In the Media: Memoir.
July 12, 2020: The article appeared in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age
The latest memoir, A Particular Woman, offers a profound exploration into the heart of resilience and renewal. Caring for two small children, and rediscovering the first flickers of joyfulness, is a story of despair and healing.
Grieving mothers, left to deal privately with their unspoken and unvalued loss, were given no tools then with which to deal with their grief. It was only a short mental step for us to come to the conclusion that we had no value. I continued to believe I was responsible for the deaths of my little ones by failing to give them life. I desperately sought relief, salvation, and some sanctuary in the belief that I had value as the nurturing mother of my son.
It was only a short mental step for us to come to the conclusion that we had no value. I continued to believe I was responsible for the deaths of my little ones by failing to give them life.
Three-and-a-half months after the loss of Henrietta, Phil and I collected our six-week-old baby daughter, Adelicia. Although I had been granted a great gift, I could not overcome my depression and I struggled to love this baby, who was to be my last.
Preoccupied by the effort to grow strong once more, I was unaware that the marriage had ended. Five months after the arrival of our daughter, my husband and I separated. My 12-year marriage was over.
Ashley Dawson-Damer's life, told through her autobiography A Particular Woman, has had plenty of twists and turns.
Ashley's life didn't play out as she expected in the 1960s, but through self-belief, hard work, and love of family, "if we are lucky, we will survive the tragedies that might occur and go on to be stronger".
On the Podcast with The National Gallery, London
The Hon. Ashley Dawson-Damer
44 min 32 sec | December 2020
Australian philanthropist and author Ashley Dawson-Damer talks to Angeliki Alexandri about her recently published memoir, her involvement in the Australian arts scene and her passion for history.
Ashley Dawson-Damer awarded the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres medal by H.E Ambassador Christophe Penot for her unwavering support to the French arts and culture in Australia.
‘There was a time in Ashley Dawson-Damer's life when she had media camped out in front of her house.’ - The Cranberra Times
JULY 26 2020 - 12:00AM By Amy Martin
Former prime minister John Howard, who appointed Ashley Dawson-Damer to the National Gallery of Australia board.
A Particular Woman: Inside the life and memoir of Ashley Dawson-Damer.
There was a time in Ashley Dawson-Damer's life when she had media camped out in front of her house.
It wasn't during her modelling career in the 1980s, but for an incident that one journalist predicted to be Australia's Watergate.
In 1993, Dawson-Damer was catapulted into the spotlight after she and two other women wrote a letter to then-prime minister Paul Keating, disagreeing with the purchase of a teak dining table that for the Lodge from Thailand, using money from the Australiana Fund.
At the time, Dawson-Damer was on the acquisitions committee for the fund, considered to be the caretaker and advisor on the fine arts and furniture for the four official residences. The $20,000 acquisition in question came about after Keating had approached Sydney antique dealer and friend Paul Kenny to source a long teak table for the Lodge's official dining room. Despite being advised against it by the fund's directors, Dawson-Damer and two other women from the committee decided they couldn't agree with the purchase.
As Dawson-Damer writes in her recently released memoir, A Particular Woman, "as a reproduction from a foreign country, the table did not fit the character of the fund, and so we could not pay for it".
It's just one anecdote in a memoir that follows Dawson-Damer's life through her time as one of the few women studying economics at Sydney University, the years spent living in Canada, the Philippines, Singapore and Nigeria with her first husband, and her experience losing four premature babies, the adoption of her two children, her time as a single mother and the modelling career she fell into to help support her children. She also sheds light on her second marriage to John Dawson-Damer, and her time serving on various boards and committees, including the Australiana Fund.
Love, Loss and Lipstick
Lunch with Leo Schofield Photo Credit John Appleyard
“I found women wanted to talk to me about their problems and many said I helped them in dark days of loss.”
Former Model Ashley Dawson-Damer had is all - then tragedy struck. Read full article by clicking the button below.
REVIEWS
“Memoir is an interesting form of writing, as one always speculates what has been left unsaid. In A Particular Woman, we fancy this is also true but Ashley Dawson-Damer has generously shared a great deal.
She speaks with honesty and heart about many aspects and periods of her life and times (she was born in 1945, as she once proudly announced in a Board meeting, when her capacity and experience were subtly called into doubt).
In exploring the most challenging times of her life, the author allows us a very clear insight into what drives her, whether that be in family matters or in her professional life.” - Barbie Robinson
Sydney thank you for providing me with a review copy and for facilitating this interview. It was a privilege and lovely to know that Ashley and I share a love of things French.
“I may have only two things in common with the author of this memoir: we are both women, and have both experienced grief and trauma in our lives. I can think of a long list of ways in which we are different: family background, political views, life experiences. So it’s perhaps not too surprising that for much of the time while reading A Particular Woman I felt a certain alienation from its author – or at least, from her representation of herself. Having said that, the book is an interesting read, partly because it’s a journey through Australian life in the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s and up to the present time.I’ll start with the blurb on the back cover.”
— Denise Newton, Writer
“A (SOMETIMES CONFRONTING) PERSONAL AND SOCIAL HISTORY: ‘A PARTICULAR WOMAN’ BY ASHLEY DAWSON-DAMER.” A Particular Woman is a story of resilience against a backdrop of a changing Australia, and would hold plenty to interest readers who enjoy first-hand accounts of interesting lives such as Ashley Dawson-Damer’s.
Full review on denisenewtonwrites.com
This book was read as part of the Aussie Author Challenge 2020.
In her memoir, A Particular Woman, she gives a loving account to a life lived to the fullest, whilst sharing how she juggled a career with her role as a wife and mother.
Reading this one felt much like reading one of those in-depth accounts that I occasionally see in the Australian Women's Weekly, of local woman who've made it, who've managed to live a wholesome and successful life and perhaps even paving the way for others to follow in their footsteps.
Recommended.
“Ashley Dawson-Damer has experienced quite an eventful life, as a philanthropist, the trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, a model, the wife of a British aristocrat who tragically died in a car race and a jet setter during the 1960s.
What I particularly enjoyed about this one is that the author gives equal footing to describing her domestic life, her beautiful home in the country and her love for, and time spent with, her husband and their two children. Of course, there were sad times too, a pregnancy that ended suddenly in Africa, and well, further heartbreak in Australia and a first marriage that did not end amicably, despite the huge sacrifices that she had made for her first husband. Still, it is never the role of the author to make readers feel sorry for her--rather it shows that anyone, no matter how seemingly well off and successful has their share of struggles.” - Kathryn White. (Author. Book critic. Blogger - Kathryn’s Inbox. Poet. )