Unlocking the Past

Bethenny reflects on the heavy feelings she’s been experiencing since the passing of her mom roughly a week ago. In doing so she can’t help but pull forth memories of her parents and how she was raised. It’s a raw moment she fortunately feels comfortable enough to share.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
So it is days after my mother passed away, and
this has been an incredible journey. I have realized that
people don't really talk about death and grief in a

(00:34):
digestible way. I'm finding that out from a lot of people.
I'm finding out. I mean, I've never had a response
to anything like I've had to divorce and death. And
I'm seeing that there are a lot of similarities and
not just parallels, but like these two topics are converging
because many people have chosen certain types of partners as

(00:57):
a result of their childhood, and the types of messages
that I'm getting are about generational trauma, meaning you know,
the parents that you had and the dynamics that you
experienced as a child, if they were traumatic or very damaging,

(01:18):
and then really getting into thinking about their childhoods and
there's anger and there's confusion, and there's compassion, and there's
being closed off. And I mentioned that I literally have
lived nowhere but in my childhood for the first time
in forty five years, in so many different ways, and

(01:39):
you kind of put it all through a strainer, and
with any luck, you end up with the good because
you end up being compassionate about the fact that if
someone was so miserable that they would abuse you and
be mean to you and abuse themselves and be self destructive.
You know, they're filled with toxinsotional toxins, physical toxins, disease

(02:04):
and addictions, and like they cannot contain it, and so
they dump it on you. And I realize that, you know,
parents dump so much on their children, even good parents,
and the kids wear it and you have to be
very aware of that. And I want to also talk
about motherhood more, and I want to talk about some
stuff that has been happening with myself and my daughter.

(02:24):
But basically the letters that I've been getting and the
emails I've never I mean divorce, it's been divorced and
traumatic experiences, Like no one was talking about divorce in
this type of way. They're illogical way sometimes it's psychological way,
but in a very like traumatic way, and how to
deal with it, how to manage it logistically and then
also emotionally. So as I mentioned in my post, I've

(02:46):
been grieving this horrendous trauma, the worst of my whole life,
the most significant loss. And also I was getting so
many messages about divorce that we are going to come
back with divorce in the next couple of weeks, and
that I'm reading all your messages, but I am am
moved by these messages about your life, your lives, your life.

(03:10):
I'm reading them, I'm seeing them, you know, and I
know that this is freeing you and you do not
feel alone, and you feel seen and you are seen
so and I am certainly not an expert on death
or grief, like I am divorced, but I've had my
own way of doing it, and i will share it
with you because it's been a different way than I've
seen other people do or I've done in the past.

(03:34):
And there are many brands of death, so they are
One brand is you had a person lives a very
long life. They're at ninety eight years old. You had
a good relationship with them, and it's so sad and
they were around for so long and you can't believe
it's over. But there's some peace to it, there's some meaning.
There's a brand where someone's very sick and it's been
torturous and you feel guilty that for years you were

(03:55):
a caretaker and that you wanted it to be over.
And that's a level of guilt, you know, there's grieving
when God forbid someone who passes before their time or
before you and you're older, or something like that, Like
that's like traumatic, or God forbid an accident or someone
takes their own life. I mean, there were so many
different brands, you know, frustration. Lorie Peterson and I have

(04:16):
been messaging back and forth from Orange County. So there
are many brands of death. And I, as a kid,
never really experienced death because I didn't really have a
family for most of my life and so I didn't
hadn't had people around me that had really died. And
I always this is going to sound strange, but not envied,
but like I felt left out with people that had
had family members pass away because they were going through

(04:37):
something and I was always like I didn't understand it.
I couldn't relate to it. I didn't know what it
would feel like, you know, grief. And my dog Cookie passing,
which will become relevant later, was a traumatic event. My
dog lived eighteen years and she was a family member
because I did, as I've now been more open about,
I haven't had family. And when Dennis, my ex and

(04:58):
a friend of thirty years, passed, it was it was
it was a brand of death. It was it was
feeling guilty because he loved me so much and would
send me these love letters, and some of them were
not lucid. And it was over the course of years,
and there was a lot that I didn't know and understand,
and and I was frustrated and blamed myself, thought I

(05:23):
could have done something, blamed other people because I was
open about certain things to them and felt that they
didn't do it. I mean, you go through a million things,
and the stages of grief is a very true thing,
and they're not all the same for everybody. They say
the stages, but they don't have to be in order
and they don't have to all happen. And so this
brand of death is a different brand than I had

(05:43):
ever heard of, than I had ever experienced, and that
many of you hadn't really thought about. And now people
that I know and people that I don't know are
reaching out and it's making them think differently, and it's
it's it's having meaning because I am telling people that
I know and also people that I don't know, when
I hear their story, it is not going to be

(06:04):
what you think it's going to be. This brand this
particular brand, this generational trauma brand, complicated being a very
understated word for this brand of death with a person
that's supposed to be the most significant safe relationship in
your life, dying is not what you expect. I know

(06:25):
other people that haven't spoken to certain family members, have
estranged relationships. They've put it in a drawer, like me,
They've locked it. They don't think about it. Days could
go by. You don't think about this person. You are
positive they are gone from your life, so you will
not when they die. It will just be something that
just happens. Like my father died, and it made me
very very sad that he never really wanted anything to
do with me and was very dismissive of me. My

(06:47):
real father, I call him, because I had a stepfather
that was more of a father and more significant. He
had a lot of issues and he is very old
and also very sick, and I'm just waiting for that
shoe to drop and then me to be under the
couch for a month. But that was the most significant
male relationship in my life was my stepfather. Because when
my mother was away and left for months at a time,
and when she went to a mental institution, and when

(07:09):
she had just left and had a boyfriend somewhere in
Wales and wasn't at my graduation, she just decided not
to go. All these times he was there and so
I didn't want to attach to him when I was
young because I didn't really want him around and he
was problematic. He did end up getting his ship more
together and was more of a solid figure, and he

(07:30):
had a lot of problems. He had left the family before,
and then I became his family, and I was sort
of a way for him to like show my mother
how much he would love her and take care of
her because he was obsessed with her, as everybody was.
So I was really with him more and he was compassionate.
He was certainly very problematic. But when my real father died,

(07:51):
someone who really kind of just left me when I
was young, they were in a relationship. He didn't treat
me right. I went back to my mother into the
arms of the next man, who was my stepfather, who
was the most significant relationship. This is still in the
formative years, which we'll get into, because I did not
realize until recently that between zero and eight is when
you're formed as a person. So if you had some

(08:14):
good memories and some love before your parent fell off
the rails, you know, you might have a shot. And
so so that that real father, when he died of cancer,
it was unresolved, and it was definitely why didn't he
love me? And for years I tried to get his love,
and for years he abandoned and dropped me and was
mean to me. I mean I had two parents be
very very mean to me, said me and things to me.

(08:35):
To the day when he died, I thought I was
going to get some sort of resolution. And a friend
of mine who was friends with him because people again
glamorized him and worshiped him, and he always dated younger,
pretty people, and he was a Hall of Fame horse trainer,
and I used to beg for his affection. I used
to pretend publicly that like I was the daughter of
Bobby Frankel, because I wanted them to think that I

(08:56):
was somebody and like that I could go to the
Kentucky Derby and I could like be that. My stepfather, John,
who wasn't as successful a trainer, but still successful, he

(09:18):
included me. He took me, He took me to Saratoga
and like put me in the Winter Circle pictures. My
real father, who was the real success, which was a
big rivalry between those two men always discarded me. And
one year I went with an ex fiance to the
Kentucky Derby and he got the ticket. He brought me there,

(09:39):
and the tickets are a fortune, and I called my
father to ask him if he could get his tickets
and he said he blew us off, and he said no,
and he didn't have any. And this is always how
he was. I don't have any. He was very He
also was scathing. So I had two scathing parents, which
will explain my personality a little bit, like I have
to try to tone it down. And I think this
will significantly change me. I've been hardened by the racetrack
and by two very scathing parents and the abuse and

(10:02):
everything else. But we showed up at the races that
day and I overheard my father, because we had to
buy tickets. I overheard him saying to other people, I
have all these tickets. I don't know what I'm gonna
do with them. I could probably sell them or something.
He was just mean my whole life, and he was
a mean person, and everybody could glamorize it. The way
that they want to. He was very successful. He was

(10:23):
very good friends with Joe Tory, the guy from the Yankees,
who also ended up disliking me, not knowing me whatsoever,
because people thought that my father, who was enamored with
some fame, like he was enamored with the Joe Torris
and baseball because the trainers were they like the workers,
even though they, you know, the owners were the rich
blue bloods and the owners and a lot of celebrities

(10:44):
hang out around racetracks. And my father was a god,
but he was a really mean, mean person, and he
was mean to me to the last breath through through
the baby cam like that thing that you can hear.
My father's friend who's my friend, also heard it, heard
how mean he was to me, and that the first
time he got a glimpse into what I my pain
for all my years, and it was validation, like because

(11:07):
people see different sides to people. And I've heard people
in the letters that you guys have written me tell
me that your mother or you know, a parent was
you know, cold to you, couldn't connect to you what
was charming and wonderful to everybody else. And it can
it can really be very sad, so we don't have
to get into too much about my real father. But
he was not a parent in any any part of
the situation. He tried to connect with me at a

(11:29):
certain age when he started seeing pictures of me with
John Paracella, and I was glad. I was I was
enamored by the glamour of that he lived in La
and I was watching sixteen Candles. I'm pretty and pink,
and I wanted to be out there and thought I
was going to live this fabulous life. And he courted me.
But once I relinquished and decided to allow my real
father to be my father, I put changed my name

(11:49):
from Bethany Paracella, which I literally would like to go
and change back. I've always hated my name because my
father it was like being bougie and like having that
name and pretending that he was a father. And it
happened in college. I had never legally been Paraslla. It
was just that in third grade I went with John
Paracella to register at school and they asked my last name,
and I felt guilty that it was Frankly, it was
on my passport my whole life, and so I said

(12:11):
Paracella and there are so many people in my life
that only know me as Beth Paracella. But so in
college because of my stepfather really lashing out at me,
every single thing I owned came to my dorm room
from my life with my mother and my stepfather. He
had physically lashed out at me, and I took the

(12:31):
name Frankel, and I leaned in and I wanted my
real father to like accept me, like I was going
to now be his daughter. And he dropped me like
a hot potato. He wanted nothing to do with me.
He literally all the courting. It was like I was
a woman that had been courted and just dumped. It
was like the dog chases the cat, the cat runs away,
the cat chases the dog, the dog runs away. So
he was not a great person, and he was really

(12:52):
pretty much a piece of shit my whole life. And
I tried so hard to write letters and to ask him,
and he just really was this cold, detached person. My
mother was not detached in that same way. She was
miserable and toxic and mean, but she had emotions underneath
and would cry and wasn't detached like you could have.
You know, she was emotional, but just very erratic. So

(13:15):
my real father when he died, it was not the
same type of feeling. It just wasn't the same brand
it was. My ex was with me, my daughter was
in my belly. I tried to make meaning out of it.
I took some meaningful things from his house that I
still have here. He was hostile in his death. On
a Today's Show episode about Father's Day, I said something like,
and I don't really have a father, like a throwaway comment,

(13:37):
but down deep, I guess he loved me. And he
used to watch every single thing that I did, and
he used to watch The Apprentice and he rooted for me.
But what good is loving someone if you're not going
to tell them or remote He just was not capable,
which was the problem that my mother had with him.
And he never was able to be in relationship because
of his generational trauma and his parents and how they were.

(13:58):
And when he he heard me say that on that
show that day, he really cut me off in his mind,
cut me off financially, which was a part of the relationship.
Like every year, I think he'd send me five hundred
dollars for or maybe more for my birthday, or twenty
five hundre dollars. Fifteen hundred dollars was all the money
in the world to me. I waited for it for
some reason, because I always have to be fully accountable.

(14:18):
For some reason, he agreed to pay fifty thousand dollars
for my first wedding. I should have just taken the money.
I don't know why he agreed to do that. And
there was a negotiation and a debate back and forth
about who was going to pay for my college between
he and John. So he died and I was I
really didn't care that much. It didn't affect me. This

(14:40):
loss of my mother was a very different brand of death,
and I did not expect to experience what I would experience.
So the way that I went into this, which was
not intentional, just what happened. I'm a loner. Another thing.
My father, my real father, was a loaner. He was
a loner's whole life. He'd be alone in the house.
My mother was a loaner. To it's Kelly Rippa who

(15:01):
said to me, that's genetic. And I am a loner
a lot. So I intervene in that and I do
a lot more than they did. But and like my father,
like his work became his social every day you get
up and you shower, and you go to the track
and you see people and you go to dinner. Like
so my work and that The Housewives in that way
was good for me. Reality television was good for me

(15:23):
because I would be even in my twenties, I was
the one who wanted to like a home early and
be in my pajamas and could be alone for days
on end and like not tell anybody about it. I
could like not do Thanksgiving because it was triggering me
and I'd be alone. I wouldn't tell anybody because I
don't want, like anyone to know or feel bad. And
some of you can relate to that. The pandemic leaned
right into that for me and really like enveloped me

(15:44):
in it being okay and normalizing being alone. And so
it's taken. I'm still it's still taking me a while
to get myself out. And so I think that Jewish
people in sitting shiva is a good thing. And I
was talking actually to Jill Zarin about this, because you
grieve for a week. But what I personally don't agree
with is the distraction of it. Because when Dennis died,

(16:08):
I went to the funeral, and I remember drinking wine
that morning because it was like making me cope. And
then I went over to someone's house after that they
were having you know, they're starting I guess the shive
at their house. And then you were in your house
and people flew into New York and like came to
see me and like it does help, and they're visiting,
and it's it's you know, if you have a family,
you're doing it together. And I'm not. I'm not there's
no way to judge anyone's version of how they're going

(16:30):
to do this. I'm not saying that at all. I'm
just saying if you're a person, that can really distract.
Because I had an ex who had a mother who
died and we did shive for a week and all
we did was drink and tell stories and look at pictures,
and then it was over and then you know, people
go back to normal life and you've had like a
social week, and that's daring. So I have not done
it that way. My daughter came back to me. I

(16:51):
was supposed to go to a volleyball tournament, and thank
god she had the volleyball tournament. It was my weekend
with her. I did not want her to be laying
with me in misery, and like I didn't want to
like share that with her. She knew my mother, but
she had seen her two times in person and done
art with her and spend time with her. She would
call her sometimes and send her things. And in fact,
when my mother would call, she would really just stay

(17:12):
to brin like I don't have much to say, colostomy
bag and I'm this and it's that, and not really
much good. Like she was selfish in that way too,
Like she wasn't saying, oh, tell me about what's going
on outside, or let's talk about your mom when she
was a little girl, Like my mother was not capable of,
like not being super deep and dumping really adult shit
on my daughter, because that's what she did on me

(17:33):
my whole life. But my daughter's not equipped for that.
Like I was an adult at five years old, and
that's not like when I first found my mother's throwing
up and found her her her trolley and her laxative
caddie and would call the cops and see people being beaten,
you know, with an inch of their life, like and
was at the racetrack with degenerates and drugs and guns
like I was an adult. It's just what it is.

(17:54):
I'm not complaining, no poor me. I'm just saying, like,
my daughter's not that person, and I can get into that.
And how I described this to her yesterday, you could
see she doesn't even have the emotional bandwidth to hear
the stories of my childhood, which have been very watered
down but just need to be explained so she doesn't
wonder why her mom never had a relationship with her mom,
and now her mom's dead, and now her mom's mom

(18:16):
is dead, and now her mom is crying. And wait,
you could have been like trying to very very dilute
it down and fold into the batter some stories of
my life and how it wasn't great. I mean, she's
old enough to understand to realize that, not to process it.
But I didn't want her. I was so happy she
had this volleyball tournament. I actually there was a moment
when I thought like I was going to be there,

(18:37):
like that's psychotic now realizing what I've gone through, But
I like put her somewhere, and I was so happy,
and she won a medal, which of course I had
placed a meaning on, and she came back on Sunday
and she had all her stuff and she was exhausted,
and you know, she hugged me and we had ramen
together and it was a distraction and I was glad
for it. And I made her this amazing cinnamon roll

(18:57):
in the morning that I like wanted to. I was
so tired of it because I was three hours a night,
but like just was paranoid that I wouldn't wake up
and be able to make her this big, like gold
belly cinnamon roll of strawberry frosting, and like she's like,
I love you, mamma. Can I hug? Can we hug?
And we hugged, and you know, and and just showing
I've been showing our pictures of my mom, Like I
haven't dumped the whole bag of shit on her at all,
but it's, you know, she's getting it. She's very emotionally,

(19:20):
you know, intelligent and and so off she went to
school and then she went to her dad for a
couple of days, and so that was good too. So
I have been alone in my house. I have people
that work here that I've been with me for years,
that I love, that have gone through their own losses
and have experienced the dentist losses of me that you know,
it's made meaning there because I've thought about them and

(19:42):
their children and the things that they've gone through and
how they're always for me and they're my family, but
like they're not really my family meaning in the sense
that like I don't live in their house. And we
started talking about some of their traumas and things that
have happened for them. And I have always you know,
Laney's been in my life for so many years. I've
always said she's in my will. But like saying that,
I mean God forbid dropping dead tomorrow and her not

(20:02):
being and my will are not the same thing. And
so I like started to take the action with my
you know, team, to like actually put them in my
will and in my like what's going to happen to them?
And they're old, They've spent all these years working with me,
and like, you know, like are they going to be
are they going to be protected? What's most important to
them is it? Are they worried about being old and alone? No,
because some of them have big families. They you know,

(20:23):
is Laney worried that her son is not going to
be able to go to college. Does she want that
for him? Like what? What? What worries her? And I
didn't want to make her feel vulnerable and uncomfortable, but
for her to talk to, you know, my business people
about like what, you know, how they can be protected,
like my home version of whatever a retirement account is,
and like a will and things like that. You know,
it was like Laney's going to be in a Rolls Royce.

(20:44):
When I dropped dead, I was alone the whole week.
I was alone, listening to seventies, you know, Carol King
radio and like having memories of Barry Mann alone. My
first album it was the Big White one that opened
and had like three parts to it, and I wore
it down and Neil Diamond and Carly Simon and James

(21:04):
Taylor and air Supply and it brought back a lot
of memories. There were some songs I absolutely couldn't couldn't
listen to, and and I took nature walks and reconnected
and connected with my area because I don't have a
good relationship with exercise, and I'm always envious to people
who like every morning they just worked out, and you
know I do that in the Hamptons. I go on

(21:25):
my beach walks and it opened up this I couldn't
say in my house. So every day, twice a day,
I would like put my big hat on and put
the Carrol King radio on and listen to Barry Manelow
and everybody nothing modern. I literally did not crave. I
was like rejecting anything current, anything like there could be

(21:46):
the way we wore, like a gaga could slip in
because it like is nostalgic from the way we were,
but like nothing, and I didn't want any of it.
And I cried on these walks and I connected with
nature and my lived in my childhood, and through this
week decided that I was going to finally go visit Saratoga,
where I went as a kid. I was gonna take
Brin back there because I have not been willing to

(22:07):
revisit there. I've never gone back because it was the
only escape from this hell. And we would have one
month and there would always would still be fights up there,
but I don't remember there being a lot of like
police level fights. I remember everybody just being happy up
there for that one month, and my mother wasn't always there.
But like I said, those drives up there, the memories
are chill my skin, like, and Saratoga's changed so much.

(22:27):
It's not a place that's nostalgic anymore. It's very commercial
and like it used to be so farm stand and
so provincial, and so I like have it in a
time capsule, and I just haven't wanted to go this
place dairy house that had this like soft custard with
so many flavors that we used to go to, and like,
I have all these memories, so all these memories were
flooding in that I never had because the music was

(22:48):
connected to the memories. And my version of sitting Shiva
was a week of just being alone and really like
you know, having compassion and forgiving and going there real
and doing therapy, realizing that if your formative years or
zero to eight, that like that's why these are so strong,
like these memories, and you know, and that's also when

(23:11):
it was like bad. But I just you know, I
had my own version. Today's the first day I've washed
my hair. And it's funny because I was looking I
was I showered to have my grandma sweater on, and
I was thinking, like I was listening to the song
You're So Vain, and there's a line in You're so
vain from Carly Simon about Saratoga. And I was thinking
about how I'm not so vain and people comment on

(23:31):
that that I'm willing to be like just look like
this and not you know, care. And my mother was
not pretentious or superficial. She was vain, but she was
the one wearing overalls to the you know, during the
day all the time. She never had makeup on, Like
you know, there are a lot of similarities with myself
and her. She didn't wasn't vain in that way. She
was internally like you know, with a disorder pain vein,

(23:55):
Like it was just she just that addiction and that
blimia just just ruled her entire life and killed her.
And it's crazy that the one thing that she was
so vain about was the thing that rotted her. And
I have a different relationship to age now. You know,
people used to think that you were in your late
thirty your thirties, and like you were done, like you
were look old. And she thought she was old at forty,

(24:16):
I mean, and she started to look old at forty
because of what she was doing to her body and
destroying herself. But like it's hard for me because I'm
having a rebirth right now, like I'm healing generational trauma
right now, and I am at an age where I
looked at her as so old, and so there's a
lot of guilt, a lot of guilt, like, you know,

(24:37):
I don't like me. I want to fix everything, and
my therapist says, I fix everything. I go there's a
problem in the Hampton's right now with encampments, and like
I've got my team there, palettes of aid. There's something
going on in Puerto Rico, like I saw it. Why
you know, why couldn't I go to Florida and just
be like, I'm gonna like solve this, and you're gonna
go into this type of rehab and you're gonna be like,

(24:58):
I don't know, And I was scared to do that,
and I didn't even know to do that, and I
had so much anger for my life. You know, it's
like it's Monday morning quarterback. Listen. She had a friend,
she had a good friend who knew nothing about this,
so she compartment mentalized this enough that she had a
friend that is in that house showing me Cartier giant

(25:19):
pearl earrings that we've like I've put next to pictures
at my confirmation, Tiffany Pearls and I mentioned the brands
because I didn't realize, like she's the one who made
my stepfather like into nice things and culture all of
us with like knowing what things were, and like disco music,
which I wasn't even allowed. I realized that too. My
mother was living at Studio fifty four as Studio fifty

(25:42):
four when I was growing up. That's when she was
going out partying, and like I lived for disco. I
had a secret life on hot skates. No one at
my school they would have made fun of me. They
all were into the doors. Everybody that went to Saint
Agnes in sixth and seventh and eight, you know grade
there was no disco. I had a secret life of disco.
No one knew about Indian food, No one knew about sushi.
My mother was living this Like she went to f

(26:03):
I t she went to Pratt, she went to Parsons.
She was like this like fabulous person. I don't know
where she got it from. It's like amazing to see that,
Like she left her house at sixteen and just found fabulousity.
It really really is. And I've been talking a lot
about well, first, Brenne and I decided together, we came
up with a good solution for her ashes her friend
in Florida. I got her someone to take care of

(26:25):
her for the last couple of years. And this woman
is like, you need to come here, and you need
to do this here, you know all this. And I
was feeling guilty because I was feeling like I don't
want to go in that. I don't think I can
handle going in that apartment. But then why should I
go there? And her friend, her actual friend of eleven years,
was like, no, she hated for And I remember that
she hated Florida as a kid, And this makes me
sad too. The I said to her friend, why did
she move to Florida? She hated Flora. She never went out,

(26:47):
she didn't go swim, she didn't go to the beach.
She couldn't give a shit. And this woman said, because
she wanted to go somewhere where no one knew her,
which also broke my heart. Like a picture that this
woman sent me of her, this beautiful specimen of all
those that had all the all the opportunity and just
continue to choose the wrong men and devolve. You know,
men are such a massive theme and and and devolve

(27:10):
that this man the last man that beat her, and
there were police reports that this her friend found and
before that was an alcoholic. Like the male choices were
just always driven by how someone loved her, never how
she loved them. Something that is like genetic, like something
that has been a massive theme in my life. And
you know, my daughter, there'll be a boy in school
and she'll say, ex likes me a lot of many times,

(27:34):
and she's never seen anything about this with me, Like
this is like it's like in our weaving of the souls.
As Michael Caponi, my philanthropy partner, said, you know, my
daughter will say this person likes me. I'm like, okay,
do you like them? Like I'm you know, trying to
break these chains by also saying like it's great that
someone likes you, and yes, it's great someone be chivalrous

(27:55):
and like you first and write the Valentine first or
whatever happens. But like, ultimately someone else cannot love or
like you enough for you to like them like or
love them like it's not that's not how this thing
is gonna work. And I realize now that like it's
because she came from an abusive household with a father
that was a tyrant, and so she just went out

(28:15):
and wanted love, like if someone would love her enough.
John Parasla love bombing, he lived, love bombed her all
those cardier stuff and those pearls and everything she couldn't
even afford himself, Like she was this woman who was
so stunning and perfect, like he wanted to like, you know,
and same with Bobby, Like she didn't really love these guys,
and she really she loved one of the guys after

(28:35):
you know, before the monster. This like one guy, but
he was an alcoholic and she was attracted to that
for that reasons, Like we have to intervene in our
lives and think about why we're choosing people. The game
is moving very quickly when you are choosing people, but
you have to find a way to think about why
and and and so, like I'm thinking about that for
my own life, Like you just want people, you know.

(28:56):
Several of my axes have said to me or friends
have said to me about these people. You're never gonna
find someone who's going to love you as much as
they do. And one of my exes said to me,
you will never find someone who will love you as
much as I will, pleading with me to be with them,
and as a person who had no real parents or
parental structure, like, yes, take me. I want to be loved.

(29:19):
I want to be loved. To give it to me,
you love, Yes, I believe you. I believe in I
believe it. No one's gonna love how No one loved
me as a child. Why would anyone else love me
more than this person who wants to be my family?
And then it gets layered that like with my ex Peter,
who I married like his parents. I loved his parents.
His mother was like a mother to me. Mary and
Susman was like a mother to me. She took me

(29:40):
wedding dress shopping. She would take me. It wasn't about
the material things, but she would take me to go
like to where are we gonna get the wedding test?
To get my makeup done? And she would like take
me shopping is a you know mother would do. And
she would talk to me and she was funny and
like I was marrying them too, you know, like there
are different reasons. They may not even be the person
you're with, You're marrying their family, like they're different reasons

(30:00):
we're making these decisions, and like I when we broke up,
you know, it broke my heart that I broke her
heart because she loved me, and I broke her heart,
And like they don't come from or understand a person
from a damaged childhood like myself. Brian Koppleman, you know
his his mother, Bunny Coplman, loved me. I was like
attracted to her. You know, you're you're finding these different things.

(30:22):
So I realized when my mom I was doing what
my mother was doing for so many years and and
I haven't been able to crack into this. I haven't
been serious about therapy for a while where I'll be
like regular where like you know how you'll like make
a standing manicure appointment and be like, Okay, the second
I leave here, I'm making the next appointment. That's how
regular I've been in the last couple of uh, certainly

(30:45):
the last year, maybe a couple of years, but really
the last year where it's like f and it could
be it could be, and the same thing for my daughter,
it'll be like it could be once a month. It
just has to be like that it's happening again because
it's something you may not want to do, but once
you do it, you feel better. It's like working out.
And if you cannot afford therapy, you know, do the
apps that have a therapist. Okay, if you cannot afford therapy,

(31:08):
go online and look up things that you know, people
like me and other people say like generational trauma or
like formative years, like I literally till yesterday did not
really realize and had to send to my friend who
was a complicated relationship with her mother the formative year thing,
which gave me some comfort. It made me realize, Okay,
maybe I'm not in a total basket case, because I

(31:28):
do have glimpses of love from when I was a kid,
and going through the old pictures is bringing me there.
And it made me very sad the first couple of
days of this grief, like tortuously, like bad, and because
I wanted my mommy and I wanted to be there
and I wanted more of it. And that move you
move through that, you move out of the bad, you

(31:50):
move into that, and then you move into like guilt
and like logic and what you could have done and
you could have brought you, you know, and then and then
you kind of go in and out of that, and
then you're just playing nostalgic songs and they're just reminding
you of something and you're just like honoring. I'm wearing
a ring that was my mother, that was mine when
I was thirteen, and a one that I bought with
Brynn recently in an antique shop that we believe is

(32:12):
the same one that I had when I was younger,
because I've never seen anyone else with it, but we
want to believe that this bee that I got for
like my confirmation, that's like a diamond script bee, and like,
you know, just trying to connect and like, there's a
beautiful picture of my mother when she looks like the
bandu sole, like this French beautiful woman, and she had
these two rings on that she wore every day and
I've always coveted them. And this friend of hers that

(32:34):
found like found these pictures sent a picture. I'm like,
oh my god, those are the rings, and she's like
in a scavenger hunt and she found them for me,
and it's making me so happy that she had this
friend of eleven years that I'm connecting with and that
you know, she deserves all this stuff. I'm like take
whatever you want and she's like, no, I want you
to have it all. And it's like, like I said,
cartier and stuff, real stuff. And it makes me happy

(32:57):
because it means she had a friend that she could
trust because anybody could have gone in there. My mother
was so vulnerable and anybody would take from her. Anybody
could have gone in there and stolen all this stuff.
And this beautiful person, Julia is her name, but it's
spelled like with an L. And she said to me
that she's now connecting with her mother because of this.
She bought her mother a ticket. So I'm feeling like
there's all these things swirling because of this death, and

(33:19):
I'm sharing it with you because a lot of things
are swirling with you and a lot of you are reconnecting.
And my friend is now thinking about therapy, and like
a lot of stuff is swirling with mothers and daughters
and it's and we're entering, we're coming into Mother's Day.
It's like the perfect time to talk about this stuff.
And I'm sending people a lot of messages saying it
doesn't matter. I know your mother abuse do. I know
she's angry and evil and all. It's not really about

(33:40):
that it's about doing something so you don't go through
like torture and trauma. Like take one part of that off,
Go send her a mixtape of songs from her generation,
write a letter, send a gift, because this person is
in tremendous pain. They've been evil, but they didn't just
wake up and decide to be evil. That's the generational trauma.
That's the stuff that comes from decades that was passed down.

(34:02):
And like, there are ways that I am like my mother,
even though it's stuff that I don't want to be.
And there are ways that I'm like my father, but
you know, at least to understand where you come from
and why. You know. I can be biting, you know,
but I've turned it into a good sometimes in the
sense that you know, my daughter's pretty incredible, and I

(34:24):
don't suffer fools, and I don't negotiate with terrorists, and
I'm strict in that way. She messes around me, she
disrespects me. She says something like, I snap it right away.
I don't let really any of them slide. I'm tremendously
loving and amazing, and I never turned down a snuggle.
I never turned down a cuddle. We hog I mean,
I live for my kid, but I don't play games.

(34:44):
And the way that I with my daughter that I've
handled it was is to like tell her the stories,
but like not you know, overwhelm her with it, you know.
And Melinda, my therapist, who's a psychoanaly is like so happy.
She's like can't believe. She's like, now the deep work
will happen. And the same thing with Breck. They're like,

(35:05):
this is profound because I feel different already. I feel
like different, even that I'm willing to go back to Saratoga,
even that I've been willing to like think about my
childhood and go there, it's a door that's been locked.
And reconnecting with people. Matt Littman said to me, Tody,
did you butt dial me? Because like, I don't talk
to my friends from that age. I transact with them
like once in a while, they'll be like someone will

(35:26):
see something and instagram a message me. But anyone from
pretty much my entire childhood until my twenties, with the
exception of two friends that I met in high school,
but I met them in boarding school, so I was
removed from the situation, and one of them I moved
out of boarding school into their house, just to give
you an idea of like I moved into another person's

(35:47):
home with it. You know, those are my two friends.
But it's interesting because I met them out of this
psychotic environment. So I've like they're they're in some sort
of separate bubble, you know, like they're they're they're they're
like protected from I did anybody that I met through
that entire life, even my friend Alyssa that I was
good friends with, whose mother took me to the hospital
when I had chicken pox because my stepfather John ignored

(36:09):
me when I said I had bumps all over my
stomach and like no one, like I had no parents
to take me to doctors. I hurt myself fell off
a mountain years ago. My mother kind of like blew
me off on the phone, like there was no compassion,
no caring, no chicken soup. When you don't feel well,
when you're an adult, no one's moving you into a
college dorm, no one's moving you out, no one's you know,
like I was in a so Alyssa, who's mother and

(36:31):
you know, horrified that I literally had chicken pox at
eighteen years old, took me to the hospital. I had
one hundred and five. I fainted when they took my blood.
Like all these people I've really kept at arm's length.
They're like, well, text me and I'll say thank you
and excel. Like they're just like I've cut them out.
I've like put them in a compartmentalized state. And now

(36:52):
I've been reconnecting with them, you know, because like I
can like deal with what part of my life they
were adjacent to. And I know a lot of this
is going to be like very familiar to and you
didn't even know it reading my old journals. And what's crazy, though,
is that John was like actually a pretty not a
bad terrible person. It's the only time he really ever

(37:12):
touched me, and there was a time he stopped touching her,
but his degenerate friends did sexually, you know, assault abused
me and because he was around degenerates. But he's eighty
two years old, and I forgive because he had a
heart and he cared and he was, you know, living
in a life of animals, like you know, and he

(37:33):
was enraged and substances, and you don't think about it
when you're young. You don't know like people could be
doing that are doing cocaine and like they're what they're doing,
you don't know what the hell they're doing. It's due
to fifty four. They're not doing you know, they're not
They're not drinking fucking boba. He did. He treated me
like a daughter, and I have he has to get
that credit. And he did admit what went on way
more than my mother did. And I'm gonna have a

(37:56):
driver take him because I don't think he can he can't.
I'm not gonna have him drive himself, but I'm gonn
have someone take him bring him to my house so
I have a property. It feels weird. He's Celiac, I guess,
and he's lost a lot of weight, and it feels
weird to like be in a restaurant with him. And
it's gonna be uncomfortable for me, it's gonna be comfortable
for Britney's and look very old and frail, and it's
gonna be triggering. But I'm gonna put that aside because
that's a lot of why I didn't see my mother.

(38:17):
And I'm going to have him brought here and sit
out on the lawn and he'll get to like watch
her do sports and he'll he asked about her metal.
I've been texting him. He texts very fast. We've been laughing.
We actually were talking about some of my personal traumas
that we've discussed on my other podcasts that you guys
won't listen to because I'm not going to get specific
right now, but you'll understand what I'm saying. And I

(38:38):
said to him that someone once told me when they
were kind of threatening me, now you're going to see
what I was like on the basketball court. Incidentally, he
was best friends with Rick Patino, the famous basketball coach
who actually named horses after like him and stuff like that.
And he was a big basketball fan. And he went
to Saint John's stepfather and it made me laugh because

(39:02):
this was a person who had played basketball, but not professionally,
just like was a good basketball player. And I said,
he was asking about a situation of my life. And
I said to him, this person said to me, now
you're going to see what I was like on the
basketball court. And I said, I said, I survived, and
I prevailed, and I fought hard, and I came out
on top. And I said to John Paracella, I said,

(39:25):
I said, I should have said back, Now you're going
to see what I was like on the racetrack at
five years old at the shoeshine stand, hanging out in
the jockeys room. I mean like and he laughed because
like he was like fu, he said, there's nobody the
NBA growing up. Now you're gonna see what I was
like on the NBA basketball court still does not hold
a candle to being raised on the racetrack by wolves

(39:48):
and animals. So we laughed because like it's very It's
like people want to know why I am like the
way I am. It's I was because I grew up
on the racetrack. It's like it's there's no place, you know,
it's not a place to be raised. I mean I

(40:15):
remember going to John Paracela and being at OTB off
track bedding, the degenerate place. People were smoking and like gambling.
It's seven years old. We'd stop at OTB because he
was John Paracelo. It was a degenerate gamber who'd crack
my piggy bank open for money. I mean, it's like crazy.
So this is like a memoir. In the end, this
is podcast. So Melinda, my psychoanalyst, said something so fascinating,

(40:35):
which you guys are going to think is interesting and
it's about she said, your mother. We came up with
this together. But like the fact that my mother would
have a lifelong eating disorder, which by the way, affected
me too. There was a time in like high school,
high school when people were talking about food, and I
talked to my daughter about that yesterday too, I told
her about the eating disorder. I was like, listen to me,
girls are going to come in with fat diets and

(40:56):
I only ate this and I look fat and I
look and I'm like, that will ruin your life. It's
almost like when people tell their kids, like, don't do
you do drugs, You'll die, Like it will ruin your life.
That's why we never talk about food in this house.
We don't talk about any why I was bad, I
was good. This thin weight, it's like not discussed in
my house. There was the word die is in the
word diet is not discussed. So and my whole life

(41:17):
it was my mother. Oh, I gained tampat like every day,
and I had that where there were times that I
took laxatives and there were times when I would in
living in that apartment in New York City where I
would you know, go out night and get drunk, go
to nightclubs, come home downstairs and eat like a whole
you know, Enteman's cake, or eat a pint device and

(41:39):
a binge because you were drinking. I did. Then college
to you get a whole pizza and then starve. I
never had the throw up that's disgusting. I never had that.
I could never make myself throw up, but like and
then would starve myself. I'm gonna be good, I'm gonna
be bad. So it wasn't a classic eating disorder like
that is like anorexic or believe it. But it was
a disorder because it wasn't in order. And that's what

(42:00):
I wrote Naturally Thin about because I don't know how
I got involved in my own life because I wanted
to be happy. Your life was defined by like I
was good, I was bad, I was fat, I was thin.
I gained way to ruin your day, you know, and
I was like twenty five pounds heavier because I had
no It was a disorder, but it wasn't in the
you know, it never got completely out of control. It

(42:23):
was more binge and never perd binge and then naughty
and be good, good, and bad. Those words are not
should not be associated with food. Food is not your
best friend or your enemy. That's naturally thin. But Melinda said,
I mean, Bethany, you have a brand called skinny Girl,
like like is it Freud? Is it? Who knows what?
But like and then that she was also in alcohol.

(42:46):
Her big disorders were we're eating and alcohol. I mean
I made all my money on alcohol. I mean, it's insane.
But skinny Girl is about having a good relationship with food.
It's about allowing. It was about allowing, like it was
never about depriving. The whole book, the whole brand was
about like, now you get to have a margarita that's

(43:08):
slightly sweet. Now you get to have microwave popcorn, but
it's better for you. Now you get to have salad dressings,
but they're better for you. It was never about depriving.
So it was like, somehow resolving that disorder. And yes,
the word skinny can be problematic, and if I were
naming it tomorrow, I wouldn't do that. It was just
the margarita was a skinnier version. But Freud would have

(43:29):
a fucking field day with that. Like that was like
a resolution to a disorder, and it became something you know,
that represents a healthier relationship with these things, to be
able to have Margerita whatever, and then alcohol, you know,
to have an alcohol brand and a wine brand. I
mean she drank wine, you know, out of the faucet.
So and then she said, and now, Bethany, this is

(43:51):
becoming so clear because I told her my mother wanted
to be a star. She wanted to be fabulous. You know,
she held me down. I wanted to go to acting classes.
She wouldn't take me. She had a friend she once
told me to made commercials. I badgered her day and night.
She she didn't take me. She once told me she
made She once told me intentionally, I guess that I
was offered a Disney contract when I was like five

(44:12):
years old, and that she turned it down. I regretted
it my whole life, my whole life. I obsessed over it,
like I could have been something. I could have had
a Disney contract, like when I was a little girl.
I begged her, why didn't you say yes? And like
I wanted to go backwards. I wanted her to call
the friend who did commercials. Like she never helped me.
She never she wanted to be famous, like she wanted

(44:35):
to be me. She was jealous of me like and
so Malinn and my father too, would name drop the
David Milch's and the dough Tories, and you know, he
was a horse trainer. He was good at one thing,
and he made a lot of He made a lot
of money. And I thought he was so rich. And
I was so enamored by the rich and my father's
rich and he lives in the Pacific Palisades and go
to the Derby and pretend and pretend and pretend. And

(44:57):
Melinda said, you, and I said, passed all of their goals.
I am wealthier, even even with inflation and all of it.
I'm more successful, more relevant, more wealthy than my father.
I and my Linda said to me, you surpassed and
you completed their goals, Like that's what happens with generational trauma,
Like you completed each of their goals. And that all

(45:21):
the times that people ask me why I have the
hard work and determination and the drive, I never go
deep enough. I think it's my father was very driven
and he was the best of what he did. And
my mother too, She was a worker. They were workers.
She worked her ass off. She didn't complain, she was
They were. They are people who worked. They are not complainers.
They are workers like I. You know, I'm surrounded by
people sometimes like people I've been in relationships with. People

(45:43):
want waw and they're complaining and what like pros play hurt.
That's how I grew up like pros play hurt. Period.
No complain, no explain, Like I work. You take all
my money today, I'll be at a restaurant. Tomorrow, I'll
be making money. I'll be working, I'll be bartending, I'll be.
I am a worker to day I die. And I
don't expect anyone to ever do anything that I've never done.

(46:04):
But I took whatever they did into the end zone,
you know. And there's something about that that I that
I like feel in my body like I did it,
I made it. And I think she thinks that that
is very related the hard work and drive. So there's

(46:25):
a lot that's like unfolding, and that's why it's been
good for me. The music, the walking, like the being alone,
like I'm using this to be good to like, you know,
work it out. Britt and I decided we were gonna
take cookies ashes, which have been in my laundry room
in a corner. For years, we have not touched them,
we have not addressed it. But we made a decision
that we would take my mother's ashes because her friend

(46:46):
that has been this good friend is gonna come here.
I'm gonna fly her here. I'm gonna send something, Send
some money to that woman who's been taking care of her,
who's like at her house, like take care of as
many people as I can. Fly her friend here, have
her stay here, put her in a hotel, hell, give
her an experience. She's reconnected with her mother, as I
told you. And we're gonna put the ashes with cookies.
I think in the water my new house in the Hampton,

(47:08):
so like Cookie and my mother are together. I know none.
This is all not real, and like you know, it's
things that we make up and you know our lives,
but maybe it is real. I said to Brim, what
do you think happens? She said, I don't know, Mama.
She said, I think you come back. I think you recarnate.
She didn't say those words, so I think you come
back as something else. I said what she said, like,
and I was sharing with Michael Capponi, my partner said

(47:30):
he said, one day, I'll tell you what I think.
And you know, he talked about the weaving of the
souls and he's into cabala and spirituality. But he said,
maybe one day, you know, bring comes back as your
mother's daughter, and like all that gets resolved. And I
can't see anything but my mother and my daughter right now.
I can't see like you guys brought it to my attention.
I had seen it myself, but was like thinking, it

(47:50):
is it true? And she looks like her and she
has that like seventies essence of her, so I can't
see anything. But and I was thinking maybe cookie and
bring love issh, like can we do that, mama? And
all the stuff the way I sell bags and that
a lie address that I can't believe this woman found
in my mother's closet from thirty years ago. All of
this stuff is going to come. And Broom was like, please, Mama,
please don't do it without me, like please, And I

(48:12):
hate stuff, but I'm like, I can't wait for it
to come, and I can't wait to go through it
with Brin. So that's all got you know, got meaning.
And it's just important that I really mention well first
that there have been a lot of signs. You know.

(48:35):
My mother was the one who'd say to me, a
black crow is a design of death. And I saw
black crow the other day just like by itself and
it wouldn't move, and I like, I remember her saying that,
and so that was meaningful to me. So many crazy
memories that like are so insane. It's a movie. It's
like literally it's a movie. So I have, you know,
I can't really just make it all that. It was

(48:55):
like I was living every day and my house was
like shit, it wasn't they were just it just wasn't
a child's house, you know. But take these moments with
your family, Take these moments with your kids. Take these
moments and really appreciate them, like as Mother's Day comes,
like appreciate them, cherish them because they're like fireflies. I
think it's so crazy that they call that movie Firefly

(49:17):
Lane because they're like fireflies, like they're fleeting. And then
you're in a bed crying at fifty three and you're
like remembering just like an ice cream cone with your
mother that's like the firefly like popcorn in the middle
of you know, on a road, Like why do I
just remember rest stop popcorn. Like I and Bryn recently
when I was going to go that weekend, she was like,
wanted to go on a road trip because I have

(49:38):
a driver, he always drives us. It's like I want
to go just mom and Peanut and I want to go,
and like we're going to take a road trip. I'm
planning a trip this summer. You know, pictures on my
mother from me and taking me to Egypt and Greece,
and like this summer, I'm taking her on a special trip,
but not just like one of these like fancy like
Sancho pe I'm taking her somewhere or see something that
we haven't seen. So it's got meaning. I'm making meaning

(49:59):
out of this, and I believe I'll be have a
more open heart, more forgiving. And I've taken the entirety
of my mother and I've put this, all of this
through a strainer and it's I'm I just have the
good now, I'm just I just have the good and
there's I'm gonna make meaning out of it. And this
podcast has been such a gift to have a place

(50:20):
to put this. I have like had this inside and
me even writing notes, reading journals, listening to letters all
of it. And and I had an experience recently where
Brynn was feeling from you know, someone that she had
the weight of the world and she's feeling guilty and
someone's making her feel guilty of something about something, and
she feels everything and like she's wearing it. And you know,

(50:41):
one day we'll get into the pandemic. And and how
much she had on her back when she my kid
broke down bad. And that's how we started her therapy.
I said to her yesterday, you are a butterfly, and
you have to do what work, what is good for
you and what is healthy for you. And I will
always support that you are not living my life. You
are not living any parents life. It's amazing that she

(51:02):
right now is making meaning out of this and wanting
to spend time with her grandparents and wanting to be
more thoughtful, et cetera. I said, regarding anything negative in
her feeling this pressure as that you are living your
this is your life. You fly, But love you guys,
Thank you, and thank you for all the messages I'm
learning from you as much as hopefully you're learning or
just expressing or being inspired by whatever this brings up.

(51:27):
For you,