Miss Rebel

see situations that you can't control. As everyone knows, I lost a good friend, we all lost. The world lost of an important person just about two weeks ago when Shannon passed. While it was expected, I think the unexpected hit all of us quite hard because I think we thought her expected would be something that she would go down in history redefining. And I guess it's humanizing to know that that's not how life works, and then it's

up to us to kind of sort that out. It was really tough for me when I found out the news. I actually my phone started ringing. I was sleeping with two of my children in their bed on the Sunday morning I found out and my phone I had it on silence, but it kept buzzing and it kept going off, kept going off. I checked the time and it was seven am, and I knew immedia was I was like, oh my god, somebody's passed. Somebody important has died. And I took that moment not to go on social media.

I didn't call anyone back. I wanted to gather the details for myself so I could see how I wanted to process it before being overwhelmed by voices and text and emails. And sure enough, when I built up Google, I saw that Shannon had passed on Saturday night, and it was shocking, and I I think the first thing I felt was madness. Is madness the word I felt mad. Not for myself. I felt mad for the life that wouldn't continue, the life that had so much to offer,

not just herself but everybody around here. This huge I want to say Ember. I don't know why I want to say Ember. This no because an Ember is small and she wasn't small just in frame. It was this huge, burning beacon. She was a beacon. Yeah, I like that one, and I know for everyone around the world that was going through something, whether it was cancer or any other kind of disease or ailment, or or connected to a hard time they were going through, or any kind of hardship.

Because it's again, it's all individual. They really did look to her for inspiration and kind of power to carry on in the moments when they felt they couldn't. And I got to see that in person. I got to see that in person in her whole life, which is beautiful. I met Shannon when I was fifteen and we were doing the pilot. She was seventeen. I was the preduser's daughter. I was coming to set. I was terrified. All I wanted was to be accepted or if nothing else, just

you know, blended with the background. Hope no one noticed me. Hope they liked me. You know, I came in with such a permegrant. It hurt in my face because I was like, you don't want to not be smiling twenty four to seven, because then they'll be like, oh, look the little rich girl. She she's not nice, and I think Sheannon and Brian were the first people that I met on set, and they were really really welcoming. And Shannon has that smile that smile that can light up

the room. And I loved her smile because she would even say it herself, like, I don't have perfect teeth, but I love my teeth. And she always loved her teeth, and it was part of you know her. It was iconic. Her smile was legendary. And it wasn't just the smile, the teeth, the lips, it was what was behind the smile, and it came across with so much genuine interest and care and happiness and joy. There was so much joy behind that smile. And she immediately took me under her wing.

She gave me a big hug, walked me around, took me into the makeup trailer. I was, you know, trying my best to pretend I was a cool, like older teen girl when I was just basically freaking out inside because standing right in front of me was one of the Heathers. And I was obsessed with the movie Heathers and my high school friends and I played it over and over again and rented it from Blockbuster. And I'm aging myself right now, but Shannon was my favorite in it.

And I remember telling my dad. My dad, from a very young age, taught me star quality, the G factor, which they would say, now, I guess, but star quality was something my dad was very good at at finding. And it wasn't something you know, It wasn't about coming in and auditioning for him and nailing the audition. It went far beyond that. Many times my dad would say, the actor that got the role after the auditions is the one that thinks he least likely got the role

because he messed up the audition. But it was never about the words on the page. It was about what was behind his eyes, and he was the one, and that guy would go on to be a ginormous star. So he when I had shown my dad, you know, my dad would always say, you know, what are the teens into? What are they like? And I would, you know, bring him my team be you know, Tiger Beat, seventeen magazines like that I had way too many of and a subscription I would always go through and we would

literally sit there at dinner sometimes together. I remember like we were eating fried chick in one night at dinner my parents' massive ouse. It was just the breakfast room, me and my dad and I had my dad used to they used to call it dog earing when he would go through a script, my dad would dog hear every page that he had a note on, and with a black big pen, he would go and circle. He didn't make notes on other pages, he did it on

the script and he would rewrite the line. And often at work they would say, uh oh, if Aaron's briefcase came back after the weekend, his assistant would open it and it would be filled with dog eared page. They'd all be like, uh oh, there's a lot of work to be done for the writers, because he basically used to rewrite all the scripts. But we would sit there and he'd be like, okay, show me, and I had all these pages dog ear, just like he liked it.

And I would be like, this girl, that guy. And at some point I was like, you have to see Shannon Doherty. She is amazing. She dad, as you say, has star quality. And he took my advice he always did, and he had her in. He met with her, and you know, that's history. You know. Obviously she came in and he saw what I had hoped he would have seen, and she had star quality. Cast her and she became

Brenda Walsh and changed history. But I think the big takeaway in the last two weeks, I've really been going back in time privately and thinking, you know, about the enormous effect that Shannon had, not just on a generation, generations to come and to come, like it's going to keep going. She will live on in her work and in the people that loved her and the things she

stood for. But for me, I was able to go back and see from a very different perspective as an adult, back to that teenage, fifteen year old girl that I felt like. And I said this in my social media post, because when she passed, I saw everyone posting, and it was hard, you know, it was hard to not look at your Instagram and to see your feed, and you didn't. I didn't want to look away because I got to

see my friend. I got to see beautiful pictures of her and I'd never seen before pictures I had seen before pictures I was in with her. But it was nice to be able in that day of solitude, upon hearing of her passing, to just see that and see

how inundated everybody was with posting about her. And then that's when it came to me, because some people were posting newer and people an expectation of sorts that if you were close with her, or if you're close with anyone who passes, and they mean something to the public, So it's not just your friend passing, it's the public's friend passing. It's almost like unspoken, unspoken, what's the word something that you owe them? I guess at least this

is what I felt. So I, being me very much went into my head of that fine dance between owing the public wording to speak out of how I felt about Shannon passing and just wanting to keep it private for myself. I mean, it was fine for me to obsessively stalk her page that is still up, or you know, her podcast page and see her last interview and look at that last interview saying she had so much hope. That was okay for me to do in my private time. But the thought in my mind I couldn't connect was

putting a statement that I couldn't take back. You can't take backwards. And that's something I've learned the hard way in life, through relationships and business and everything as we get older. And I was like, how could I summarize

someone I've known for thirty six years? Thirty six years it's over half my life, someone I grew up with, someone who was my best friend, someone who at some point I had misunderstandings with and didn't have contact with, and lost years for things we were to later go back and talk about and realize it was silly, and we acknowledged we had lost time, years and years that we could have been together over things that outside influences like press articles that maybe we believe and they got

to us too much, or maybe inside influences other people that we knew and worked with influenced either of us, probably me because no one can influence her in a way that shaped and misshaped and unhinged our friendship. But ultimately we got that time to go back and say, none of that matters. What matters is that core friendship that we had and we were able to get back to that. And I'll talk about that in a second, but I want to be mindful to go back before

it gets too far away. That it was really hard for me to put that first post up on Instagram, and I talked to a friend who said, she said, do it in your own time. Grief is right for what's right for you, and you handle it your way. No one expects anything, and I wish that were true.

I did watch on social media, you know, because I did take a day before I posted, because I just my thoughts were everywhere and I wanted it to be right, and I I didn't want to rush it up to be like, oh see, look how much I love Shannon. I have a post up immediately a picture of us that was not what I wanted. And I did take a day, and during that day I did see comments like, oh I thought Tory and Shannon were friends. Tory hasn't posted,

oh only maybe they weren't friends. And I had to be like, okay, that's just outside noise, let it go, let it go. It see did in though, So I was really happy I did take that day and didn't react because the post I put up. I actually think Shan would have been really proud of the post I put up. I would have called out a few more things if I really wanted to please her. Who knows, maybe I will do in time. But it was very authentically me, which is all she told me to ever be.

I just want to be mindful that for years, you know, I think Shannon, I think we all have said this and seen these quotes that Shannon was misunderstood. I always hate these PC things. The press who were never PC tend to put out PC words when it's like now they're choosing to be semi kind, you know, or whether it's others that are saying, oh, she was just misunderstood. There was miscommunication. If I had to look back at it, I don't think Shannon ever was misunderstood. I don't think so.

I think at the time she was a young girl, she was seventeen, who grew up in the business. She grew up, she grew up with men, she grew up with older men. I mean she was on Little House in the Prairie. She you know, Michael Landon was like her father, you know, Wilford Brumley with the star of

her other show. Like it was these iconic, legendary old school men and here was this young girl, this spitfire, you know, smart, smart as they come, Like Shannon didn't miss a beat, even when she didn't feel well, even when she was sick, she never missed a beat. You could be talking about something and you could turn and you could say, oh, you think you made a good joke, or you think you brought it all back around, and you say, oh, you didn't hear me, and she goes,

what when you said that? She heard everything while listening to three other people, and she just didn't comment on it. And I always said, oh, okay, noted she heard me. Eh, it wasn't a great one. It wasn't a great joke I made cool, but she heard me. And so she came up in a time where she felt like she had to be strong to be heard, which is unfortunate, but it laid the way for other generations who now

can happily step into that role. And instead of looking back at a time when people said, oh, you know and she would say this, you know, people thought I was maybe they thought I was a bitch, they thought, you know, and she wasn't. I can tell you right now. She was strong and she would tell you right to your face if she didn't believe in something. And so in the nineties, you know, maybe that was here's other girls who were hiding behind there. You know, we're cute,

we're giggly. I hate to admit it, I was one of them, like please, thank you, am I okay or whatever you want? And you know she was always the one behind me. No, no, not whatever you want. You know what you want, say what you want, not what they want. And I just wish I had learned sooner. I think a lot of us as screw a lot of us me. I'm gonna talk about me. I spent so many years feeling like I was conditioned to be a well behaved girl who is seen and not heard.

And those are my feelings. But I also feel like shandified that. I feel like Shan she was a rebel. And obviously I'm not negain the fact that, and she had acknowledged this in the past, that she could have handled things better in certain circumstances, and she's addressed that. But you know what the truth is, we were all young, and what she gave to everyone on camera, that is what lives on. And she never let anyone down on camera.

She always hit her mark. She always knew which camera angle, she knew everything going on, and she would even be helpful, and not in a buster ball type of way. I would hear her talking with the crew, and crews always loved Shannon Cruise. If it historically, if you go back and there's people that had, you know, something to say about Shan's strength. It was always actresses you know, or actors. But I hate to separate actors actresses. But it was

a different time then. It wasn't crew members. Crew members loved her. They loved working with her. They looked laughing with her. I loved hearing Shan be like one of the guys behind the scenes and she'd be out there laughing. She'd be on the back parking lot, you know, when we were like twenty, and she'd be like smoking cigarettes with the crew guys and they'd be laughing these hearty laughs.

And I just remember looking her and there'd be these big guys and there'd be little Shan in her little black crop top and her tight like Levi's best but ever and her boots, and she'd be smoking a marble light and talking to them and just like the boldest laugh. And I was like, that's cool. And I always would look at her and be like, I want to be that girl. I just didn't know how to feed that girl.

But the thing is, you know, Shan had to take all that she had to take the ebbs and flows of her career, dealing with a woman that was very strong, a woman that fought injustice, a woman that said, hey, if I don't think this is the right way to do it. I'm not going to pease you, because ultimately it's me they see on camera. It's not someone off camera that told me, no, you can't do it that way. You have to stand there, you have to do this.

She fought, and I think the art that she has put out there that will be her legacy stands by that. I don't think she ever looked at something that she put out there and was disappointed by what she put out there or felt bad about the means she took to get it out there. And that speaks volumes to someone that was so passionate about what she did and passionate about her fans and giving them the right thing.

So yeah, I spent years kind of fighting that, and when we were able as adults to come back and reconnect and say I love you, where did this friendship go wrong? And I know you guys saw the interviews on my podcast and on Chance podcast of us, you know, kind of figuring out where the relationship kind of fizzled and why we didn't get it back and what was keeping us from getting it back, and then ultimately we just kind of let it go that day that day

and it wasn't that long ago. Really changed my life, and it changed my life because for two reasons. One, we've all had a lot of death in our lives, I'm sure at this point, and I know I've had a lot of untimely deaths that weren't expected, young deaths of people that it's like, way too soon. And I don't believe in regrets in life. That's one of my big things. I don't even know why, I just I just don't. But I always had the regret that I

never because I'm non confrontational. So if something's uncomfortable, I will sit in it and I will give you a million and one reasons why I can't do it. I can't talk to that friend, I can't reach out. They might not want to speak to me. And it's my own fear and it's my own shit. And a lot of people passed in my life that I didn't get that one last conversation with that one last question or that one last like you know what, we're here now.

I love you. Past doesn't matter, including my own dad, like I didn't get that with my dad that I wish I had. That's all. And with Shannon, while it was so completely unexpected. I did get that time with her where we were able to really dissect our friendship and really and this isn't over the one podcast, This Isn't over. You know that amazing private plane flight I took back from the last convention with her and Chris and Ruth, Anne and Drew and Christie. Oh, And that

was so special to me. I'll never forget it. And it was just some other times we got. We got a few times together, and it all ended with us remembering at the heart why we became friends and why that friendship was so strong, and why that friendship should

it continued. I know through talking to some of Shannon's very close friends that while it was not unexpected when she passed last two weeks, she knew there was a time clock, and she lived the last year or so with intent, and the choices she made were very intentional. The people she talked to, the people she allowed in

it was intentional, and I'm grateful. I'm grateful I had that. Now, at this point in the program, I'm going to take Shan out of it, and I'm going to say the effect on me, because you know, our loved ones, once they're past, they've passed, they've you know, they've transitioned and they're out of their bodies and they're above and it's super crazy. We all have our little things. I'm sure you all do this when a loved one passes. You're like, give me a sign, a sign. I want to see something.

And someone always told me when I could never find the signs of my dad, and I'd be like, I just nothing, he never comes to me. And someone said, look for a monarch butterfly. I was like, okay, So I'd look, and you know, let's face it, there's butterflies everywhere. So I'd always see a butterfly once here, nor there or wherever, and I'd be like, you know, oh my gosh.

And I look over and I see ten other people in the parking lot pointing, going oh, there's my mom, there's my grandmother, there's and I was saying, no, fuck me, Well, Dad, are you one of them? I don't know. But the interesting thing is the day after Shan passed. And we all know Shannon was a huge animal lover. I always say she saw the truth in humans and had no tolerance for it. But she unconditionally loved animals and children.

She really did. Oh in fashion and good food, best taste in wine, but she yeah, anyway, my dog Manty. We have a da that leads out in big beautiful View where we live and Monty. The day she passed, I went out there and he was just I think I posted something on Instagram and say what it was. I want people to think I was weird. But he looked out there and he was crying, and he kept looking at and I kept saying, what are you looking for?

What are you looking for? And then I think, when you're going through grief, it's natural human instinct to be like, is that my friend? Is that my loved one? Do you hear them? You know? Is we want a connection? We want to we want something that's not about that, that's about us, you know, that's our need to hold on to control what we think has been lost forever.

He continued to do that for a week though. But more than that, I've never seen somebody more our butterflies in my backyard than I have, so either my dad, you know, it would have been gosh, eighteen years later, it's like, hey, I'm here, I'm here. I don't know Shan She had of like monarch butterflies. I don't know, it would definitely be like a bull black, like like

those beautiful what were those beetles? When the light hits them, they get not a metallic look, but like a holographic kind of like the scaab beetles, which I feel like. I'm not a history girl, so I'm sure I'm gonna get this wrong. And uh, well, you wouldn't expect me to know this, so don't worry. But scabs were always a sign like jewelry, and Shannon, I love jewelry. The scabs were thought to be a very significant sorry i'm

looking it ran the gypsum's thought. The behavior of the scareb represented the sun's journey and the eternal cycle of life, making the scab a symbol of rebirth and regeneration. And I'm talking about a scab. I'm not even sure where that came from. So I usually have to trust my gut instinct and when things come out, they're meant to be. So yeah, And I always used to like look for

like antiquejewelry. We used to, shann, I used to jewelry like antiquing on like Melrose and and do things and oh my gosh, we used to do like thrifting before, like the kids call it thrifting now, like we did it in the nineties. Before it was like even in and yeah, scareb like jewelry was very like cool and empowering and anyway, so I'm gonna say, I'm gonna look for a scare maybe they don't even really exist. I'm

gonna look for a beetle. I don't know, but but what I what I have been trying to put into effect. And I feel like where this is the first step, execution is the second. So I have not executed this completely. But for so long Sheeann would tell me, you have to take your power back, take your power back. And she always was saying, you're your father's daughter. There's no mistake, there's no mistake. You need to come into that and you need to own it, and you need to stop

apologizing for it. You have spent your entire life apologizing for being you. And I was like yeah, and she would say, like you hear that sounds you're apologizing for you. Why why own it? Own it? Your dad would tell you that. I'm telling you that, And she did ask me, what are you scared of? What you're so scared of about owning this immense power that you could have. And when I really had to think about it, I thought, well, it's going to make a lot of people very uncomfortable.

And then I thought about it, Wow, just like your power back in the day made a lot of people very uncomfortable. But you move forward with it. And she's like, yes, so what happens if you move forward with your power? And you know me, I bring everything back to jokes and I'm like, well, everyone's fucked then, because then I'm going to take over. And she just I know, we talked about some of this on our podcasts. You probably

couldn't see her smile. It was the biggest smile I think yet that I had seen since she was seventeen. And she just nodded at me and she said, exactly, So I put it out there. Here's a quote she hadna didn't give me, but someone I care very much about gave me this quote. And here's the quote. In a society the profits from your self doubt, Liking yourself

is a rebellious act, and that stuck with me. Sure everyone wants everyone to be in a mold so it's easier to control so and I think the people that are so anxious about you being you, and maybe it's like, WHOA, We're not ready for that. You know too much? You know, well, they're trying to put you into a box because they

don't feel like going out of their comfort zone. So I guess, I guess what I'm saying is I made a promise too, not only this person I care about, but also Shannon when she passed, that I would stay rebellious for her and not just for her. I'll stay

rebellious for me. And that allows me to know I'm right on the right path, like I'm you know, I feel like as long as I am true to myself, then I have to really block out what other people say because they're gonna say it anyway, whether I put on a mask and I'm perfect and I'm cookie cutter and I'm the quote unquote good girl I'm supposed to be. I dress how they want me to dress, I speak how they want me to speak. I say enough, but not too much. I you know, don't say crazy things.

I don't say inappropriate things to fine inappropriate. You know, I don't talk too dirty quote unquote. You know, I'm I'm a lady. There's so many, so many fuckings rules. But who made these rules? And there are rules to either go okay, thank you, great that works for someone else, or thank you, I'll take a little piece of that, or to say fuck the rules. So that's my thing. I go back between like I'm gonna say like it is and like, oh I'm sorry, was that okay? Is

that too much? Or you happy with me? Or you mad at me? So I'm just gonna take those little things away. It's like unsnapping, like my little extensions and throwing them away. Yeah, I'm going to get rid of all the things that don't behoove me anymore. It's going to take time. I'm in progress, but yeah, I just want to thank Shan for being that beacon in my life. I have promise to carry the torch. So like switch on,