in the flyover state, we know that they're visiting us.

Ashley C. Ford:

Yes, for sure.

Annmarie Kelly:

Because they're not coming for the scenery. Like you've got some, I think a bridge or two in Indianapolis. Are you still in Indianapolis?

Ashley C. Ford:

Yep, still in Indianapolis.

Annmarie Kelly:

I'm in Cleveland, we've also got a bridge or two. We've got some sports games, but people have that in other places, they're coming to visit us. In those other places, how can they even know people are coming to visit them because they're coming to see the monuments or the museums.

I was kind of late to the Ashley C. Ford party. I realized I followed you on Twitter for forever without knowing that the I Smash Fizzle. Like I didn't know who you were and then I was — I knew who you were, but I knew you was that.

And I was listening to The Chronicles of Now during the pandemic and you were hosting and I'm like, “Wait a minute, Ashley C. Ford, I know it.” And it was the same Ashley C. Ford, this like same person. Because like a lot of folks during the pandemic, I was losing my mind in the house.

I had to take these long walks and I wanted an escape show, but I wanted an escape show that didn't pretend that the world wasn't crazy, and The Chronicles of Now, we had this amazing … you guys would be like, “Alright, what we're living through right now is not right. We're going to just tell you some stories. It's still happening. Roxane Gay is here to tell you about string or Curtis Sittenfeld is going to give us a story from the point of view of a giant panda.”

It was just these wacky, wonderful stories. And I don't know if you have been told this, but you have the kind of voice that is soothing in a crisis.

Ashley C. Ford:

Oh yeah, I get told that quite a bit actually. Which is hilarious to me because I grew up feeling like man, I wish my voice was more feminine. I wish it was higher. I wish that I had the cute voice or whatever.

Lo and behold, I hit my thirties, and this is the voice that everybody was into the whole time. Which honestly, makes a lot of sense given how much people have listened to me talk when I wasn't saying shit for a really long time.

Annmarie Kelly:

Well, I found your voice incredibly soothing amid that crisis. And then I met you on paper after that. So, I knew you on Twitter, I knew you in the pandemic, and then of course, I met you through your inspiring and heartbreaking debut memoir, Somebody's Daughter, which I've had the fortune to read.

But I'm suspecting that some of our readers or some of our listeners don't yet know that story. So, I'm wondering if you, Ashley C. Ford can give us just a small version of what's your story that you wrote about there?

Ashley C. Ford:

I think at its core, it's just a story about being a child who is a witness to her family's great gifts and great flaws, great tragedies.

It's about what it feels like to be a person growing up in the midst of these big things we talk about as issues, and not about as a personal realities for some like incarceration, depression, assault, but also like a certain kind of humor that comes from growing up in poverty, a certain kind of survival instinct, a certain kind of confidence and independence.

It's just allowing for all of those things to exist at once in one person's story, which happens to be mine.

Annmarie Kelly:

There were definitely times when I was reading that book, Living Inside of that Story with You, that I did not understand how you lived inside of that story with you the whole time.

When I was little and growing up, we would get an allowance, which my mother would steal back. It wasn't called stealing. She would just take it back. And then when I was a teenager and I had my purse with nothing in it but a Bonnie Bell ChapStick, and the money I thought was there, I would go to pay for my movie ticket and there's no money in there because my mother has taken it out.

I just grew up thinking that in a family, mothers could take money at any point. That's just what moms could do. And I was recently years old when I found out that actually that's not, that doesn't turn out to be a thing that all moms do. That was just something that happened in my house.

So, do you remember when you realized that what went on in your house wasn't necessarily what went on in all the houses?

Ashley C. Ford:

I feel like it was a constant discovering of that when I was growing up because at first, whenever I encountered stories or visuals about families who all ate at the table together, or moms who got mad and lost their temper, but then came back and said, “Oh my God, I'm sorry I lost my temper” to their kids.

Or parents who did things like know where you were all the time and if they didn't know where you were, found you immediately, like parents who didn't hit — I thought all of those things were just in books and on TV. I didn't know that that was happening in real life. But then I started making friends outside of my large family, so people who I wasn't directly related to who had grown up in the same culture.

And I think that's when I started being like, wait a minute, wait a minute. I think something different is going on inside of their homes than what goes on inside of my home. It was at first, the eye of comparison in other people's homes was really focused on especially if they had a dad, I was immediately jealous. If you had a dad, I was jealous.

There was probably very little your dad could do or say or anything in front of me that would make me be like you know, maybe you having a dad isn't that great. Because in my mind, it was just “Holy crap, you have a dad.”

But then, very quickly, it became the things that I was envious of or the things that I was like, oh my gosh was the stability and the quiet. “Like your parents know that we have band practice? Your parents are going to drive you every time? Your parents are going to volunteer in the concession stand during games? Like your parents do that. What? Because my parents do not, does not, would not, will not.” It was constant.

And I feel like from a very young age, I like not looked in the mirror and had a discussion with myself, but absolutely, had to reflect on the fact or accept the fact that I did not trust my mother to be right. I did not trust her to do right. I didn't trust that just because she was doing or saying something, that that meant it was the right thing. And I think that that's when I started to feel alone, like really alone.

Annmarie Kelly:

Yeah. And that comes through in your book. It's so interesting because I'm traveling through your book with adult Ashley C. Ford who we're both visiting child Ashley C. Ford, who still seems lonely even though we're both there learning her story together.

The conversation between you now and you then is sometimes just magical and other times, it underlines the heartache because you survived so much trauma, verbal and physical abuse from your mother, as you've alluded to here.

And your dad's gone for decades of your life, incarcerated. And I'm reading your story and even though I know adult Ashley is telling it, I'm still not guaranteed you're going to make it through. I'm still not sure at points how this is going to go even though I feel like there should be a clue because you've written it.

You are a triumph and a wonder man, because I was still not sure we were going to make it out of there. And so, then I kind of wonder how on earth did you survive that to be sitting here now just chatting about it?

Ashley C. Ford:

It's hard for me because I don't think that my situation was that unique. I think that maybe I wrote about it uniquely, and that there were true things that aren't often said that I did not attempt to obfuscate in my writing.

I did not want people to walk away from this feeling like, “Oh my gosh, her mother was so good to her and was this perfect mother of sacrifice, and she was this perfect child of sacrifice and their father had left them.” I mean, all of that is true, but it's more complicated than that.

And I wanted it to be complicated. I wanted it to it to end with like, yeah, being like” How did she come through that? I see how she came through that in one way or another,” but also being like, “Wait, maybe I don't at all get how she came through that.”

Because I think the truth of the matter is nobody does. I don't, you don't. There are people who have been through things that have been much more dire or where the stakes have been higher, who have made it through and done much more amazing things with their life or much more unlikely things with their life than what I've done.

And I don't know how, and I bet they couldn't tell you how either. They might come up with reasons but I think that's the part of us that wants to satisfy other people's curiosity. And it's not the part of us that's being honest with ourselves.

Because if we're honest, what we know is that we just put in some effort. Sometimes it paid off and sometimes it didn't. And I think that that's true for everybody. I also think that there are a lot of places where I got extremely lucky.

I see so many places where I could have been brutalized, where I could have been taken advantage of, where I could have been dismissed, where I could have been thrown away. And I know in so many of those cases that the reason why I wasn't, is so arbitrary, it would piss you off.

Like the reason why I got picked and another kid didn't wasn't about intellect, it was about the fact that I've been talking like this since I was like 14, you know what I mean — earlier, actually. This has been the way I spoke for a really long time because I spent so much time watching TV and reading books. And my favorites were Shakespeare and Oprah.

You get a kid who loves Shakespeare and Oprah at the same time in the third grade and this is what they sound like. And I know how that worked in my favor for adults who prefer their black people like Oprah, and prefer their black kids to talk like they read Shakespeare in the third grade.

I know the doors that that opened for me, and the chances that that gave me that were not available to the kids who had different interests.

Annmarie Kelly:

That is not an easy answer, but I understand what you're saying, and there's so much truth there.

I teach an online course in a prison. And one of the things that comes up for me again and again when it's largely gentlemen in my class, there's one girl — but when these folks tell their stories, what I hear in there is not this huge stark contrast about “I'm so different than they are.”

What I hear is “I drove drunk that time and didn't hit the motorcyclist,” and he drove drunk that time and he did. My mom grew up with mental health issues and got some medicine, and your mom grew up and didn't. Like that's such a thin line and luck and circumstances. I didn't choose what I was born into. Nobody chooses that.

I didn't choose the luck that came my way. You only get to choose what you do in the face of it. That is so frustrating. But I suppose it's also yeah, I don't know. There's something hopeful in there.

Again, I don't remember what page of your book that hope was on. I'm going to have to look again for it. But it's not within our control as we think, but it's not as out of control as we think these lives of ours.

Ashley C. Ford:

I think that we just overestimate the places where we do have control and underestimate the places where we don't. I think that it helps, that I was a kid who was not for whatever reason, attracted to being mistreated. That never felt like love to me. That never felt right to me or familiar to me even when my mother was doing it.

Even when the person who gave birth to me, who made the house I was raised in, when she treated me poorly, I just didn't lie to myself about what was happening. I never told myself this is for my own good. I never told myself that because my mom was able to take those things out on me, maybe that meant she didn't take them out on my siblings. No, I always felt like it was BS.

I always felt like I can understand that you are going through a lot or that you're feeling a certain way, or that life has been a certain way to you, and I can have empathy for you, and I can feel sad for those circumstances. And I can also know at the exact same time that I deserve to be treated better than this.

And that treating me with more kindness in this moment is free. And it's not that I need you to make sure I have my hair done every two weeks and the latest shoes that come out and blah, blah, blah. It's more so like, “I wish you cared about what my day was like, I wish that your concern for me turned into more loving action than fearful action.” That's my wish.

Annmarie Kelly:

I'm interested thinking about the way that you fought against your teachers or spoke up for yourself or the times that you silenced that still, small voice or still, large voice.

I grew up in a home where anger was not an emotion that I was allowed to have or express. My mom had a lot of big feelings and when she was angry, you knew it. The house would rattle, she would be cursing and throwing things in the kitchen. And as children, what we knew about anger was that we were supposed to hide, that we were supposed to give her wide berth.

But we were not allowed to have anger because if we had anger, if I expressed anger, I was already in trouble. You were not allowed to have anger. So, where did you put anger in your house?

Ashley C. Ford:

For a long time, I think I lied to myself about it, I'm going to be honest. I would tell myself things like Ashley, if you let yourself get angry or be angry about this thing or this circumstance that keeps happening over and over, the anger is all you'll have. You won't have anything else.

So, you've got to choose, literally choose to just turn some of this off. You have to be mad about it for 10 seconds and then turn it off, and I was a teenager. So, it's not like that always worked. Like it definitely did not.

But it probably wasn't until my early thirties that I realized that not only was I allowed to have anger now, but I had it the whole time and it would show up in different ways because of the fact that I wasn't allowed to express it.

I also was not allowed to have anger in my home but I can remember being a kid who was so burnt out and exhausted by the end of the week that I couldn't really go hang out with people on the weekends.

I would just either try to nap or I would be in bed watching HGTV and reading and not being able to really get out of bed, just sleeping as much as I could.

And I remember my mom coming to my room when I was laying there in the dark, just curled up and I don't even think I was sleeping. I was so tired, I was just resting. I just had my eyes closed. And all of a sudden, my door came open and I looked out and I was like, what? And she was just like, “I don't like this. Quit acting like a depressed person. Get up, go for a walk.”

And that was the way she showed concern about my well-being or about what was going on. I wanted to be in that moment or what I knew was true in that moment, was it's not that you don't like that I feel this way, it’s that you don't like the way it looks.

And I felt that so much about anger in my household is that my mom, it wasn't that she didn't want me to be angry, it's not that she didn't want me to experience the things that made me angry. She just didn't like the way it looked. And so, I didn't have anywhere to put it.

There were ways that I was deeply, deeply into self-sabotage at that point in my life, and I think maybe that's where I put it. I tried to avoid it at all costs. I was so worried about my anger or what would happen if I became too angry, how I might treat another person, what I might say, that I also became afraid of other people's anger.

Especially about things that I felt like I couldn't defend myself against. Like I'm not a very competitive person, but I win things a lot. I win things a lot. I do well and I hate it. I don't like playing games. I'm not kidding. I don't like playing games. I don't like playing board games. I don't like any of it.

And I hate it because everybody else is competitive, and I'm truly not. And so, when people get upset or mad or when people start to cross that line where the game becomes really serious to them, like they have to win — I will every time, just make myself lose.

I have to, because if I don't and they get angry, I will get angry because it didn't matter to me in the first place, and they probably made me play the game. And so, then I don't like myself in that state because I feel like I'm going to be mean and I don't want to be mean.

So, now, I'm angry about the fact that you put me in a position where I made you angry and now, we're both angry and it’s just too much. So, I'm still working on that. I'm still working on that, and not playing board games with anybody.

Annmarie Kelly:

That's reminded me of an episode of Blackish where they try to play until Dre flips the monopoly board, and everyone gets a hundred dollars.

[Music Playing]

Annmarie Kelly:

It also makes me think then about boundaries, which I think you've talked about. And I don't remember when the word “boundaries” existed in my home. Like you maybe had boundaries for a game of tag or like you weren't allowed to play hide and seek and hide three down in the Baldwin House. Like that was the boundary.

Ashley C. Ford:

That’s the boundary.

Annmarie Kelly:

But there were certainly no boundaries inside the house. Like as I mentioned, mom has some mental health struggles, and even saying that out loud right now, like I grew up with so much shame around mental health.

Like even saying it out loud today, now, when my mom knows and I know that she … it was a family secret we didn't talk about. But if mom was upset, it was like a bad day for all of us. There was no boundary between her feelings and our feelings, they weren't separate.

And like when your mom's talking about like get out of that depression, I feel like there was no boundary. Like she was feeling blamed or she was feeling it was on her. Like oh, those lack of boundaries. And I didn't realize until I was an adult how much I struggle with that still.

Ashley C. Ford:

Absolutely same. Absolutely same. My mom, like we were a boundaryless house for sure. Everything was about my mom's feelings. Like it was really complicated emotionally to be in a home with my mother trying to learn how to emotionally regulate from a person who could not and cannot emotionally regulate themselves. Like literally cannot.

And my mom, when we would try to discuss something, because every once in a while, she would do like the … I don't know if your mom did this, but every once in a while, she would do like the “No, let's just talk about it. Like let's just very calmly talk about it. No, let's just have the discussion.”

And I would think, oh, okay, she really wants to calm me and-

Annmarie Kelly:

Ashley, don't fall for it. No, don’t fall for it.

Ashley C. Ford:

… talk about it, and I fell for it every time. And so, we would start talking about it and I would be very, very … and I realized what was happening was this is not, “Let's be calm and talk about it.” For her, this is, “Let's see how long you can be calm until I make you cry.” Like it's a competition for who can be calm the longest.

But I am a child and you're my mother, and I'm not trying to have a competition for who can be calm the longest. I'm trying to figure out like how do we communicate with each other? How do we understand each other? How do we talk to each other?

But my mom has no concept of argument or disagreement that leads to solution. She only has a concept of argument or disagreement that leads to one person being blamed and one person not. And as the parent, she was just never going to be the one who was blamed ever.

And so, it was constant that we would have this thing of like her either trying to make me cry, telling me that I'm a way too sensitive person because I cry. Or if I don't cry, then I wasn't affected, which meant I wasn't listening at all.

So, then it would be like, if I never cried, well, then, the argument isn't over. If I didn't cry, then she might take a break, but she'll be back and it'll be the same issue, the same subject. And it'll be like we never took a break in the first place.

She'll just come into my room and be like “So, I was just thinking about what you said earlier about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And I would be like, “This is hours later,” but I didn't cry, and I didn't have the big emotional reaction she expected from me. And she would not stop until I did.

Annmarie Kelly:

Oh my God, I'm exhausted thinking about this. Just because you grew up without the boundary with my feelings then, and your feelings begin, like it's all blurry and confusing. I feel like at least what has happened for me, is that I would just like stuff that down.

“What feelings? I don't have any feelings. There's nothing to see here. Like whatever you want, whatever you want.” Like to grow up like having no … there's no boundary between us. Like whatever you want is what I want.

“Are you hot or cold in the car? Because whatever you are is what I am.” It doesn't matter how cold you are or how hot I am in the car — whatever you feel is what I feel, and I got to be the same.” Like that's something I'm still working on.

Ashley C. Ford:

My mom taught me that love was giving myself away. I honestly used to think that the best thing about me, like my major selling point as a partner in a relationship was how little I needed from anybody at all. And not even just needed in terms of like need from you as my partner, but also just needs.

“Like, oh, I don't need a lot of space, I don't need a lot of food. I don't need a lot of money. I don't need a lot of this.”

It's like just trying to make my needs so small that like anybody could just sort of like fit themselves into like the space I made. Like there was no trying to smooth out all the curves in that space that would've like implied specificity or particularity, just smooth it all out so that anybody can get in there.

Because that's the only way I thought that I would or could be loved because I didn't know anything different. The first person who was supposed to love me, like I was everything did not do that very well. And so, I'm having to redefine what love looks like.

Annmarie Kelly:

I mean, I definitely, I see that in the book in a couple of places and I know your book has been written about and I've read articles, but that story that your grandma tells you about the snakes — your grandmother is also an adult we meet in this book and she sets some snakes on fire as grandmothers want to do. And she sees the snakes and they're all tangled together. And I wrote this down, I'm sure.

You're watching the snakes that … “These things catch fire without letting each other go. We don't give up on our people. We don't stop loving them not even when we're burning alive.”

And when you're taught that that's what it means to love, to hold onto the flaming thing and catch fire yourself, that that's what love is — I mean, that is one version of love and I think we've all watched a movie like that, but that isn't what love is like on the day-to-day. Every day shouldn't feel like you're burning to death, holding onto the person that you love.

Ashley C. Ford:

I've discovered that love is supposed to feel like it's that moment when like I am feeling very, very, very alone and it's scary. And I look over at this person and not only are they there, but I'm glad they're there. Like truly glad, truly, deeply glad they're there.

I grew up in a community that prioritized the obligation of bloodline over the reality of behavior. On a day-to-day basis, I know that I can't sustain that. And I also know at this point in my life, that I don't want to be alone. I like having people around. I like having people in my life, and I believe that nobody is my last option or my last shot at being well loved, nobody.

Because A, I can always love myself well, and B, there're like 7 billion people in the world. Like 7 billion.

Annmarie Kelly:

I think it's fantastic, that is good math. I wonder if the constancy of your dad who was in jail the whole time you're growing up — but the constancy of the way he writes to you throughout the book, there's never a doubt in my mind that this man who is not able to have a relationship with you, he's physically not in your life, but that he loves you, and is proud of you and is on your side.

And that you have this steady drumbeat throughout the pages of this book, and I can only assume throughout the pages of your life where you knew that love could be better than what you had at home because you had evidence of it on a page.

Ashley C. Ford:

My dad, in those letters and cards, the only thing he could give me by that point was the option of a story I didn't see in front of me. My dad really opened up to me the idea that things were happening in the world, things were possible, that you don't necessarily see right in front of you, that you don't necessarily understand, but it's true.

Because it was true that I never for a second thought that my dad didn't love me. Like in my whole life, I don't have a memory of ever thinking maybe he doesn't care or maybe he doesn't love me. Maybe he doesn't think I'm the best. Maybe he doesn't think I'm beautiful. Maybe he doesn't think those things. I just had no reason to think that might be true.

The only story I had about my dad's love for me, the only story he gave me was one of unconditional love. And it felt just the reality of that or even the fantasy of that because at the time, there wasn't really a way for him to show up and prove that to me in any real way.

So, the reality of that from his end and the fantasy of it from my end built a really gorgeous story, A truly gorgeous story about what love could be and what love could feel like. And I didn't want anything less than that.

Annmarie Kelly:

When I hear you talk about your mom, both in the book and when I've heard interviews, you also talk about loving your mom. And I think that I understand this because I have a flawed relationship with my mother, but I love my mother.

And I know some of that is duty, I know I'm supposed to love my mom and I don't want to be a person … but I also know that my mom's relationship with her father was really flawed, and a lot of what my mom learned to be, she didn't choose that either.

I'm one of those people who believes for the most part, people are doing the best that they can. And that doesn't mean that I need to share my full story. That doesn't mean that I need to open myself to be hurt. Like I don't go with like an open heart all the time, but I love my mom. Do you love your mom?

Ashley C. Ford:

Oh, for sure. For sure, I love my mom. I love her so much. I recently told somebody I love my mom so much that I trust her to do her own work. That's how much I love my mom.

Like I think what's hard for other people sometimes when I talk about my mom or when I talk about the way our relationship is, is that it's heartbreaking for them in a lot of cases because they're like, “Oh, it's not supposed to be like that with your mom.”

And I'm like, “No, it's not like that with your mom. Or it's not like that in your fantasies of a mom,” but it is like this with my mom. And so, yes, I do love her. I love her so much, but I also accept her as she is. I don't lie to myself about what I know to be true about the repeating behaviors and patterns of my mother.

I love her as she is, which does not require me to lie about who she's been to me. And I think that's hard, that's a hard concept for a lot of people to accept. I think that there was a time for me and my mom to build a certain kind of relationship that included a foundation of closeness and understanding and care, and that time has come and gone.

And that doesn't change the fact that she's my mother, and it doesn't change the fact that I'm her daughter. And it doesn't change the fact that our relationship could change somewhere down the line.

But if I start lying to myself about who she's been to me in the past and who she is to me now, I am setting myself up for a world of hurt and disappointment unlike any other, because nobody can hurt you like your mom. Nobody.

Annmarie Kelly:

And I'm not going to gaslight myself the way I've been gas lit. You don't want to make that mistake. We already know what that looks like, what that sounds like. We've already been told that what happened didn't happen, and we've fallen for that.

So, just the idea that just be truthful about it and that love can still exist with someone who hurt you. It doesn't mean that you have to set yourself up to be hurt again by them. I have some healthy boundaries with my own mom now, where they don't always make sense to other folks. But they make real good sense to me, and they are safe.

Ashley C. Ford:

I heard somebody say on TikTok and I like totally agree with it. And yes, it was definitely on TikTok. It was like some guy.

Annmarie Kelly:

Everything on TikTok is true.

Ashley C. Ford:

And it was just some guy. He wasn't anybody's therapist or anything, it was just some guy. And he said, “My boundaries are not an attempt to push you out of my life, they're an attempt to keep you in my life.”

Annmarie Kelly:

What channel was that I got to follow him? Keep you in, not push you out?

Ashley C. Ford:

But I was thinking about it and at first, I was like, “What?” And I was like, “Oh my God, that's absolutely true.” I don't have boundaries with anybody I don't mess with and who I don't like. I don't have boundaries with them. I have like, they're not around. I don't talk to them. That's what I have with them.

The only people who I talk boundaries with, have boundaries with, discuss boundaries with, are people who I am trying to hold on to. I am trying to keep them in my life because I love them. Because I see the good, because we have a history that I'm not ready to let go of because of whatever, like the boundaries are like medicine.

Annmarie Kelly:

Okay. So, shout out to the random TikTok guy who … I mean, boundaries are for what we do to keep people in our lives. I have not thought of that.

Ashley C. Ford:

Yes. It's not to push you out. People think of boundaries, it's like a door. It's like people are like, “When you see my front door, do you think it's just there to keep you out? Or is it also there to keep like the most precious things to me protected on the inside?” And a closed door is not the same as a locked door, and the locked door is not the same as a wall.

Annmarie Kelly:

Oh, that's most excellent. I'm loving that. Aright, shout out to the TikTok guy. This is probably a strange question to ask you towards the end of a conversation, but how do you interview someone?

I've read interviews that you've done with Serena Williams, with Missy Elliot, with Anne Hathaway. How do you keep your cool and not sweat like I'm doing here through two shirts? Like how do you get them to unfurl and let their guard down? How do you interview someone?

Ashley C. Ford:

First of all, I sweated through both my outfits when I interviewed Serena Williams and Anne Hathaway, I just want to say. And probably the only reason I didn't sweat through my outfit when I visited Missy, is because we were in a highly air-conditioned recording studio. So, that's the only reason it didn't happen then.

I sweat through everything when I'm interviewing these people, but I'm also a former child who was traumatized. So, I am great at keeping a straight face as I am spinning on the inside. And to be perfectly honest, I find in those moments, that two of the inclinations that I have when I talk to anybody immediately come up.

One is the inclination to have the person I'm talking to be comfortable. And the second is the inclination to talk to the other person, like they're a human being.

Annmarie Kelly:

Human, I'm writing that down.

Ashley C. Ford:

So, when I'm interviewing like a Serena Williams, a Missy Elliot, a Kamala Harris, what I'm having in that moment is really an opportunity to get the story, get my questions asked, let my curious brain take over, but also, have a moment with a person who never really gets to feel like they're just a person.

And I get to like look for the moment where they get there with me. And that is always a beautiful special thing when all of a sudden, this person feels super comfortable, and they feel like maybe they're talking to a friend or making a friend. And you get to catch a second of that before they inevitably pull it back because they've gotten media training and they know that that's how you get caught up and say things that you shouldn't have said.

But when I'm sitting with a person, I'm feeling their energy. I'm seeing like where maybe they can go, but they're a little uncomfortable versus something that's terrifying. I don't want somebody to be terrified with me.

So, I leave the investigative journalism to those journalists and the entertainment, getting to know you, lifestyle journalism, that's me.

Annmarie Kelly:

I love it. I love it. Oh, thank you for that. I'm going to need a do over on this whole this thing by the way and … just that means we have to talk again sometime.

We always close with just some fun fan favorite little questions that maybe to kind of tackle things we didn't get to in our serious talk. These are just multiple choice, you pick one.

Coffee or tea?

Ashley C. Ford:

Tea.

Annmarie Kelly:

Mountains or beach?

Ashley C. Ford:

Mountains.

Annmarie Kelly:

Dogs or cats?

Ashley C. Ford:

Dogs.

Annmarie Kelly:

Golden Girls or The Joy Luck Club?

Ashley C. Ford:

Oh my God. I think I have to go with the Golden Girls, but I'm not happy about it.

Annmarie Kelly:

I know, I know. I thought you wouldn't be. I mean, like-

Ashley C. Ford:

That's the rudest question I've ever done.

Annmarie Kelly:

That's such a gotcha question. That's gotcha journalism at its worst.

Blanche, Rose, Dorothy, or Sophia? Like which speaks to you?

Ashley C. Ford:

Dorothy.

Annmarie Kelly:

Ooh, exactly. I think I spent a whole lot of years trying to be a Blanche, but deep down, Dorothy.

Ashley C. Ford:

Dorothy was it, the whole time.

Annmarie Kelly:

But shout out to the Joy Luck Club because we love you.

Ashley C. Ford:

We do.

Annmarie Kelly:

So good. Although I think you were a little too young to be watching that. I was thinking of something else.

Ashley C. Ford:

I definitely was. I 100% was too young to be watching it. But shout out to me for even as a child, being like, “Great film, great film. Two thumbs up.”

Annmarie Kelly:

Hummingbird or Jackhammer?

Ashley C. Ford:

Hummingbird.

Annmarie Kelly:

Kenny Loggins or Christopher Cross?

Ashley C. Ford:

Kenny Loggins.

Annmarie Kelly:

Cracks me up every time I hear you say that.

Ashley C. Ford:

It's a hard one too though.

Annmarie Kelly:

So good, yacht rock. Lois Lowry’s, the Giver, or Lauri Halse Anderson's, Speak. What? Who's writing these questions? That's not even a choice. I don't even think … look at it. That's a tie. Those are very different books.

Ashley C. Ford:

They're very different. And I would say it's a tie, but if I had to choose, I'd definitely choose Speak. I’d have to.

Annmarie Kelly:

Did that book come to you at the right time? Did you-

Ashley C. Ford:

That book came to me at the exact right time and continue to show up in my life in really amazing ways. I actually got to write the forward for the 20th anniversary edition of Speak, which was one of the coolest things I had ever done in my life.

Annmarie Kelly:

I think your book is going to be the kind of book that comes to people at the right time too. When I think about the way I felt reading Speak the first time, and the way I felt reading this book that you created, I think it's going to find its way to people when they need it before they realize they need it, but your book is a gift, as are you.

Ashley C. Ford:

Thank you, thank you.

Annmarie Kelly:

I have three more questions. Alright, these are fill in the blanks. If you weren't working as a writer, what would you be?

Ashley C. Ford:

A nanny.

Annmarie Kelly:

Like Nanny McPhee or Mary Poppins, or are you a different sort of nanny?

Ashley C. Ford:

You know what, the truth of the matter is, like I was a nanny in a really specific situation, and it was amazing and I would probably hate doing it for anybody else. But if I can go back to being a nanny in that specific situation, that would definitely be my second favorite job, for sure.

Annmarie Kelly:

Love it. Alright. What's something quirky that people don't always know about you? A like, a love, a pet peeve. Something weird.

Ashley C. Ford:

I know the Hebrew alphabet — [Speaking Hebrew].

Annmarie Kelly:

Why do you know that?

Ashley C. Ford:

I learned it in the summer of 2006.

Annmarie Kelly:

It was just still there.

Ashley C. Ford:

I worked at a camp with a bunch of people who were from Israel, and I basically was like, “Hey, can you guys teach me Hebrew?” And they taught me some, and specifically, the alphabet, I held onto a couple other pieces here and there, but it was fun.

At the end of the summer, they threw me a bat mitzvah and gave me a Hebrew name. It was really sweet.

Annmarie Kelly:

Oh wow. What's your Hebrew name?

Ashley C. Ford:

Havah Ore.

Annmarie Kelly:

Do you know what it mean?

Ashley C. Ford:

It means woman of light. It’s very sweet.

Annmarie Kelly:

That seems exactly right. Ah, alright, last one. If we were to take a picture of you really happy and doing something you love, what would we see you doing?

Ashley C. Ford:

Oh, man. Dancing or running around with kids, that's pretty much it.

Annmarie Kelly:

To Christopher Cross or Kenny Loggins?

Ashley C. Ford:

Yes, or talking about like some celebrity lore that I love that you've never heard about, like all the details of Shania Twain's second marriage.

Annmarie Kelly:

Oh, okay. You're going to have to come back. We'll just do a whole … we’ll only talk about that. Making a note right here. That's excellent.

Oh my gosh, Ashley C. Ford, thank you so much for making time today. I know that you’re pulled in many, many more important directions and that you were probably bamboozled into being here today.

But we're so grateful that you were willing to spend even a few moments. You probably saw this on your calendar. You're like, “What the hell?” And I'm just grateful that you're here with us. Thank you.

Ashley C. Ford:

This was super fun. Thank you for having me.

[Music Playing]

Annmarie Kelly:

Uh, everybody, Ashley Ford's memoir is called Somebody's Daughter. You can find it wherever books are sold. Just go out, grab it, buy it, give it to everyone you know. You will not be sorry. You might be sorry like occasionally, but then you'll be like whole and healed and just like amazed to be living and alive at the time when this woman is living, and alive.

To everybody listening, we are wishing you love and light. Wherever this day takes you, be good to yourself. Be good to one another, and we'll see you again soon on this wild and precious journey.

Voiceover:

Wild Precious Life is a production of Evergreen Podcasts. Special thanks to executive producers, Gerardo Orlando, and Michael DeAloia, producer Sarah Willgrube, and audio engineer, Ian Douglas.

Be sure to subscribe and follow us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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