Rory Feek’s Daughter Heidi Responds to Dad’s Blog Post amid Family Dispute

Heidi Feek is speaking out in an open letter to her father, Rory Feek, amid a family dispute over the care of Rory’s youngest daughter Indiana.

Heidi, 37, and her sister Hopie, 35, are considering legal action against their musician father Rory, whom they claim has cut them off from contacting Indiana, 10, and put her in harm’s way.

In response, Rory, 59, published a blog post titled “love, dad” on Sunday, Aug. 31, in which he said his daughters’ allegations have “broken my heart,” and that Indiana “has never been more loved or better cared for than she is right now.”

That same day, Heidi wrote an open letter to her father responding to his blog post, saying she and Hopie are “just happy to hear from him” after they reached out repeatedly to no avail.

“You’re right of course, online isn’t the place to settle this. We don’t know if you are aware, but we’ve been trying to reach you for months now offline, but you haven’t been responding,” she wrote in the letter, which she shared with PEOPLE and later published on Instagram. “Our hope is that this letter will find you, so you can know where our hearts are. Love is action, not words. We forgive you for your unkind words. You called us cowardly in your blog post for not facing you. We forgive you.”

She continued, “The last time we sat down to have this conversation, without a mediator as you requested, you told us you were done being our father. We forgive you.”

Heidi also included a screenshot of multiple unanswered text messages to her dad that were sent at various points in July asking about Indiana, whom Heidi says she last saw in June.

As the letter went on, Heidi continued with a list of things for which she and her sister “forgive” Rory, including the time he allegedly “abandoned” his daughters in the middle of the night as children and boarded a Greyhound bus (Rory discusses this incident in his audiobook, saying he went to the train station without telling anyone and asked for a ticket to “anywhere but here.” He said he dreamed of a life “that didn’t have the responsibilities” he had as he rode the Greyhound, but later returned home after wondering who would raise Heidi and Hopie).

“We found peace in our own lives and have taken the long journey of healing,” Heidi wrote in her letter. “We have come out stronger on the other side of our childhoods.”

Heidi also wrote she felt “heartbroken” by Rory’s claim that Indiana’s care has never been better, especially in regards to Rory’s late wife (and Indiana’s mother) Joey, who died in 2016, when the child was just 2 years old. Rory married a woman named Rebecca in July.

“My heart aches for Joey. You went on to say, ‘For the first time in her life, she has a mother.’ How can you say that?” Heidi wrote. 

She also spoke at length of her concerns about Homestead Heritage, an “agrarian and craft-based intentional Christian community” that Rory and Rebecca are a part of. Multiple members in the past have been arrested and charged with child abuse; Rory admitted there can be “a few bad apples” in large groups, while the community itself said in a statement that “in every case of abuse we’ve ever encountered, it was our ministry that exposed and reported the crime.”

“Love is action. And we love our little sister Indiana more than anything in the world. So we are taking action,” Heidi and Hopie wrote. “Love, your daughters.”

In addition to their letter, Heidi’s husband Dillon Hodges wrote a letter of his own to Rory that addressed Rory’s decision to stop allowing Indiana to spend the night at Heidi and Dillon’s house in Alabama. In his blog, Rory said that Indiana “absolutely” misses her sisters, and asks about them “all the time and would love to see them.” Still, he said he’d stopped allowing sleepovers because Hopie and Heidi “refused to respect my wishes when she was there,” and that the crux of the disagreement was the sorts of entertainment each party wanted to expose Indiana to.

“While I tried my best to respect your wishes when Indy came to visit us (we never allowed her to look at screens, and always prayed before meals, etc), I’ll admit that I regularly let her listen to Disney songs (and sometimes even Whitney Houston) on my iPhone,” Hodges wrote. “I know you said no music, but please don’t punish the girls for my actions.”

Hodges said he’s also recorded conversations between Rory and his older daughters. 

“I have been shocked and appalled by the way you have treated all your children, so I felt the need to document it,” he wrote. “You are no hero. You are no victim.”

A lawyer for Heidi did not immediately respond to a request from PEOPLE, and it remains unclear if Rory’s older daughters have yet to sue him, and what for.

“I know they are angry and frustrated and want justice for the wrongs they think have been done,” Rory wrote. “But if I’ve learned anything in my nearly 60 years, it’s that it doesn’t work this way…. I will readily admit that I wasn’t a perfect father when they were young, but I tried to be a good one. And I continue every single day to do my very best for Indiana.”