photo © Preston Ehrler
“No more crumbs.”
—AMY FERRIS, Writer. Author. Speaker. Warrior. Goddess. Badass.
(Facebook profile self-description)
I met Amy Ferris in the Summer of 2017 at an event and panel discussion hosted by Take The Lead Women, an organization whose mission is to establish gender parity in US leadership by 2025. The room was filled with feminists, some wearing name badges, others not. I didn’t recognize anyone when I first walked in, but then I saw a familiar face.
“Has anyone ever told you that you look like Meryl Streep?” I asked a woman as she walked by. I looked down at her name tag: Amy Ferris. It was familiar to me, but I wasn’t sure why. I soon discovered that she had been an original board member of the Women’s Media Center, an organization founded by Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, and Robin Morgan. This led us to a further conversation about Gloria. I told Amy I’d written an article about Gloria for the Huffington Post in celebration of her eightieth birthday a few years earlier.
“You wrote that?” Amy replied, with a surprised look on her face. “I printed out that article. I loved it. It was so real.”
Having become a friend of Amy’s over the past two years, I look back on that encounter and realize how important that word—“real”—is to Amy. Being real is something Amy not only admires in others but exudes herself. She is always present, her eyes focused solely and entirely on whomever she is speaking with. This is especially true when she’s with women, and particularly with women whom she sees as needing to embrace their true worth. “No more crumbs,” she is known for often saying and writing in her Facebook posts. “You deserve the whole shebang!”
Amy is an author, writer, editor, activist, screenwriter, playwright, high-school dropout, and self-described ruckus maker. Her memoir, Marrying George Clooney, Confessions from a Midlife Crisis, was adapted into an off-Broadway play in 2012. Her screenplay, Funny Valentines, was nominated for a Best Screenplay award (STARZ/BET) in 2000. She also cowrote the film, Mr. Wonderful, and has edited two anthologies, Dancing at The Shame Prom (2012) and Shades of Blue (2015).
Amy often writes about what and whom she loves, as she did on marryinggeorgeclooney.com, the web site dedicated to her memoir: “I love writing about (all things) women. I love championing and supporting and encouraging and inspiring women, and my fervent wish (and prayer) is that all women awaken to their greatness: using their lives fully, with passion, compassion, determination, hope, self-fullness, humor, truth, authenticity, power, boldness, kindness, and forgiveness. I want women to forgive themselves for all those old antiquated belief systems that were instilled and engraved in their lives by others who just didn’t know any better.”
Amy invited me to interview her for this book in August 2019 at one of her favorite spots, the Hotel Fauchere in Milford, Pennsylvania, the town where she resides. Built in 1852, the building is not only historic but authentic, remaining true to the Relais & Chateaux “5C” motto—character, courtesy, calm, charm, and cuisine. The large brick and white gothic Italian-style building stands on the corner of West Catherine Street, a street filled with quaint and eclectic restaurants, antique shops, and mom-and-pop retail stores.
When I arrive, Amy is seated at a table on the outside deck, just in front of the beautiful, glass-enclosed dining room. It’s a bright and sunny day. Amy greets me in her signature style, by cupping my face in her hands as she places a kiss on my lips. We each order a glass of white wine (her favorite) and salad.
Before we get into the interview, I excuse myself to use the restroom, which is located inside the hotel at the bottom of a mahogany wood staircase. The walls on both sides of the stairs are adorned with signed headshots of honored hotel guests, including former US Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton; celebrities like Babe Ruth, Mae West, and Rudolph Valentino; and famous writers like Alistair Cooke, Robert Frost—and Amy Ferris. Her framed headshot hangs between famed film directors Lionel Barrymore and Cecil B. DeMille. While Amy Ferris may not be a household name, to all those who have come to know her, her spot among these luminaries has been well-earned.
As I join Amy upstairs at our outdoor table, I ask her when she is planning to host another writing workshop in New York City. I first came to learn about her workshop, “Women Writing/Righting Their Lives,” on Facebook (or “Gracebook,” as she calls it) soon after we first met. She describes it this way online: “The most extraordinary things happen when women get together—when we write/share our stories, write/right our lives—we give each other the courage and inspiration and absolute permission to be huge and audacious, fierce and mighty—to be fucking Goddess/Warriors. Bring your computer, a pen, some paper, and a pad,” it continued. “A story you wanna share, a truth you wanna spill, a secret that you’ve tucked, locked away that needs to be released and sent on its way. This is a safe, sacred space where we get to change our lives.”
I signed up for the workshop even before I read the description in its entirety. And, yes, it did change my life.
Three days before the workshop, Amy sent us three writing prompts: 1) Broken Open, 2) Assisted Loving, and 3) I Pick Me. We could choose one, two, or all three to write about, but they must be read aloud, she warned. “This is how we dig deep. You will not be critiqued or judged, and this workshop is not about craft. It’s about changing our lives, declaring our worth, owning our greatness, standing in our power. This is how we become women of unlimited self-esteem.”
At the start of the workshop, I read this aloud to the group of twelve:
I pick me.
I pick me because no one else can.
I’ve tried. It just never worked.
Looking back, I have always found that I knew the
right thing to do.
And to not do.
But I allowed myself to be persuaded, dissuaded,
due to doubt,
The doubt of others, as well as putting others’ needs
before my own.
While moving all others to the front.
It was the only way I was appreciated.
It became, indeed my identity.
Until one day, that shelf fell, but it didn’t break into
charred pieces.
I was there to catch it, to cradle it.
Finally, I caught myself.
Reading a personal piece aloud, publicly, is an experience like no other. There is a unique freedom and power we experience from the support and acceptance from a room full of strangers. Amy was right. I did feel empowered when I read aloud. As each of the twelve women in the room read their writing, a camaraderie formed, and a sense of community was developed. After the end of four hours of writing and reading, then more writing and reading to a number of different prompts, Amy asked us to do one more thing:
“Write a Dear John or Dear Jane letter to something or someone you no longer need or want in your life; something that has kept you small, invisible, not believing in your own greatness; someone or something that has caused you great pain.”
Mine was a letter to my mother. After we each read our letters aloud, Amy asked us to hand all of them to her. “I will take them home and throw them into a fire,” she said. “No more pain.”
That was the first of four workshops I participated in over the next year and a half, and each time I felt more empowered, respected, and accepted by every one of the women who participated along with me. It therefore seemed logical to bring Amy’s words, and love, to as many other women as possible.
In 2018, I invited her to write a regular column for Women’s eNews, which she named “WRighteous.” Announcing this new column in Women’s eNews, I invited our readers into “Amy’s world, to champion, encourage, and inspire women to awake to their greatness, as only she can, through passion, truth, hope, and humor—along with a heaping side of activism.” She didn’t waste any time getting to it. In her first column, introducing “WRighteous,” she wrote, “I will stand up on a soapbox and remind you that we have unlimited power, untapped power, and that anger is not power. This is the place where I will remind you, as I constantly remind myself, that we have become the women our mothers longed to be, always wanted to be. This is the place where I will demand that we all—each of us—take down the walls that we have built around ourselves, the walls that keep us from being intimate, keep us from sharing our down and dirty, keep us from sharing our truth, keep us from exposing the very stories that move and rattle and shake and, yes, understand another human heart.”
“WRighteous” was just the first of several collaborations between Women’s eNews and Amy Ferris. The other, which Amy named “The Ovary Office,” is a video series that reports on the true qualifications and accomplishments of each female candidate running for public office in 2020. “Rather than her electability or likability, which too often takes precedence in traditional coverage of female politicians,” I wrote in the series’ introduction, “Amy Ferris, with her usual fierceness, will write about each candidate’s expertise, policies, and goals for the future of the US with accuracy, honesty, and transparency.”
In her first article, “The Ovary Office: This Is No Time for Polite,” Amy opens by writing: “Women have been told to sit down and keep quiet, to stand off to the side and stay out of view. Polite is a first cousin to nice; both are rooted in fear and worry, preventing us from standing tall, standing up, and standing for whom and what we believe in, allowing others to get ahead at our expense. Polite may give us the shirt off its back, but it will never allow us to stand on it, and it most certainly won’t have ours. Polite will never have our back.”
As we finished our lunch, Amy told me that someone had recently asked her where she learned to love other people the way she does. She told me about an experience she had as a child in response, which she also posted on her blog, “Post Coffee, Pre Wine,” which is also now a podcast.
It went like this:
Where did you learn to love the way you love?
Here’s a taste. The bag sat on my lap, and she told me to hold on to it tight.
“Don’t let it spill open,” she said, while she chain-smoked.
We pulled into a driveway, the car now in park.
A deep breath, a deep sigh, a deep exhale of cigarette smoke combined.
She took the bag off my lap, and I watched as she walked up the stoop and rang the doorbell, and then she disappeared into a split level.
A good forty-five-minute drive from where we lived out on Long Island.
I sat, fidgety, minding my own business and everything else from inside the car.
After what felt like forever in little girl years, she came out of the house cradling her purse. The man stood on the porch and waved to me. I waved back.
I had no idea who he was, but my mother always reminded me to be nice to her friends.
She placed her purse on the seat between us, and while I was concocting a million stories in my head about what happened to the bag that sat on my lap, she lit a cigarette, opened the window a crack, and then motioned for me to open her purse.
And there smack in the middle—as if it were standing at attention—was a ring.
A man’s pinky ring. Two diamond chips on either side of a tiger eye stone set in platinum.
“Where’s your jewelry, Mommy, where?”
“Well, I made a trade, I traded some of my jewelry for this, for Daddy’s birthday. It’s a surprise, a secret, so don’t say anything. Cross your heart.”
I crossed my heart.
“… and hope to die?” I asked.
“No, no … it’s enough to cross your heart,” she replied.
We were broke, struggling, a bad set of circumstances spiraled, setting our lives back, and we were barely eking by. Barely.
She threw him a small dinner party at our house with some of their nearest and dearest, and after he blew out the candles and made a wish, she placed the little black box on the table, and when he opened it his eyes filled, and my mother leaned in and kissed him—long and hard—and in what seemed like a whisper—stuck, lodged in her throat—she wished him a happy birthday and many more, and then he slipped the ring on his pinky, and it felt as if he grew an inch or two taller as he stared at this gift, this unexpected gift filled with so much love.
A little over a year later, while our lives were still on hold, slowly but surely regaining some ground, it was my mom’s birthday. He was taking her out to a favorite restaurant of hers, and even though it would cost him an arm and a leg, he was willing to give up those body parts for her. A giant, gift-wrapped box sat on the dining room table, a card leaning up against it; her name, Bea, written in his impeccable gorgeous handwriting on the envelope. She was dressed to the nines, her hair coiffed, her face made up. Her lipstick matched her dress, magenta. “Mommy, open it open it open it,” I had no idea what it was, but I loved gift-wrapped presents. They were filled with hope. My father stood next to the table as she unwrapped the box—a brand-new leather jewelry box, three drawers thick. She looked up at him, and he nodded and gestured for her to open it. There in the jewelry box were the pieces she had pawned to buy him the ring—her jewelry polished and shiny and ready to wear.
Years later my Dad told me the story. “A little O’Henry-ish,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, smiling. “Yes.” The jeweler, the nice man I waved to, was a good friend of my dad’s. He owned a jewelry store on West 47th Street—the jewelry district—and he held on to my mom’s jewelry, knowing he would give it back to my dad.
“What do I owe you,” my dad asked his friend.
“The pleasure of your friendship,” he said.
They remained good friends until my dad died.
My dad’s pinky ring, along with a few of my mom’s pieces, live side-by-side in a jewelry box that Ken [Amy’s husband] gave me.
All this to say: Please, believe in love and goodness and hope.
And she does, along with everyone who has the good fortune to come to know her.