All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [209]
Several people who are exceedingly special to me took the time to read portions or all of the manuscript, offering sensitive, nuanced feedback from their deep expertise and souls. Ted Klontz, PhD, Tennie McCarty LCDC, ADC III, CEDC, CAS, Gloria Steinem, Sue Monk Kidd, Carol Lee Flinders, PhD, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu: I l love each of you, and you have changed my life, especially because your audacious authenticity emboldens my own.
Ted and Tennie, in particular, have given me as an adult what I so often needed as a child, “a good listening to.” Thank you for taking my calls, night and day, and giving me that safe container in which to process, heal, and grow, and the tools that work under all conditions. I hope I can give away to others a modicum of what you have so freely given to me.
My time at the Harvard Kennedy School was enriched by powerful relationships with faculty and students, and supported by a nurturing administration. In particular, I honor and thank Professors Marshall Ganz (my glorious advisor), Bernard Steinberg, Diane Rosenfeld, Martha Chen, and Sofia Gruskin, and Ambassador Swanee Hunt, for not only their devoted scholarship of the highest caliber, but how their work and study is motivated by, and infused with, the unapologetically spiritual belief that every single individual is of infinite worth, and that the base must be empowered. Moral leadership, the role of narrative in building social movements and creating peace, eradicating gender violence, economic empowerment of the poor, health and human rights: I was the luckiest student in the world. In addition to these and many other professors, I am indebted to my classmates: your diversity (my midcareer Masters Public Administration group represented ninety-eight countries), your brilliance, your earnest diligence, your humility in sharing how at times you, too, were overwhelmed by everything going on in that school of copious abundance, and your unabashed belief that we can change the world, all while helping me know that while no one can play my role in the struggle for peace, I never have to fight alone. I especially acknowledge my feminist social justice cohort: You light me up. Whether in the classroom, or in corridors where great moments often spontaneously transpired, during office hours, or off campus for tea or “dinners for seven,” Harvard was a constant source of stimulation, inspiration, reflection, and challenge. Thank you, Professor Volnay Gay, for having suggested the School to me; I never would have dreamt of it for myself.
Thank you to friends such as Michelle McGrath, Bobby Shriver, and Seane Corn, who graciously permitted what should be private elements of our friendship to be published. Such are the hazards of friendship with a famous person, and I appreciate your trust in allowing me to share aspects of our conversations and interactions.
I thank my entire family, living and ancestral, American and Scottish, perhaps most especially my dad, Michael Ciminella. He withstood numerous inquiries from both Maryanne and me that necessarily rehashed the darkest and most painful aspects of our family’s past. His fortitude in repeatedly sharing, devoid of all defensiveness or attempts to duck his former shortcomings, is remarkable. Both my mother and he have given me the gift I have come to believe every child deserves: having her reality and experiences while growing up validated, understanding that a day in the life of a child is very different from a day in the life of an adult. I am profoundly grateful to sit with you today in a circle of unity, forgiveness, empathy, and humor, knowing not just intellectually, but feeling in my heart, that “that was then, this is now.” Or, as Tennie would say, “So what. Now what?” Our “now” is a joy, and I love you both. My joyous affection naturally includes my sister and her beloved children, Elijah and Grace.
As for my husband, Dario Franchitti, simply put: I love and adore