news | Thursday March 26, 2026

Growing My Way Home Is Here!

Guess what just arrived back from the printer? It’s Growing My Way Home, the new work of autofiction by award-winning Sḵwx̱wú7mesh author Jenn Ashton! From abuse to early involvement in the criminal justice system, Growing My Way Home traces Ashton’s experiences as a thirteen-year-old drug dealer, a fifteen-year-old parent, and finally an award-winning writer, artist, and filmmaker.

An excerpt from Growing My Way Home:

“Another thing I found I couldn’t say “no” to was the endless string of ‘dates’ my mother’s husband would set up for me. At first it was a joke but soon became a burden, as I rejected the men one after the other like a row of dominos, my mother and her husband not understanding what was ‘wrong’ with their plan. All the men worked in oil, were wealthy, in their late twenties or early thirties, often divorced, average looking, and all looking for a ‘wife,’ never minding the addition of a baby.

These dating rituals were a pretty good example of some of the forces shaping my life; they were the perfect summation of my past, my present, and everybody else’s expectations of me. I didn’t have any safety net surrounding me, so more often than not, I had to bumble my way through these strange events, evaluations put into my path by well- meaning people.

How it worked was that every Sunday, when the baby and I would go for dinner, my mom’s husband would just have happened to also invite a single man that he worked with, telling me he’d taken pity on him and wanted to feed him a good home- cooked meal. Then afterwards the man was asked if he would like to take a walk with me. Inevitably, this man would ask if I would like to meet up or go out with him. At first I said yes to many, not understanding the mating ritual I was part of, but after a few one-night stands and some scary events, I wound up screaming at the husband that I wanted him to stop trying to sell me like a piece of meat. He would come back with, ‘What else is a seventeen- year-old single mother going to do?’”

Ashton’s writings richly illustrate a life of survival and fortitude. Drawing on her teenage journals and fifty years of lived experience, Growing My Way Home documents a long journey to acceptance and understanding. Pick up your copy here.