Unlocking the Past

to anything like I've had to divorce and death. And I'm seeing that there are a lot of similarities and not just parallels, but like these two topics are converging because many people have chosen certain types of partners as a result of their childhood, and the types of messages that I'm getting are about generational trauma, meaning you know, the parents that you had and the dynamics that you experienced as a child, if they were traumatic or very damaging,

and then really getting into thinking about their childhoods and there's anger and there's confusion, and there's compassion, and there's

being closed off. And I mentioned that I literally have lived nowhere but in my childhood for the first time in forty five years, in so many different ways, and you kind of put it all through a strainer, and with any luck, you end up with the good because you end up being compassionate about the fact that if someone was so miserable that they would abuse you and be mean to you and abuse themselves and be self destructive.

You know, they're filled with toxinsotional toxins, physical toxins, disease and addictions, and like they cannot contain it, and so they dump it on you. And I realize that, you know, parents dump so much on their children, even good parents, and the kids wear it and you have to be very aware of that. And I want to also talk about motherhood more, and I want to talk about some stuff that has been happening with myself and my daughter.

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

the most significant loss. And also I was getting so many messages about divorce that we are going to come back with divorce in the next couple of weeks, and that I'm reading all your messages, but I am am moved by these messages about your life, your lives, your life.

I'm reading them, I'm seeing them, you know, and I know that this is freeing you and you do not feel alone, and you feel seen and you are seen so and I am certainly not an expert on death or grief, like I am divorced, but I've had my own way of doing it, and i will share it with you because it's been a different way than I've seen other people do or I've done in the past. And there are many brands of death, so they are One brand is you had a person lives a very

long life. They're at ninety eight years old. You had a good relationship with them, and it's so sad and they were around for so long and you can't believe it's over. But there's some peace to it, there's some meaning. There's a brand where someone's very sick and it's been torturous and you feel guilty that for years you were a caretaker and that you wanted it to be over.

And that's a level of guilt, you know, there's grieving when God forbid someone who passes before their time or before you and you're older, or something like that, Like that's like traumatic, or God forbid an accident or someone takes their own life. I mean, there were so many different brands, you know, frustration. Lorie Peterson and I have been messaging back and forth from Orange County. So there

are many brands of death. And I, as a kid, never really experienced death because I didn't really have a family for most of my life and so I didn't hadn't had people around me that had really died. And I always this is going to sound strange, but not envied, but like I felt left out with people that had had family members pass away because they were going through something and I was always like I didn't understand it. I couldn't relate to it. I didn't know what it

would feel like, you know, grief. And my dog Cookie passing, which will become relevant later, was a traumatic event. My dog lived eighteen years and she was a family member because I did, as I've now been more open about, I haven't had family. And when Dennis, my ex and a friend of thirty years, passed, it was it was it was a brand of death. It was it was feeling guilty because he loved me so much and would send me these love letters, and some of them were

not lucid. And it was over the course of years, and there was a lot that I didn't know and understand, and and I was frustrated and blamed myself, thought I could have done something, blamed other people because I was open about certain things to them and felt that they didn't do it. I mean, you go through a million things, and the stages of grief is a very true thing, and they're not all the same for everybody. They say the stages, but they don't have to be in order

and they don't have to all happen. And so this brand of death is a different brand than I had ever heard of, than I had ever experienced, and that many of you hadn't really thought about. And now people that I know and people that I don't know are reaching out and it's making them think differently, and it's it's it's having meaning because I am telling people that I know and also people that I don't know, when I hear their story, it is not going to be

what you think it's going to be. This brand this particular brand, this generational trauma brand, complicated being a very understated word for this brand of death with a person that's supposed to be the most significant safe relationship in your life, dying is not what you expect. I know other people that haven't spoken to certain family members, have estranged relationships. They've put it in a drawer, like me, They've locked it. They don't think about it. Days could

go by. You don't think about this person. You are positive they are gone from your life, so you will not when they die. It will just be something that just happens. Like my father died, and it made me very very sad that he never really wanted anything to do with me and was very dismissive of me. My real father, I call him, because I had a stepfather

that was more of a father and more significant. He had a lot of issues and he is very old and also very sick, and I'm just waiting for that shoe to drop and then me to be under the couch for a month. But that was the most significant

male relationship in my life was my stepfather. Because when my mother was away and left for months at a time, and when she went to a mental institution, and when she had just left and had a boyfriend somewhere in Wales and wasn't at my graduation, she just decided not to go. All these times he was there and so I didn't want to attach to him when I was young because I didn't really want him around and he

was problematic. He did end up getting his ship more together and was more of a solid figure, and he had a lot of problems. He had left the family before, and then I became his family, and I was sort of a way for him to like show my mother how much he would love her and take care of her because he was obsessed with her, as everybody was. So I was really with him more and he was compassionate.

He was certainly very problematic. But when my real father died, someone who really kind of just left me when I was young, they were in a relationship. He didn't treat me right. I went back to my mother into the arms of the next man, who was my stepfather, who was the most significant relationship. This is still in the formative years, which we'll get into, because I did not realize until recently that between zero and eight is when

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

going to get some sort of resolution. And a friend of mine who was friends with him because people again glamorized him and worshiped him, and he always dated younger, pretty people, and he was a Hall of Fame horse trainer, and I used to beg for his affection. I used to pretend publicly that like I was the daughter of Bobby Frankel, because I wanted them to think that I was somebody and like that I could go to the

Kentucky Derby and I could like be that. My stepfather, John, who wasn't as successful a trainer, but still successful, he included me. He took me, He took me to Saratoga and like put me in the Winter Circle pictures. My real father, who was the real success, which was a big rivalry between those two men always discarded me. And one year I went with an ex fiance to the

Kentucky Derby and he got the ticket. He brought me there, and the tickets are a fortune, and I called my father to ask him if he could get his tickets and he said he blew us off, and he said no, and he didn't have any. And this is always how he was. I don't have any. He was very He also was scathing. So I had two scathing parents, which will explain my personality a little bit, like I have to try to tone it down. And I think this

will significantly change me. I've been hardened by the racetrack and by two very scathing parents and the abuse and everything else. But we showed up at the races that day and I overheard my father, because we had to buy tickets. I overheard him saying to other people, I have all these tickets. I don't know what I'm gonna do with them. I could probably sell them or something. He was just mean my whole life, and he was a mean person, and everybody could glamorize it. The way

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

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

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

John Paracella, and I was glad. I was I was enamored by the glamour of that he lived in La and I was watching sixteen Candles. I'm pretty and pink, and I wanted to be out there and thought I was going to live this fabulous life. And he courted me. But once I relinquished and decided to allow my real father to be my father, I put changed my name from Bethany Paracella, which I literally would like to go

and change back. I've always hated my name because my father it was like being bougie and like having that name and pretending that he was a father. And it happened in college. I had never legally been Paraslla. It was just that in third grade I went with John Paracella to register at school and they asked my last name, and I felt guilty that it was Frankly, it was on my passport my whole life, and so I said Paracella and there are so many people in my life

that only know me as Beth Paracella. But so in college because of my stepfather really lashing out at me, every single thing I owned came to my dorm room from my life with my mother and my stepfather. He had physically lashed out at me, and I took the name Frankel, and I leaned in and I wanted my real father to like accept me, like I was going to now be his daughter. And he dropped me like a hot potato. He wanted nothing to do with me. He literally all the courting. It was like I was

a woman that had been courted and just dumped. It was like the dog chases the cat, the cat runs away, the cat chases the dog, the dog runs away. So he was not a great person, and he was really pretty much a piece of shit my whole life. And I tried so hard to write letters and to ask him, and he just really was this cold, detached person. My

mother was not detached in that same way. She was miserable and toxic and mean, but she had emotions underneath and would cry and wasn't detached like you could have. You know, she was emotional, but just very erratic. So my real father when he died, it was not the same type of feeling. It just wasn't the same brand it was. My ex was with me, my daughter was in my belly. I tried to make meaning out of it. I took some meaningful things from his house that I

still have here. He was hostile in his death. On a Today's Show episode about Father's Day, I said something like, and I don't really have a father, like a throwaway comment, but down deep, I guess he loved me. And he used to watch every single thing that I did, and he used to watch The Apprentice and he rooted for me. But what good is loving someone if you're not going to tell them or remote He just was not capable, which was the problem that my mother had with him.

And he never was able to be in relationship because of his generational trauma and his parents and how they were. And when he he heard me say that on that show that day, he really cut me off in his mind, cut me off financially, which was a part of the relationship. Like every year, I think he'd send me five hundred dollars for or maybe more for my birthday, or twenty five hundre dollars. Fifteen hundred dollars was all the money

in the world to me. I waited for it for some reason, because I always have to be fully accountable. For some reason, he agreed to pay fifty thousand dollars for my first wedding. I should have just taken the money. I don't know why he agreed to do that. And there was a negotiation and a debate back and forth about who was going to pay for my college between he and John. So he died and I was I

really didn't care that much. It didn't affect me. This loss of my mother was a very different brand of death, and I did not expect to experience what I would experience. So the way that I went into this, which was not intentional, just what happened. I'm a loner. Another thing. My father, my real father, was a loaner. He was a loner's whole life. He'd be alone in the house. My mother was a loaner. To it's Kelly Rippa who said to me, that's genetic. And I am a loner

a lot. So I intervene in that and I do a lot more than they did. But and like my father, like his work became his social every day you get up and you shower, and you go to the track and you see people and you go to dinner. Like so my work and that The Housewives in that way was good for me. Reality television was good for me because I would be even in my twenties, I was the one who wanted to like a home early and be in my pajamas and could be alone for days

on end and like not tell anybody about it. I could like not do Thanksgiving because it was triggering me and I'd be alone. I wouldn't tell anybody because I don't want, like anyone to know or feel bad. And some of you can relate to that. The pandemic leaned right into that for me and really like enveloped me in it being okay and normalizing being alone. And so it's taken. I'm still it's still taking me a while to get myself out. And so I think that Jewish

people in sitting shiva is a good thing. And I was talking actually to Jill Zarin about this, because you grieve for a week. But what I personally don't agree with is the distraction of it. Because when Dennis died, I went to the funeral, and I remember drinking wine that morning because it was like making me cope. And then I went over to someone's house after that they were having you know, they're starting I guess the shive

at their house. And then you were in your house and people flew into New York and like came to see me and like it does help, and they're visiting, and it's it's you know, if you have a family, you're doing it together. And I'm not. I'm not there's no way to judge anyone's version of how they're going to do this. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying if you're a person, that can really distract.

Because I had an ex who had a mother who died and we did shive for a week and all we did was drink and tell stories and look at pictures, and then it was over and then you know, people go back to normal life and you've had like a social week, and that's daring. So I have not done it that way. My daughter came back to me. I was supposed to go to a volleyball tournament, and thank god she had the volleyball tournament. It was my weekend

with her. I did not want her to be laying with me in misery, and like I didn't want to like share that with her. She knew my mother, but she had seen her two times in person and done art with her and spend time with her. She would call her sometimes and send her things. And in fact, when my mother would call, she would really just stay to brin like I don't have much to say, colostomy bag and I'm this and it's that, and not really

much good. Like she was selfish in that way too, Like she wasn't saying, oh, tell me about what's going on outside, or let's talk about your mom when she was a little girl, Like my mother was not capable of, like not being super deep and dumping really adult shit on my daughter, because that's what she did on me my whole life. But my daughter's not equipped for that.

Like I was an adult at five years old, and that's not like when I first found my mother's throwing up and found her her her trolley and her laxative caddie and would call the cops and see people being beaten, you know, with an inch of their life, like and was at the racetrack with degenerates and drugs and guns like I was an adult. It's just what it is. I'm not complaining, no poor me. I'm just saying, like, my daughter's not that person, and I can get into that.

And how I described this to her yesterday, you could see she doesn't even have the emotional bandwidth to hear the stories of my childhood, which have been very watered down but just need to be explained so she doesn't wonder why her mom never had a relationship with her mom, and now her mom's dead, and now her mom's mom is dead, and now her mom is crying. And wait, you could have been like trying to very very dilute it down and fold into the batter some stories of

my life and how it wasn't great. I mean, she's old enough to understand to realize that, not to process it. But I didn't want her. I was so happy she

had this volleyball tournament. I actually there was a moment when I thought like I was going to be there, like that's psychotic now realizing what I've gone through, But I like put her somewhere, and I was so happy, and she won a medal, which of course I had placed a meaning on, and she came back on Sunday and she had all her stuff and she was exhausted, and you know, she hugged me and we had ramen together and it was a distraction and I was glad

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

but it's, you know, she's getting it. She's very emotionally, you know, intelligent and and so off she went to school and then she went to her dad for a couple of days, and so that was good too. So

I have been alone in my house. I have people that work here that I've been with me for years, that I love, that have gone through their own losses and have experienced the dentist losses of me that you know, it's made meaning there because I've thought about them and their children and the things that they've gone through and how they're always for me and they're my family, but like they're not really my family meaning in the sense

that like I don't live in their house. And we started talking about some of their traumas and things that have happened for them. And I have always you know, Laney's been in my life for so many years. I've always said she's in my will. But like saying that, I mean God forbid dropping dead tomorrow and her not

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

because some of them have big families. They you know, is Laney worried that her son is not going to be able to go to college. Does she want that for him? Like what? What? What worries her? And I didn't want to make her feel vulnerable and uncomfortable, but for her to talk to, you know, my business people about like what, you know, how they can be protected, like my home version of whatever a retirement account is,

and like a will and things like that. You know, it was like Laney's going to be in a Rolls Royce. When I dropped dead, I was alone the whole week. I was alone, listening to seventies, you know, Carol King radio and like having memories of Barry Mann alone. My first album it was the Big White one that opened and had like three parts to it, and I wore it down and Neil Diamond and Carly Simon and James Taylor and air Supply and it brought back a lot

of memories. There were some songs I absolutely couldn't couldn't listen to, and and I took nature walks and reconnected and connected with my area because I don't have a good relationship with exercise, and I'm always envious to people who like every morning they just worked out, and you know I do that in the Hamptons. I go on my beach walks and it opened up this I couldn't

say in my house. So every day, twice a day, I would like put my big hat on and put the Carrol King radio on and listen to Barry Manelow and everybody nothing modern. I literally did not crave. I was like rejecting anything current, anything like there could be the way we wore, like a gaga could slip in because it like is nostalgic from the way we were, but like nothing, and I didn't want any of it.

And I cried on these walks and I connected with nature and my lived in my childhood, and through this week decided that I was going to finally go visit Saratoga, where I went as a kid. I was gonna take Brin back there because I have not been willing to revisit there. I've never gone back because it was the only escape from this hell. And we would have one month and there would always would still be fights up there, but I don't remember there being a lot of like

police level fights. I remember everybody just being happy up there for that one month, and my mother wasn't always there. But like I said, those drives up there, the memories are chill my skin, like, and Saratoga's changed so much.

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

connected to the memories. And my version of sitting Shiva was a week of just being alone and really like you know, having compassion and forgiving and going there real and doing therapy, realizing that if your formative years or zero to eight, that like that's why these are so strong, like these memories, and you know, and that's also when it was like bad. But I just you know, I had my own version. Today's the first day I've washed

my hair. And it's funny because I was looking I was I showered to have my grandma sweater on, and I was thinking, like I was listening to the song You're So Vain, and there's a line in You're so vain from Carly Simon about Saratoga. And I was thinking about how I'm not so vain and people comment on that that I'm willing to be like just look like this and not you know, care. And my mother was

not pretentious or superficial. She was vain, but she was the one wearing overalls to the you know, during the day all the time. She never had makeup on, Like you know, there are a lot of similarities with myself and her. She didn't wasn't vain in that way. She was internally like you know, with a disorder pain vein, Like it was just she just that addiction and that blimia just just ruled her entire life and killed her. And it's crazy that the one thing that she was

so vain about was the thing that rotted her. And I have a different relationship to age now. You know, people used to think that you were in your late thirty your thirties, and like you were done, like you were look old. And she thought she was old at forty, I mean, and she started to look old at forty because of what she was doing to her body and

destroying herself. But like it's hard for me because I'm having a rebirth right now, like I'm healing generational trauma right now, and I am at an age where I looked at her as so old, and so there's a lot of guilt, a lot of guilt, like, you know, I don't like me. I want to fix everything, and my therapist says, I fix everything. I go there's a problem in the Hampton's right now with encampments, and like I've got my team there, palettes of aid. There's something

going on in Puerto Rico, like I saw it. Why you know, why couldn't I go to Florida and just be like, I'm gonna like solve this, and you're gonna go into this type of rehab and you're gonna be like, I don't know, And I was scared to do that, and I didn't even know to do that, and I had so much anger for my life. You know, it's

like it's Monday morning quarterback. Listen. She had a friend, she had a good friend who knew nothing about this, so she compartment mentalized this enough that she had a friend that is in that house showing me Cartier giant pearl earrings that we've like I've put next to pictures at my confirmation, Tiffany Pearls and I mentioned the brands because I didn't realize, like she's the one who made my stepfather like into nice things and culture all of

us with like knowing what things were, and like disco music, which I wasn't even allowed. I realized that too. My mother was living at Studio fifty four as Studio fifty four when I was growing up. That's when she was going out partying, and like I lived for disco. I had a secret life on hot skates. No one at my school they would have made fun of me. They all were into the doors. Everybody that went to Saint Agnes in sixth and seventh and eight, you know grade

there was no disco. I had a secret life of disco. No one knew about Indian food, No one knew about sushi. My mother was living this Like she went to f I t she went to Pratt, she went to Parsons. She was like this like fabulous person. I don't know where she got it from. It's like amazing to see that, Like she left her house at sixteen and just found fabulousity.

It really really is. And I've been talking a lot about well, first, Brenne and I decided together, we came up with a good solution for her ashes her friend in Florida. I got her someone to take care of her for the last couple of years. And this woman is like, you need to come here, and you need to do this here, you know all this. And I was feeling guilty because I was feeling like I don't want to go in that. I don't think I can handle going in that apartment. But then why should I

go there? And her friend, her actual friend of eleven years, was like, no, she hated for And I remember that she hated Florida as a kid, And this makes me sad too. The I said to her friend, why did she move to Florida? She hated Flora. She never went out, she didn't go swim, she didn't go to the beach. She couldn't give a shit. And this woman said, because she wanted to go somewhere where no one knew her,

which also broke my heart. Like a picture that this woman sent me of her, this beautiful specimen of all those that had all the all the opportunity and just continue to choose the wrong men and devolve. You know, men are such a massive theme and and and devolve that this man the last man that beat her, and there were police reports that this her friend found and before that was an alcoholic. Like the male choices were just always driven by how someone loved her, never how

she loved them. Something that is like genetic, like something that has been a massive theme in my life. And you know, my daughter, there'll be a boy in school and she'll say, ex likes me a lot of many times, and she's never seen anything about this with me, Like this is like it's like in our weaving of the souls. As Michael Caponi, my philanthropy partner, said, you know, my daughter will say this person likes me. I'm like, okay,

do you like them? Like I'm you know, trying to break these chains by also saying like it's great that someone likes you, and yes, it's great someone be chivalrous and like you first and write the Valentine first or whatever happens. But like, ultimately someone else cannot love or like you enough for you to like them like or love them like it's not that's not how this thing

is gonna work. And I realize now that like it's because she came from an abusive household with a father that was a tyrant, and so she just went out and wanted love, like if someone would love her enough.

John Parasla love bombing, he lived, love bombed her all those cardier stuff and those pearls and everything she couldn't even afford himself, Like she was this woman who was so stunning and perfect, like he wanted to like, you know, and same with Bobby, Like she didn't really love these guys, and she really she loved one of the guys after you know, before the monster. This like one guy, but he was an alcoholic and she was attracted to that for that reasons, Like we have to intervene in our

lives and think about why we're choosing people. The game is moving very quickly when you are choosing people, but you have to find a way to think about why and and and so, like I'm thinking about that for my own life, Like you just want people, you know. Several of my axes have said to me or friends have said to me about these people. You're never gonna find someone who's going to love you as much as

they do. And one of my exes said to me, you will never find someone who will love you as much as I will, pleading with me to be with them, and as a person who had no real parents or parental structure, like, yes, take me. I want to be loved. I want to be loved. To give it to me, you love, Yes, I believe you. I believe in I believe it. No one's gonna love how No one loved me as a child. Why would anyone else love me more than this person who wants to be my family?

And then it gets layered that like with my ex Peter, who I married like his parents. I loved his parents. His mother was like a mother to me. Mary and Susman was like a mother to me. She took me wedding dress shopping. She would take me. It wasn't about the material things, but she would take me to go like to where are we gonna get the wedding test? To get my makeup done? And she would like take

me shopping is a you know mother would do. And she would talk to me and she was funny and like I was marrying them too, you know, like there are different reasons. They may not even be the person you're with, You're marrying their family, like they're different reasons we're making these decisions, and like I when we broke up, you know, it broke my heart that I broke her heart because she loved me, and I broke her heart, And like they don't come from or understand a person

from a damaged childhood like myself. Brian Koppleman, you know his his mother, Bunny Coplman, loved me. I was like attracted to her. You know, you're you're finding these different things. So I realized when my mom I was doing what my mother was doing for so many years and and I haven't been able to crack into this. I haven't been serious about therapy for a while where I'll be like regular where like you know how you'll like make a standing manicure appointment and be like, Okay, the second

I leave here, I'm making the next appointment. That's how regular I've been in the last couple of uh, certainly the last year, maybe a couple of years, but really the last year where it's like f and it could be it could be, and the same thing for my daughter, it'll be like it could be once a month. It just has to be like that it's happening again because it's something you may not want to do, but once you do it, you feel better. It's like working out.

And if you cannot afford therapy, you know, do the apps that have a therapist. Okay, if you cannot afford therapy, go online and look up things that you know, people like me and other people say like generational trauma or like formative years, like I literally till yesterday did not really realize and had to send to my friend who was a complicated relationship with her mother the formative year thing,

which gave me some comfort. It made me realize, Okay, maybe I'm not in a total basket case, because I do have glimpses of love from when I was a kid, and going through the old pictures is bringing me there. And it made me very sad the first couple of days of this grief, like tortuously, like bad, and because I wanted my mommy and I wanted to be there

and I wanted more of it. And that move you move through that, you move out of the bad, you move into that, and then you move into like guilt and like logic and what you could have done and you could have brought you, you know, and then and then you kind of go in and out of that, and then you're just playing nostalgic songs and they're just reminding

you of something and you're just like honoring. I'm wearing a ring that was my mother, that was mine when I was thirteen, and a one that I bought with Brynn recently in an antique shop that we believe is the same one that I had when I was younger, because I've never seen anyone else with it, but we want to believe that this bee that I got for like my confirmation, that's like a diamond script bee, and like, you know, just trying to connect and like, there's a

beautiful picture of my mother when she looks like the bandu sole, like this French beautiful woman, and she had these two rings on that she wore every day and I've always coveted them. And this friend of hers that found like found these pictures sent a picture. I'm like, oh my god, those are the rings, and she's like in a scavenger hunt and she found them for me, and it's making me so happy that she had this friend of eleven years that I'm connecting with and that

you know, she deserves all this stuff. I'm like take whatever you want and she's like, no, I want you to have it all. And it's like, like I said, cartier and stuff, real stuff. And it makes me happy because it means she had a friend that she could trust because anybody could have gone in there. My mother was so vulnerable and anybody would take from her. Anybody could have gone in there and stolen all this stuff.

And this beautiful person, Julia is her name, but it's spelled like with an L. And she said to me that she's now connecting with her mother because of this. She bought her mother a ticket. So I'm feeling like there's all these things swirling because of this death, and I'm sharing it with you because a lot of things are swirling with you and a lot of you are reconnecting.

And my friend is now thinking about therapy, and like a lot of stuff is swirling with mothers and daughters and it's and we're entering, we're coming into Mother's Day. It's like the perfect time to talk about this stuff. And I'm sending people a lot of messages saying it doesn't matter. I know your mother abuse do. I know she's angry and evil and all. It's not really about that it's about doing something so you don't go through

like torture and trauma. Like take one part of that off, Go send her a mixtape of songs from her generation, write a letter, send a gift, because this person is in tremendous pain. They've been evil, but they didn't just wake up and decide to be evil. That's the generational trauma. That's the stuff that comes from decades that was passed down. And like, there are ways that I am like my mother, even though it's stuff that I don't want to be.

And there are ways that I'm like my father, but you know, at least to understand where you come from and why. You know. I can be biting, you know, but I've turned it into a good sometimes in the sense that you know, my daughter's pretty incredible, and I don't suffer fools, and I don't negotiate with terrorists, and I'm strict in that way. She messes around me, she disrespects me. She says something like, I snap it right away.

I don't let really any of them slide. I'm tremendously loving and amazing, and I never turned down a snuggle. I never turned down a cuddle. We hog I mean, I live for my kid, but I don't play games. And the way that I with my daughter that I've handled it was is to like tell her the stories, but like not you know, overwhelm her with it, you know. And Melinda, my therapist, who's a psychoanaly is like so happy. She's like can't believe. She's like, now the deep work

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

see something and instagram a message me. But anyone from pretty much my entire childhood until my twenties, with the exception of two friends that I met in high school, but I met them in boarding school, so I was removed from the situation, and one of them I moved out of boarding school into their house, just to give you an idea of like I moved into another person's home with it. You know, those are my two friends. But it's interesting because I met them out of this

psychotic environment. So I've like they're they're in some sort of separate bubble, you know, like they're they're they're they're like protected from I did anybody that I met through that entire life, even my friend Alyssa that I was good friends with, whose mother took me to the hospital when I had chicken pox because my stepfather John ignored me when I said I had bumps all over my stomach and like no one, like I had no parents to take me to doctors. I hurt myself fell off

a mountain years ago. My mother kind of like blew me off on the phone, like there was no compassion, no caring, no chicken soup. When you don't feel well, when you're an adult, no one's moving you into a college dorm, no one's moving you out, no one's you know, like I was in a so Alyssa, who's mother and you know, horrified that I literally had chicken pox at eighteen years old, took me to the hospital. I had one hundred and five. I fainted when they took my blood.

Like all these people I've really kept at arm's length. They're like, well, text me and I'll say thank you and excel. Like they're just like I've cut them out. I've like put them in a compartmentalized state. And now I've been reconnecting with them, you know, because like I can like deal with what part of my life they were adjacent to. And I know a lot of this is going to be like very familiar to and you

didn't even know it reading my old journals. And what's crazy, though, is that John was like actually a pretty not a bad terrible person. It's the only time he really ever touched me, and there was a time he stopped touching her, but his degenerate friends did sexually, you know, assault abused

me and because he was around degenerates. But he's eighty two years old, and I forgive because he had a heart and he cared and he was, you know, living in a life of animals, like you know, and he was enraged and substances, and you don't think about it when you're young. You don't know like people could be doing that are doing cocaine and like they're what they're doing, you don't know what the hell they're doing. It's due to fifty four. They're not doing you know, they're not

They're not drinking fucking boba. He did. He treated me like a daughter, and I have he has to get that credit. And he did admit what went on way more than my mother did. And I'm gonna have a driver take him because I don't think he can he can't. I'm not gonna have him drive himself, but I'm gonn have someone take him bring him to my house so I have a property. It feels weird. He's Celiac, I guess, and he's lost a lot of weight, and it feels

weird to like be in a restaurant with him. And it's gonna be uncomfortable for me, it's gonna be comfortable for Britney's and look very old and frail, and it's gonna be triggering. But I'm gonna put that aside because that's a lot of why I didn't see my mother. And I'm going to have him brought here and sit out on the lawn and he'll get to like watch her do sports and he'll he asked about her metal. I've been texting him. He texts very fast. We've been laughing.

We actually were talking about some of my personal traumas that we've discussed on my other podcasts that you guys won't listen to because I'm not going to get specific right now, but you'll understand what I'm saying. And I said to him that someone once told me when they were kind of threatening me, now you're going to see

what I was like on the basketball court. Incidentally, he was best friends with Rick Patino, the famous basketball coach who actually named horses after like him and stuff like that. And he was a big basketball fan. And he went to Saint John's stepfather and it made me laugh because this was a person who had played basketball, but not professionally, just like was a good basketball player. And I said,

he was asking about a situation of my life. And I said to him, this person said to me, now you're going to see what I was like on the basketball court. And I said, I said, I survived, and I prevailed, and I fought hard, and I came out on top. And I said to John Paracella, I said, I said, I should have said back, Now you're going to see what I was like on the racetrack at five years old at the shoeshine stand, hanging out in

the jockeys room. I mean like and he laughed because like he was like fu, he said, there's nobody the NBA growing up. Now you're gonna see what I was like on the NBA basketball court still does not hold a candle to being raised on the racetrack by wolves and animals. So we laughed because like it's very It's like people want to know why I am like the way I am. It's I was because I grew up on the racetrack. It's like it's there's no place, you know,

it's not a place to be raised. I mean I remember going to John Paracela and being at OTB off track bedding, the degenerate place. People were smoking and like gambling. It's seven years old. We'd stop at OTB because he was John Paracelo. It was a degenerate gamber who'd crack my piggy bank open for money. I mean, it's like crazy. So this is like a memoir. In the end, this is podcast. So Melinda, my psychoanalyst, said something so fascinating, which you guys are going to think is interesting and

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

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

it was my mother. Oh, I gained tampat like every day, and I had that where there were times that I took laxatives and there were times when I would in living in that apartment in New York City where I would you know, go out night and get drunk, go to nightclubs, come home downstairs and eat like a whole you know, Enteman's cake, or eat a pint device and a binge because you were drinking. I did. Then college to you get a whole pizza and then starve. I

never had the throw up that's disgusting. I never had that. I could never make myself throw up, but like and then would starve myself. I'm gonna be good, I'm gonna be bad. So it wasn't a classic eating disorder like that is like anorexic or believe it. But it was a disorder because it wasn't in order. And that's what I wrote Naturally Thin about because I don't know how I got involved in my own life because I wanted

to be happy. Your life was defined by like I was good, I was bad, I was fat, I was thin. I gained way to ruin your day, you know, and I was like twenty five pounds heavier because I had no It was a disorder, but it wasn't in the you know, it never got completely out of control. It was more binge and never perd binge and then naughty and be good, good, and bad. Those words are not should not be associated with food. Food is not your

best friend or your enemy. That's naturally thin. But Melinda said, I mean, Bethany, you have a brand called skinny Girl, like like is it Freud? Is it? Who knows what? But like and then that she was also in alcohol. Her big disorders were we're eating and alcohol. I mean I made all my money on alcohol. I mean, it's insane. But skinny Girl is about having a good relationship with food. It's about allowing. It was about allowing, like it was

never about depriving. The whole book, the whole brand was about like, now you get to have a margarita that's slightly sweet. Now you get to have microwave popcorn, but it's better for you. Now you get to have salad dressings, but they're better for you. It was never about depriving. So it was like, somehow resolving that disorder. And yes, the word skinny can be problematic, and if I were naming it tomorrow, I wouldn't do that. It was just

the margarita was a skinnier version. But Freud would have a fucking field day with that. Like that was like a resolution to a disorder, and it became something you know, that represents a healthier relationship with these things, to be able to have Margerita whatever, and then alcohol, you know, to have an alcohol brand and a wine brand. I mean she drank wine, you know, out of the faucet. So and then she said, and now, Bethany, this is becoming so clear because I told her my mother wanted

to be a star. She wanted to be fabulous. You know, she held me down. I wanted to go to acting classes. She wouldn't take me. She had a friend she once told me to made commercials. I badgered her day and night. She she didn't take me. She once told me she made She once told me intentionally, I guess that I was offered a Disney contract when I was like five years old, and that she turned it down. I regretted it my whole life, my whole life. I obsessed over it,

like I could have been something. I could have had a Disney contract, like when I was a little girl. I begged her, why didn't you say yes? And like I wanted to go backwards. I wanted her to call the friend who did commercials. Like she never helped me. She never she wanted to be famous, like she wanted to be me. She was jealous of me like and so Malinn and my father too, would name drop the David Milch's and the dough Tories, and you know, he

was a horse trainer. He was good at one thing, and he made a lot of He made a lot of money. And I thought he was so rich. And I was so enamored by the rich and my father's rich and he lives in the Pacific Palisades and go to the Derby and pretend and pretend and pretend. And Melinda said, you, and I said, passed all of their goals. I am wealthier, even even with inflation and all of it. I'm more successful, more relevant, more wealthy than my father.

I and my Linda said to me, you surpassed and you completed their goals, Like that's what happens with generational trauma, Like you completed each of their goals. And that all the times that people ask me why I have the hard work and determination and the drive, I never go deep enough. I think it's my father was very driven and he was the best of what he did. And my mother too, She was a worker. They were workers. She worked her ass off. She didn't complain, she was

They were. They are people who worked. They are not complainers. They are workers like I. You know, I'm surrounded by people sometimes like people I've been in relationships with. People want waw and they're complaining and what like pros play hurt. That's how I grew up like pros play hurt. Period. No complain, no explain, Like I work. You take all my money today, I'll be at a restaurant. Tomorrow, I'll be making money. I'll be working, I'll be bartending, I'll be.

I am a worker to day I die. And I don't expect anyone to ever do anything that I've never done. But I took whatever they did into the end zone, you know. And there's something about that that I that I like feel in my body like I did it, I made it. And I think she thinks that that is very related the hard work and drive. So there's a lot that's like unfolding, and that's why it's been good for me. The music, the walking, like the being alone, like I'm using this to be good to like, you know,

work it out. Britt and I decided we were gonna take cookies ashes, which have been in my laundry room in a corner. For years, we have not touched them, we have not addressed it. But we made a decision that we would take my mother's ashes because her friend that has been this good friend is gonna come here. I'm gonna fly her here. I'm gonna send something, Send some money to that woman who's been taking care of her, who's like at her house, like take care of as

many people as I can. Fly her friend here, have her stay here, put her in a hotel, hell, give her an experience. She's reconnected with her mother, as I told you. And we're gonna put the ashes with cookies. I think in the water my new house in the Hampton, so like Cookie and my mother are together. I know none. This is all not real, and like you know, it's things that we make up and you know our lives, but maybe it is real. I said to Brim, what do you think happens? She said, I don't know, Mama.

She said, I think you come back. I think you recarnate. She didn't say those words, so I think you come back as something else. I said what she said, like, and I was sharing with Michael Capponi, my partner said he said, one day, I'll tell you what I think. And you know, he talked about the weaving of the souls and he's into cabala and spirituality. But he said, maybe one day, you know, bring comes back as your

mother's daughter, and like all that gets resolved. And I can't see anything but my mother and my daughter right now. I can't see like you guys brought it to my attention. I had seen it myself, but was like thinking, it is it true? And she looks like her and she has that like seventies essence of her, so I can't see anything. But and I was thinking maybe cookie and

bring love issh, like can we do that, mama? And all the stuff the way I sell bags and that a lie address that I can't believe this woman found in my mother's closet from thirty years ago. All of this stuff is going to come. And Broom was like, please, Mama, please don't do it without me, like please, And I hate stuff, but I'm like, I can't wait for it to come, and I can't wait to go through it with Brin. So that's all got you know, got meaning.

And it's just important that I really mention well first that there have been a lot of signs. You know. My mother was the one who'd say to me, a black crow is a design of death. And I saw black crow the other day just like by itself and it wouldn't move, and I like, I remember her saying that, and so that was meaningful to me. So many crazy memories that like are so insane. It's a movie. It's like literally it's a movie. So I have, you know,

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

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

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

more open heart, more forgiving. And I've taken the entirety of my mother and I've put this, all of this through a strainer and it's I'm I just have the good now, I'm just I just have the good and there's I'm gonna make meaning out of it. And this podcast has been such a gift to have a place to put this. I have like had this inside and me even writing notes, reading journals, listening to letters all

of it. And and I had an experience recently where Brynn was feeling from you know, someone that she had the weight of the world and she's feeling guilty and someone's making her feel guilty of something about something, and she feels everything and like she's wearing it. And you know, one day we'll get into the pandemic. And and how much she had on her back when she my kid broke down bad. And that's how we started her therapy.

I said to her yesterday, you are a butterfly, and you have to do what work, what is good for you and what is healthy for you. And I will always support that you are not living my life. You are not living any parents life. It's amazing that she right now is making meaning out of this and wanting to spend time with her grandparents and wanting to be more thoughtful, et cetera. I said, regarding anything negative in her feeling this pressure as that you are living your

this is your life. You fly, But love you guys, Thank you, and thank you for all the messages I'm learning from you as much as hopefully you're learning or just expressing or being inspired by whatever this brings up. For you,