Dear Ashley: A Father's Reflections and Letters to His Daughter on Life, Love and Hope

By Don Blackwell and Michael E. Berrett

In this soul-stirring book, a parent offers support, advice, and honest self-examination as his child recovers from a life-threatening eating disorder.
 
Events wholly beyond our control can sometimes abruptly and profoundly interrupt our life journeys and the journeys of those we love. Often, in the face of great physical or emotional trauma, we become paralyzed by fear and uncertainty.
 
Several years ago, one of those events drove Don Blackwell’s daughter to death’s doorstep. Thanks to her courage in the midst of suffering, Don realized that such events can also serve as opportunities for reflection and growth. Taking a step back from the heartbreak of the moment and reflecting on the matters of the heart that surround those events, they can lead to a deeper understanding of ourselves, of those we love and of the human condition.
 
Dear Ashley is a collection of personal reflections like these, and the intimate father/daughter letters used to convey them—shared in the hope that the unique perspective they offer will provide guidance, understanding, and healing when life’s challenges inevitably come knocking on your door.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781614483304

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

A few years ago, while sitting in a local church listening to the Old Testament story of Moses and the burning bush (Exodus 2:23–3:20), it occurred to me that maybe God is over the whole burning bush thing. Oh sure, there undoubtedly still are life situations where those involved experience a burning bush moment. However, my sense is that, more often than not, God chooses to be much more subtle when it comes to showing His face to us and that we, in turn, are called upon to be much more sensitive to and perceptive of His presence in the world and His efforts to provide guidance to us on our life journeys. As I started to look at my life through the prism of that possibility, I began to see seemingly ordinary people and events in my and others’ everyday lives in an entirely different and extraordinary way.

A CASE IN POINT: THE BABY

Our now 24-year old daughter, Ashley, who, for the better part of five years fought what quite literally became a life-and-death battle with anorexia nervosa, has never been very fond of children, particularly infants. I’m not entirely sure where or why her aversion first began, but it’s real. In fact, if you were to believe what she’s had to say on the subject over the years, her aversion has, at times, bordered on open hostility. So you can imagine my surprise, when, in the days leading up to my church pew revelation, I received a call from her gushing about a brief experience she had earlier that day with a baby, whom a friend had asked her to hold during family visitation at the treatment facility where both of them were residents at the time. She too was surprised when the baby took to her almost immediately. He had smiled from ear to ear while she was holding him, reached out his arms to her lovingly and enthusiastically, and when the time came for him to be returned to his mother, he insisted on hugging her not once, but twice.

The smile in her voice while recounting the day’s events was evident even over the telephone, a brief but no less welcomed change in a spirit that, in the preceding months, had been repeatedly ravaged to the point of despair by an insidious and extremely complex disease that often left our daughter, a young woman once steeped in faith, questioning the very existence of God, if not openly suggesting that He had abandoned her entirely.

Still, I didn’t think too much of it at the time—reluctant to place too much importance on what seemed like a relatively commonplace event in the midst of the gathering storm that had characterized her disease—that is until several days later in that church pew, when, looking through my new-found prism, I saw her experience with the baby in a completely different light. I rushed home from church and quickly sent my daughter the following note:

Dear Ashley:

I was thinking about that baby you told me about last week, the one who hugged you so lovingly and enthusiastically, and then did it again—just in case you missed it the first time! Truth is, Ash, I think both of us may have missed it the first time, but it is very clear to me now: What if it was no accident that the baby found his way into your unsuspecting arms? What if that adorable little child was the manifestation of the God who created and is committed to protecting you? What if it was His way of telling you: I am here for you, Ashley, I love you, and I will never abandon you?

With All My Love,

Dad

And so began my journey…

The Hurt

CHAPTER 1

On Loneliness and Intimacy

(Dealing with it just like all the other kids—or not)

I’ve always envied people who are able not only to remember the names of many of their elementary, middle and high school classmates, but who still count some of them among their closest friends. I have very few memories of my childhood and early adolescence, let alone of those outside my immediate family who shared those periods of my life with me—inside or outside the classroom. I suppose part of that is a by-product of having grown up in a home with a father whose job kept the family constantly on the move from one city to the next. Knowing that another move to a distant city was always just around the corner probably didn’t have a significant impact on me in the early years, but, over time, it made it increasingly difficult to develop or even want to consider developing the kinds of close friendships that I suspect often arise between those who, year after year, are fortunate to share the experiences of growing up in a common community.

I also don’t remember my mom and dad socializing much with other families who had children our age or taking other affirmative steps to help facilitate our getting acclimated to our new surroundings and making new friends. To the contrary, my recollection is that my brother, sister and I were largely on our own where relationship-making and building was concerned, and if I’m to be honest, we weren’t afforded much in the way of a model as to how to make that happen or what a healthy relationship between a man and a woman, a man and a man, a woman and a woman, brothers and sisters or a parent and a child was supposed to look like. I did, however, have a very clear picture as to what healthy relationships did not look like. Simply put, there was a lot of loneliness and a lack of intimacy in my childhood home.

Initially, I tried to fill that void with activities that I knew would keep me busy and out of the house for extended periods of time and which weren’t dependent on others’ availability—sports like golf and bowling. Sometimes, I would spend hours hitting plastic golf balls from one sprinkler head to the next in our front yard or take a shag bag out to an adjacent easement, where I would pound balls between telephone poles that Florida Power & Light had conveniently placed 150 yards apart until it was too dark to find them in the seldom mown grass. As I grew older, a nearby driving range and practice facility that was lit in the evenings became my second home—my refuge. In fact, that was the place I spent what was to have been the night of my high school senior prom—a long story for another