Let's Be Clear with Shannen DohertyAn episode of 'Let's Be Clear' that's dedicated to all the fantastic fathers and father figures out there.Shannen shares her special bond with her dad and the impact he had on her life.She explores how she coped with his passing, and a part of her that's grateful he's not here to witness her battle with cancer.
This is Let's Be Clear with Shannon Doherty. Hi, everyone, welcome to an episode of Let's Be Clear with Shannon Doherty. So Father's Day we just had it. I Father's Day is really special for a lot of people. For some people, it's not, which I really sympathize with. I can't even imagine what it's like or what it was like for some of you to not have the kind of dad that I had, and hopefully you had a brother or an uncle or a friend or you know, a foundation that helped you out, or your mom. Your sale mom was phenomenal, you know, having dual characters, father and mother. I consider myself extremely lucky because I had great parents. My dad and I were extremely extremely close. I don't know if this is PC to be frank, I don't really care anymore, you know, cancel culture is so ridiculous anyway. But my dad used to tell me as a kid growing up, like you're me and drag because I resembled him so much in personality.
We sort of thought the same in a lot of ways. And certainly.
Me growing up in the business and being exposed to so many different people and all ethnicities, like all of it definitely broadened my horizons a lot. I have a you know, huge acceptance for everybody out there.
My dad did too, but.
He was just he was so intelligent, and he was so thoughtful with his words and how he treated others. I just remember him as being, you know, a rock in a lot of ways. I think that what's incredibly important for fathers and daughters is that because that relationship is so special. I think fathers and daughters are you know, incredibly close. It's actually later in life that mothers and daughters get closer. At least that was the case for me. But I I always knew that no matter what I did, my dad was going to hear me out, talk to me about it, not judge me. He may say, hey, you can make a better decision, and you should make better decisions in the future, but he would talk me through that decision and sort of the reasons why my decision was not right. But again, I never felt judged. I never felt like he was turning his back on me. I always felt that I had, you know, a champion in my corner. I always felt that, you know, he'd be like, okay, you know, we're bearing the body again, probably not PC, but like I said, I don't care. So my dad always challenged me mentally from a young age. When I could first read him and my mom, uh put newspapers in front of myself and my brother, and when we all had dinner collectively as a family, because that was a requirement, we had to have read the newspaper and discuss world events, discuss what was on you know, that front page of the newspaper, and really and then if we kept reading the newspaper, you know how we felt about other things. Obviously, when you're like five or six, you're like, I don't really know what any of this means. But it was something that continued throughout my life, so that when I started comprehending what those newspaper articles we're talking about. And this was you know, obviously back in the seventies when I think, I don't know, we're newspapers more honest back then, I actually don't know.
I feel like they were.
I feel like we live in a day and age of clickbait and there's not really a lot of honest journalists. But you know, my dad would have us, my brother and I like decipher what this was and what it meant. And again when we got older, putting our own opinions into it and having really intelligent and calm debates. And it's only helped me in school, it helped my brother, he was on the debate team, because yes, we were able to formulate our opinions, but we had people at home that would counteract that, that would even if they believed in the same things we believed in, they would take the opposite role, just so we would have to come up with intelligent arguments for what we had sort of translated from that newspaper and our you know, young brains had figured whatever out. So forever grateful for that. I'm forever grateful for his you know, intense love, the fact that I always felt like I had a place to run to and that I had someone to talk to. My dad was you know, very very very sick, and I was growing up. He had you know, his first, I think heart attack in his thirties, and I remember it was in the Dallas airport. But he still managed to bring me a bear stuffed teddy bear that he had bought me in Dallas, which I still have that teddy bear. I think to grow up loving someone to that degree and then have them be so sick impacted me in a lot of ways that I didn't realize until I was a lot older.
I think.
Watching him go in and out of the hospital, and the fear that I constantly felt of is this going to be the last time I see him? Is he going to die? Is he not going to come out of the hospital. It definitely brought up feelings of abandonment. But it wasn't like that he was doing that to me.
It was more that I was.
Putting I was projecting that onto myself because I was so scared that the most important man in my life was not going to be there that I there was part of me that sort of shut down as I got older, and I think I definitely we've discussed this before, you guys, were I chose men that were not like my dad, that we're not that kind and that gracious and that great. I chose men that it wouldn't necessarily break my heart if they dumped me and left me, that I would survive and be okay and probably move on pretty quickly. There's only a few that mattered to me, and they know who they are, So you guys, but you know, having a father that was in and out hospitals, and I actually, at one point in time in my life believed that I could actually heal. Like I don't know what got into my brain, but I was like, I can heal. And I remember we were at the hospital and I said to my brother and to my mom, I was like, you guys need to, you know, go out of the room, the hospital room and let me be alone with dad. And my brother chuckled at me. When I was like, I think I can heal. He was like okay, And I, you know, obviously tried. I failed. I was not gifted with that gift. But it was funny because I thought my dad was kind of like asleep, and so I was talking to myself about like, okay, you know, Shannon, like concentrate, close your eyes and put all of your energy through your hands, and you'll be able to heal. And at some point, like my eyes were closed, my hands were like hovering over my father, and I heard this chuckle. My dad had the best laugh in the world, and when he really found something funny, he would laugh so hard, but like no noise, just his entire face would wrinkle and tears would pour out of his face, and there was there would be like a little like tiny bit of noise. And I heard this noise and I opened my eyes and my dad was like doubled over basically from his hospital bed, laughing, hysterically crying, and was like, Oh, I love you, baby, I love you so much. It was it was a very special moment. Which really strange is that I was always present when something happened with my dad. If he had and I don't know, my dad must have had like ten strokes, eleven heart attacks, something like that. My mom were here, she could tell you, probably the exact number, but it was a lot. Quinn tubled bypass heart surgery, kidney failure. He was on dialysis. But I was always there. It didn't matter, like for some reason, it happened when and I was close by or in LA and I could go, you know, rush to the hospital and meet them there. And his final I guess it was a stroke that sent a blood clot in his brain and killed him. I was not there. I was in New York. I was in New York to do I was on a book tour and I was getting ready at the hotel to go do press and I got that phone call. He hadn't passed yet, but it was my mom and she was sobbing, and she was like, this is not good. And I left all my stuff in the hotel room, jumped in a cab, went.
To the airport. I was hysterical.
They didn't even want to let me on the plane, and you know, they did and I was in the very back and I was sobbing. People just kept looking at me, like what is wrong with this girl? And I got off the plane and my phone got serviced again, and my mom had kept calling me and told me that he had passed, which is really interesting because you know, I prided myself on always being there and him always knowing how much I loved him, and that he was, along with my mom, along with my brother, like my number one priority. But my dad was like my heart, you know, he he was just really special. And to get to the hospital and to realize that you don't get to, you know, look at them and say I love you and for them to hear you was devastating to me. And then I had to click into like a totally different gear. I had to click into the gear of the person who can get it all done and pull it together and be there for my brother be there for my mother, make funeral arrangements, pick out a coffin. Even though he was being cremated, we saw at a coffin. It was just I think it took me a while to really process. One of the first times that it started processing was after the funeral. After the memorial service, my best friend Chris said he had this beautiful ranch in the hills of Malibu, and he said to me, you know, I think you and your mom should go stay at the ranch.
For a little bit. Get out of the house, get out of.
You know, your normal environment where you're used to seeing your dad or your husband in the case of my mom, and just go, you know, connect with nature. And and we went there and he had had, you know, food taken to the house, like we literally had to do nothing. And I it was at night, and his property is on like Chumash land really and I definitely maybe it's because I'm a part Native American Indian. I definitely feel like energy there. And I went outside by myself and I said on the steps and this wind picked up lent my prefaces by saying, like, one of the things that was really hurting me was that I didn't my dad died. I did all of this stuff, funeral, blah blah blah, but I felt like I felt nothing. I didn't feel connected. And I always thought that, like when he died, I would still feel very connected, and I didn't. All of a sudden, it was like this giant space, empty space inside of me, and that was really devastating. But so I went outside on the steps and this wind kind of blew and I felt like this warmth come around me and I heard him say it's okay, baby, it's going to be okay.
I love you, and I was.
Like, oh my God, like finally, and that's when I started feeling the connection to my dad again, which I do all the time. I mean, I after that, it was like the floodgates opened, you you know. It was just sobbing and acceptance. And my mom really helped me with that acceptance of because I blamed myself for not being there, for putting work as a priority, even though I obviously didn't know my dad was, you know, going to die, I still blamed myself and my mom really helped me go through that, helped me realize that, you know, sometimes people that really love you choose to pass away when you're not present, they want you to remember them in a totally different way. And I kind of recognize that with my dad now that I don't think he would have wanted me to see him like that, which is interesting also because there are moments, not many most of the time, I wish my dad was still with me almost ninety nine percent of the time, but there's like one percent where I think to myself, thank God he's not here, because it would devastate him that I'm so sick. It would you know, every time a protocol stops working, it would kill my dad. Every time you know, we had to see me getting an infusion or shots or you know, all of the crazy things that cancer patients go through. It would dostate my father. I'm sure of it. So sometimes I'm like, thank God, it's not here. But for the most part, I, you know, wish she was because it's a totally different kind of warmth and love. I'm again super lucky because I have a mom that much. You know, later in life, we bonded in a very different way than my dad and I were bonded, And I think it's a bond that I needed, and I think it's a bond that continues to grow and adjust and evolve, and you know, and she's a fantastic mother. But again it's it's a totally different relationship. So Father's Day can sometimes be hard for me. It can be hard for you know, my mom, who has vowed that she'll never date and never marry, and selfishly in the beginning, when my father first passed, I was like, damn straight. And now so much time has passed and I look at my mom and I'm like, I don't want her to be lonely. I don't want her to be sad like people sometimes need, you know, companionship. Most of us need companionship. I don't need companionship. I have my dog who's a great companion, and I have like the best friends in the world, and I'm pretty happy alone.
But you know, my mom had one love.
Her entire life, which was my dad, and for a large majority of their marriage he was very ill and she had to take care of him. And I just wonder, like, yes, I take her on trips and I take her to places that she's never been, but it's not the same as going with a companion that loves you in a different way than your daughter loves you, or then your son loves you.
So I think I'm past that.
I know, I'm past that selfish stage where I was like, you know, in my head, I was like, yeah, damn straight, you know, honor my father, because now it's about honoring my mother as well, and the things that she deserves in life, and she deserves complete happiness and to not feel alone. Not that she feels alone. I spend an extraordinary amount of time with her. Sometimes we look at each other and she'll be like, hey, I'm going to go back to my house because I need a break from you, And I'm like, yeah, we're pretty funny together again. Going back to like, it's very different relationship then my dad. There was, you know, something very very very gentle about my relationship with my father, Whereas my mom and I argued a lot, and I think we still argue some not you know, it's like one percent compared to what we used to. But you know, it's that like challenging two women, strong women sort of challenging one another. Whereas my dad was super strong, but his entire goal in life was to make me strong. His whole thing was I don't want you to you know, just go get married and and that like, if that's what you want, good for you, But there are other options out there for women. And again this was you know, I was born in seventy one, that's right, people, I'm old, and so things weren't as progressive as they are now. Not that we're fully progressive, we certainly are not, but for him to be that man who was like, I want you to know that your gender means nothing, ginger means zero. Anybody can can reach a goal. Whether you're male, female, gay, transit doesn't matter, like you can reach that goal. And he was big on that with me, which you know is incredibly special growing up too, to have someone that just anytime I would come home from work and be like, oh god, you know like male producers and this one threatened me with like the freaking mob and you know, this one touched me inappropriately, and my dad would be like, no, you don't take that. Fight back, absolutely, fight back, report them, do whatever.
You know.
He would come to set with me sometimes just to watch over me.
So it's hard to miss that as much as I do, But I also feel.
So lucky that I had him for as long as I had him In my life. It was forty something. I think when he passed away, that's a long time to have a father. I guess could definitely be longer, but that was the amount of time that I got and then God took him.
And the one thing I sort of know, and that.
Also relaxes me, is that I know I get to see him when I pass away, and that's kind of a cool thing. And I get to see him healthy and happy and you know, thriving in his environment with God, which is pretty cool. So that's, you know, my relationship with my father, which was great. Not to say that there weren't complications, because I think everybody has complications with their parents. It's just part of growing up. And and also my you know, because he was so sick and oh he had diabetes and high blood pressure and heart disease. I think that it impacted as he got older and sicker, it definitely impacted his mental health. And we all in the family, my brother and my mother and myself, we all had to learn to cope with that, which was not easy. So yeah, that's my relationship with my dad.
Trying to think if like, you know.
We we shared a love of cooking, so I love to cook, and my dad loved to cook, but he would make cooking like a very special experience. He would put on pavarati, he would open up a bottle of red wine, and I would stand on like a little, you know, step stool and help him cook, and he would break it all down for me. He was an amazing cook actually, and so cooking I always sort of romanticized cooking. I thought that it was just this beautiful experience that you did with someone that you loved, whether it be paternal love or whatever kind of love, and that it what cooking did, is when you were cooking for others. It was my friend Christy, who you guys have heard about. She owned Christie's Village Cafe in Malibu. She always says, my love language is food, and I guess that's kind of what my dad was teaching me, along with the fact that we loved to cook together and then you know, serve my brother and my mom.
But his love language a lot of it. He hit a lot of.
Different languages of love, but one of them was cooking. Was he would be so proud, like the dish turned out perfect, and oftentimes they were. So that was something that we did together. We also continued reading the newspaper up until he died. We always talked about world events. We always had sort of healthy debates, or we were in complete agreement, just depended on the subject. We were just connected and again incredibly similar that it was easy to have hobbies, to have things that we'd like to do together, and they could be really simple, like I said, just me, you know, going to my parents' house and sitting down with him and you're like, okay, you know, this is the latest, this is what's.
Happening in the world. What do you think?
And even our debates were like fun and lively. They didn't ever feel threatening, are bad. And what's funny is you know, you always have one parent that's lenient and you have one that's a disciplinarian. My poor mother she got the role of disciplinarian. And my dad was just he was like a teddy bear. He was a big teddy bear that would just wrap his arms around you. It was really funny. I can't One of my exes who was on the podcast, I think it was Rob, said that, you know my dad was this like man and very intimidating. But what's funny is that he was just a teddy bear. This was not someone that anybody needed to be scared of. I'll tell you guys a story.
I was, I don't know young.
We were living in palace thirties, and my father and mother did not believe in hitting at all. They believed in you could discipline a child without hitting them. But I had done something that was apparently quite bad, maybe like six, I don't know, and my dad said to me, okay, it's time for your first banking. I was like, really, little girl. He said, yes, you know, like this is bad. You need to learn that you can't do stuff like this. There's repercussions. And so I said, okay, Daddy, can I please go to my room and compose myself first. He looked at his watch and he said, yes, you have two minutes and you have to come back down. So I ran up to my room and I found, you know, softcover books, and I stuffed them down the back of my pants. Little did I know, because it was like six, that my butt was a perfect like rectangle. So I went back downstairs and I looked at my dad and I said, okay, Daddy, I'm ready for my punishment. You're right I deserve it. And I bent over his lap because I think we'd seen it on TV or something of a child being you know, not really spanked, but it was going to be spanked or whatever, and that's how they did it on TV or wherever we saw it. And so I bent over his knee, and you know, my butt underneath my chords. I remember I was wearing corduways was a rectangle. And my father started laughing hysterically again, tears pouring down his face. And I just remember being like, oh, I think I got out of this, and I did. He was never going to spank me anyway. My dad did not have the capability of doing that at all. It was one of those threats of like, so that's how my dad was as a disciplinarian. You just had to stick a book down your pants, or you just had to make him laugh. But honestly, he he was never the disciplinarian my mother was. And my mom never raised a hand to us. She didn't believe in that either. And so just having a father like that, it's like you learn you have traits that you share. Yes, we both had tempers, for sure, I got I definitely got it. Temper from my father. But I also got from him the the ability of, even when I had a temper, to think things through and to display my temper in an intelligent way. It wasn't until I think towards the end of nine of two and zero that I went to a therapist and learned to count to like three, and of three didn't calm me down.
I had to count to ten because.
I just you know, my dad was quick, and I was quick like my dad, like we had a retort for everything. Somebody said something else and we were like, oh yeah. And I had to learn for my career, for the workplace that I couldn't have that quick a retort, especially being a woman that was not tolerated. The men did not like that. The men were like, you know, who does this bitch think she is?
And that's right. Back then we were called bitch, which my dad.
Did not like.
Oh gosh.
I came home and said something about, you know, a man on a set calling me a bitch. It was like, hide the keys. Hide the keys so Dad doesn't jump in a car and go get them at their house and sit them down and have a conversation with them.
So I mean.
Tempers, yes, but I think I also got from my father a large capacity to love, a large capacity to forgive, often to my own detriment, and I also got the ability to stand up for myself from him. It was, you know, he ingrained it in me. Him and Michael Landon basically ingrained in my brain that I was intelligent and that was going to get me in a lot of trouble, and that I should stick up from my health. And yes, I could have learned how to do it better when I was eighteen, but hey, eighteen years old, I'm not going to keep apologizing for stuff like that because life is too short, and it gets a little ridiculous after a while that people want to keep bringing up your past. I think those people who do that must be extremely bored in life.
And I am not.
So moving on, I kind of a lot of other traits. My mom would again be able to list them all. But I know I got his sense of humor. We both have a dark, dark, dark, dark sense of humor. We laugh at things that are completely inappropriate, and I'm the girl who and I don't mean it because I love everyone and I'll be there to help anyone, especially my friends. But I remember my hairdresser, un Charmed, Susannah Consinikis. She We were in I think Canada, doing a movie together, and we were trying to hustle across the street because the light had changed and still laugh it's horrible. I think it's not a reaction to being funny. I think it's a reaction to like pure panic. She fell in the middle of the crosswalk and I could not stop laughing and all and I was laughing, but I kept yelling at her, you have to get up, you have to get up, you have to get up, my dad. I don't think that's part of the darkness of humor. Again, I think that him and I just panicked when somebody got hurt or somebody might be like, it was just a panic moment. So I inherited that trait from him, which good bad. I don't know is one of those. And his thirst for learning, his thirst for accepting people, his thirst for you know, always seeing both sides.
Of an argument and giving allowance to people.
He was very much like, we are not all built the same, We're not all going to believe the same things. All that we need to do is practice kindness and tolerance. And respect the fact that somebody else might feel differently about a subject. I definitely inherited that from him. I think I'm very, very very open and accept everyone. But I know that people don't agree with me on certain things, and that's fine. I accept the accept that they have a different opinion than me. That's you know, God gave us free will, Thank you God. So with free will, we're all gonna go down our own pass and our own system of beliefs. I can't, you know, convince anyone to believe the same thing that I do. And my God, what a boring world it would be if everybody believed what I believe. And my dad was all about that. He was also about like listen to that person because you might actually learn something. They might turn you on to something completely different. And can you guys tell that I just had like a fantastic dad growing up.
I think he was really special.
So you guys know how much I love my dad, how grateful I am for the time that I had with him. I could go on for hours and hours and hours about my father, just like I could about my mother. Just want to say that to all the dads out there, like that treat their kids really well and love them and guide them, and.
Thank you.
It's appreciated because kids need that like I needed it. Your kids need it. And to all those stepfathers and you know, adopted dads, the uncles who treat, you know, their sister's kids as if they're their own link to all of you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for the bottom of my heart. You're doing a great job. Keep it up.
That's it.
That was Father's Day. That was a little heavy, but fun. I liked revisiting my dad with all of you.
And that's it.
Okay, So I love you guys, and I, you know, hope that this episode warmed your hearts.
Thank you for listening to Let's be clear Wishanna Doherty. Bye,
