Over the years, stars including Jennette McCurdy And Macaulay Culkin discussed with their parents how they hit rock bottom.
The iCarly alum broke down the abuse she faced because of her mother, Debra McCurdy, in her memoir, I am glad my mother passed away.
“Of course there are times when I fantasize that my mom would have apologized or our relationship would change, but that’s fantasy,” she said. Fashion in August 2022. “That’s a lot of what the book is about for me, no need to romanticize the dead and validate our own experience with them.”
The California native continued, “I have every confidence that if my mother were still alive, I would still have eating disorders. I would still have many mental health issues. I’m sure she and I would still live in the same place and I wouldn’t have a chance to be in a relationship or have friends. I have no doubt that my life would still be very much controlled by her if she were alive.
That same month, Jennette discussed how her mother’s death affected her dynamic with her other family members Time, “My relationship with my brothers has been a great source of camaraderie and support for me. My grandfather gave me a lot of love and support.”
The host of the “Empty Inside” podcast admitted that at first she wasn’t sure if she could talk about her childhood in public.
“Because it’s so personal, it was important to me that I had a lot of experience in therapy,” she said. “I didn’t sit down with a therapist and say, ‘So I want to write a memoir. How can we get me to a place where I have the perspective to do it?’ But it was several years of really intense therapy before I started to feel like I could explore all those personal things creatively.
The Home alone star, for his part, also reflected on his decision to step back from the spotlight amidst issues with his parents. “People assume I’m crazy, or crazy, or damaged. Foreign. Cracked. And until the last two years, I didn’t really put myself in there at all. So I can understand that,” Culkin shared Esquire in March 2020. “It’s also like, okay, everybody, stop acting so shocked that I’m relatively well adjusted.”
After legally removing his mother and father from his trust fund as a teenager, the actor opted to hire an executive to handle his finances. For Culkin, the decision came with some public misconceptions.
“It’s always been misinterpreted that I ’emancipated’ myself from my parents,” he said at the time. “The story was that I was divorced from my parents. I just thought I was doing the right thing – taking my father’s name off, taking my mother’s name off, so my opinion is unbiased. And when I did, the whole thing ended a lot faster.
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