September 25, 2024 • 29 mins
Hollywood superstar, Brooke Shields, is telling Jennie all about being an empty nester, why she continues to reinvent her career, and how she had to trust the director when making their documentary.
Plus, the women connect on a deeply personal shared experience.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Garth. Hi, everyone,
welcome to I Choose Me. This podcast is all about
the choices we make and where they lead us. My
guest today is a Hollywood superstar. Her career started when
(00:22):
she was a tiny baby, and she has conquered just
so many obstacles in her life. She's known for Blue
Lagoon and Endless Love, her breakout performance as Joey's crazy
girlfriend on Friends, which led her to starring in her
own sitcom, one of my favorite sitcoms, Suddenly Susan, where
she killed it at comedy, and her most recent Netflix movie,
(00:45):
Mother of the Bride. She is the subject of the
documentary Pretty Baby Brookshields, which was a testament to how
strong and smart she is, how much she has endured
in her long career that has spanned multiple decades. She
is a mama, she's an entrepreneur. She's a badass. You guys,
please welcome Brookshields to the I Choose Me Podcast. Thank
(01:10):
you for being with.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Us, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I'll just jump right in. You've had some incredible highs
in this business, but I have to admit, even considering
all of that and loves. I love what you are
doing and saying right now. You are out front helping
to knock down these archic stereotypes that we should just
be put out to pasture after fifty and never seen
(01:35):
again after sixty. So you've partnered with GSK to help
people thrive at fifty plus. Let's talk about what people
fifty plus need to be aware of when it comes
to our health, specifically our immune system.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
We have to become people have to really take their
health in their own control and ask their doctors, ask
their pharmacists about your risk for shingles, and about vaccination.
There is so much that we are not made aware of,
(02:12):
and we have to ask, and it's so important that
we understand the statistics that ninety nine percent of those
fifty years and older actually already have the virus that
causes shingles inside their body. Okay, no, not all of
them are going to get it, but by the same
token staggering. I didn't know that. I had no idea,
(02:36):
so when I heard it, I was like good, no good,
and so I partnered with j's k's Thrive at fifty
plus campaign because that was the messaging that they really
said to me. Was the most important for them, and
the idea of really being proactive in this era of
your life and being your own advocate. You know, a
(03:00):
million about a million estimated people develop shingles in the
US just per year, and it's painful and it's terrifying,
and it's disruptive and it is it. I have a
friend who had to stop work for two weeks, and
you know she's going to afford to do that. That
(03:21):
wasn't you know, And it really read tavoc on her life.
So to me, it's important in this era. When you
talked about changing stereotypes. Part of how we do that
we don't sit and just wait for a narrative to change.
We start speaking about ourselves differently. We stop using words
(03:42):
like aging or anti aging or dry or all these words.
I'm so synonymous with just being female over forty. Practically
I'm fifty nine, So you know this is I'm definitely
in the in the and according to you know, the stereotype,
I got one foot in the grave. And that messaging
(04:06):
was I don't want my daughters, and you have three daughters,
right I do. Baby girls are always going to be your
baby girls. Yes, I have a baby eighteen year old
and a baby twenty one year old, and I want
them to know that this is not the big scary
era of age. But we are armed with many positive things,
(04:29):
many progressive ways that we can own our health, own
our lives, and take a power that we are. The
messages that we're not, we no longer have it, and
I don't even think about taking it back. I just
think about revealing it even more.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
I heard you in an interview once say that you
didn't feel fully in your body until you were in
your forties. And I know that feeling firsthand. And I
also know all that it takes to get to that
kind of self discovery when you grow up in the
business that we have grown up in and when you
just want so much to be confident in just being you.
(05:11):
Why did it take us so long to grow up
and to truly love and value ourselves?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Okay, first of all, we're in a ridiculously demigrating and
deridict being I can't even say the word industry. So
first of all, our whole industry is based on comparison
to look like that, or you're not enough of this,
so you're not. That's just all about that it's negative
and it gets drilled into us from a very young age.
The thing that's amazing to me is this is every
(05:42):
woman's flight. Really ours is played out on this ridiculous stage,
and that comes with its own challenges. But it took
me until I was pregnant. Actually, as being pregnant, my
body finally had a purpose aside from looking a certain
(06:07):
way or being a certain standard or fitting into something
or looking like so and so and so. That was
a really important right of passage for me. And then
just it started when I was forty. I just started
to realize that I could do things on my own terms,
that I didn't have to first go through the checklist
(06:31):
of making sure I was being a good girl or
that everybody was going to like me. I went I
started shifting the way I asked myself questions. And to me,
that was the first step towards you know, again we
say love our bodies. Well, there's stuff that's hang in
a lot lower now that I wish wasn't. I wish
(06:53):
I enjoyed it when it was higher, but I did
not enjoy it when it was all in its perky place.
And you know, I feel bad about that because I
wasted some time for myself.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yes, Yes, you wasted all that time loving yourself.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah. And then you start to really see yourself as
a whole, not as your waste size, or as a
healthy person, as someone who is not afraid to take
their their health and their own on their own terms
and ask questions. Ask their doctors, ask their pharmacist. You
can ask your pharmacist about everything from your risk for shingles,
(07:31):
about vaccination, about anything. This is the period of time
when we need to really self advocate.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
I love that, and that's so true. I've always had
a real level of respect for you, and I see you,
and I see how you are someone who has always
appeared I don't know if this is the case, but
you always appeared to have had a sense of yourself,
even during times in your early life when maybe you
(07:59):
didn't have a lot of agency over what was happening.
You didn't only survive, you excelled, and you had to
protect yourself. You had to protect your mother, then you
had to protect yourself some more than you had to
protect your girls. It takes someone who really understands who
they are to be able to protect like that, and
that is something when I see you, and when I
(08:20):
think of you, that's what I think of.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Thank you on that is absolutely lovely and beautiful. I
don't know how, but maybe it was because I started
so young and my mother kept me away from so
much of the industry, and I went to all regular
(08:47):
grade schools and schools and high schools and college and
all of that with just kids who were not in
the entertainment industry. I don't know. I think that did
have a positive effect on me. I think I somehow
learned at an early age that I didn't want them
(09:08):
to win, and weakness would allow them to win, and
so I sort of had to fake it till I
made it because I would think, oh, no, I'm not
going to I'm not going to let you. Whether whether
I was terrified in betwe inside or not, I didn't
want to let them know, and I didn't want to
(09:29):
let them get the best of me. And I think
that I was so stubborn like that, even just as
a little girl, and I had to protect my mother.
Like you said, when you have to protect your mom,
it's almost as all bets are off, even in a
different way than your children. I mean, I'd kill for
my children but there's something about protecting your mother source
(09:51):
that causes you to have to be really creative in
how you stay strong and really creative and how you
keep your feet planted. And I started ferreting out things
that I knew people couldn't take away from me. Education,
my really close friends from high school, those little things
(10:14):
that were like my checkpoints to know that whenever I
saw the craziness or the bad behavior that was I
would say, that's all right, this is my home. And
I think I think I was really lucky that I
practiced that growing up, and over time the sense of
(10:36):
self materialized. It didn't take It wasn't easy, you know,
it happened mentally through university or according to the way
I would process information. You know, we're not taught to
have opinions when we're nobody really asks us what we
(10:58):
feel or think about something, whether it's a roll or
a part or something. You know, you know this better
than anybody, and so you get so used to not
having a voice that it's kind of comfortable. It's familiar,
you know, And so finding that I had my own
intelligence was a revelation. Then finding out that I had
(11:20):
this body that would do something extraordinary, like have babies
was like I couldn't believe my luck, you know, And
I think just over time, you have to fight for it.
And I don't know, I think I never even wanted
to take drugs because I didn't want to be unaware,
because I needed to be at the ready all time
(11:43):
something comes at you here, you're ready for it, you know.
I mean, it's a hell of a way to have childhood,
but eventually, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Becoming natural right. Your work ethic and your drive also
inspired me in my career and in my personal life.
And I just kind of want to ask you what
motivates you to keep reinventing yourself time and time again,
(12:13):
because I know for me that's what it is. Like
I look back now and I say, oh, there, that's
where I was at a certain point in my life.
But somehow, by the grace of whatever, I managed to
turn that into something else, then something else, and then
something else, until here we are.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Rejection failure.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And not wanting them you said before, not wanting them
to win.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah, And you know, you get enough of that, which
is all the time you start thinking, Okay, well I
can just sit here and stay in that place, or
I can pivot enough to stay creative, but keep moving through.
You know, you can argue whether it's forward or not.
You know, who knows. But there's this pivot. You know,
(13:02):
out of college I couldn't get it, couldn't get a
film job or a TV job. And I was like
twenty pounds every year, bad haircut, and I was no
longer the Brookshields that went into the university and I
all of a sudden I came out and thought they
were gonna like me because I was an educated actress
and we know how Hollywood likes smart actresses. And I thought, oh, oh, oh, okay,
(13:27):
well what can I do? And it became you know,
can I write? Can I does theater open up for me?
Does TV open up for me? Because I wasn't in
TV at that point. And so it's this idea of
just not losing, just continuing to.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Move through, not giving up.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
And also, you know, we worked hard when we were younger,
and still to this day, I had a work ethic
instilled in me by my mom. I mean, my daughter
just recently did her third internship at a GMA and
the first thing I said to was show up earlier,
leave later, make yourself necessary. I don't care if you
(14:09):
have nothing to do, buind something to do. Be proactive.
I don't care if it's holding someone's head over the toilet,
if they're puking and bringing them you know, anchor coffee,
or rewriting a script or you know, handing out. I
don't know. It doesn't matter what it is. Keep your
eyes and ears open and work hard, because that's the
(14:30):
one thing that can't be taken away from you.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Oh true, did you ever feel at any point in
your life that you were like significantly stuck in that
before the pivot?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Definitely? First of all, I've got to say, your voice
is so soothing, and when I hear mine, I feel
like it's grating oks And then.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
You start talking like, oh oh thanks.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Say this maybe it's a lovely thing. Thank you for
being so beautiful presence. And every time I had to
always go through that crying and angry and I'm worthless
and I hate this and I'm never going to do
it again, and I can't do it, and I'm all
these things that I listened to, all my bad tames,
(15:12):
and then I realized, oh this doesn't feel really good,
so I better change my way of thinking. And distract
myself by something else that I haven't been rejected by it.
So I think that that's the place that I felt
the most stuck and did not see a way out,
was through postpartum depression. That was that none of my
(15:35):
old habits or approaches or beliefs had any place when
I was experiencing that something like that. That flattened to
me that nothing else had ever done before, nothing had
ever undone me before, and this undid me.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
I mean, it just goes against are as women what were.
It's so shameful. I had it on my third daughter,
and I know exactly yes, right, that's just I don't
even know if I had it on the first or second,
to be quite honest, because I was so out of
my body at all times, just like functioning and continuing
forward that I didn't really ever just like drop in
(16:15):
and feel my feelings. I was just do do do?
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
I know, yeah, I don't know. And it's not what
we're told. We're told we have the baby handed to you,
and your hair cascades down and the baby latches on
look up and you're just it's bliss, and the birds
flying around your head like that's the least why.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Yeah, it's not like that for It wasn't like that
for me either.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Nope, And I think that you know, it's hard todn't
feel like a failure, but we're so prone to feeling
like failures as women. We're all we're told why it's
our fault. And I believe me, I never even knew
that I had this rather feminist approach to things and
it's something against men, but I never I just my value.
(17:03):
I never realized how threatened it was all the time.
And then you have this biochemical situation with this something
that you're told is supposed to be so natural. And
I was convinced I was a normal and you know
when I was a huge failure and made a huge
mistake and shouldn't have played God and all of this
(17:24):
and all of that is unnecessary punishment for us.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
You posted a video a couple of weeks ago, I
think now about being an empty nester. I'm really close
to that, and there's just such a mixed bag of
emotions for me surrounding that big milestone. How is it?
How are you adjusting?
Speaker 2 (17:45):
So I'm thankful to my children for it, even telling
me how to do trending tiktoks or maybe that was
I'm not quite sure what it was, but whatever that was,
they totally directed me in it. And that's that's the
only way I get to do those things is if
tell me I should do it, you know it. The
second one is different than the first one because or
(18:05):
the third, because it does leave a different type of
emptiness and silence that it's just really unfamiliar. So I
think that that was sort of the first shock. But
then they're thriving so much and they have each other.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
That's you're so lucky.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
But then you go through the fear of not being
needed anymore, and therefore my worth is like well, what
I mean, they're not crying and missing their mother like that.
That's threatening, you know, And then you sort of like,
you know, it's just you and the dog, and you're
kind of like, oh, this isn't so bad. Like I
have time in a different way, to be ambitious, to
(18:44):
do nothing, to be with friends, to say yes without
checking for schedules and practice and basketball and parents and this,
you know what I mean, Like there's this whole world
of scheduling that I don't have to salt anymore.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Yeah, yeah, which is really a relief, certain freedom.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Got time.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
It's your time to shine. Yeah, I have the twenty
one and the eighteen year old. They're still at home
with me, but I mean just watching them grow into
these incredible, like self aware, driven young women is just
the gift of life for me. And my daughters have
really held me up at certain times. Have you have
(19:27):
you felt that and did you ever feel any like
guilt or shame around that because you were supposed to
be the one that has it all together, even though
you're just going through everything for the first time yourself
and learning as you go, Like I remember feeling like, wait,
I'm supposed to be the strong mom here.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
I mean, yes, absolutely, but it was It was interesting
the way it happened for me. My younger daughter was
in a tizzy about something, and she was explaining to
me what I where I was wrong and where but
not really wronged her, but just where I was looking
(20:04):
at the situation inappropriately and unnecessarily, And she just laid
it into me with such clarity and no judgment, just
and love, like there was love in her judgment, which
is interesting, but it was true, and I just burst,
I laughed, I burst out laughing, and she got madder
(20:25):
and mad her and she was like, why you're laughing,
This is not funny. And I said, sweetheart, I hope
and pray for you. If it's what you want. You
always have to clarify everything now that if and when
you choose or hope or blessed with having a child,
they will one day turn around and teach you and
(20:46):
it will shock your system and you will realize what
a gift it is. And I said, you know what,
You're absolutely right. I was not acting in my best
interest and my ego was driving me, and it was
just it didn't it was about it was about wearing clothes,
and believe it or not, it was about something absolutely frivolous.
(21:08):
But the lesson was she had such clarity, and I thought.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
This is I've done my job well enough so that
they are their own people, so it's not threatening to
me when they when when the.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Roles are reversed. I was relieved for my daughters that
she was able to teach me and educate me.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Right at first, it's like a tough pill to swallow,
like you're like, wait, what this is not okay? Rule reversal,
But then I'm so grateful, like I feel like, oh,
I've done something well, I've done something right.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Well that's the thing. You're like, how dare you be
so right? And you're like, oh, and then it opens
a conversation.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
So it really does.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
But it's like it's like with anything, you know. I
Hey know when your girls first go to a gynecologist
in there and they're all, you know, you no longer
you're no longer going in there with them. Well, by
the time we're the gynecologists and usually not but probably,
I mean the conversation and you start teaching them to
ask questions for themselves, ask questions. This is your body,
(22:17):
You're able to do that. It's what it's what the
drive up if you plus campaign is about. It's like,
it's every step of the way we have to learn
that our bodies are our own and whatever that entails
to you and be proactive. So it's all these messages
that I never learned as a child and took me
(22:40):
a long time to learn, and it took outside influences
to help me learn that. I'm trying to save them
a little time and pepper the pepper the information into
their lives and hope they hope they hear it.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
I love that I loved your documentary Pretty Baby. If
anybody that's listening didn't see that, you should definitely go watch.
It takes so much bravery to share yourself on that level.
You opened up about some of your darker moments in
your life, and I've found that riveting. And now I
(23:17):
just want to know, like, with all that deeply personal
information that you've shared out there in the open, how
do you feel? Because I know after I've shared sometimes
I feel like, oh no, how can I get that back?
Speaker 2 (23:31):
I think you always feel what have I done? But
going into it, I really I talked to the director
and I said, look, I'm going to hand over all
of my archives to you, and all I ask is
that as you were watching through, as you were coming
(23:51):
through this, that the narrative that you'd come up with
is something bigger than me. Otherwise it's a true Hollywood
story or worse, where are they now? And you know,
and so you're like, oh God, but what I believe
this director did and I had to just trust. So
(24:13):
that was and I will say I have been burned
so many times by trusting that this was the ultimate trust.
But I felt like it was time and it was appropriate,
and she made this documentary about a larger conversation about
the sexualization of young women, especially in our society, and
(24:35):
it just broadened the view of one person's story. And
I was the conduit to a bigger conversation. And that,
to me, is the biggest gift of all.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Did your daughter see that that they see the reason
that you did it?
Speaker 2 (24:54):
One of them did, the other one did not. My
younger one, Bob will forever be angry with me. I
she was ambushed with the information. I just it was
a bad, bad mom move on my part. I didn't
set her up, and she doesn't like being surprised. She
doesn't like me. She felt sort of cold cocked, and
(25:18):
I just didn't. I assumed it would be fine. I thought, well,
she knows her mother. Her mother's healthy and not damaged,
and you know, and I thought it would be she
would be able to look at us now and think like, wow,
you are You've come a long way, and isn't that great?
And no, no, no, she said she will never be
okay with it. She will never be okay with anything
(25:39):
happening to me. And my older daughter really thought about
it and said, well, it was tough. I don't need
to see that again, but women need to see this.
So I think that period of maturity helped my older
daughter to understand it differently. And I'm not sure where
my my eighteen year old is gonna get any better.
(26:03):
I don't know if she's good.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Maybe she'll get there maybe those years.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Well, I hope it's not through the hard way.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, don't we all? Before I let you go, Brookshields,
what was your last I choose me moment?
Speaker 2 (26:16):
So it's so menial and silly, that's okay. Over the weekend,
I had so much to do. I had so many
parents packing and unpacking and moving and work stuff and zooms.
And I literally got a cup of tea, went out
on the little swing on my small little front porch
(26:39):
and I sat there for an hour and a half
and did things like strands, connections, needle point. I did
this like all these things that were that I never
really do, and they were just sort of mindless, and
I felt like I had had a vacation or a
massage after about an hour and a half, and that
(27:02):
was I chose me for that hour and a half
rather than waking up and going directly into chores and
things that I had to do in Errand's so just
choosing me in a quiet way was it was really
was healing for me.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, sometimes it's just those moments that we need.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Sometimes it's staying before in the morning, binging some show.
I mean like, sometimes I feel like I'm getting away
with so much if I still to get up at
six or seven the next day, But it doesn't matter
because how quiet time is mine. And you know I
used to feel guilty for that, and I don't anymore.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
I love that. I've loved our conversation and I love
what you're doing, and I just want to say thank.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
You, thank you so much, good luck with your your latest,
your last baby, and thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
I want to thank Brooke for coming on. She is
such an inspiration to so many women that you can
be anything you want, You can change and evolve as
many times as you like in this lifetime. And I
love that as we continue to choose ourselves each week,
I want you to try a little self care. Okay,
(28:18):
when was the last time you had a bubble bath
or got a massage or sat on your porch. My
favorite form of self care is usually sitting outside like Brooke,
just enjoying nature and turning off my mind from all
that is going on up there. I also love bubble baths,
(28:39):
so maybe you'll find me in one later today. This week,
I want you to put yourself on your calendar and
have a little I Choose Me time with no guilt,
no shame, because it is vital that we put ourselves
first here and there. Thanks for listening to I Choose Me.
You can check out all our SOLF links in our
(29:01):
show notes, and you can rate us and review us,
and tell me things that I really want to hear,
and even tell me things that maybe I don't want
to hear. Use the hashtag I Choose Me. I'll be
right here next week. I hope you will choose to
be here too,
You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Garth. Hi, everyone,
welcome to I Choose Me. This podcast is all about
the choices we make and where they lead us. My
guest today is a Hollywood superstar. Her career started when
(00:22):
she was a tiny baby, and she has conquered just
so many obstacles in her life. She's known for Blue
Lagoon and Endless Love, her breakout performance as Joey's crazy
girlfriend on Friends, which led her to starring in her
own sitcom, one of my favorite sitcoms, Suddenly Susan, where
she killed it at comedy, and her most recent Netflix movie,
(00:45):
Mother of the Bride. She is the subject of the
documentary Pretty Baby Brookshields, which was a testament to how
strong and smart she is, how much she has endured
in her long career that has spanned multiple decades. She
is a mama, she's an entrepreneur. She's a badass. You guys,
please welcome Brookshields to the I Choose Me Podcast. Thank
(01:10):
you for being with.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Us, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I'll just jump right in. You've had some incredible highs
in this business, but I have to admit, even considering
all of that and loves. I love what you are
doing and saying right now. You are out front helping
to knock down these archic stereotypes that we should just
be put out to pasture after fifty and never seen
(01:35):
again after sixty. So you've partnered with GSK to help
people thrive at fifty plus. Let's talk about what people
fifty plus need to be aware of when it comes
to our health, specifically our immune system.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
We have to become people have to really take their
health in their own control and ask their doctors, ask
their pharmacists about your risk for shingles, and about vaccination.
There is so much that we are not made aware of,
(02:12):
and we have to ask, and it's so important that
we understand the statistics that ninety nine percent of those
fifty years and older actually already have the virus that
causes shingles inside their body. Okay, no, not all of
them are going to get it, but by the same
token staggering. I didn't know that. I had no idea,
(02:36):
so when I heard it, I was like good, no good,
and so I partnered with j's k's Thrive at fifty
plus campaign because that was the messaging that they really
said to me. Was the most important for them, and
the idea of really being proactive in this era of
your life and being your own advocate. You know, a
(03:00):
million about a million estimated people develop shingles in the
US just per year, and it's painful and it's terrifying,
and it's disruptive and it is it. I have a
friend who had to stop work for two weeks, and
you know she's going to afford to do that. That
(03:21):
wasn't you know, And it really read tavoc on her life.
So to me, it's important in this era. When you
talked about changing stereotypes. Part of how we do that
we don't sit and just wait for a narrative to change.
We start speaking about ourselves differently. We stop using words
(03:42):
like aging or anti aging or dry or all these words.
I'm so synonymous with just being female over forty. Practically
I'm fifty nine, So you know this is I'm definitely
in the in the and according to you know, the stereotype,
I got one foot in the grave. And that messaging
(04:06):
was I don't want my daughters, and you have three daughters,
right I do. Baby girls are always going to be your
baby girls. Yes, I have a baby eighteen year old
and a baby twenty one year old, and I want
them to know that this is not the big scary
era of age. But we are armed with many positive things,
(04:29):
many progressive ways that we can own our health, own
our lives, and take a power that we are. The
messages that we're not, we no longer have it, and
I don't even think about taking it back. I just
think about revealing it even more.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
I heard you in an interview once say that you
didn't feel fully in your body until you were in
your forties. And I know that feeling firsthand. And I
also know all that it takes to get to that
kind of self discovery when you grow up in the
business that we have grown up in and when you
just want so much to be confident in just being you.
(05:11):
Why did it take us so long to grow up
and to truly love and value ourselves?
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Okay, first of all, we're in a ridiculously demigrating and
deridict being I can't even say the word industry. So
first of all, our whole industry is based on comparison
to look like that, or you're not enough of this,
so you're not. That's just all about that it's negative
and it gets drilled into us from a very young age.
The thing that's amazing to me is this is every
(05:42):
woman's flight. Really ours is played out on this ridiculous stage,
and that comes with its own challenges. But it took
me until I was pregnant. Actually, as being pregnant, my
body finally had a purpose aside from looking a certain
(06:07):
way or being a certain standard or fitting into something
or looking like so and so and so. That was
a really important right of passage for me. And then
just it started when I was forty. I just started
to realize that I could do things on my own terms,
that I didn't have to first go through the checklist
(06:31):
of making sure I was being a good girl or
that everybody was going to like me. I went I
started shifting the way I asked myself questions. And to me,
that was the first step towards you know, again we
say love our bodies. Well, there's stuff that's hang in
a lot lower now that I wish wasn't. I wish
(06:53):
I enjoyed it when it was higher, but I did
not enjoy it when it was all in its perky place.
And you know, I feel bad about that because I
wasted some time for myself.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Yes, Yes, you wasted all that time loving yourself.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Yeah. And then you start to really see yourself as
a whole, not as your waste size, or as a
healthy person, as someone who is not afraid to take
their their health and their own on their own terms
and ask questions. Ask their doctors, ask their pharmacist. You
can ask your pharmacist about everything from your risk for shingles,
(07:31):
about vaccination, about anything. This is the period of time
when we need to really self advocate.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
I love that, and that's so true. I've always had
a real level of respect for you, and I see you,
and I see how you are someone who has always
appeared I don't know if this is the case, but
you always appeared to have had a sense of yourself,
even during times in your early life when maybe you
(07:59):
didn't have a lot of agency over what was happening.
You didn't only survive, you excelled, and you had to
protect yourself. You had to protect your mother, then you
had to protect yourself some more than you had to
protect your girls. It takes someone who really understands who
they are to be able to protect like that, and
that is something when I see you, and when I
(08:20):
think of you, that's what I think of.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Thank you on that is absolutely lovely and beautiful. I
don't know how, but maybe it was because I started
so young and my mother kept me away from so
much of the industry, and I went to all regular
(08:47):
grade schools and schools and high schools and college and
all of that with just kids who were not in
the entertainment industry. I don't know. I think that did
have a positive effect on me. I think I somehow
learned at an early age that I didn't want them
(09:08):
to win, and weakness would allow them to win, and
so I sort of had to fake it till I
made it because I would think, oh, no, I'm not
going to I'm not going to let you. Whether whether
I was terrified in betwe inside or not, I didn't
want to let them know, and I didn't want to
(09:29):
let them get the best of me. And I think
that I was so stubborn like that, even just as
a little girl, and I had to protect my mother.
Like you said, when you have to protect your mom,
it's almost as all bets are off, even in a
different way than your children. I mean, I'd kill for
my children but there's something about protecting your mother source
(09:51):
that causes you to have to be really creative in
how you stay strong and really creative and how you
keep your feet planted. And I started ferreting out things
that I knew people couldn't take away from me. Education,
my really close friends from high school, those little things
(10:14):
that were like my checkpoints to know that whenever I
saw the craziness or the bad behavior that was I
would say, that's all right, this is my home. And
I think I think I was really lucky that I
practiced that growing up, and over time the sense of
(10:36):
self materialized. It didn't take It wasn't easy, you know,
it happened mentally through university or according to the way
I would process information. You know, we're not taught to
have opinions when we're nobody really asks us what we
(10:58):
feel or think about something, whether it's a roll or
a part or something. You know, you know this better
than anybody, and so you get so used to not
having a voice that it's kind of comfortable. It's familiar,
you know, And so finding that I had my own
intelligence was a revelation. Then finding out that I had
(11:20):
this body that would do something extraordinary, like have babies
was like I couldn't believe my luck, you know, And
I think just over time, you have to fight for it.
And I don't know, I think I never even wanted
to take drugs because I didn't want to be unaware,
because I needed to be at the ready all time
(11:43):
something comes at you here, you're ready for it, you know.
I mean, it's a hell of a way to have childhood,
but eventually, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Becoming natural right. Your work ethic and your drive also
inspired me in my career and in my personal life.
And I just kind of want to ask you what
motivates you to keep reinventing yourself time and time again,
(12:13):
because I know for me that's what it is. Like
I look back now and I say, oh, there, that's
where I was at a certain point in my life.
But somehow, by the grace of whatever, I managed to
turn that into something else, then something else, and then
something else, until here we are.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Rejection failure.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And not wanting them you said before, not wanting them
to win.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Yeah, And you know, you get enough of that, which
is all the time you start thinking, Okay, well I
can just sit here and stay in that place, or
I can pivot enough to stay creative, but keep moving through.
You know, you can argue whether it's forward or not.
You know, who knows. But there's this pivot. You know,
(13:02):
out of college I couldn't get it, couldn't get a
film job or a TV job. And I was like
twenty pounds every year, bad haircut, and I was no
longer the Brookshields that went into the university and I
all of a sudden I came out and thought they
were gonna like me because I was an educated actress
and we know how Hollywood likes smart actresses. And I thought, oh, oh, oh, okay,
(13:27):
well what can I do? And it became you know,
can I write? Can I does theater open up for me?
Does TV open up for me? Because I wasn't in
TV at that point. And so it's this idea of
just not losing, just continuing to.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
Move through, not giving up.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
And also, you know, we worked hard when we were younger,
and still to this day, I had a work ethic
instilled in me by my mom. I mean, my daughter
just recently did her third internship at a GMA and
the first thing I said to was show up earlier,
leave later, make yourself necessary. I don't care if you
(14:09):
have nothing to do, buind something to do. Be proactive.
I don't care if it's holding someone's head over the toilet,
if they're puking and bringing them you know, anchor coffee,
or rewriting a script or you know, handing out. I
don't know. It doesn't matter what it is. Keep your
eyes and ears open and work hard, because that's the
(14:30):
one thing that can't be taken away from you.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Oh true, did you ever feel at any point in
your life that you were like significantly stuck in that
before the pivot?
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Definitely? First of all, I've got to say, your voice
is so soothing, and when I hear mine, I feel
like it's grating oks And then.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
You start talking like, oh oh thanks.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Say this maybe it's a lovely thing. Thank you for
being so beautiful presence. And every time I had to
always go through that crying and angry and I'm worthless
and I hate this and I'm never going to do
it again, and I can't do it, and I'm all
these things that I listened to, all my bad tames,
(15:12):
and then I realized, oh this doesn't feel really good,
so I better change my way of thinking. And distract
myself by something else that I haven't been rejected by it.
So I think that that's the place that I felt
the most stuck and did not see a way out,
was through postpartum depression. That was that none of my
(15:35):
old habits or approaches or beliefs had any place when
I was experiencing that something like that. That flattened to
me that nothing else had ever done before, nothing had
ever undone me before, and this undid me.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
I mean, it just goes against are as women what were.
It's so shameful. I had it on my third daughter,
and I know exactly yes, right, that's just I don't
even know if I had it on the first or second,
to be quite honest, because I was so out of
my body at all times, just like functioning and continuing
forward that I didn't really ever just like drop in
(16:15):
and feel my feelings. I was just do do do?
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (16:18):
I know, yeah, I don't know. And it's not what
we're told. We're told we have the baby handed to you,
and your hair cascades down and the baby latches on
look up and you're just it's bliss, and the birds
flying around your head like that's the least why.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Yeah, it's not like that for It wasn't like that
for me either.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Nope, And I think that you know, it's hard todn't
feel like a failure, but we're so prone to feeling
like failures as women. We're all we're told why it's
our fault. And I believe me, I never even knew
that I had this rather feminist approach to things and
it's something against men, but I never I just my value.
(17:03):
I never realized how threatened it was all the time.
And then you have this biochemical situation with this something
that you're told is supposed to be so natural. And
I was convinced I was a normal and you know
when I was a huge failure and made a huge
mistake and shouldn't have played God and all of this
(17:24):
and all of that is unnecessary punishment for us.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
You posted a video a couple of weeks ago, I
think now about being an empty nester. I'm really close
to that, and there's just such a mixed bag of
emotions for me surrounding that big milestone. How is it?
How are you adjusting?
Speaker 2 (17:45):
So I'm thankful to my children for it, even telling
me how to do trending tiktoks or maybe that was
I'm not quite sure what it was, but whatever that was,
they totally directed me in it. And that's that's the
only way I get to do those things is if
tell me I should do it, you know it. The
second one is different than the first one because or
(18:05):
the third, because it does leave a different type of
emptiness and silence that it's just really unfamiliar. So I
think that that was sort of the first shock. But
then they're thriving so much and they have each other.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
That's you're so lucky.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
But then you go through the fear of not being
needed anymore, and therefore my worth is like well, what
I mean, they're not crying and missing their mother like that.
That's threatening, you know, And then you sort of like,
you know, it's just you and the dog, and you're
kind of like, oh, this isn't so bad. Like I
have time in a different way, to be ambitious, to
(18:44):
do nothing, to be with friends, to say yes without
checking for schedules and practice and basketball and parents and this,
you know what I mean, Like there's this whole world
of scheduling that I don't have to salt anymore.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Yeah, yeah, which is really a relief, certain freedom.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Got time.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
It's your time to shine. Yeah, I have the twenty
one and the eighteen year old. They're still at home
with me, but I mean just watching them grow into
these incredible, like self aware, driven young women is just
the gift of life for me. And my daughters have
really held me up at certain times. Have you have
(19:27):
you felt that and did you ever feel any like
guilt or shame around that because you were supposed to
be the one that has it all together, even though
you're just going through everything for the first time yourself
and learning as you go, Like I remember feeling like, wait,
I'm supposed to be the strong mom here.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
I mean, yes, absolutely, but it was It was interesting
the way it happened for me. My younger daughter was
in a tizzy about something, and she was explaining to
me what I where I was wrong and where but
not really wronged her, but just where I was looking
(20:04):
at the situation inappropriately and unnecessarily, And she just laid
it into me with such clarity and no judgment, just
and love, like there was love in her judgment, which
is interesting, but it was true, and I just burst,
I laughed, I burst out laughing, and she got madder
(20:25):
and mad her and she was like, why you're laughing,
This is not funny. And I said, sweetheart, I hope
and pray for you. If it's what you want. You
always have to clarify everything now that if and when
you choose or hope or blessed with having a child,
they will one day turn around and teach you and
(20:46):
it will shock your system and you will realize what
a gift it is. And I said, you know what,
You're absolutely right. I was not acting in my best
interest and my ego was driving me, and it was
just it didn't it was about it was about wearing clothes,
and believe it or not, it was about something absolutely frivolous.
(21:08):
But the lesson was she had such clarity, and I thought.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
This is I've done my job well enough so that
they are their own people, so it's not threatening to
me when they when when the.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Roles are reversed. I was relieved for my daughters that
she was able to teach me and educate me.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Right at first, it's like a tough pill to swallow,
like you're like, wait, what this is not okay? Rule reversal,
But then I'm so grateful, like I feel like, oh,
I've done something well, I've done something right.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Well that's the thing. You're like, how dare you be
so right? And you're like, oh, and then it opens
a conversation.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
So it really does.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
But it's like it's like with anything, you know. I
Hey know when your girls first go to a gynecologist
in there and they're all, you know, you no longer
you're no longer going in there with them. Well, by
the time we're the gynecologists and usually not but probably,
I mean the conversation and you start teaching them to
ask questions for themselves, ask questions. This is your body,
(22:17):
You're able to do that. It's what it's what the
drive up if you plus campaign is about. It's like,
it's every step of the way we have to learn
that our bodies are our own and whatever that entails
to you and be proactive. So it's all these messages
that I never learned as a child and took me
(22:40):
a long time to learn, and it took outside influences
to help me learn that. I'm trying to save them
a little time and pepper the pepper the information into
their lives and hope they hope they hear it.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
I love that I loved your documentary Pretty Baby. If
anybody that's listening didn't see that, you should definitely go watch.
It takes so much bravery to share yourself on that level.
You opened up about some of your darker moments in
your life, and I've found that riveting. And now I
(23:17):
just want to know, like, with all that deeply personal
information that you've shared out there in the open, how
do you feel? Because I know after I've shared sometimes
I feel like, oh no, how can I get that back?
Speaker 2 (23:31):
I think you always feel what have I done? But
going into it, I really I talked to the director
and I said, look, I'm going to hand over all
of my archives to you, and all I ask is
that as you were watching through, as you were coming
(23:51):
through this, that the narrative that you'd come up with
is something bigger than me. Otherwise it's a true Hollywood
story or worse, where are they now? And you know,
and so you're like, oh God, but what I believe
this director did and I had to just trust. So
(24:13):
that was and I will say I have been burned
so many times by trusting that this was the ultimate trust.
But I felt like it was time and it was appropriate,
and she made this documentary about a larger conversation about
the sexualization of young women, especially in our society, and
(24:35):
it just broadened the view of one person's story. And
I was the conduit to a bigger conversation. And that,
to me, is the biggest gift of all.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Did your daughter see that that they see the reason
that you did it?
Speaker 2 (24:54):
One of them did, the other one did not. My
younger one, Bob will forever be angry with me. I
she was ambushed with the information. I just it was
a bad, bad mom move on my part. I didn't
set her up, and she doesn't like being surprised. She
doesn't like me. She felt sort of cold cocked, and
(25:18):
I just didn't. I assumed it would be fine. I thought, well,
she knows her mother. Her mother's healthy and not damaged,
and you know, and I thought it would be she
would be able to look at us now and think like, wow,
you are You've come a long way, and isn't that great?
And no, no, no, she said she will never be
okay with it. She will never be okay with anything
(25:39):
happening to me. And my older daughter really thought about
it and said, well, it was tough. I don't need
to see that again, but women need to see this.
So I think that period of maturity helped my older
daughter to understand it differently. And I'm not sure where
my my eighteen year old is gonna get any better.
(26:03):
I don't know if she's good.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Maybe she'll get there maybe those years.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Well, I hope it's not through the hard way.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, don't we all? Before I let you go, Brookshields,
what was your last I choose me moment?
Speaker 2 (26:16):
So it's so menial and silly, that's okay. Over the weekend,
I had so much to do. I had so many
parents packing and unpacking and moving and work stuff and zooms.
And I literally got a cup of tea, went out
on the little swing on my small little front porch
(26:39):
and I sat there for an hour and a half
and did things like strands, connections, needle point. I did
this like all these things that were that I never
really do, and they were just sort of mindless, and
I felt like I had had a vacation or a
massage after about an hour and a half, and that
(27:02):
was I chose me for that hour and a half
rather than waking up and going directly into chores and
things that I had to do in Errand's so just
choosing me in a quiet way was it was really
was healing for me.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, sometimes it's just those moments that we need.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Sometimes it's staying before in the morning, binging some show.
I mean like, sometimes I feel like I'm getting away
with so much if I still to get up at
six or seven the next day, But it doesn't matter
because how quiet time is mine. And you know I
used to feel guilty for that, and I don't anymore.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
I love that. I've loved our conversation and I love
what you're doing, and I just want to say thank.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
You, thank you so much, good luck with your your latest,
your last baby, and thank you.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
I want to thank Brooke for coming on. She is
such an inspiration to so many women that you can
be anything you want, You can change and evolve as
many times as you like in this lifetime. And I
love that as we continue to choose ourselves each week,
I want you to try a little self care. Okay,
(28:18):
when was the last time you had a bubble bath
or got a massage or sat on your porch. My
favorite form of self care is usually sitting outside like Brooke,
just enjoying nature and turning off my mind from all
that is going on up there. I also love bubble baths,
(28:39):
so maybe you'll find me in one later today. This week,
I want you to put yourself on your calendar and
have a little I Choose Me time with no guilt,
no shame, because it is vital that we put ourselves
first here and there. Thanks for listening to I Choose Me.
You can check out all our SOLF links in our
(29:01):
show notes, and you can rate us and review us,
and tell me things that I really want to hear,
and even tell me things that maybe I don't want
to hear. Use the hashtag I Choose Me. I'll be
right here next week. I hope you will choose to
be here too,
Host
Jennie Garth
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