“Imma hype her every time…”

Or, a story behind my best friend’s new book

It’s sometime in early 2012, and I’m at my desk at work, browsing Pinterest (shhh!) and saving pictures of my dream life when I see a gorgeous image of the Santorini Coast shared by my friend, Erica. Below the image, I read the description and the name of the woman who took the photo: Ashlee Gadd. I recognize the name right away—having known her husband, Brett, from youth sports days in elementary and middle school—so I click through to Ashlee’s blog and it takes no more than a minute to see her work for what it is: beautiful, intentional, creative, unique. Her photos and her words captivate me from the first sentence, and I start spending as many free work minutes as I possibly can catching up on every post she has ever written.

At this point, Ashlee is seven months pregnant with her first baby boy, due in May, and I am newly pregnant with my first, due in December. After a few weeks of reading Ashlee’s bump updates and marveling at her ability to put feelings into gorgeous prose, I get up the courage to comment on her blog. For some reason, I’m nervous. Ashlee is a real writer, after all, and I’m just a nobody with a writing hobby and a blog, and certainly her husband won’t even remember me when I try to make a connection, but her writing is just so beautiful, I have to say something.

So I do. I tell her some rendition of I just love your writing, I’m having a baby in a few months, too, and oh by the way, I knew your husband and his dad years ago at school… and I leave it there, truly thinking I’d never hear anything and would continue being a fan girl from behind a screen a few states away. 

The next day, I log on to my computer at work and check my email, and there it is: a notification that Ashlee Gadd (!!!) has responded to my comment. I have a moment with this. She responded to me! I quickly log on to her blog and not only has she thanked me for my words, she tells me she remembers my older brother, that Brett remembers our family, and that she has been looking at my blog and loves my writing, too. 

Oh my gosh, she read the blog! A giddy smile forms on my face.

Ashlee is the first writer to tell me my words are okay, good, even.

(Which has become a theme in our friendship, you’ll see.)

And there, with a blog comment, and a response, I meet my sister. 

//

There are a few dozen stories I want to tell you about Ashlee. I want to tell you how she has led Coffee + Crumbs for almost nine years with consistency, integrity, and a commitment to excellent work that so few people on the internet have. 

I want to tell you about our trips to visit each other, staying at Airbnbs and hotels working on projects, praying about how to serve the readers God brought to Coffee + Crumbs, sharing ideas about what is possible (Well, mostly Ashlee would tell me her ideas and I would tell her how great they are. We joke about it, but it’s true: in all the years I have worked with Ashlee, I’ve had only one good idea. It’s fine. I truly am a better hype-girl than innovator).

I want to tell you that she’s the hardest worker I have ever met, evidenced by finding her working on a Google document at 4:56am just last week. (I was awake for my son’s early morning dental procedure, so please don’t think I, too, was just up writing before 5:00am).

I want to tell you how much I love her teamwork with her family, with her three incredibly sweet kids, and her husband, Brett–who is so supportive and encouraging; it is impossible to see how proud he is of Ashlee and not get teary-eyed. 

There is so much I want to tell you, but here’s the story I’ll settle on.

It’s December 6, 2021, and Ashlee and I have been waking up early together for a few weeks while she finishes the manuscript she’s been working on for a year. We text each other every morning, making sure the other is up, reporting progress or non-progress, just being there in the dark together, a few states away. 

But on this morning, I respond to Ashlee with the kind of news a good friend feels absolutely paralyzed at hearing: my husband checked himself into rehab, there’s so much I didn’t know, so much I don’t know, life will never be the same. 

Two days later, Ashlee has a plane ticket booked for her and Presley to come see me and the kids a few days before Christmas. And somehow in the two weeks in between–while she is filling and mailing care packages for me, sending me Starbucks money, checking in every hour, and though I know her heart is breaking with me–she finishes the manuscript of the book the world gets to hold in their hands today. 

While Ashlee is visiting me and the kids, she spends a lot of time cleaning up after my children, then listening to me cry and think out loud about a very unknown future. One night, once all seven kids in the house are in bed, after I casually mention that I’d like to learn photography, she smiles. And just like that, Ashlee throws herself behind my dream, as if its her’s. She teaches me how to use the camera, where to watch the best tutorials, how to manage a photo shoot, what it means to look for the light. The same hard work and integrity I have been watching her work with for years, she lends it to me, to help me keep moving forward.

And she’s the first photographer to tell me I can do it, that my pictures are ok, too. 

She’s helping me, in the darkest season of my life, create anyway.

//

Today, my sister’s book is arriving on doorsteps and in mailboxes all over the world, and the thought of what beautiful work will be inspired in every medium from women reading her words just makes me smile. It’s the book that began with a list of a dozen essay ideas, and is sure to become the one we read over and over, freshly inspired each time. It’s the book that I need, that I know you will love, and that Ashlee gave every bit of her very best to write. 

I know from experience that a life of creating anyway is the kind of life that is always looking for the good, for the beautiful, for the true, and wanting to share it with others. Ashlee lives that kind of life, and she wants everyone of us live that way, too. 

I mean really, imagine what it will look like if we do?  

//

I hope before you do anything else on your phone or computer today, you’ll order Create Anyway. It’s a masterpiece.

Ashlee, I am speechlessly proud of you. Celebrating you today will forever be one of the great joys of my life. You’re my best friend.