Rory Feek's daughter Heidi says it's her 'duty to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself' amid family rift
Country singer Rory Feek's daughter Heidi is doubling-down on how she feels about her father's parenting of her sister, Indiana, and has decided to take legal action.
Heidi and Hopie, Rory's oldest daughters, have expressed their concern about their father putting their 10-year-old sister in "harms way" and shared that he has banned communication between the sisters.
"This is a devastating change for her, because we’ve been in her life since the day she was born," Heidi said in an interview with People magazine. "She’s even come to stay with us once a month for most of her life."
On Saturday, the country singer penned a long blog post, titled "love, dad" and said that Heidi's claims about him have "broken my heart."
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"I love my daughters, Heidi and Hopie, with all my heart. And I do not want to hurt them, even if their desire is to hurt me deeply. It mostly makes me want to love them more," Rory wrote.
Rory and his second wife, Joey Feek, found fame together as Rory + Joey and welcomed Indiana — Indy — in 2014. Joey passed away from cancer in 2016. Since Indiana's mother's death, Heidi and Hopie "developed a special maternal bond" with their sister who has special needs, according to their GoFundMe page.
Heidi has been close with Indiana over the past several years, and she even served as her flower girl during her wedding in 2018. Heidi told People that their bond began to change a few years ago.
She told the outlet that Rory would not allow Heidi or Hopie to FaceTime Indiana anymore, which served as their main source of communication since they lived in different states.
Then, text messaging was not allowed.
"We supported his decision because we could still talk to her on the phone and she continued to visit us in Alabama," Heidi told the outlet. "But things got concerning when Rory began canceling her visits to Alabama without rescheduling. Eventually, he said she wasn’t allowed to do overnight visits anymore, with no explanation. After that, we were only allowed to see her three times: her 10th birthday, one dinner, and the Homestead festival in June — when we saw her last. Now, he doesn’t let us talk to her on the phone and won’t respond to my texts."
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In Rory's blog post, he noted that Indiana is allowed to talk to her sisters, but confirmed she's not allowed overnight visits with them. He explained that he has different "worldviews" than his oldest daughters and doesn't want to expose his youngest to certain things. He also noted Heidi and Hopie "refused to respect my wishes when she [Indiana] was there."
"But Indiana is my daughter, and I know what Joey would want, and I am standing firmly on not compromising the values and principles that are important to me to raise Indy with," Rory wrote. "I tell her that hopefully soon, we’ll all be back together, and she’ll get to talk to and see them again. I do look forward to that day almost as much as Indy does."
After Rory released his blog post, Heidi took to Instagram to share a message of her own.
Heidi included several slides, directing the conversation at her father, before concluding with, "This is Hopie and Heidi again, love is action. And we love our little sister Indiana more than anything in the world. So we are taking action. Love, your daughters."
During her interview with People, Heidi explained that she and Hopie were told that their mother did not want to be part of their lives, but only recently discovered that wasn't the truth.
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"When we started getting cut off from Indy, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this had all happened before," Heidi told the outlet. "That’s when I found my mom and called her. She had always wanted to be part of our lives and had been waiting my whole life to share her story with me. Now, I realize it’s my duty to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself."
Rory denied Heidi's claim in his blog post.
"All this to say that I know that this has not been an easy life for Heidi and Hopie," the musician wrote. "Most of the first fifteen years of their lives were without a mother and the one that they did get to finally have passed away young, just when they started to all become really close. And though they’ve recently reconnected with their birth mother, which I’m so glad to hear, it sounds like she has a whole other side of the story that she’s shared with them, saying that I kept them from being with her all those years. I hope someday they give me the opportunity to share my side of the twenty years that I raised them on my own, rather than just accuse me of something without any chance to respond."
Heidi and Rory did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.