April 22, 2024 • 51 mins
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
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hello, This podcast has certainly taken an interesting turn.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Overall, just overall.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
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
(01:05):
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
(01:25):
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
(01:47):
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
(02:10):
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
(02:31):
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
(02:54):
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,
(03:17):
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
(03:39):
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.
(04:00):
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
(04:21):
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
(04:42):
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.
(05:02):
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
(05:22):
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.
(05:44):
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
(06:05):
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,
(06:26):
and I go, I can't talk right.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
I was very dismissive. I can't.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
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.
(06:51):
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
(07:12):
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
(07:33):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
And so immediately I was like.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
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
(08:07):
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
(08:28):
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
(08:48):
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
(09:09):
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.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
In my body.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
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
(09:50):
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
(10:11):
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
(10:37):
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
(11:00):
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,
(11:21):
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
(11:42):
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
(12:03):
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
(12:30):
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
(12:53):
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,
(13:14):
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
(13:34):
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
(13:55):
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
(14:18):
when I wrote that, I was mourning her loss and
mourning her loss because what a poor soul and spirit
and life.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Like my mother was so breathtakingly beautiful.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
When I tell you that, I like, look, I wanted
so much from her, Like I got tiny glimpses and
like wanted.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
So much more.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
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
(15:00):
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
(15:20):
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,
(15:44):
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
(16:07):
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
(16:28):
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
(16:51):
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
(17:14):
an adult. And if you know anything about the racetrack,
it's I know why she said it.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
It ruined her life.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
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
(17:45):
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
(18:05):
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
(18:26):
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
(18:48):
every day.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
It's the ultimate freedom.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
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
(19:15):
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,
(19:38):
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
(20:00):
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.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Know, worry about her.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
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
(20:31):
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
(20:54):
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.
(21:14):
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
(21:36):
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
(21:57):
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
(22:17):
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,
(22:38):
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
(22:58):
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
(23:20):
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
(23:43):
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,
(24:04):
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
(24:25):
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
(24:45):
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
(25:07):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Get rid of it.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
It destroys, it lives.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
It happened.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
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
(26:16):
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.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
But it's not a.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
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.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
And she was very mean.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
She loved me and when I was little, she really
really I feel a lot.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Of the love I do. But she was extremely mean
and extremely jealous of me.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
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.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
I want to be you know, she wanted to be me.
But and.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
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
(27:41):
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.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
And the thing about it is that.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
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,
(28:20):
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.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
This is where it seemed sort of cool.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
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
(29:01):
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
(29:23):
was like fast cash.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
New money. And this was when we made it.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
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
(29:51):
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
(30:20):
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.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
I thought this was hope.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
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.
(30:59):
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.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Sexually abused.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
You know, there was just a lot of stuff that
happened and it affected it.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
It like hid every tree of the dysfunction.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
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.
(31:45):
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
(32:06):
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
(32:26):
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.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
And like eating her alive. But you can't see it.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
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,
(33:06):
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.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
And she didn't.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
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
(33:41):
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
(34:01):
in a drawer, and I thought one day she would
pass and it would just be like nothing happened.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
I really really thought that.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
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,
(34:27):
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
(34:52):
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.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
I want her to have a family. I want her
to have people around her.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
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.
(35:26):
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.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
I don't know why you remember.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
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,
(36:10):
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.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Mom letters.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
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
(36:51):
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
(37:14):
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
(37:35):
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.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
Never.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
I just sat in traffic and like she was just
pretty pretty terrible.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
But I don't want to remember that. And so.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
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.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
And she's writing you know.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
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
(38:29):
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.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
You are the light of my life. You are the
love of my life. You're the only one who really
knows me.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
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.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
At all times.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
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.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
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
(39:49):
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
(40:14):
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
(40:37):
what you needed as a child, like she was the mother,
you were the daughter.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
There are things that no child needs, like you were
the deed of the adult.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
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.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
You can take this one off your plate. In terms
of blame.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
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.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
What you can do is what you are doing.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
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
(41:46):
like be the full person that I could be. And
and I've had friends tell me. My other friend said
(42:08):
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
(42:30):
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,
(42:53):
me and Russo who's always messaging me on Instagram.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
She's such a supporter.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
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.
(43:17):
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
(43:44):
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
(44:06):
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
(44:29):
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
(44:49):
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,
(45:21):
I've had great loves in.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
My life, people to love me.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
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,
(45:48):
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
(46:10):
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.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
Barely even believe that she was sick.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
She always was every time we were on the phone,
from when I was twenty to now.
Speaker 3 (46:27):
It was just always everything was.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
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,
(46:49):
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
(47:10):
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.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
She's sick.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
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.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
And then the mood she'd be in the mood swings.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
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
(48:07):
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
(48:28):
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.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
I just.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
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
(49:03):
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,
(49:23):
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
(49:43):
just hope that my healing process will help yours, because
it's been all this toxins stuck inside of me.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
And this woman.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
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.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
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,
(50:34):
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.
Speaker 3 (50:49):
I was alone. I've been alone my.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
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
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.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Hello, This podcast has certainly taken an interesting turn.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Overall, just overall.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
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
(01:05):
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
(01:25):
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
(01:47):
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
(02:10):
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
(02:31):
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
(02:54):
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,
(03:17):
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
(03:39):
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.
(04:00):
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
(04:21):
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
(04:42):
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.
(05:02):
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
(05:22):
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.
(05:44):
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
(06:05):
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,
(06:26):
and I go, I can't talk right.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
I was very dismissive. I can't.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
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.
(06:51):
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
(07:12):
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
(07:33):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
And so immediately I was like.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
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
(08:07):
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
(08:28):
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
(08:48):
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
(09:09):
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.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
In my body.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
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
(09:50):
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
(10:11):
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
(10:37):
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
(11:00):
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,
(11:21):
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
(11:42):
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
(12:03):
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
(12:30):
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
(12:53):
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,
(13:14):
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
(13:34):
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
(13:55):
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
(14:18):
when I wrote that, I was mourning her loss and
mourning her loss because what a poor soul and spirit
and life.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
Like my mother was so breathtakingly beautiful.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
When I tell you that, I like, look, I wanted
so much from her, Like I got tiny glimpses and
like wanted.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
So much more.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
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
(15:00):
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
(15:20):
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,
(15:44):
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
(16:07):
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
(16:28):
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
(16:51):
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
(17:14):
an adult. And if you know anything about the racetrack,
it's I know why she said it.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
It ruined her life.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
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
(17:45):
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
(18:05):
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
(18:26):
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
(18:48):
every day.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
It's the ultimate freedom.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
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
(19:15):
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,
(19:38):
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
(20:00):
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.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
Know, worry about her.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
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
(20:31):
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
(20:54):
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.
(21:14):
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
(21:36):
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
(21:57):
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
(22:17):
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,
(22:38):
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
(22:58):
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
(23:20):
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
(23:43):
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,
(24:04):
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
(24:25):
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
(24:45):
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
(25:07):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Get rid of it.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
It destroys, it lives.
Speaker 2 (25:34):
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.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
It happened.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
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
(26:16):
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.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
But it's not a.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
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.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
And she was very mean.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
She loved me and when I was little, she really
really I feel a lot.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Of the love I do. But she was extremely mean
and extremely jealous of me.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
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.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
I want to be you know, she wanted to be me.
But and.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
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
(27:41):
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.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
And the thing about it is that.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
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,
(28:20):
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.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
This is where it seemed sort of cool.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
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
(29:01):
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
(29:23):
was like fast cash.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
New money. And this was when we made it.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
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
(29:51):
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
(30:20):
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.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
I thought this was hope.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
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.
(30:59):
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.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Sexually abused.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
You know, there was just a lot of stuff that
happened and it affected it.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
It like hid every tree of the dysfunction.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
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.
(31:45):
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
(32:06):
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
(32:26):
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.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
And like eating her alive. But you can't see it.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
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,
(33:06):
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.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
And she didn't.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
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
(33:41):
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
(34:01):
in a drawer, and I thought one day she would
pass and it would just be like nothing happened.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
I really really thought that.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
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,
(34:27):
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
(34:52):
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.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
I want her to have a family. I want her
to have people around her.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
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.
(35:26):
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.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
I don't know why you remember.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
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,
(36:10):
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.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Mom letters.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
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
(36:51):
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
(37:14):
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
(37:35):
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.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
Never.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
I just sat in traffic and like she was just
pretty pretty terrible.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
But I don't want to remember that. And so.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
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.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
And she's writing you know.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
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
(38:29):
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.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
You are the light of my life. You are the
love of my life. You're the only one who really
knows me.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
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.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
At all times.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
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.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
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
(39:49):
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
(40:14):
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
(40:37):
what you needed as a child, like she was the mother,
you were the daughter.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
There are things that no child needs, like you were
the deed of the adult.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
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.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
You can take this one off your plate. In terms
of blame.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
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.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
What you can do is what you are doing.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
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
(41:46):
like be the full person that I could be. And
and I've had friends tell me. My other friend said
(42:08):
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
(42:30):
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,
(42:53):
me and Russo who's always messaging me on Instagram.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
She's such a supporter.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
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.
(43:17):
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
(43:44):
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
(44:06):
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
(44:29):
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
(44:49):
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,
(45:21):
I've had great loves in.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
My life, people to love me.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
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,
(45:48):
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
(46:10):
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.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
Barely even believe that she was sick.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
She always was every time we were on the phone,
from when I was twenty to now.
Speaker 3 (46:27):
It was just always everything was.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
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,
(46:49):
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
(47:10):
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.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
She's sick.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
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.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
And then the mood she'd be in the mood swings.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
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
(48:07):
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
(48:28):
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.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
I just.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
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
(49:03):
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,
(49:23):
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
(49:43):
just hope that my healing process will help yours, because
it's been all this toxins stuck inside of me.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
And this woman.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
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.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (50:10):
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,
(50:34):
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.
Speaker 3 (50:49):
I was alone. I've been alone my.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
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
Host
Bethenny Frankel
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