HAYDEN PANETTIERE: The Truth Behind the Headlines (Finally Telling Her Story In Her Own Words)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
I worked so hard to create this incredible life and career,
and I print it all to the ground. Don't believe
what you see in a picture. There's so much more
going on, so much more. For the first time I
was able to put towards what it has been going

(00:24):
on for the past decade, I was going to ask
if I could read it.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
I'd really appreciate it. Okay, hey, everyone, welcome back to
on Purpose, the place you come to become a happier,
healthier and more healed. Today's guest is one of those
stories that I believe allows so many of us to
understand more deeply, to expand our compassion, to recognize the

(00:53):
value of what we all go through behind the scenes
when you actually live a very public life, a life
that we think we know, but we know very very
little about. Today, I am joined by Hayden Panetier, an
actress so many of us grew up watching whose careers
spanned more than three decades, from one of my favorites

(01:13):
Remember the Titans, to becoming a global start on heroes
and earning two Golden Globe nominations for her role on Nashville. Now,
for the first time, Hayden is sitting down to share
her story in her own words, in her powerful new
memoir that I got to read beforehand. This is Me
A Reckoning. Please welcome to On Purpose, Hayden paneteer, Hayden,

(01:35):
Welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
It's an honor to be here.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
I want to start by just saying that when I
read the book, I can't imagine how challenging, difficult, and
vulnerable you have to be to even begin to capture
the amount of life that you've lived in these thirty
six years. I just want to acknowledge the courage and
strength that I saw in it when I was reading it,

(02:00):
and I was so looking forward to our conversation today
because I really wanted to learn about the human behind
these words, but also behind the headlines and the news
that we've seen. I wanted to start by asking you,
what say childhood memory that you have that you feel
defines who you are today?

Speaker 1 (02:19):
God got a laundry list I can think of off
the top of my head, but really defines who I am.
I think I've I've been really impacted by the people
that I've gotten to work with, and especially when I
was at very sensitive ages like when I think back
to remember the Titans, as you said, at ten years old,

(02:42):
that experience, that whole experience. Everyone on set it been
playing that character of Cheryl that felt so similar to
who I was naturally as a person. I felt like
that really shaped me, really shaped my perspective of the industry,

(03:02):
made me feel like, now I know what kind of
actor I want to be. I want to be generous
and I want to be there for people, but this
can also be fun.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah. Absolutely, I wanted to read from your book, if
that's all right. Yeah. You say in the book that
from a very young age I lost the chance to
have a normal childhood, friends, relationships, and my privacy because
instead of fighting it, I leaned into the talent I
was somehow blessed with. And I wanted to ask you,
what do you think a normal childhood look like? And

(03:35):
how was your as different from that?

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Well, to me, a normal childhood looked like extracurricular activities.
It looked like doing you know, going to school, being
in school all day long, having a social life and
connection with your peers, you know, going home, doing homework,
having playdates, having friends over having those kind of experiences.

(04:03):
And even though I did get some of that because
I had to live that life and had to be
removed from it all the time, whether it was to
go to auditions or to go to work. I constantly
was missing out on the social aspect of what was

(04:23):
going on with my I mean, I was trying to
be friends with them. But when you miss out, you know,
and then you said, sit down, you really have nothing
to talk about, because I want I only had my
experience and what I did yesterday, which was I was
on set or I was in the city doing an audition,
and that wasn't something that I could expect anyone around

(04:47):
me to understand. So I feel like I got a
taste of what I saw what a normal childhood would be.
And I was on swim team and I did do gymnastics,
and you know, occasionally I got invited to a birthday party,
but a lot of the times I was left out.

(05:09):
So it didn't feel like I had a normal childhood,
normal upbringing. But to me, it was yeah, just being
able to be a kid.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, did you recognize that, Danly? I did.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
I remember school was very tricky for me because here
I was trying to fit into two different worlds and
I was dealing with this massive world which is the industry,
and dealing with big emotions like what you feel after
rejection or not getting a role, or a ridiculous amount

(05:44):
of praise, an unhealthy amount of praise that you get
at too young of an age. And then I had
the world that I was desperately trying to fit into
as well that I was opposed to fit into. That
it should have been easy to fit into, and I
couldn't fit into that either, So I was like, where

(06:05):
do I belong?

Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah, it's hard when you're caught in between two different
words and you somehow, as a very young child, have
to somehow make it look seamless and move through these
words with taking emotions from this one into that and
that one into this and yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
And you don't want anyone to see you sweat. Yes, either,
you want to make it. You want to be cool,
calm and collected, because being overly emotional around your people
that age, like my age, it doesn't go over well,
and it doesn't go over well with adults either, So
you have to like bottle up all of these emotions.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
Yeah. Wow, Yeah, it almost feels like when you're with
your kids your age you're just trying to fit in
and be cool, but you're dealing with these emotions you're
carrying over, and then when you're with the adults, you're
trying to make sure everyone's happy and everything's going okay.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
And yeah, I feel like the first time I really
felt like I didn't fit in that was actually and
I was in kindergarten and it was brought on by
the teacher not liking me. The opinions of the teachers
in the way that the adults saw me was rubbing
off on the kids. And I can only imagine what

(07:15):
the kid's parents were saying about, you know, their children
going to school with an actress at home. But yeah,
I was bullied first by a teacher in kindergarten and
then graduated to first grade. Was the first time I
heard anyone say raise their hands and say why does
Hayden get to miss school and we don't, And that

(07:36):
was the first time I felt like, oh, they really
bothers them that what I do. And then middle school,
which is treacherous as for anybody, but especially as a female,
like girls are just really hard on each other and
wouldn't help when the teacher would roll in a screen

(07:56):
and say, hey, we're going to watch a movie during class.
Everyone get excited and then they pop and remember the Titans.
And there I was trying to fit in and just
trying to find a seat next to somebody who wasn't
rolling their eyes and huffing and puffing about having to
sit next to me. I was just trying to blend

(08:17):
and then they were popping that on and I was
just like, is this even legal? Like can you do
this to a kid the child's abuse?

Speaker 2 (08:27):
Was it ever clear what the reason the teacher who
bullied you was or did they ever have any interactions
with your family or no?

Speaker 1 (08:35):
I mean, first of all, the kindergarten is way too
young to really do anything wrong. I mean I remember
what was the first time she ever bullied me. Was
the very first day of kindergarten and we were coloring
and they had the color the crayons in these wet
wipe the wet white boxes and they said, you know,

(08:55):
wrap it up. Everybody closed the boxes, and as being
being kids, you know, it became a little bit of
a race of who's going to close it first. And
I went to close one and another girl went to
close it at the same time, and it went on
her finger, and I apologized profusely and felt horrible about it,
and I remember her best friend walked up and said, yeah,

(09:17):
but we have to tell I'm you, and my heart
sank and I didn't know how it was going to go.
And they walked up to the teacher and told her,
and I looked at her and I said, it was
an accident, and she looked right at me and she said, oh,
it doesn't look like an accident to me.

Speaker 2 (09:32):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
And I mean at such a young age for that
to like that stuck with me, you know, all of
these years later. Not all of my teachers were like that.
There were teachers that were super supportive, but there was
a substitute teacher who came and she would call me
the big cheese in front of everyone. And she said,

(09:54):
what you think, because you're an actress, you're the big cheese.
And that's so not who I was, and so not
who I wanted to be. So quite the experience trying
to fit in, disappointed in people. I really just just
wanted to, as you said, fit in. I wanted to
be normal, like every kid, like every kid.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
Yeah, like all of us do. And as someone by
the way you described. I had a very normal childhood.
And it's hard enough as it is, even when it's normal.
And so when something's making you stand out, or someone's
pointing things out, especially as kids, when we don't have
a clue what's going on, and all the other kids
in your class who wouldn't really understand how to make

(10:38):
context of this. You need an adult to kind of
make sense of it.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, and a lot of it I felt like came
out of left field. I one of the things I
sure you read in the book is that I kept
the notes that were passed me in school, the nasty notes,
and I kept them in my binder and I kept
them under my bed. And I think it was because

(11:02):
I wanted to desperately to understand what they were seeing
in me. And it started the habit of changing who
I was to make others happy, to make them like me.
And I thought if I could understand where they were
coming from or what they saw, what they didn't like,

(11:22):
that I could. Maybe it was the actress in me,
and having been directed all my life, that I could
I could change my performance a little bit and it
would make them accept me.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah. You also you've talked about having the pressure to
support and provide for your family as well, right, did
you always know that that was your responsibility? And then,
like when you're talking about this idea of performing making
sure everyone else is okay, I wonder how much of
it was something you had to do at home as well.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
I want to make it clear that, I mean, my
father was a lieutenant in the fire department and he
had businesses, so I wasn't so poorting the family. But
I do remember being very young and my mom trying
to explain to me that this incorporation that she set up,
this corporation she set up, paid for the cars, the

(12:14):
lease on the cars, and the cell phone bills because
it was a tax right off. And I remember that
role reversal being incredibly uncomfortable for me where I was.
You know, on one hand, I was still a kid,
and I was listening to my parents and had to
do everything that they told me I could and could

(12:37):
not do. But at the same time, I was working
hard making money, and this money was going towards things
that I wasn't privy too, so as my dad would
kick my butt if I made people think that I
was like supported the whole family But then when I
got older too, and my mom bought an apart meant

(13:01):
for me when I was sixteen, and my whole family
lived in it. So again it was just that very strange,
uncomfortable feeling of the rural reversal and desperately wanting to
still feel like the kid and still feel like I
had parents to lean on. I didn't want. Even when

(13:21):
I was a kid, I was scared of the dark,
and my dad would I would make my dad lay
down next to me, and if his head ever went
below mine, I would freak out and make him, you know,
sit up further so I could Because I wanted to
feel like the kid. That is kind of continued on
in in my life, just wanting to know that if

(13:44):
I found myself in a terrible position that I could
cause somebody to help me, I could rely on somebody.
I wasn't the only person. I wasn't the person that
everybody else was relying on, and therefore nobody was there
for me.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, I mean, and so natural right to want that
and to seek that is so real and so natural,
especially as a young child and kid. And then of
course with everything else that you're taking on, there's nothing
about that that feels anything but what every child deserves
and what every child wants and you know, yeah, people
he's looking for. But I know in the book you're

(14:20):
also write about how there's this sense of what you
were just saying about collecting all these notes and not
wanting to almost let the kids down and become who
they need you to be. It feels like that kind
of became your relationship with your mum as well, where
you didn't want to disappoint her.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
Oh my gosh, that was my entire relationship with her.
She was my boss. That's how I saw her. Even
though she was the most supportive person when I, you know,
did what I was supposed to do and did it
well and was the one cheering me on, it did
feel like that was what I had to do to

(14:55):
get her love. And that was, you know, a tough
pill tos. I never everything was business. Everything was business focused,
and there's not I mean I started at eight months old.
There's I don't even I can't even remember a time
where she wasn't a momager, you know, where everything didn't

(15:16):
revolve around business. And there were periods of time as
I got older where we spent a lot of time
traveling and on the road together, and I was the
only person there. So I became the confidante and the
assistant and the therapist and the shoulder to cry on
and everything but her child.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
Have you ever had the opportunity to tell her that
and to have that conversation with that?

Speaker 1 (15:45):
When I was nineteen, I finally got the guts to
got up the courage to split from her as in
business wise, because I desperately wanted a relationship with her,
desperately wanted her to just be my mom. And so
she came to my trailer during lunch when we were

(16:08):
filming Heroes, and I said to her, I don't want
us to work together anymore. I just want you to
be my mom. And I remember being hopeful, but there
was that part of me who knew her too well.
But I also wasn't expecting the reaction that I got,

(16:28):
which was you owe me, and that's all she said,
and she walked out, and part of me was like, oh,
I'm relieved that it was. It was short, like riped
the band aid off. But then it was like this
dark looming cloud, you know, over my head, going what
does she mean by I owe her? What form of

(16:51):
payment is she expecting? And it was disappointing to find
out that it was money and that she didn't pursue
a relationship with me as just a mother daughter, like
once the business aspect was removed, I was I was

(17:12):
hoping that if I removed this, then she that there
will be no reason for her to be anything other
than my mom. And and the fact that she it
seemed like she didn't want to have didn't care to
have a relationship with me was a tough pill to swell.

Speaker 2 (17:32):
As a child. I'm sure you were also even as
a teenager, you're still dealing with the guilt of like,
how do I have this conversation with my mom? M?
Because I'm guessing there was a part of you that
was of course grateful and of course of course like
you know. But at the same time I hear you
intention loud and clear, which is I just want you
to be my mom. Yeah, and I don't want you

(17:53):
to play another role in my life and then to
not get that other role even when that part's taken
care of it. Yeah, do you still not connect to
or talk today at the moment?

Speaker 1 (18:05):
No, there there is not a relationship between her and
I sadly, I've gone through periods of time where we
just we we haven't spoken at all. It seemed to
me there it was kind of like there was no reason,
she had no reason to call on the only reason
why she would reach out was when something was needed.

(18:30):
It wasn't just to say you know, hi, or how
are you, or let's grab a bite or anything like that.
It's been a really tough road and I've no matter
how many times that door has been slammed in my face,
I've desperately seek her approval might for my entire life.
You know, she was the person after every take that

(18:52):
I looked to. I wouldn't look to the director or
the producers or anybody else. The only person that existed
and the only person always whose opinion mattered to me
was hers. So after every take, no matter what I
was doing, I would find her. And I'm I'm sure
I made you know, the directors feel like hey, because

(19:15):
I would run right past them straight to Mom. And
I had to make sure that I wasn't that she
was happy with it, and I wasn't in trouble, because
if I didn't do it right, I was in trouble. Yeah,
it was not a good, good reaction, But I mean,
I've lived to please her, and and even though as

(19:36):
I said, as you said, you know, I'm incredibly grateful
you're here, she's she and I've never had a conversation
with her as so why she stopped acting and decided
to focus her entire life on creating a career for me,
and whether it was just that she felt like I
was good at it, which is why she kept me

(19:58):
in it, or she wanted to live vicariously, or if
she wanted to create a potentially successful future for me.
I haven't gotten a chance to really talk with her
about that, but I'm very grateful for everything that I have.

(20:19):
But it was just very confusing because I never asked
for it, And that was the thing, like I wasn't
there were times where things would get overwhelming, and I
could tell they would get overwhelming for her, and she's
a big personality. And I also felt very guilty about

(20:40):
us having to spend so much time away from my
father and her having to spend so much time away
from her son, my little brother who was growing up,
and not it was because of me. It was because
of what I was doing, and it was my fault,
and I remember actually turning to me one night and saying,
you're the reason why I'm missing my son growing up.

(21:03):
And you know, that was a punch in the gut.
But as grateful as I was, I wanted to say
to her, but I didn't ask you to take me
on auditions. I didn't. I wasn't even old enough to,
you know, proceed to understand anything but good, bad, hot, cold, diaper,

(21:28):
change food, you know that kind of stuff. So there
were really high emotions. I loved what I did and
I had great experiences, but at the same time, I
was like, I didn't beg you to give me your
your life, to sacrifice all of this so that I
could have this career.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, it wasn't your dream, it wasn't your choice.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
And I don't know if it would have been. You know,
I wanted that all the time.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
Talk to me about that, because even earlier, when I
read the accept from the book, you talk about this
idea of acting being a talent that you just leaned
into because there was a gift that you had given
and then you leaned into it. It's almost like you
never got the opportunity to discover who you would have been.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
I remember being about I would say, around probably twelve
years old and having a total identity crisis. I mean
I was standing in my room and I was had
been auditioning and acting for years, and I was sitting
there going, who am I? Which part am I? Because

(22:34):
I can be all of these different characters, and I
can find all these these these parts in me, and
I can be I can become you know, and I
can bring up my fiercer side, or I can be
more gentle, whatever the character called for. And they all
felt like parts of me. But who the heck was

(22:56):
I like just without this? Who would I be if
without this? So I was very aware of it, and
I was very aware that it was going to have
an impact on me when I was older, and I
was very worried about that. I didn't talk to anybody
about it ever. I didn't think anybody would ever have

(23:18):
an answer, I don't you know, to it. But I
was like, this is going to screw you up as
an adult. It's going to rear its ugly head and
it's going to and you're not going to be able
to make the connection between why a certain behavior, Why
am I behaving like this? As an adult, it's going
to be very difficult to find the connection to the

(23:39):
childhood experience that caused that.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
It's a lot to take on so young, and hard
to process, and yeah, hard to know where it goes
and how it moves forward with you in your life.
It sounds like you were being reflective of this almost
all the way. It doesn't feel like something that you've
only done. Really, it feels like at every stage where
there was twelve or nineteen when you finally made the decision,

(24:06):
did you ever start to feel a sense of choice
and agency and effect.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
I'd grown up in a household where, you know, as
much as I loved the chaos of my family, there
was a lot of headbutting going on. So when I
was eighteen and Heroes was on and we had all
as a family, moved out to la and we were

(24:32):
living under the same roof in a condo with dogs
and cats and just we were in each other. We
went from living all living in a big house to
living in very tight quarters. But as soon as I
was eighteen, I was I went to my mom and

(24:54):
I said I want to move out. And I knew
I needed to move that from my own mental and
emotional health. I would say eighteen was when I finally
felt courageous enough to h to communicate that and to
and to you know, if i'd start my own life.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah, did that? Did that come with a sense of
confidence and kind of enthusiasm that you had that or
was it almost like a necessity, like I just need
to do this to survive?

Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah? No, it was. It was both. It was it
was the idea was terrifying because I'm a true pack animal,
like I need people around me. If that's it's arguably
it has the biggest impact on me mentally, emotionally, spiritually,
which leads to physically. Yes, it was survival. It was

(25:49):
definitely survival. It was necessity. It was I need to
get myself out of here, and it was I carried
a lot of guilt with me and leaving my little
brother behind in what I could no longer tolerate, and
I was terrified to live alone. I didn't want to
be lonely. The I didn't I wanted people around me.

(26:09):
I was still scared of the dark and didn't want
to not have anybody to you know, lay down next
to me until I went to sleep, to make sure
that I was I was safe, so it was exciting,
but at the same time I would say it was
more so necessity. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, I mean you know, as I was reading your
book and learning more and more about you, it was
almost like my empathy for you just like grew every time.
And I mean that in your strength, for your strength
in these situations, not as a sense of pity or
feeling sorry for you, but seeing just how strong you
had to be in so many different situations. And this

(26:51):
when I got to this part when you write about
this in the book, you write about a moment in
your career where a friend of yours takes you onto
a boat, so you're led to a room which has
an older man in it and then basically told to
perform sexual acts you know, oh yeah, And when I
read that, I'm like, oh gosh, Like, not only have

(27:11):
you felt like you've had a really unsupported you know,
upbringing you now with a friend in the industry and
then ending up in a situation like this, Could you
talk to me about what that moment does to your
psyche when you're that.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
I mean the fact that I was eighteen, even though
I'd lived such a huge life and I thought I
was oh so mature at eighteen, you know, scientifically, you know,
her frontal lobes don't develop until we're what twenty six,
twenty five, twenty six. So even though I felt like
I could make healthy decisions, safe decisions, I wasn't capable

(27:54):
of being fully aware of what was going on around me.
And it wasn't until I found myself in predicaments that
I realized, like it my my perspective completely shifted and
I realized that I was in danger. But by the

(28:15):
time I'd realized I was in danger, I was quite
literally to see and and it was it was that,
I mean, that moment shook me and was shocking, and
I was quite literally put walked down. And I had

(28:36):
been having a great time. There was no hints of
anything like that happening. So it took me. I was
I was shocked. It took me by surprise, and it
was somebody led by somebody that I had grown to
trust and see as a protector and somebody who had

(28:58):
my back, and to be walked down, you know, down
the stairs, and it was it was as like a
surprise presented as though it was like a surprise, and
it was this very small room and she physically put
me in the bed next to this this undressed man

(29:19):
who was very famous and had his hands like this,
like like this was just, you know, an average day
for him. This is something that happens all the time.
And I waited for her to leave, and I I
mean that that lion in me, that fire, and me

(29:40):
that that my my hair stood on end, and I
became ferocious. I was like, this is not happening. But
I had nowhere to hide, and I bolted and I
I hid wherever I could think of to hide on

(30:01):
a boat. On a boat, there was no jumping off
and swimming away, and there was nobody who was going
to I realized that there was nobody who was going
to be empathetic to my situation. That this was nothing
new to them.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
I mean, you know, that sounds such a horrifying event
to go through and to be put in that position
at eighteen years.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
Old, and disappointing when somebody lets you down like that,
And I've been let down so much before that when
you really find somebody that you trust, like you hold
on to them for dear life, and you feel so lucky,
so to be betrayed like that, it's just an awful feeling.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
How do you decide do you trust? Now?

Speaker 1 (31:03):
It doesn't seem like I've done much of a very
good job. I don't think I've gotten much better at choosing.
On one hand, because I do feel like I have
there are certain people that I negative with negative energy
and that are just not good. People that have been

(31:23):
I've that have been drawn to me for whatever reason,
and who I've not seen clearly immediately. It took me
a while, like they really were able to pull the
wool over my eyes, which you would not I didn't
expect of myself, you know, having had all the life

(31:47):
experience that I have and having had things like that
already happened to me, like you would think it would
have been a learning experience, and you know, I would
have made sure that it never happened again, and unfortunately
that was not the case. But that being said, I
have I On the other hand, I have had amazing

(32:11):
people in my life. I mean, my dad has been
a huge support system for me since I was a kid.
He was the safe space and there's a lot of
me in him. He is the person that kept me
grounded and made me, you know, the good in me.

(32:33):
I got my big, big heart from him. But I
have throughout the year has been fortunate enough to meet
just incredible people. And I do have a group of
friends that are incredible people, incredibly loyal and are genuinely,
genuinely good. So there are just a few that have

(32:58):
snuck snuck in.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
You're in there, yeah, I think, And I got to
meet some of them today. Your best friend is with
you and others who are who are wonderful people, and
you know, great to see you surrounded by them. And
I was sharing this with you as we were speaking
before that sometimes I feel that I think a lot
of good people beat themselves up for attracting negative people

(33:20):
around them. And the truth is, I don't think you
attract negative people. I think when you get so big
and large in your work and your career and you're
exposed to so many people, you just come across more
negative people because you're exposed to more, and you know
you don't, right like, if you're only exposed to your
town or your community, whatever, maybe you come across a

(33:41):
couple of people. But when you start getting exposed to
a bigger industry in a bigger world.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Right, but it just exposed is one thing. But then
it's hard for me not to beat myself up over
letting them get passed, you know, my defenses, letting them
get close to me, and for how long I have
you know, it's really as I told you before, it's
really important for me to have to choose the people

(34:09):
who are around me wisely. And I have an incredible
team of people who are are not just great at
what they do, but who are just have become dear,
dear friends and confidence and protectors. And I haven't always

(34:29):
had that. I and they're not afraid to tell me
the truth either, and that's a hugely important thing for me.
But it's hard to not beat myself up for certain people,
you know, having access to my life that not should

(34:52):
never have had access, should never have been a part
of my life for many, many, many reasons.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah, I feel like when you're young, as well, from
having spoken to quite a lot of young talent in
the industry, it's almost like you're hoping that the adults
around you are making good choices. And you talk about
in the book how you were actually given pills before
a red carpet to make you feel more confident, and

(35:18):
how that planted the seeds for so many other things
that came in the future. And again, you're coming to
a point where you're hoping the people around you, especially
when you're young, yeah, to help you make better decisions,
especially when you start as young as you did.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Yeah. And the person who handed me those pills, I
had already developed a very tight relationship and a great
bond with them, So when it happened, I didn't see
it as anything inappropriate or negative. I trusted this person

(35:56):
and this it was. I didn't just have a great
personal relationship with this person, but this person's job is
part of their job, was to always protect me. And
so I was so used to following the directions of
the people that I respected, the people that I worked with.

(36:20):
If they told me to jump, I jumped. They told
me to wear this, I were that. You know, I
trusted them more than I ever trusted myself. I wasn't
raised to trust myself except for my instincts as an
actor that was instilled in me. But as a person

(36:42):
it was a completely different story.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
And at the same time, you're getting this, like you know,
huge wins, like you become one of the most you know,
well known, popular young actors, when you land heroes and
it's this huge moment and from the outside it just
looks like an incredible accomplishment. What's going through your heart
and mind when that happens? In all emotions, what are
you experiencing?

Speaker 1 (37:04):
The success meant that I my mom was going to
be happy with me, so that was that was hugely important.
It also meant that I fit in, that I was, Yes,
I found my place, that I was finally somebody accepted
me and I was part of something that involved the

(37:27):
other people and they became my crew and my group
of friends. I finally felt like I fit in somewhere
and I finally felt like my gosh, I made it.
Like I remember the first time I walked out of
my apartment and paparazzi. I was about sixteen years old,
and I had imagined younger, you know, getting to the

(37:51):
place in my career where I would get paparazzi and
you know what, I just think, look like, am I
gonna do like one of those to take a picture
of me? Like like it's gonna be one of those
like just like beauty perfectly, you know, beautiful shots. And
it was just sheer terror. I mean the shot like

(38:13):
when I actually happened. I heard this clicking and I
looked up and it was I remember it feeling like
I was looking down the barrel of a gun and
it was a guy sitting in his car with his
window rolled down, and I was I think it was
walking my dogs. And I was horrified because I was like,

(38:34):
oh my gosh, that's not the look that I expected
to have. That pictures of me looking terrified, absolutely terrified,
and probably go something like that, that's not the shot
you the first want.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yeah, definitely, that's what happened.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
You can plan all you want in god less Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
Yeah, definitely. I mean, but you you talked about this,
you said this at the start, this idea of just
like how your life became used to living for applause,
like having to get the applause from your mom and
then the community and then of course paparazzi whatever. Right,
It's like you kind of see that trend.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Oh yeah, and then it grows and it grew and
it grew, and it went from something that was like
kind of cool, something that was incredibly dangerous and incredibly invasive,
and not just for me but for the people around me.
For it felt like the people around like I wasn't safe,

(39:36):
the people around me were being affected by it. Yeah,
I was very protective of my little brother, fiercely protective
of the people I love, period and especially back then
when I was sixteen years old, it was a whole
different ballgame. Like the paparazzi situation was crossed lines that

(40:03):
still blow my mind today that they were that were legal,
they were able to do the things that were set
the way that they would box you in while you
were driving. I remember coming out of a store once
and it was, you know, one person saw me in
Suddenly it was over one hundred outside and they kicked me.

(40:28):
I just felt this kick on the back of my
leg and I realized and when I turned around, they
had a camera in my face, and I realized that
that's where they were trying to get a reaction out
of me. So I remember a very famous successful publicist
set me down when I was when I was young,
and I think when Heroes was about to change my

(40:49):
life permanently, and he knew this, and he sat me
down and had a whole conversation with me about how
to handle paparazzi and how to keep your expressions you know,
kind of boring if you if you will, But the
lengths that people will go to get that shot and
the things that they would say to me at such

(41:12):
a young age were appalling. They're truly just just mind
blowing and shocking. It was wildly dangerous, and I was like, why,
especially after Princess Diana, how has this not changed? How
has nobody stepped in and stopped this? This is crazy?

Speaker 2 (41:33):
How did you cope? And like, what did you do?
How did you deal with one of that? Because that
just seems overwhelming?

Speaker 1 (41:38):
There was nothing to do? Like that was that was
you feel completely helpless? Yes, powerless helpless. I would get
in the car and I drove like a bat at
eh double hockey sticks like I I would. I was.

(41:59):
I became an NASCAR driver and knock on wood. Thank god,
nothing nothing, nobody ever got hurt. But there was one
time I was out trying to run them in a
rental car and I was going so fast down the
street that I had to make a quick right turn
and I hit my brakes and instead of the car stopping,
it just went for the slide directly into traffic. So

(42:24):
I would I mean, I was able to turn into traffic,
like just in time, in the nick of time, like somebody.
I felt like somebody was watching over me and protecting
me at that point, and sometimes I just had to
go home afterwards. I didn't and I went out with

(42:45):
a plan to do something and it wasn't safe, and
I didn't feel like dealing with them all day long,
so I just went home and would go, hah, you
didn't get your you didn't get your shot. But I
also didn't get to do what I wanted. When I
was living on my own, I remember having to call

(43:09):
like taxis two at at the time, we didn't have
uber or anything up to my house, and I would
have to lie down in the back seat, like almost
on the on the floor so that they couldn't see.
The paparazzi that were waiting in the street couldn't see
that I was in the car, or I have a
friend picked me up, and I would have to hide
under yoga mats and things like that. I also didn't realize,

(43:32):
like we'd go to do it somewhere like let's say
the grove, how many people were somewhere on like rodeo.
How many people were paid money to do this to
be a celebrity spotter, right, and you know, you think
you've fooled them and you got out of there, and

(43:54):
it just takes one person to the wrong person to
see you and there goes your day.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
Yeah. Yeah, well, I believe it was around the same time.
In the book you talk about meeting Blood for the
first time when you're doing the show, and I was wondering,
what do you when you reflect back on it now
and meeting him, What version of you were you then?

Speaker 1 (44:15):
When I met him, I was nineteen. I liked myself
back then. Actually, when I think when I think back
on it, I felt like I held my own well.
I found a lot of joy in life. I was
a really happy person. I hadn't had anything, you know,

(44:38):
I hadn't lost people I loved or been through anything
that had negatively shaped me. So I was in a
really good mental spot, healthy mental spot. When I met him.
I was full of piss and vinegar as my mama's.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
And did it move fast? Did you were you? You know?
Was it was? It? Just instantly you both know you
that there was something there at the time.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
He was not my type at at first. I mean,
he was like looking at a Greek statue like, That's
what it was like being in his presence. Like I
just studied his face. He looked chiseled out of out
of you know, stone, out of marfully like. And he

(45:29):
was so big, yeah, I mean his features just like
everything about him was so so fierce, and I was
so small. But the personality that came out of him
was surprisingly gentle and kind and made me very curious.

(45:52):
But it I had just gone through a breakup with
a co star that I was still working with, so
I wasn't really in the headspace of fully moving past
that breakup yet. So it took an it was. It
was another year. Was when I was twenty years old

(46:13):
that Vlatten I actually connected and started dating. I think
that we were supposed to meet up. I was at
the Super Bowl. We were supposed to meet up once
when I was still nineteen, and I guess I was
supposed to call him and I never did, and there
he was, you know, the heavyweight champion of the world

(46:33):
and going. Apparently he was very pissed off that I
never that he was waiting around for my phone call.
He was like, who does this girl think she she
know who I am? He's not. He's not a Gogkeeperson,
but I remember his reaction to that being very very funny.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
That's right, that's right, that's fair.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Yeah, So it took a I met him, We kept
in touch, and then actually my first fight was for
my I brought my little brother to his brother's fight
for my little brother's birthday.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
So it was a very special time. And then and
I stayed in touch and then started a relationship.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
Yeah. In the part in your book that I found
like something that I was totally unaware of, and I'm
going to read from it here, you talk about this
is so while you were on Nashville, you obviously become
a mother, and it was this idea that Nashville was
almost writing based on your life and writing around you.

(47:42):
You talk about the storylines for your character Juliette Barnes,
and how on Nashville they mirrored what you were going
through in your personal life, and you write this specifically,
I was suffering from dehabilitating anxiety and an addiction I
couldn't shake, and I had to live through it twice,
first at home as Hayden and then in front of

(48:03):
millions as Juliet. Yeah, and that really struck me because
you know, I think we all watch TV and film
and everything and we don't really It's almost like we
believe you are that character anyway, absolutely, and you don't
really ever know what the real character is and till
you and you can in an interview. But if you

(48:24):
don't see that, if you only see someone for three
minutes on a late night show or a morning show whatever,
you know, you have no real sense of who they
are beyond oh, well, Aiden and Juliette, like that's who
she is, right, Like.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
On TV in what you see you see in the
news and and what you look like.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
You see headlines and news, gossip and all that kind
of stuff you see the TV show and then you
see pictures you're absolutely right, and that's all you get.
And this is why I really appreciate just how I
just want to acknowledge them for anyone who's going to
read this book, Like you get to see someone who's
I believe, lived through a lot of hardship that has
this ability to reflect and introspect about what's happening. And

(49:06):
when you put it that way and you're like, oh,
I didn't realize Hayden's going through this, She's living through
the reality and I want to talk to you about
the anxiety that you're experiencing, and then at the same time,
you're living it twice because now you're having to act
to at work and they're writing around you being pregnant
to have the show continue, and then after that as well,
and so talk to me about where the deabilitating anxiety

(49:29):
was coming from and what it felt like to live
it twice.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
It felt like it never ended. I didn't know where
Juliette began and Hayden ended. In the beginning. When I
first started doing Nashville, I thought, well, it's just a
coincidence that our lives have so many similarities. It must be.

(49:56):
And then as the years went on, the episodes went
on and everything kept started matching up, from the who
Juliette Barnes was dating to being an alcoholic, to postparm
depression to losing her child basically abandoning her child. Then

(50:25):
it was like, okay, this, you guys are just mirroring
my life. And we would get the we wouldn't get
the episodes very far ahead of time, so to go
to them and say, hey, you got to change this,
and that wasn't anything I was used to doing I

(50:45):
was just used to doing my job and making it work.
But it felt like the day never ended, and we
would shoot ten minutes out of the years, year end,
twelve to twenty hour dates. And I never thought I
was a method actor, and and I've worked with method

(51:10):
actors who when they play a character role, they never
they never jump in, they don't jump in and out
of the character. They are the character for the entirety
of the filming process. Shooting something for six years, ten
months out of the years, that's not really, that's not
what you want to do. But it wasn't was unavoidable

(51:34):
because it was my life. I couldn't come up from
for air from it. There was no break from it.
And here I was playing this very deeply emotional, dark character.
We had so much alike, but we but we were

(51:54):
different in who we were as as people. But especially
when I was on set, even during breaks, I didn't
even realize that I was taking I was becoming her constantly,
and I wasn't therefore taking care of myself, able to

(52:18):
take care of myself mentally and decompress and process what's
going on in my life. Nor did I want to
talk about it because I had just spent all day
acting it out and crying. I just felt like I
was constant. I was holding my breath all the time
and I couldn't get away from it. And you know,

(52:40):
you're in a contract and I was. I became desperate
and I was doing everyth That's why I turned to
substances because the anxiety that I started, I started having
having the panic attacks that I started having. I used
to have nerves a lot, and I had stage fright.

(53:01):
I've had stage fright since I was a kid. But
that those good nerves that keep you on your toes
at some point turned into genuine, like genuine anxiety that
made me incapable of functioning properly or thinking clearly. It

(53:24):
would make me physically shake. So I was self medicating
and looking for relief at the bottom of a bottle,
and it was the only thing that worked. But I
needed to numb. I needed to self numb. I needed
my brain to take a trip and needed to go

(53:45):
on a vacation. I needed to not think about all
these ugly things for just a little while. And I
didn't find myself able to do that without the help
of of a drink.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
Yeah, I mean explained to me the complexity of And
I asked this from the perspective of having so many
friends who've gone through postpartum depression and it just not
being talked about enough. Yeah, and whether it be even
initially when it happened. I remember speaking to a lot
of my male friends and them not understanding what their

(54:23):
partner was going through, only then to realize that we
were just unaware of, you know, the amount of women
that go through postparum depression. Talk to me about the
complexity of the emotion of having your baby girl and
the emotions that come with that as being a mother,
and then the postpum depression that follows that.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
From a young age, I was dreamt of becoming a mom,
Like it was something that I always knew that I
would be, always wanted to be, And I had all
these ideas in my head of the kind of mother
that I was going to be. I was going to
have cameras in every room, and I was going to

(55:05):
capture this and that, and I'm it was going to
get them into all these these different extracurricular activities and
made sure that they spoke different languages, and like I
had this this beautiful plan in my head, and then
I had my daughter, and I knew something was just terribly,

(55:29):
terribly wrong. And now there's a lot of stigma around postpartum,
and there's a lot of misunderstanding, and it's on a
there's it's on a spectrum, it's on a scale. And unfortunately,
you know, I never felt any hostility or negativity towards

(55:50):
my child, you know, thankfully, but I wasn't connecting with
her the way that I knew I should be, and
that I was full of stress and anxiety all the time,
and what I was doing to suppress those those emotions

(56:15):
was not normal and it was not healthy. I was miserable.
I was in tears all the time, you know. Even
though the alcohol helped, you know, my nervous system calm down,
it is a depressant, so over time it made things worse,

(56:37):
not better. In a moment or two, it might feel
give you the illusion that it's making things better, but
ultimately it becomes backfires and it becomes a disaster. But
Blood was incredibly supportive, even though he had no idea
what was going on, and I had no idea what

(56:58):
was going on either, because I had never been around
anybody who had ever experienced postpartum depression before. I had
never heard it. It spoken about, you know, my mom,
my mom, the females in my life, nobody ever said
anything about it. All of their stories were of these beautiful,
positive moments of joy and love. And I would say,

(57:24):
expectation leads to disappointment, but in this in this way
I had, of course, I had expectations and they were
they were good, and they were positive, and they were
they were going to be life was going to be great.
And at about four months old, I finally went to
Vlad and I said, I said, I need I need help.

(57:48):
I can't live like this anymore. You know, something is
terribly wrong, and he said, okay, let's let's get you
some help. I went to a facility during the hiatus
of the show, so I was kept private, but I
was therefore alcoholism. They were treating me for alcoholism, and

(58:11):
nobody ever said anything about postpartum depression there. So I
felt unfixable. I felt like there was no way the
way out of it, and I was trying to process
the idea that maybe I was going to be depressed
like this for the rest of my life and this

(58:32):
was just the new normal, So that was terrifying. I
had this gorgeous, sweet angel child healthy. I was so
lucky and blessed, and I was just a mess. I
was just a mess and there is nothing that I

(58:54):
could I could do to fix it properly, and there
was It felt like there was nobody around who understood
because there was so much stigma around it, and because
it's so misunderstood. It took me probably about ten months
to really realize what it was that was going on

(59:15):
of me researching and figuring it out myself.

Speaker 2 (59:19):
Wow, yet to do yourself because I know also you
talk about how like when you finally did talk about it,
you even lost an endorsement deal.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
Yep, nut Regina I was with for ten years, and
I mean they have morals clauses, which was a huge
You had a huge impact in my life because I
was a teenager and I had all the paparazzi around
me catching all of these gory moments, like every moment,

(59:48):
every cigarette that I smoked, or bad outfit or oh
she's looking chunky in a bathing suit, Oh she has
a fat vagina. I mean I went through through all
of that. You know, they were there for everything. Nutrigena

(01:00:10):
was a huge part of my of my life. I
had the morals, clauses, they caught absolutely everything, and of
all the things two that they would fire me over.
This was the last thing that I thought they would
ever fire me over. And when I actually went out
on to stage, it was live with with Kelly and Michael.

(01:00:33):
I had no intention of or plan to talk about
postpartum depression. It just came up, and I was just
being honest and never for a second did I think
that anyone or cared that anyone would have a bad
reaction to it. It was my truth. So when I

(01:00:54):
got that call that that Neutrogena wanted to fire me
for that, and my representative at the time said, that's illegal.
You can't do that. And even though you know, she
saved the day that year, I knew that that was
going to be it, that there was going to be.

(01:01:15):
I was not going to be invited back the next year.
And I had worked with these people for ten years,
and I remember not hearing a word from anybody, not
a great working with you for ten years, not a
nice hope you're okay, Yeah, I hope you're you're a good. Way.
We wish you well, and I remember that really breaking

(01:01:38):
my my heart. I wouldn't change it for the world.
I wouldn't take it back. But as I said, of
all the things that I had been caught doing, that
being the thing that that was where they drew the

(01:01:59):
lawn and it was immoral, was shocking to me. And
it made me realize and understand exactly what people thought
of women who experience postpartum depression, and how misunderstood it is,
how much stigma there is around it, and how I mean,

(01:02:24):
we're already in pain, we are already like the worst
possible thing, one of the worst possible things in the world.
To add it to a woman is already happening to her.
The last thing we need is, you know, the icing
on the cake, you know, and feeling so judged and

(01:02:46):
in such a negative way.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
What do you want people to know about postponum depression
that you think they miss.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
That it's real, that it's not something we make up,
it's not something we want, it's not you know that
we've we've we've lost our our marbles and and it's
not something that we want to go through and and

(01:03:32):
we're not lying when we tell you something strong and
and we're we're in tears for absolutely no reason, Like
we don't have control over this, and this would be
the last thing that we would ever want to experience
or go through. What we want to be with our children,

(01:03:52):
our child, our brand new child and have be filled
with joy and feel like the luckiest person and in
the world, and you know, capture every every moment, and
for anyone to think otherwise is just misinformed. And yeah,

(01:04:16):
I just I think people need to know a lot
more about it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
You need to understand did the facility you visited help
you with the alcoholism or what finally actually helped with that?

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Oh, I struggled with set for for years. It was
an on and off battle for a really long time.
And getting out of that depression was really difficult. And
the fact that I didn't have the time to really
spend on healing myself and fixing myself figuring out, you know,

(01:04:52):
how to navigate this and get back to my old
self because I was on Nashville and we were shootings
so so much. I mean, at one point I did
have to say to the show, I have to go
get treatment. You're gonna have to write me out of
the script, which upset a lot of people and made

(01:05:14):
me feel awful because I'd always pride myself and being
a professional. But it was incredibly important for me to
get my head screwed on straight or I was gonna,
you know, I was just gonna going off the deep
bend I was. I felt myself sinking further and further

(01:05:35):
and further into this dark hole that I just could
not climb out of.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
When I was reading the book, it just felt like
the challenges just get tougher and tougher and tougher and
tougher and tougher as you kind of, you know, go
through it with you. And they also seem kind of again,
just as your career in the beginning stages was almost
not a choice, all of these things also feel that
way where it's kind of like just happening to you,

(01:06:01):
and because of you know, just a it's not a
choice to bring these things on. They're coming off you know,
of course postfum depression and everything else that's happening through
that and not and also not having these conversations like today.
You know, millions of people will listen to this conversation
and be able to have a better understanding of what

(01:06:21):
that means and what that looks like. And today the
conversation around these things is growing. It's still not where
it needs to be yet, and sadly there are still
terrible headlines and terrible gossip and terrible stories made up
about people. And but these conversations are beginning to happen
and you go, okay, well, hopefully the next person doesn't
have to go through the fact of not knowing where

(01:06:43):
to go for help or be seen as I'll just
get over it or move on, or there's something wrong
with you, or whatever the ridiculous things we all hear
are in those scenarios. Yeah. I think it was around
the same time that you talk about the book where
the custody of your daughter shifts from you know, over
to flood and to Ukraine. I believe as well. And

(01:07:06):
I feel like that was especially talked about terribly, where
there's so many speculations and so many opinions and so
many assumptions on why that's happening. Could you tell us
what was really happening?

Speaker 1 (01:07:20):
I mean, the idea that anybody would think that I
would just give away my child and be okay with
it is heartbreaking. Couldn't be further from the truth. You know,
as you said, I was struggling with mental health and
anxiety and the postpartum and having to act my way

(01:07:45):
through it and just feeling like I completely lost myself.
And I think a misconception is that I have been
in the past forced into treatment, when in fact I
have been the one who sought it out, who was

(01:08:09):
saying I desperately need help. I don't you know. I
know this is gonna look terrible, but I am I
cannot live like this anymore. And even though Vlad didn't
understand it, the people around me didn't know what was
going on. I didn't know what was going on. They

(01:08:30):
were supportive I I went to go get help. They
didn't know what was going on, and so it became
this horrible cycle for years of battling depression and anxiety
and alcoholism and substance abuse, and me just trying to

(01:08:52):
find my way back, my way out of this darkness.
I would have done anything and tried anything, but it
wasn't until lat and until Kaya was two years old,

(01:09:13):
about to two and a half years old, that Vlad
decided that he thought it would be best for her
to live in Europe and when that first happened, I
did not have a good reaction to it. I went, like,
mother Lion, I would have burnt the world down for

(01:09:38):
my child. So that was incredibly difficult, not you know,
the fact that my child wasn't going to be with
me all day every day was was I mean, just
you can't put words to it. It's just a really

(01:09:59):
intense lif you know, feeling that are multiple feelings really
like layered together. But I realized that, you know, she
had been traveling back and forth for so many years,
and because I was working on the show, and because
Led had had to prepare for fights, and as a

(01:10:21):
businessman in his own right, she had to go back
and forth between the US and Europe, and sometimes we
would go together, and sometimes she would go with the nanny.
So she had spent a lot of time over there.
She had family, she had friends, she had extracurricular activities,

(01:10:42):
she had a really she already had a beautiful life,
and she understood the languages and was starting to speak them.
So by the time I finally got healthy, I felt
like it would have been unfair of me too, and
selfish of me to try to pull her out away

(01:11:06):
from this this life, that that she had been created,
that she was living an incredible life. She's an incredible
little girl, so happy and speaks five languages and and

(01:11:26):
and rides horses and knows that she's got two parents
that love her, and she I know in my heart
that she feels supported. I have an incredible relationship with her.
I go, I travel as much as as I can,
I see her. I do spend a lot of time

(01:11:47):
on FaceTime with her, but we talk about really deep
things that we have a really intent, incredible bond, and
I very grateful for that. And I know that she
knows that she has two parents who would do anything

(01:12:07):
in the world to make sure that she is happy
and healthy mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and she in no
way feels abandoned. And that's something that I've made sure
to be stay on top of and be very aware of.

(01:12:28):
And I think it's also good to lead by example
as a parent. She gets so watch She didn't just
get born with one parent in the limelight who is
famous and powerful. You know, she was born with two
and two completely separate continents and in their own ways.

(01:12:53):
But she's very proud of watching her mom and dad
kick button do what they do. She she's our biggest fan.
I think it makes her feel like she can accomplish anything.
You could just see that she is good and she
has solid and she feels loved because of the way

(01:13:17):
that she's able to love herself and watch it as
as a parent, you are eleven year old already have
this beautiful ability to love other people and love love themselves.
Is you just can't ask for more than that. So

(01:13:37):
I think there's been a common and you know, a
very common misconception that I just gave up my child
when there is that could not be farther from from
the truth. So I hope people will that are watching this.

(01:13:57):
I hope it's a little clearer, and I hope becomes
clearer in the book.

Speaker 2 (01:14:02):
Yeah. I think when they read the book as well,
there's you see so much of the context that I
think we miss in everything else. And there's this really
powerful line in the book that you share where you
say you grieve not being this was at that time.
You grieve not being the mother you thought you'd be,
And I wanted to ask you, how do you hold

(01:14:24):
that grief without letting it define the mother you are today?

Speaker 1 (01:14:28):
The grief has definitely gotten the best of me many times,
many many, many times, but it's transformed from grief. It
was grief in the beginning, but because of the relationship
that I do have with with her and how things
ultimately played out, I'm incredibly grateful to or her. She

(01:14:55):
has an incredible father, an incredible family, and I I
no longer I don't feel it, even though it's not
what I wanted to happen, and it's not what I
hoped motherhood was gonna be or what it would look like.

(01:15:17):
I'm so lucky to that it turned out the way
it did, and that she is safe and and and
a wonderful, well rounded person that I am, that we
have the bond that we have, which is it's something
that I you know, it was terrified wasn't going to
happen when she was taken away, that that I was

(01:15:38):
going to have to fight really hard to have any
sort of relationship with her, and it ended up, in
a lot of ways being a blessing. I will always
want her here, you know, I always miss her. I
always want her to you know, be and to have
my arms wrapped around her. But that's just not the

(01:16:02):
way life is right at this moment. But I do
believe that, you know, there will be a day where
she is an adult and she's able to make her
own decisions and go wherever she wants, and I have
faith that she is going to come to me and
that we're going to have an incredible relationship and bond

(01:16:23):
and friendship that a lot of parents don't get to
have with their kids.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
Thank you for sharing that. It's always incredible, how like
things don't turn out the way we expect them to.
And yeah, it seems like you've found a way to
work at it and work on yourself and try to
make the shifts and changes you need to. Whether it
was you know, with the alcoholism, whether it was getting
yourself up out of spaces that you didn't want to

(01:16:50):
be in to try and be the person that you.

Speaker 1 (01:16:52):
Would that's the only option to me. That's is you
keep getting no matter how many times you fall, you
you keep getting up and dust yourself off. It's it's
it's and you can you keep going. It's it's how
you what you do with these failures are falling, falling

(01:17:13):
on your face is what you do after that really counts.
It's how you handle that that really counts and matters,
and I'll never stop fighting to be good.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
Yeah, I mean you you were mentioning to me that
also you have a strong relationship with blood, which helps
this situation. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
Yeah, Vlat and I are very close. We all three
of us talk all the time. He travels a lot
when he's in Europe too, so sometimes we have a
three way FaceTime going on, and sometimes it's it's the
two of them and me. But but yeah, she's been

(01:17:53):
incredibly supportive. I mean, she's he's brought her over here,
She's known her great grandparents. They've been a part of
her her life. My I've lost my my Granpy and
my Papa, but but they were able to to know her,
which was really important to me. And she still has

(01:18:15):
my Nana and my grandma. She calls Nana Supernanna, Supernanna
and she is Supernawna. Yeah, we have we have a
We have a great, great relationship, and Vlad and I
are still best friends. There's not many people who know
me on the on this in this world as well
as as he does, and I know that we still

(01:18:38):
have an incredible amount of love for each other, and
most importantly, we have an incredible amount of respect for
each other. We made promises that something that I unfortunately
grew up with was hearing a lot of negative talk
from my mother about my my father, and that had

(01:19:02):
a really negative impact on me. And it hurt to constantly,
you know, hear the person that you love be put down.
So we made a promise to each other that we
would never say anything negative about one another to our daughter,
and that both of us have stuck to that promise,

(01:19:27):
and we talk each other up to our daughter and
talk positively about each each other, and I check in
with her make sure she's, you know, being respectful, and
that she's loving and loves her dad and and that
she knows he's a hero and one of the bravest

(01:19:48):
people I know, and and she loves both of us
to death.

Speaker 2 (01:19:55):
So I mean, it's I feel like it's an intention.
We all have to kind of repeat the good things
our parents did well and try to not repeat the
things that maybe they didn't do so well. And it's
almost like we're always trying to be I think those
of us who are trying to be on the part
of the wayness, yeah, yeah, evolve and just say hey,
I'm going to make other mistakes. We all are because

(01:20:17):
we're human. But I'm going to try and do my
best in this capacity. I feel like something we were
talking about earlier, about repeating patterns and people that we
attract into our life, and you talked about this and
you were mentioning it to me earlier. You talked about,
you know, surviving your abusive relationship with your ex. Yeah,

(01:20:38):
and I just I wanted to ask you about because,
like I said before, it's like every time you go
further in the book and deeper in the book, I
can tell that you know your truth and you know
who you are. And as you said earlier in our
conversation today, you were like, but I don't know if
I'm always good at knowing or trusting my gut or

(01:20:58):
following through on it. Yeah, why do you think that is?

Speaker 1 (01:21:03):
I feel like I've let myself down so many times
and let other people down so many times, and I've
I've just I mean, it worked so hard to create
this incredible life and career and I basically burnt it

(01:21:25):
all to the to the ground essentially and had to,
you know, start climbing up that mountain. And it happened,
you know more than once, and having to try to
get out of my own way was the most difficult
part of it. It was almost like like I would

(01:21:46):
like self implode and just and destroy something good that
I had going on before anybody else got a chance too.
It was like, instead of setting myself up for failure,
I knew it was going to fail, so I was
gonna just just might as well happen sooner rather than

(01:22:09):
then later. And it made me stop trusting myself. I mean,
I wasn't even raised to trust myself, as I said before,
like my instincts, aside from my instincts as an actor,
as a human being, I was not like I was
not taught to really trust myself. I was taught to

(01:22:30):
trust these people around me. It's been a really long
road and a really hard road, and a really stressful
road trying to to get back to that trust I
had at one point when I was when I was
younger in my in myself and how you know, knowing

(01:22:53):
how important it is that you listen to yourself, that
you listen to your gut. Every time that I have
not listened to my I got I have. I have
always regretted it. I found myself in a terrible position.
The abuse, the fact that I allowed this person not
only into my life, but for how long I put

(01:23:16):
up with it, And this is something, This is a
topic that is I've been journaling a lot about it,
trying to organize my thoughts and my feelings. And I
did journal last night, and for the first time, I
really feel like I was able to put in towards

(01:23:39):
what has been going on for the past decade of
my life in regards to the abuse. And I was
actually going to ask if I could read it because
I think it's really important. Is this topic is really
important for me to word word properly, word well, and

(01:24:02):
so that to the people listening really understand what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (01:24:07):
Please.

Speaker 1 (01:24:10):
It took me a long time to finally see the
situation clearly. I've had to do a lot of soul
searching and therapy around this topic because allowing somebody to
get away with harming me was so unlike me. The
more I thought about it and analyzed it, the more
connections I made between the abuse I was allowing to
transpire and the abuse I've gone through in my past.

(01:24:33):
They say that you end up marrying one of your parents.
I know I'm not married, but I found a very
interesting connection between this abusive behavior and my mother's abusive behavior.
Even though they would both shake their heads and say
I was crazy to think there was anything similar about
the two of them, there definitely was. I realized that

(01:24:55):
I was more afraid of being alone than being abused,
and in order to be around that kind of behavior,
it took me dulling my senses and numbing myself with
substances in order to silence that rational voice in my
head that was telling me exactly what was going on
and the many reasons why I needed to get myself

(01:25:16):
out of this toxic relationship and as far away from
this person as possible. Somehow, every time I found the
strength to get away from my abusers, they would always
find their way back into my life one way or another.
It was like being on a hamster wheel in this
endless dizzying cycle. And the craziest part, and the hardest

(01:25:36):
part was to understand. To understand was that the physical
abuse would come out of left field, But it was
always when he was drinking, same as my mom. We
could be dancing and joking, then a switch would flip
and suddenly it was on something would snap, and it
was like watching a predator suddenly smell blood. I was

(01:26:00):
dealing with his doctor Jackyl mister Hyde situation. I tried
to fight back in every way that I could think of.
If I took every approach, from standing my ground to
attempting to calm the situation to running and hiding from
it until he sobered up. Then once he was sober,
that good part of him would be back and he

(01:26:22):
would see the damage he had done, and he was
devastated and apologetic, and it seemed so honest and genuine
that I was torn. I thought back to everything I've
done wrong in the past and the forgiveness I was shown.
So I think a part of me felt an obligation
to be just as forgiving. I desperately wanted to make

(01:26:45):
him a better person. I wanted to fix him. I'm
a really strong person at my core, and anyone who
knows me was shocked that I would ever allow anything
like this to happen. I have this bright, powerful light
in me that comes on, but then it would dim
around that kind of intense conflict. I found myself trying

(01:27:08):
to be smaller and weaker just to avoid a battle,
because there's no reasoning with the unreasonable, and as strong
as I am, I couldn't physically stand up to a
grown man. I know I have a big heart, and
I always try to see the good people in people,
so much so that it's been to my detriment at times.

(01:27:29):
The worst part was that by allowing the cycle to continue,
it hurt the people I love who came to my rescue,
and I cannot allow that to continue to happen. In
order to finally get off the hamster wheel and put
an end to the cycle of abuse with him and
with other toxic people in my life, I had to
remind myself how strong I am. I had to envision

(01:27:51):
the life I want for myself, and most importantly, I
had to take accountability for enabling unforgivable behavior.

Speaker 2 (01:28:01):
Thank you for sharing that from your journeal, very very
personal and appreciate you, you know, letting us in that
deeply as you do in the book and in what
happened in the last couple of nights I believe.

Speaker 1 (01:28:15):
Thank you for letting me share. I feel like, I mean,
that's the first time I've shared that, so I'm feeling
the weight, this weight come off my shoulders at this moment.

Speaker 2 (01:28:35):
How does it feel to say out loud, you.

Speaker 1 (01:28:38):
Know, when you feel so much pressure on your chest
and it and there's that anxiety and nerves and then
you're relieved to buy some buy something like that. It
feels like an elephant stepped off my chest. I feel
overwhelmed in a positive way. I feel like I finally,

(01:28:59):
I finally did it, and I got to do it
in my own words. In this moment, I feel more
trust in myself than I have in years. So I
got a little bit of me back just now.

Speaker 2 (01:29:21):
That's so beautiful to hear. I mean, it's you just
said now that in your own words, and I feel that.
I feel like this entire book is a reclaiming of
who you are.

Speaker 1 (01:29:33):
And yeah, yeah, one step at a time, one step
at a time, but that it's been a ten year
dilemma in trauma after trauma, and just to be able
to explain it at all, I never thought that I
would be able to put it into wards.

Speaker 2 (01:29:54):
You said in there that you and I think a
lot of us we tolerate abuse because I'd rather do
that than be alone. And I think when you look
back on that, you can beat yourself up to say
why did I leave earlier? And as you were saying,
like I'm stronger than that, like why wouldn't I stand
up for myself? And at the same time there has
to be a sense of compassion for oneself to say

(01:30:16):
you'd you're just doing the best you could in.

Speaker 1 (01:30:18):
That moment, coming from a good place.

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
Talk to me about that.

Speaker 1 (01:30:23):
That was one thing that was that made it all
the more confusing to me is because I knew throughout
I've known throughout the whole thing that I didn't I
wasn't doing anything to deserve it. And that's why I
say that in that part, like talk about how come
out of left field. It didn't take me saying anything wrong.

(01:30:46):
It didn't take me doing anything wrong. It didn't take
mistakes or jealousy or think there was no catalyst, And
suddenly it would be I would be being dragged by
the hair and it was like what just happened? What

(01:31:09):
did I do?

Speaker 2 (01:31:09):
What?

Speaker 1 (01:31:10):
And what can I do to make go back to
to you know, two seconds ago? Like what's going on?
And as I said, you can't reason with the unreasonable,
And it was like the person that you loved just

(01:31:32):
was disappeared. I would look in his eyes and they
would be vacant like and then it was terrifying, terrifying.
And I've always been been interested in psychology, and so
trying to understand what was going on. I mean, I

(01:31:55):
was like going through the DSM like am I am
my head and trying to you know, trying to figure out,
you know, is it skitz, a schizophrenia, is it is
a parent? It's like, what in the heck is going
is going on? Because it was it was only when

(01:32:17):
when alcohol was involved, But no amount of alcohol could
ever make me capable of doing something like that, especially
over and over and over and over and over and
over again.

Speaker 2 (01:32:33):
I'm so sorry you had to go through that.

Speaker 1 (01:32:36):
It was like, I don't know, maybe it was my
my ego, like he was in my in my ring,
and I I felt like I was not going to
let him, you know, win win the battle, and by
by me not the idea of what would be winning

(01:32:59):
to me would be fixing him, being able to fix
him and make him better because I saw some good
in there and wanted to bring that to the surface
and no control over that, and some people don't want

(01:33:23):
to change, and you just have to accept that as
disappointing as it is.

Speaker 2 (01:33:29):
Again, I think you've been hard on yourself. Like I
think you know, there's a there's a sure, there's you
know all of and and by the way, we're all
people pleasers, we're all control we all have all of
that in us because of how we've all been raised.
And there's a sense that we all want to fix
people and make people better, and of course we're working
on these things, but we all share this, and it's

(01:33:53):
that it should never lead to that.

Speaker 1 (01:33:54):
No, no, yeah, I know. And the fact it's still
baffles me that it ever went there, that I ever
allowed it to, that I ever stuck around for it.
I mean, it's just so unlike me. But I think
that a huge part of it is that being alone piece.

(01:34:18):
I had just finished when I met him. I just
finished Nashville and just moved back to LA and I
was lonely and nobody was present. In the beginning. It
was the person that I fell in love with was great,

(01:34:40):
So the mister I did not show up until I
was already in love with the doctor Jackall.

Speaker 2 (01:34:49):
Were you able to talk to anyone? Did you did
you feel you could reach out to anyone, or did
you just feel so unsafe.

Speaker 1 (01:34:54):
I felt embarrassed, humiliated, I felt ashamed. I wanted to
keep my friends and the people that I loved as
a far away from the situation as humanly possible, because
there was no understanding it. It didn't it wasn't rational,
it didn't make sense, and I wanted to protect them

(01:35:21):
from feeling the need to protect me. I just knew
there was no explaining it without getting the reaction of
what are you doing? What are you thinking? And I
would go, I genuinely don't know. I don't know what
in me is is putting up with this? Is allowing

(01:35:45):
this to happen? I really don't. And as I said before,
I never there's never, for a moment did I think
that I deserved it or that it was okay at all?
Was that was? That was never never a thing. I mean,
I used the term forgiveness very lightly, because as hard

(01:36:08):
as I tried to forgive, I'm not unable to do that.
You don't forgive and forget those kinds of those kinds
of things. And it's not just the physical abuse, but
it's also the emotional abuse that leaves the deepest scars.
The bruises might fade, but you're laughed with these incredibly

(01:36:33):
deep emotional scars from gas lighting and being made to
feel like it was it's your fault. And I think
I was caught at that very that perfect time where
I was incredibly vulnerable and incredibly weak. He preyed on

(01:36:56):
on that, on my vulnerability.

Speaker 2 (01:37:15):
What did it take to finally get out? Like? What
what does that take? Because I feel so many people
stay there. How long were you tolerating this for?

Speaker 1 (01:37:24):
Well? I thought I at one point I thought I
had gotten out of it and gotten away from it.
But I'm it's like it's like we talked about for
It's like this, Like abusers, they weave themselves like weeds
into your life, and there's always something that they left behind.

(01:37:47):
There's also always something that they have to come back forward.
There was there's always something that they find to keep
that connection, keep you on the hook, keep that connection
with you no matter where you you go, that they
will always find you and find an in find a

(01:38:10):
way to slowther back into your life. So I I
went from you know, really wanting to keep my the people,
my loved ones away from it, to too, that's it.
I've snapped you don't pull out a gun and wave
it around. You only pull it out. This is this

(01:38:34):
is it. But you don't raise wave it around. You
only pull it out if you're going to pull that trigger.
And I finally decided, you know that I needed to
pull the trigger, and I called in. I called in
the heavy, heavy hitters and the people that were going
to protect me and make sure that he had no

(01:38:57):
way back back in, that this was going to be
a done deal. Finally, I always hoped that this was
going to happen by me one one day, And as
I said, I thought that I really thought I had
done it, and I was capable of doing it by myself,
but I needed an incredible amount of support and backup

(01:39:20):
in order to make sure that that there was no
way for him to find his way back in.

Speaker 2 (01:39:29):
What did it take for you to take that step?
Like what had to happen for you to say enough
is enough?

Speaker 1 (01:39:34):
And finding out that the good that I was holding
onto that I thought I saw in him was not
real that it was realizing all of the lies. I mean,
you got to be really good to pull the wall

(01:39:57):
over my eyes, and that he was. But once I
knew that that good was not real. That good, that
good side of him, the big heart that I that
I saw, was just made up and was just acting,

(01:40:20):
just really good acting. Then I had the ability to
let go and let myself off the hook, that I
didn't have to care anymore, and that I didn't have
to feel guilty anymore about about parting from him. Whatever
struggles he he goes through are his and there, and
they're no longer mine to clean up, and I don't

(01:40:43):
have to worry about it anymore. I have released myself.

Speaker 2 (01:40:50):
What you just said there is so real and so true,
and I honestly honor your vulnerability and clarity because it's
well you just said, this idea of accepting that that
person is good isn't real, because that's the thing that
keeps finding their way back and keeps appealing to someone
who wants to help and solve and fix, And it's
just believing on her. But there is there's that, There

(01:41:12):
is that, and you keep thinking it's real, even if
it's small and you don't see that often. But then
when you finally accept on her, it's not real. It's
it's actually the reason that they keep getting away with
this behavior.

Speaker 1 (01:41:26):
And it's heartbreaking to find out that it's that it
wasn't real. I mean I remember finding texts that and
having relationships and this and that. And one of the
things that that I thought was great about him is
how loyal he of a person he was. And when

(01:41:51):
I realized how long that had been a farce, like
I was, I was like, I have somebody ripped off
the rose colored glasses and I see clearly now. I
see clearly now, and there's nothing left to as you said,
hang on to. There's nothing to keep me there or

(01:42:16):
invested or forgiving in any way.

Speaker 2 (01:42:19):
Yeah. Yeah, when you say have you you mean the
FBI had to get involved, rightly, had to get to
that levelone already.

Speaker 1 (01:42:27):
Oh, I mean they know he went to jail. He
went to jail, and they they did have to get involved.
But he managed to weasel his way back in even
after that for a little bit, so I had to

(01:42:50):
get him out again. It was it was it was
like this this period of time, like back and forth
battle and I mean, as I said, I thought I
had gotten away from from him for this this big
period of time, and then for you know, certain reason,

(01:43:14):
I'm I won't go into you know, gory, the gory
details of exactly what what happened. But but don't believe
just what you see in in a picture, and there's
so much more going on, so much more going on.
Truth is stranger than fiction. It truly, truly is. You

(01:43:37):
couldn't you can't write this stuff, You can't make this up.

Speaker 2 (01:43:42):
As I was reading the book and thinking about all
the headlines that you've had to live through and the
conversation and the gossip and the you know, the everything
that comes with it, and then you know you did
this people interview, I think it was like a year
ago or something as well. And then again the rumor
will begins about questioning your sobriety and how you're talking

(01:44:04):
and everything, and then we learn, actually, it's because you're
grieving and going through so much more behind the scenes.
And I keep thinking, like, when more we finally stop
like assuming that we know what's going on in someone's life,
or we know exactly why they are the way they
are they are, and when we allow them the opportunity
to tell us, because it's a real human with a

(01:44:26):
real brain, with a real mind, with real well being,
with the real emotions, and yes, no matter how successful
someone is or whatever it may be. It's hearing things
about you that are untrue, are just so like at
the core, just unsettling for any of us. And we
know what that feels like at school, we know what
that feels like in a family.

Speaker 1 (01:44:46):
And when somebody says something, it's like, there's no changing
people's minds. It doesn't matter really, you know what you say.
You know, when I was younger, my father was accused
of of hitting my mother, and and even though I

(01:45:07):
knew the real story, when you say something like that
about somebody, there's no no convincing anybody that that's not
the truth and that didn't happen. There are just certain
things that people go, eh, I'm not buying it. I
saw I saw it for my for myself. When you're like,

(01:45:30):
if you saw the big picture, you would you it
would go you go aha, oh no, it makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:45:39):
It's like watching Yeah, I feel like it's like watching
a thirty seconds of a movie and deciding you're.

Speaker 1 (01:45:44):
The bad guy good guys, yes, and why in that scenario.

Speaker 2 (01:45:48):
And then you're like, all right, well if you watch
the whole movie, well you're woken halfway into the theaters
and right, it doesn't make any sense, and yeah, I
just you know, I really feel like this is me.
This book does that for people who want to understand,
you know, what the picture really looks like. And you sadly,
I mean, you've talked about him throughout you know, you

(01:46:09):
sadly lost your brother three years ago and you describe
him in the book as the heartbreak of my life,
always right there in the center of who I am.
I wanted to ask you, like, how did losing him
change the way you see all of this because it
feels like the hardest one, even though everything we've talked

(01:46:29):
about is extremely heavy and heart.

Speaker 1 (01:46:32):
Oh yeah, there's there was nothing in my life that
feels like losing my other half, like the other half
that I was, that was born to be my my
the ying to my yang, and we were so close,
and especially being the older sibling who it's your job

(01:46:56):
to protect them and kingdom safe and not being able
to is I mean, heartbreaking doesn't doesn't even begin to
cover it. I would need to a dictionary to go
through all the words for all the feelings that you
know that go through your mind. But I've got I mean,

(01:47:19):
I collapsed and it's stayed with me. I know, time
is like the best is the best tailer generally. But
it's been three years, and every year it's gotten, it's changed,
the heartbreak has changed. But losing him and realizing how

(01:47:39):
much of life I was going to have to go
through alone and without him where I when I always
saw him as being there, you know, the day that
my parents are not here anymore, I'm going to have
to do alone, and the fact that he's not here

(01:48:00):
to be a part of my daughter's life, and the
fact that he's I mean, there's so many times I
want to call him all the time, and he was
my best, best friend, and and like when he first died,
I just remember screaming, I don't want to live in

(01:48:23):
a world where he doesn't exist, so I would unfortunately
had to, but he seemed so alive in my head still.
He was such a big, big personality, and he just

(01:48:46):
like no matter how, no matter what, Like he was
just one of those people. I never thought anything could
take him down or take him away. He was so
good too, And it makes you so angry to see
that they're sort of bad people thriving in this world,

(01:49:09):
and then one so good that's just taken from you.
Why it's not fair. It doesn't make sense. So that's
something I just I don't think i'll ever I'll never
get over, It'll just evolve. Luckily, he was an amazing artist,

(01:49:34):
and I have his his paints, some of his paintings,
and that keeps part of him alive for me. He
left that behind, beautiful things behind. But and I feel
him with me. I know that's he's protecting me from

(01:49:55):
where he is and was needed elsewhere. But I wish
I would send him back to me.

Speaker 2 (01:50:03):
I'm so sorry for your loss. And hearing about him
from you and reading more in the book, it's about
your relationship. It's so special to have an amazing sibling relationship,
even when you grew up in a home where things
were maybe a bit more complex.

Speaker 1 (01:50:19):
Yeah, that becomes kind of like your Yeah, he was
my moro, of my rock my we're the only two.
He was the only other person who fully understood everything
about me. I mean, we grew up in the same positions,
seeing the same things, we joked about, the same things,

(01:50:41):
we left about, the same things, we cried about, the
same things. We were if we weren't five years apart,
and you would think we were personality wise twins. You
know twins, so you know tivose somebody who understands you
on that level. Yeah, And feeling like I failed to

(01:51:03):
keep him safe. It was really hard. And of all
the people that should have understood him and been there
and been able to protect him, it should have me.
And I did try, and I was shaking the people
around me, going wake up to what's going on. This

(01:51:24):
is serious, you know. His struggle with the addiction was serious.
And I mean I remember before he was eighteen, saying
begging my parents to send him to military school, before
he was capable of making decisions for himself, that he

(01:51:46):
needed to they needed to do this for his for
his safety, and he needed to be disciplined. And as
much as I loved his free spirit spiritedness is that
a word, spiritedness? Yes? He was such a deep emotional person.

(01:52:12):
It was so beautiful. I mean, you think about I
think about the way that I'm able to forgive like
and and how I'm a first person to see someone
struggle and I will be the first person there like
he was me times times one hundred. It was just

(01:52:33):
too much. I think I think it was too much
to be to be him. It was over overwhelming. This
the way he thought was overwhelming, the way he felt
was overwhelming, so he had to numb too. So I

(01:52:53):
get it, and I just wish I could have done
something differently.

Speaker 2 (01:52:59):
Yeah, it's it's hard when you love people and see
them do that and you have a deeper understanding of
it because you've been there as well yourself and you
know what that can look like and feel like. And
but again it's too much pressure for you too. It's like,
you know, you have a big art and you care

(01:53:20):
a lot, be kinder to yourself because you can't, you know,
solve and say fix everything and everyone's mine. It's a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:53:29):
I feel like that's something that they need to teach
in school to children, like how to be kind to yourself.
Teach them about negative self talk, because that's something that
we're all guilty of, and it's it's so it's horrible

(01:53:49):
what it does to us, what we've found out scientifically
that it does to us and our energy and our
way we think, and they just see the physical and
emotional mental effects it has on Honestly, I feel it's
doing It's really important for for people for to understand

(01:54:14):
that even though it might be something small in their
minds that that it's it's it's a big deal to
talk to yourself like that. People ask, you know, would
you would you talk to a friend the way you
talk to yourself, and most of the time people say no, right, yeah, And.

Speaker 2 (01:54:36):
The pressure we put on ourselves to solve everything and
fix everything and be there for everyone all the time.
It's it's a wonderful intention and a desire, but it's
it's impossible to live up.

Speaker 1 (01:54:47):
To for a yeah, absolutely agreed.

Speaker 2 (01:54:50):
Yeah, no matter how much you care and love someone,
it's it's a it's impossible. But I'm so sorry for
your loss. And yeah, it's it's one of those things
that never goes away. But you know, you get to,
like you said beautifully, that it's still living with you
and you still feel him and still feeling protecting you
from wherever you know he is. That that's a really

(01:55:14):
beautiful approach to grief. I can't imagine how much it
took to write this book, and we're only talking about
specific events that we're diving into, and there's so much
more inside when people will read it and learn so
much more about everything we're talking about. But I can't
imagine just how much excavating it took. And then to
add to it all, you write about the book how

(01:55:36):
you had a stalker and through the isolation through that you.

Speaker 1 (01:55:40):
Know, and I'm just like, it just keeps getting better.

Speaker 2 (01:55:46):
How does that feel to be going through grief, to
be isolated and then be dealing with that on top
of everything that you've gone through that you've shared today.

Speaker 1 (01:55:54):
I was they have that saying when it rains, it pours.
I feel that all the time. Go through periods of
times where things are great and then everything will go
wrong all at once. And I don't know if it's
mercuryan retrograde, or the something in the air, like what

(01:56:20):
is going on to make all of these things happen
all at once? But the experience with him is the
man who stalked me was was terrifying. And this man
was not just a stalker who was a big a

(01:56:40):
big fan like, he was genuinely mentally unwell and leaving
a message after a message about how he was going
to bring his Katana's sword and decapitate and he was.
I had to I had to actually cancel speaking engagements

(01:57:06):
that I had because he was flying and he was
waiting for me there. Now, I've had stalkers before in
the past who we're all talk right and no action,
and you go after a while you goo okay, and
they're not really going to do this is somebody who's
just just has the time to sit here and do this.

(01:57:27):
But then they are those that you realize are incredibly
dangerous and the mean what they say, and you have
to FBI and Secret Service had to get involved, and
I I mean, I thank them both, all of them,
from the bottom of my heart for getting him and

(01:57:51):
for putting him away. He did just recently get out,
so I've done. You know. It's I'm feeling, you know,
all these different emotion emotions going on while having having

(01:58:12):
X I like the way you say it, excavated my
life and written this book and put it all out there,
very emotional topics. Then to deal with something like this
on top of it, and knowing that he just got
out too of jail recently is scary. The whole experience

(01:58:40):
is just to deal with somebody that's that unhinged is terrifying.
It's because it goes back to that you can't reason
with the the unreasonable, and you have no idea what
they're capable of. When you don't know what somebody is

(01:59:00):
capable of. I mean, we've all seen people to things
that we could we would never imagine them people being
capable of doing. And and to to feel like you're
sitting in limbo and just and you have no idea
if they're going to show the stories that we've heard

(01:59:20):
in the in the past, and people should always showing
up and just boom, you're done, You're you're you're gone.
You to deal with somebody like like that, that is
that that is one of the most terrifying feelings in
the world.

Speaker 2 (01:59:40):
Can't even begin to imagine. I'm happy that.

Speaker 1 (01:59:42):
You was the icing, the icing on the cake. It
was very, very thick.

Speaker 2 (01:59:47):
I'm happy that you're protected and that you're taking the
right precautions and measures because you're absolutely right, and just
glad that you have the right people around you to
see you through this. Have been you know, I wanted
to There's only one last thing I wanted to say
to you and ask you is just you know, when
you came in here, and I want to point this
out because we've had You've had to revisit for this

(02:00:09):
conversation to talk about the book. We've revisited so many
hard and dark moments in your life. When you came
in today, you have this big smile in your face.
You greeted me with a really warm embrace. You were
so kind when we walked over here. We were having
a wonderful conversations and you were telling me just about
this next chapter of your life and how excited you
are to attract goodness into your life and attract love

(02:00:32):
into your life and just and I could see in
your eyes and you know you are this light, as
you said, as yourself and your journal. And I want
people to know that that I felt that and saw
that when you came in, because you know, we've revisited
the past that that is is tough and is talked
about in your book. This is me. But when you
write a book like this, it almost feels like the

(02:00:54):
end of a chapter in the beginning of a new
one as well. You kind of put all of this
together and it and I wanted to ask you that
what would you what would you want to call the
chapter of this that you're entering into now that you
walked into it today, that that I got to experience.

Speaker 1 (02:01:11):
I don't know yet it was one of the hardest
parts of this too, is was figuring out what to
call it. I felt like I couldn't come up with
the name until I was already until I was done
with the process of the book. And sometimes people do
it in the middle of the experience. Sometimes people do
it they need a title before they start the process

(02:01:34):
of writing. And I felt like I had to wait
till till the end. So I mean, I would have
to say I feel like it. To come up with
something good, I would I would have to see where
that where the book went, see where my life is
going to go. Because I finally feel like I have

(02:02:01):
shaken off all of this this darkness and this negativity,
and that means I've closed one door and another door
is opened, and I can feel it opened, and I
can feel all the possibility, all the possibilities, all the

(02:02:24):
exciting possibilities. I feel like I have a lot more
life to live.

Speaker 2 (02:02:30):
Absolutely, I think you're one of the toughest and most
vulnerable and bravest people who sat in that chair, and
I really notice and acknowledge just how much work you've
had to do to even be sitting here right now
to share your story. With this much grace and correct
So thank you for trusting me, thank you for being here.
And I'm really looking forward for people to read this

(02:02:51):
book and I hope it reaches the people who really
need it right now, people who may be caught in
cycles that you found yourself in can break out, that
it can protect others who are in the early stages
of careers like yours.

Speaker 1 (02:03:05):
I pray I just wanted to help people. I want
what I have gone through to be for a reason,
to have happened, everything to have happened for a reason,
and for that reason to be to help people, to
help people go through whatever it is, whatever challenges they're facing,

(02:03:26):
and to know that it's possible, it can't be done.
Thank you, Thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:03:33):
Can I give you a huge of course, if you
love this episode, you'll really enjoy my episode with Selena
Gomez on befriending your inner critique and how to speak
to yourself with more compassion.

Speaker 1 (02:03:45):
There's blessing in the breaking and every moment that you
encounter in your life, even if it's just road rage.

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Host

Jay Shetty

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