Bethenny shares her very personal thoughts regarding the passing of her mother. Her stories and memories reflect both the happy and more difficult sides of their relationship as mother and daughter
The following episode of Just Be with Bethany Frankel contains potentially disturbing content, and we want to alert trauma survivors. It contains material that for some may be difficult to discuss or listen to.
Hello, This podcast has certainly taken an interesting turn.
Overall, just overall.
It started out as the concept for it was just to have really interesting guests like moguls and power players and just visionaries, which we've had amazing people like Matthew McConaughey, and we've had Hillary Clinton and Mark Cuban and just really incredible guests and conversations. And then we had really interesting people like Elizabeth Moss talk about rewives. And then one day I just decided I wanted to sit down and talk about divorce because I hadn't really ever told the story. Sometimes I think that I've told you stories because you've seen snippets of my life on reality TV or in sound bites or in articles, and I realize, so realize that that's not really even me, and that's not really the story. That's a reaction to someone at a restaurant to describe something, and so you kind of like are piecing together the puzzle of a person, and not that you need to know the whole of who I am as a person, but as this journey evolves from the day that I was in my apartment on the season one of Housewives and the man Jason I was dating said we'll talk about it later multiple times, and it was sort of obvious that I was being like sort of dissed on TV, and you all said I was your Carrie Bradshaw and like you felt badly for me. It was It was wild because I was like, oh, wait, you can be flawed and have something bad happened to you and connect with people. It was the first time that I realized that the medium was meaningful versus just like showing people what you want to show them. And I think that in that medium. The one thing that I did vowed to do from the very beginning was that I was going to be warts and all and like tell you the truth about the girl that you know was broke and wanted a life and a family and to be somebody and do something. But so along the way, in an edited show with their own story, people got some some version of me, and in the media people have gotten some version of me. But through these different experiences, I've realized that you really haven't got and the real version of me, And it's not really about me, but it's about us. And the real responsibility that I've ultimately assumed and honor and cherish is to be able to share, to connect, to help other people, to heal other people together and them in turn heal me. Social media, for example, and this podcast, you know, not really this podcast is really great because it's really just a vehicle to communicate, and it's a direct to consumer vehicle. But social media has given me a great gift of connection and communication. And while it can be toxic, and it can be evil, and it can be mean because people can be toxic and evil and mean, it's been a really great vehicle for philanthropy and for communication and for healing. And I was dancing one night. I was going out. I was looking cute. I was deciding to be social. I said, I was adventuring my I was entering my adventure era and I was wearing an alad. This is a I know this brand because I remember it was the black dress that I used to borrow from my mother. And her apartment was her She had nice things, but it was the only really like nice, major thing that I could wear. And I didn't even understand what alia was, but it was so tight and like so hot. And so I was dancing last week in my alayah dress to the song I'm Alive by Celine Dion. There's been a remix, and I was really happy, like I was feeling really happy and free. I was releasing things. And the next morning I was on the phone with Melinda, my therapist, and I've been I've been walking lately, which is I know it sounds ridiculous, but I don't really exercise, And in the summer, I come alive and I walk on the beach in front of my house, and it's my therapy. It's my church, it's my spirituality, it's my yoga, it's my everything. It's my soul. And I wait all year to do that. And if I go to Florida or go away on a trip, I I do that. If I snowboard, it's like doing that. It's my other version. But I'm just not a person who like traps myself in exercise and and my house in the suburbs. I haven't connected to like nature in any way, and so recently, I've been Every morning I wake up, I'm basically still in pajamas, put a brawn and just walk out and nature walk a lot of waterfalls near my house. Sometimes you guys see me post a picture of something that looks like a stream or just like rocks, or it's just it's just a new thing I'm doing because I feel like I'm breaking out and I'm alive. So I was on the phone with Melinda and I was telling her I was I'm so happy. I'm so happy. I've never been happier. I don't know what's going on. I mean, I don't know if that's true, but like in the context of recent I just feel happy. I feel free, I feel alive. I'm just good. You know, I'm just good because I was releasing and I was connecting, and you guys are releasing and connecting and and the meat you got wrong. This premonition, the version of this premonition. So I'll clarify it for you. The night before, I was dancing to the song I'm Alive in an A Lie address. This morning, I was walking on a nature walk and I was happy, and I saw a nine to five four number come through, which is Florida, some version of Florida. And I was on a FaceTime with Milinda and the number came through and I like went over to pick it up and then she was like hello, Beth, and I go, I can't talk right.
I was very dismissive. I can't.
I thought it was someone, this woman. I had this caretaker that I had gotten for my mother a couple of years ago, several every day, which was some gesture that I could do to just have someone be there. And I just had this weird feeling like wait a minute, because this one's called before. And I had this weird feeling and I texted to my assistant and said, please call this woman. And I said to Milinda, my mother's dead. I think my mother's dead. And as I do with my therapist because I can can't go deep. You know, I've done therapy with other people in relationships because that's been a challenging area of my life, and I do it myself, but I always feel like I'm cheating a little bit. I feel like I'm cheating a lot of areas of my life when it comes to emotions, like I can't go super deep. We dip in and we reference things. But so one of the things that H has come to be very clear is that I fix you know me, I like organize my entire house. I situation happens, I know how to tackle it. A problem happens in business, there's a mistake that's been made, there's a contract, it needs to be reworked. Like, I can fix it. I can handle it. There's a there's a dilemma, there's a logistical issue.
And so immediately I was like.
My assistant said I'm sorry by text, and I was like my mother's dad like and I didn't even there's no way to process that sort of information right, Like I was in like thinking, I was in like solution mode. So I was like, Okay, wait a second, I'm just to get in the car and I'm supposed to take Britt to volleyball and she's going to the tournament Philadelphia, and I don't want to miss it, and I don't want to go. And I thought in my mind that I would be disconnected from this because all the ways that I thought about this scenario, which I haven't really allowed myself to think that much, was that this was in a box and that like every time I tried to reach out to her or connect her in some way more for her. I used to say, it's more for her. I just want to make sure she's not alone and that she has help and that she feels safe. And then when I introduced my daughter Brynn to her for Brinn, because Brynn was asking me about it, and it's always these like problem solving things like so eventually I wouldn't regret this, like you know, like I want to send her someone so she feels happy and not alone and she can be taken care of in her house. I didn't realize she had a friend. Thank god, she had one good friend, and that this person who I sent for her to take care of her house also became a very good friend and a family member. But like that I did the connecting not for me from Brynn, like because so then there'll be no regrets not thinking about that, I would have no regrets really, but that like brinin wouldn't be like wait, why did I ever get to meet your mama? And so like in this moment, I was thinking of Brennan and the volleyball tournament and like I want to go and I want to see her and I feel like I'm going to disappoint her, and I always am thinking of her to the point if there's something I know my daughter wants me to do, I am incapable of thinking about what I want. It sometimes bothers me when she lets me know something that she wants, Like we're on a vacation and she wants to go somewhere and she wants to do somebody, she wants to see something. Because the minute I know that she wants to do it, it's.
In my body.
Even if I don't want to do it or I don't feel up to it, I do it. It's like all part of this same stuff that happened in the divorce, with like wanting to be with her every second, Like it's all this like sort of internal trauma. So now I started thinking about the volleyball tournament and how I wanted to go and I wanted to be there. Mollanda was like okay, and I was gonna stay with a friend at a hotel. Mona was like, okay, is there like a world where you go? And you know, I'm sure she was following my lead. I was being logical, and then I realized I was not going to go, and the fact, now knowing what I've been through the last several days, the fact that I even contemplated going is insane. And it was in a convention center, and so, like long story short, I didn't go, and I wanted Brinn to go and to be happy. And Melinda was like, are you going to show up at school now and tell Brynn. I'm like, I don't want to go and make this big drama at her school, and I don't want to disrupt that. I want her to go and I want her to enjoy her weekend. At her tournament. Incidentally, she won her first medal ever, so I know many of you will see symbolism in that. So when she was on her way home, I kind of told her about a bunch of things and I'm going to tell you like that she had left everything to Brinn and the Brinn was the one who really gave her happiness in the end of her life. And Brin was like, Mom, I should have called. I didn't speak to her recently. I should have called. I didn't speak to her recently because recently my daughter heard the that my mother spoke to me on one unfortunate call, and I think she got a glimpse into the childhood that I had, and I think that she never said it, and I just said to her, she loves you, and it's nothing to do with you, and I didn't Mommy didn't have the kind of life that you had, and she started feeling guilty, and I was like, you gave her so much happiness. And so my mother passed away two days ago Friday morning. She had one friend who was friends with her for eleven years old. Eleven years she called me. I soon realized, first of all, I was so happy that she had a friend, and I soon realized that this friend didn't really understand anything about the fractures in our relationship. And I realized that my mother never really was accountable to anything that happened, which I don't I don't know if I had gone there towards the end and sat next to her and talked to her and old music and things like that. And that's leave me a lot of what's going through my head right now. But I am If you read my Instagram post I'm sure you did, or my TikTok post, you kind of get some of it. And a lot of you are relieving and reliving your own traumas. And Mother's Day is coming up, and so I am going to share just a bit of what I went through, because what's crazy is that that you would never the way the experience that I've had, the emotional accident that I feel like I've been in since this news Friday is nothing like I would have ever expected. And I really do tell you, even if you hate someone who's been connected to you in a way that is supposed to be perceived or received as love, or they hate you or you think they hate you based on whatever their traumas are, you should connect with them on some way, on some left, because I will tell you that this has been I thought the divorce was the most traumatic experience. This on the heels of that is almost debilitating, But this has been the most extraordinary, unexpected release that I've ever had in my life. Because in all of these years of going to therapy or failed relationships or Ramona telling me I'm going to be alone on a bridge, or beating myself up or feeling like something was missing, and I've been cheating myself in therapy and not really going deep. Or when I was married to Peter and I went to therapy and couldn't go there, just couldn't go there in all of that time, there's no therapist that could bring out what's come out, And what's happening is something very unique, and it's I'm literally in my childhood. It's like someone they do this with them with the like mushrooms and like ketymine or like things like that where they like, I guess, bring you back in some way. So this death has put me in my childhood a place that I've never wanted to go back to in my life, but need to to like give myself some grace and compassion. And so when I wrote that, I was mourning her loss and mourning her loss because what a poor soul and spirit and life.
Like my mother was so breathtakingly beautiful.
When I tell you that, I like, look, I wanted so much from her, Like I got tiny glimpses and like wanted.
So much more.
If you ever saw the show Firefly Lane, my friend Terry so mad, she's like they stole your life for that show, not every bit of it, but like it's very much. It's like shockingly triggering because it's like that that's that vibe that seventies vibe and that mother who was like gorgeous and making every wrong choice. My mother and I bring up their beauty for a very specific reason, and I'm gonna get there. My mother was spectacular, like so gorgeous that it was like frightening to people, and everyone was in love with her. And she later when it was like in the you know, the the years of like maybe her late twenties and thirties looked like Michelle Pfeiffer, And when she was young, she looked like Sharon Tate. And people are now saying brain looks like her, which is like, just it's been the most beautiful result of this because I saw it the second I pulled out her pictures, and I've never thought of it before. I don't think of her that much. So she was stunningly beautiful, and it was actually her curse in a way, Like she left her house. She left her very abusive house, very abusive father, very scathing biting. So you guys know, I'm I can be biting, and my mother was way more biting, and her mother was so scathingly biting. My mother sister died. My mother's sister, I think she punched her a parent. No, she punched my mother and knocked her down the stairs I think, or something her sister. Her sister died too, and her sister's children they reached out Kelly Christy Ryant. They all had a similar experience, except that they had a grounded father. I had a stepfather and a father that were as horrific, if not no worse than the experiences I've had with my mother. So I hit the trifacta trifecta of parents. But her her beauty was like debilitating, I think, because and all she wanted to do was be a model, but she was too short. And all her sister wanted to do was be a jockey, but she was too tall. Literally, she was in the horse business like my grandfather and my father and my stepfather. My mother's father was a horse trainer. Also, No one wouldever realize that that's how my mother found her way into these degenerate men's lives, because the racetrack is no place for a woman, and she found it because of her father, which is why the one thing that she imparted to me is never ever marry someone from the racetra Never ever marry someone from the racetrack like from a small child and as an adult. And if you know anything about the racetrack, it's I know why she said it.
It ruined her life.
Her father, so her family was very abusive, and she left her abusive household and she just went on a journey as a result. I'm sure of her abusive household of not only choosing the wrong men, like folding into the wrong men for how much they worshiped and adored her. They were all abusive, they were all exploitative, And the big characters in her life were vanity, which is why I mention her beauty, vanity and a lifelong eating disorder that was ultimately her child. Vanity with an eating disorder, addiction and substance abuse and money. Money was such a main character in her life. And the one thing I will say is her saying to me, never marry someone from the racetrack, and her always always having issues with money, or telling me that she stayed with men for money, or that she gave up her life for me, or that she stayed with these men because of me. Money was a recurring factor in this entire lifetime. My mother's reliance on abusive men and her staying with them for financial support. Is probably why I made it my life's intention to never have to rely on a man for financial support, and something that I also impart my daughter every day.
It's the ultimate freedom.
And my childhood was there were a lot of There were some I lived went to like thirteen different schools. And as I've been reliving this, I've been like back in my houses and there were different houses and different eras with different friends. You know, the hell whole era was like in Forest Hills and Long Island and this is where, you know, this is where the suicide attempts and the physical abuse, and you know, she would go out till all hours of the night and come home and smash the window in when she wasn't my stepfather was the one watching me. She really wasn't around much, and then they would get into a very terrible fight and he would smash and beat her with the phone, one of those like old little half moon looking phones and has that coiled cord, and he would beat her and come in and scream to me. And it's the first time I ever heard the word see the sea word. I remember it like it was yesterday, him saying that she's a sea and that look what she does to me, and we would the cops would come. I think it was sometimes the neighbors, sometimes it was me, but the cops would come. The neighbors would call the cops. And its funny because my girlfriend yesterday said that Craig Siegel, who is my neighbor, that as an adult, he said, we used to be we used to, you.
Know, worry about her.
And Jennifer Caine lived across the street in Long Island and it was a it was a hell hole. I remember once I set like paper on tissue on fire in this small room, like probably wanted to set the house on fire. And what was crazy was that my room was always immaculate. My mother was an interior designer, and my room was immaculate, like perfectly designed, and the rest of the house, every other room in the house was completely empty. We ate off a card table. We had a parakeet. I don't know why I remember that, but we didn't. I think we had we had like kittens and cats. And I remember my getting a week with my mother alone, like I think John left and I think she wanted him to leave because I think she was really with him for money. I was four on East fifty second Street, and he came and scooped her up. She had been with my real father, another horse trainer, and I guess he used to run with my stepfather, and that's how she ended up with John, who kind of rescued her. And my real father was also another real piece of shit that people idolized because he was a Hall of fame horse trainer, but as a man and a father, he was a bad person. And that's just the way that it was. She could provoke anyone to physically abuse them, but he was part of it too. And he used to leave me with like young prostitute girlfriends, Like he would just leave me with them, and he was like hanging out with people who did cocaine and like the full seventies, like the way the seventies won, and if you grew up was and if you grew up in the seventies, you know. And there was a time that I had to live with him, and she positioned it as and it was this he wouldn't pay for me. This is how money became a role early. He wouldn't support me unless I was with him, So they were battling over me, and it's why I bring up in the divorce trauma, the custody battle of pulling at kids. Don't you would never know this until you're fifty three years old. You would never understand this emotionally. So I ended up we ended up with John another person, because I wanted to get home, Like I didn't want to be in California with him. I just wanted to be with my mommy. And then I went with her and she fell into this guy's arms and he became my stepfather. And she was gone a lot, and I was with him a lot, but like one week he was gone and I was with her, and I was so happy. I remember we used to go to Hearty's, this like other version of Arby's, and like I remember the roast beef sandwitchariessed to get at the drive through, and I remember us driving up to Saratoga where we had a place, and like good memories, good memories of like food, and she loved Alaska king crab legs, and like all these memories are good, but like, there was a lot of abuse in my house, a lot of abuse. And Karen Moody, a girl who reached out to me, recently told me that like we would have sleepovers and then like my family would get into a horrific argument my parents, and then the police would come and everybody would have to go home. So I'm remembering these things. And my mother was a mixed bag because like she took me to to Greece, Turkey, Rome, Paris, London, Egypt on this trip, and I remember not wanting to go. And I do remember being an experience, like I saw things, I learned thing she I don't know how she knew everything about food, language, international, All these men were so attracted her because she cultured them like she was this she could have been like a wrothchild, like really she was so elegant, like she just like went down the trash lane, and she could have easily been this like elite, you know, just elegant princess, and she went down this road of tragedy. And when I was seven, I realized that she was throwing up. And she used to tell me not to tell my stepfather because he would be worried about it. And it was like in my mind, but that's too young to process that. And I always and I remember too the trolley, the plastic trolley of laxatives, like the in her bathroom, the caddy and her always having to like go to the bathroom when we were driving somewhere and say that it was the coffee, and like, this is stuff that you don't process yet. You're a kid, you're in your formative years. You haven't put the puzzle together. But by the time I was fourteen, I was a cop. I was a Bolimia cop, and we went on that trip to Europe. I was a police officer. Like because I finally had her trapped on a boat. It couldn't be home where after you know, she'd eat, she'd go for for an hour and be in the bathroom and then it would smell and I would just know. And then every time we went to a meal out at the at a restaurant, it was when she cooked at home. The food was so spectacular. But there would invariably be some something that goes wrong at a party and she would smash the whole house. Something would go crazier, they'd get into a fight, and she would smash the whole house. And when we went to a restaurant, I can never eat eggs benedict as long as I live, even though it's such a great dish, because she would water egg's benedict and if the eggs weren't like the softest of soft, like if they poke and ooze, they couldn't have any of that like pastiness. She would abuse the way the server. You walk down eggshells at home, you walk down eggshells at restaurants, and like the bolima became a main character, as did the money, because it was you can never get away from food. You can leave, you can put alcohol and.
Get rid of it.
You can't not have a relationship with food. And anyone who has an eating disorder, or anyone who is beliemic or knows someone beliemic, like understand.
It destroys, it lives.
It destroyed my entire life, and it destroyed It was my mother's child. It was my mother's most sacred relationship. It was something I wanted to like kill and capture. She's never ever to the day she died, admitted it.
It happened.
She never gave it up. Years later, my twenties, she gave up alcohol for a time, which is but she never gave up the bolimia, the smoking that you know. She was a French type alcoholic. She would drink all the time. They call it I learned in college in a class called alcoholism B type, like you drink but all the time and then yes at night in the mornings, I would wake up and there'd be bottles and bottles in the sink.
But it's not a.
Person that's like you see like sitting in the corner and they're hiding giant bottles of vocket in the bat. You know, she's just like a tab drinking seventies smoking while pregnant, like that type.
And she was very mean.
She loved me and when I was little, she really really I feel a lot.
Of the love I do. But she was extremely mean and extremely jealous of me.
And I can't even imagine why, because she was so stunning and so vain in the leads to the blieme me. But she blamed everything on me, and she was just she was so like she used to say, I want to switch places with you.
I want to be you know, she wanted to be me. But and.
Thank God for the roller rink, thank God for hot skates, Hot skates and Limbrook. The owners like literally they closed, they reached out to me. They've sent me pictures like they know I spent my entire childhood a Hot Skates in Limbrooke. I would be dropped my mother would drop me up at nine o'clock in the morning because it was a nine I think it was like a ten to twelve thirty, a two to five thirty or something like that, and a seven to nine thirty and I would be there in the morning until night. I had a whole life there. I had relationships there because when people talk about roller Girl like it was my like it's saved roller skating saved my life.
And the thing about it is that.
You can you can abuse someone and also you know, love them like it's possible. And so I've been going through these journeys in my mind. Then I took It's like I'm doing the movie, but in my mind with music, I'm playing all the seventies music. It's helpful to bring things out because I have never gone there in therapy. I've never been back to my childhood until this weekend. I've never visited there. I left, I shut the door, I never went back. And then I was in my high school, which I've explained to you, was like.
This is where it seemed sort of cool.
You know. I was the one who at thirteen in Saratoga before high school, was going to night clubs and I was not like reckless, believe it or not. Yes, I was getting myself into and out of the city and taking the train by myself. But I was an adult already. It's very hard for you, don't understand. I was in Vegas at thirteen at the craps tables with my parents gambling. We'd stayed there for three weeks. Like I was already an adult. It's not right, but it's like my daughter can't even process this death. She's so young, she's younger than most girls her age, you know, and like that's great. Like I just was an adult as a child, So I would go to nightclubs and I was, you know, in this place Old Westbury, Long Island, that was like fast cash.
New money. And this was when we made it.
And you know, I I've been speaking to some friends from this era, from these different eras. This is the era where I needed some clarity because we then got past high school. I've asked to go to boarding school, thank god, you know, I asked to go to boarding school. I wanted to get out of my house. And that was the last time, you know, when I left for boarding school at fifteen, That's the last time I was really in my house. Sir had any semblance of a parental structure. It's affected every area of my life. It's affected my obviously, my relationships. I mean there he would visit, he would abuse her, and I would beg her the next day, beg her. After we were in the hospital, I would I would take the paper out and like look through for apartments and be like, can't we leave? But I didn't realize it was because of money, Like you don't think of money as a kid, like please.
I thought this was hope.
Every time she would go to the hospital, I'd be like, Okay, this time she'd have a black eye. I'd be like, this time, we're getting out of here. And I would be dropped. I always was with somebody, this horse groom. He had like a horse groom Wilson, and I was dropped off at his mom's house. Pat Wilson, her husband was an alcoholic. Her son touched me, my stepfather's friends. He always said, all these degenerates around, bookies, sneakers, larry all these people. One of them, you know, was inappropriate with me. His partner, his horse owner also.
Sexually abused.
You know, there was just a lot of stuff that happened and it affected it.
It like hid every tree of the dysfunction.
And I just didn't allow my I don't I'm like so tough that I don't allow myself to go there. And so I'm mourning this poor girl. I'm not mourning I'm mourning my mother in her poor life. And I'm mourning this poor girl because I can't imagine a child going through that. But I just didn't accept it as my own. I just make it like that's why I'm tough. And then I've pretended that it didn't happen. I like think, I think I'm making it up, you know, you stuff things. So when I went to college, I just didn't want anything to do with this anymore. But like my mother did love me in her way, and so I felt like I had to be can to her and not had to want it to She started to get like meaner. It just there was just a there was just a change in her face and in her life. Even when she was younger and when she was drinking and she was a bleaemic, it was like she still had that beauty and that freshness about her that like, you know, everybody was scared of her, the Virginia slims and the tab and it was still sexy. It looked like some seventies ad and and and and then she started to like look it starting now, I realize you can still look beautiful at forty, you know, and fifty. But like this is when it started. You started to see it like it was destroying her whatever it was, all of the toxins and self destruction was destroying her.
And like eating her alive. But you can't see it.
You can't intervene in your own life, like it's just and I saw her differently, and her meanness was just different. And she did yet she did nice things. She I She found me an apartment while I was in France to get a studio apartment in New York City, and she wrote me letters and she was so that I was coming back and we were gonna have holidays together. And she took a couch and my friend Melissa Levine, who I spoke to yesterday, remembers that she like staple gone fabric to this couch that she had had in our days of having like beautifully designed things, and it was in my apartment. I don't want to make it like she didn't love me.
And she didn't.
And she was so hilarious and so brilliant and so wild and so electric. And I understand. I understand why men have fallen in love with her. I understand why so many men have fallen in love with me. I have a part of her that is that, and and you know, there's a lot of me and her. And sometimes I look at my face in the mirror and I see her, and sometimes it's good, and sometimes it scares me. And I've been going through all of this in her death, and I have no anger. I wish I could have found a way to connect to her later in life. Brynn begged me, I want to meet your mama. I want to meet your mama. And I didn't want to do it. I kept saying it was in a drawer, and I thought one day she would pass and it would just be like nothing happened.
I really really thought that.
I really thought that there's nothing and I'm sorry, no disrespect to men or sons. There's nothing like a mother and a daughter bond. There's there's just nothing like what it represents and what it's supposed to be and and so so I didn't think it was gonna be this kind of experience, like this emotional accident, like a trauma, like bringing all this together, and I realized why I've had such a challenge with relationships because I've never like addressed this and I've been years ago there was a People magazine oracle saying my baby saved me and then I was unlovable, and part of me feels that's true. I have. You know, I've always felt flawed and damaged, and like every time I meet someone, it's like they're gonna judge my childhood and like why doesn't she have parents and why doesn't she speak to her family? And I had no brothers and sisters either. Story I really was, and it's like self conscious, and I'm self conscious with Britain who.
I want her to have a family. I want her to have people around her.
I love that she gets to go do the barbecues and the family reunions with her father and his parents, Like I want that far as she deserves that. I have that from my friends, but you know, I don't really have that for myself. And this has brought up not only everything and so I was looking through pictures. I was looking through pictures. I wanted to get pictures. I want to represent her as the beautiful woman that she was, because she that was important to her and it was true people worshiped her. And so I was looking through pictures and then I couldn't find I still can't find the one there's a picture of like the day when I was a little kid that I remember being happy, like I remember a nature day and I just remember it.
I don't know why you remember.
I remember this day, and I can't find the picture representing that day. And I remember a picture of her when she looked like Michelle Pfeiffer at the racetrack, and I couldn't find that. So I had gone through all the pictures, and then yesterday I woke up and I was just like listening to songs and normal grief and kind of fine and whatever. And I don't know why this happened. I went into this other areas doesn't have photographs, just like another cabinet, and there's this plastic, clear container and it has different things from like my life, like just different pieces of paper, my high school diploma, things like that, an article I wrote in college, like and I just and I found this zip block and it said.
Mom letters.
Now. I don't know why they're all from this one era which is now make me wonder where my other letters are. But and it was like it was funny because it was Hello Kitty stationary, which I was. This is when I was twenty years old. It was nineteen ninety. But she had found on my stationary and I used to, I guess, love Hello Kitty, and I make fun of Hello Kitty now and talk about her, but I loved her, and I loved Ziggy and little Miss twin Star, And so she started writing me these letters in this from my childhood stationary, like when I was like twenty This is long before my wedding where she really she really was very very mean and me talking bad about me at my wedding and my rehearsal dinner and criticizing it and got really drunk at my wedding and didn't want to come. And my wedding was the time that I found her in the supermarket with a cartload of alcohol when I thought she was recovering, and she said she wasn't going to come, and she danced all night and flirted with someone's husband and it was like and then later said she should have brought John to my wedding, like to be mean and criticized my ring and just like mean, and she was mean at my bridal shower and my friends remember she came and a bunch of traffic and she walked in and she said never again.
Never.
I just sat in traffic and like she was just pretty pretty terrible.
But I don't want to remember that. And so.
I look yesterday in this clear bin, and I see these mom letters and I start reading them and and I recognize her writing so well.
And she's writing you know.
Sometimes like you're like the mother and I'm the daughter, and you're probably a better role model, and you didn't have it easy. Like for her to say that is like big because she doesn't have any accountability. She won't she wouldn't allow herself to go there about what happened. She's just the victim that like chose these men for me and they beat her and she ruined her life. She has no capability of like realizing that I was the child and she was the mother, so much so that she never even reached out to speak to Britain like she doesn't realize the difference between the mother and the daughter. But there were these sentences and these letters that were saying like.
You are the light of my life. You are the love of my life. You're the only one who really knows me.
She was talking about all these this money in these letters, like all this, all this these money is hues and John fucked me over and didn't sign this and Bill is destitute and filing bankruptcy and like I know it's twenty and you're an adult, but like it was just all this stuff on me.
At all times.
I didn't know what to do for her. I didn't know how to support her. I didn't know how to like take care of her. I didn't know how to do it. She was forty and I was twenty, and I mean that's not a kid, but like I was the age when she had me. It was just a lot to dump on me, I felt. But yesterday I started to read these sentences, I was.
Like, you were the light, You're the life of love of my life. I mean I was dying and I just I just and.
I just started to scream in my house, like I'm a bad daughter. I have a bad daughter. Why didn't I read these last month? And I would have gone there? And I was like freaking out. I mean, I was freaking out. I couldn't No one could help me, know. One I called, no one could say anything to me, and none of my friends nothing. And I started to call my high school friends that I haven't spoken to in years, and I was like, because they had been Some of them had messaged and said, like, your mom, you know it was beautiful, you know, trying to make light of it. And I was like, no, I don't want to hear that. I need to hear that it was real what I said. I need to know that. I need to know that what I'm feeling is real. I need to hear what happened in that house. I need to know why I disconnected from her because I'm a bad daughter, Like why did I disconnect? Tell me what happened, you know, like why? And I spoke to my friend Melissa, who had her own horrendous challenges, and she was like, those are words about thatany those are words letters. She's like, because she had an extraordinary experience too, and she said, I have letters like that from my mother too, but those are not She didn't give you what you needed as a child, like she was the mother, you were the daughter.
There are things that no child needs, like you were the deed of the adult.
And she was really, you know, helping me because I needed I needed some information from that house. And my friend that said, as someone that cares a lot about you, I would compare you to a relative that I just don't get to see much.
You can take this one off your plate. In terms of blame.
Your mother had some serious issues in John Paracella was her spouse and abusive to you. I don't recall your mother being any type of positive force, and I do not want to get to specifics unless you want me to. You a delta hand that no one should ever have been dealt no one. Your house was criminally chaotic, abusive, and detrimental to providing stability and any kind of self esteem for you.
What you can do is what you are doing.
Take those negatives, raise a daughter with the acknowledgment that you were a child put in a horrible circumstance and you learned from it. And I've never heard of someone wanting to hear the bad not because I want to disrespect our memory, but because I want to put this somewhere. I want to like walk through this and like be able to have a life and a good relationship and like be the full person that I could be. And and I've had friends tell me. My other friend said this was trauma to the bringhard because you were her same gender, her only child, a beauty like her, and she was fiercely proud of you. You craved the connection any daughter wants. And not only did she not allow you to securely attached to her, she also it's not the right phrase, but almost like strung you along by sometimes allowing you to feel the connection. If the story is just she's a bad guy that hurts, but it's not multifaceted. What makes it harder is the contradiction and duality because it's true I loved her and I worshiped her, and I'm mourning now the loss of like getting that once I got a little bit as a child. So these friends have really helped me to release this, because to release myself of the guilt. You know one girl, me and Russo who's always messaging me on Instagram.
She's such a supporter.
She's a very rare person that I knew as a child who's a big fan. She said, we dropped my family dropped ourselves off first after a concert in the city, way too young, and that she was then left alone with the limo driver and there was before a cell phone, so she was lost in crying and called her parents. She's like, it was not what should happen with a thirteen year old to be in a car alone with a man driving her. And Laura, who texted me that other really smart text, said that my mother dropped the two of us off on the Meadowbrook Highway. We had to get out of the car because I got into a fight with her. It just wasn't really what it should be. And I need to now make this something meaningful for you. What I need to make this meaningful for you is Mother's Days coming up in Mother's Days and about perfection and making people feel bad if they're not a mother, And it's not about making everything about flowers and think Mother's Day is about if you think you're doing a good job, or if you feel like you're a good mother, to reflect, to applaud yourself, to celebrate that. But if you feel like you're failing and you feel like you're not you're flawed and you're not doing the best job, but there's always a way to change and intervene. And that if you're thinking about being a mother, the responsibility that it ultimately is to be a mother. And if you have a mother, thinking about the fact that they themselves have been going through tremendous trauma in their life too, and they have their own story that's hard for you to understand that is part of the fabric of who they are, and you know, and that I don't know what kind of event could happen for you to get in touch with this, but I do wish I got in touch with this so many years ago. I literally couldn't. I literally couldn't. And I do feel like I have been cheating because I haven't been able to really like access this. And I think that I think that that I'm lucky to you know, I've had great loves in.
My life, people to love me.
Just might be being unlovable, people like Larry, people like Peter, people like Paul, because there's a lot of work I have to do on myself, and I think this is unlocking it. And I think this is just this divorce trauma and this and I'm sure it's related. I'm sure there's a reason I've chosen some of the people that I've chosen. So as Mother's Day approaches in the next month, give yourself grace and you can always change. And please, I beg that you connect with somebody who's entirely impossible to connect with, because it will heal some lifelong wounds that have been bothering you. In time just passes, like I don't really think there's anything that I could have done differently because there was such a meanness. That's why I'm struggling up to the end, up to when my daughter was with my mother, and my mother was on the phone with her a couple of months ago, and I.
Barely even believe that she was sick.
She always was every time we were on the phone, from when I was twenty to now.
It was just always everything was.
Just a complaint and what she and being mean to me and what she did for me, and when she was only talking about ailments all day long, I almost didn't believe it. And one day she said to my daughter, who I think at the time was twelve, no thin she was thirteen, like, I don't know, I might die or something and I was like, I said no, no, no, you can't. You can't say that to my daughter. And she said, oh, I can't stand you. And Brinn heard it, and Brin's ever heard anything like that, like in a relations in a relationship where it's supposed to be so loving, and I think it shocked her. And I was like, it's okay. Her relationship with you has nothing to do with that. She had a hard life and she just wasn't the mommy that I was to you, you know. And and we were on the phone recently and it was all these years later.
She's sick.
She's cancer, colon cancer to lung cancer, like really sick, colossy bag, the whole thing. And I saw her and she's like, you know, gotta beat eighty eight pounds. And we were on the phone. She's like, I gained ten pounds. And I was right back there to like my whole childhood of every week, Oh no, I gained ten pounds.
And then the mood she'd be in the mood swings.
And I was like, and you just you roll your eyes and you're just like, I'm sure you look great. Like the things that you have to say to people like this, and I'm like, and I doubt you did. You're very thin, you know, like thousands of times I've said this, and then she goes, no, really no, I gain and I said, okay, I said, but we don't talk like that in front of Brin, Like that's not something that I that goes on in this house. Like because I thought of I was like impatient with her because the one thing that was in the way of my entire relationship with my mother was the eating disorder. It was the one biggest thing because I couldn't stomach being at a meal with her. I was embarrassed to have her come to anyone's house because I thought she was I knew she was gonna throw up all over their bathroom and then it was gonna smell and everyone would know. I never wanted to be I didn't want meals are part of life. I didn't want to go to dinner with her, have dinner at home, have her cook, have her talk about food, have it.
I just.
It just was like a big pediment. Impediment. So addiction, you know, when they say addiction is Steve Madden, I always bring him back. He said, addiction is your number one, Like it's your safety, your control, your your best friend, your lover, your your and you are incapable of being on a with anybody else. And you are incapable of true human connection if you're an addict, because you are already completely committed to something else, and it's impossible to be a full parent. So many of you have, you know, addiction issues in your family too, And I feel you. I feel all of it, and so I'm hoping and I just want you to know that this is a lot, and I know that it's a lot, and I really haven't had any place to put it. And I've been writing, and I've been thinking, and I've been listening to a lot of music and walking walking if you're going through something, walking is so helpful. I just walk outside my house water, hot bath, cold, shower, like Water's helpful. And I do believe that you have to go through it. And I just hope that my healing process will help yours, because it's been all this toxins stuck inside of me.
And this woman.
I was reading this article that this woman, Barbie Adler, she was quoted and she was saying that until you to get it to a relationship, you have to be a person that you'd want to be in a relationship with, like yourself, your full self. And I was thinking about how I haven't been my full self.
I don't know.
I don't know how I could have been my full self with all this stuff. And it's weird the things I'm thinking about. It's weird thinking about Ramona on the bridge saying to me, you're gonna you know, you can't, you won't be loved, or you have no friends, or things like that, because those kind of things hurt, but they're also why I have very few friends, why why I have close, close, close friends. I don't trust anybody, and I keep my circle very tight because the defining, original trusting relationships that that mold you and give you the foundation to have future trusting relationships I didn't have. I did not that, I didn't even have role models. I didn't have that like attachment feeling.
I was alone. I've been alone my.
Entire life, So that's why I'm alone a lot now. So thank you guys for listening. And I hope on some level this helps you to heal and to forgive and to forgive yourself and to be loving and graceful to yourself, thank you