You're listening to How to Be a Better Human.

I'm your host, Chris Duffy.

Today, we're going to be talking to Ashley C. Ford about processing your life through writing.

For me, for years, I have journaled every day.

Occasionally, I might have to miss a morning, but I really try my hardest not to.

And most of what I write in my journal is just completely mundane nonsense that I'm never

going to go back to and reread. It's a lot of entries about needing to clean my desk or how hard it is

to write. You know, it's not exactly Pulitzer Prize winning material. But occasionally,

when I'm writing something about my life, like say, an intro for this podcast, I go back into

an old journal to capture the details of a particular moment,

or the exact wording of what was running through my head on a day in the past. Those journals

can be a source of that raw material. And for me, one of the biggest reasons that journaling matters

is because it's a way of processing my life, of putting words onto the page and figuring out what I think, creating a narrative of what has happened to me.

Now, today's guest, Ashley C. Ford, is one of the absolute best people in the world at this.

She is the author of the bestselling memoir, Somebody's Daughter, which is one of the most beautiful books I've ever read.

It's a masterclass in nuance, empathy,

and making meaning out of even really terrible life experiences. But if you haven't read the book,

I don't want to spoil it too much because it's funny, it's touching, it's deeply, deeply moving.

The basic plot is that it is about Ashley's childhood, growing up with a father who was incarcerated,

dealing with abuse and violence in her own life, and figuring out what it means to have your

love for someone not be based on the worst thing that they ever did. It's a book that's really

impossible to reduce into just a few words. So to give you a taste of Ashley's writing and the way

...