The Megyn Kelly Show - Bridget Phetasy on Trauma and Recovery, Victimhood, and Marriage | Summer Re-Release

Episode Date: July 26, 2022

Today we're re-releasing a favorite episode from December 2020, with podcast host Bridget Phetasy. She and Megyn Kelly talked about victimhood and entitlement, drug abuse and recovery, political hypocrisy, overcoming trauma and sexual assault, Oprah Winfrey, and Phetasy breaks the news that she's married, and what marriage has brought to her life.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We are off for a week this summer, off with the kids, but we wanted to keep the podcast feed going for you with some of my favorite episodes from the archives. Today, love, love, love to bring you my conversation with Bridget Phetasy. Oh, epic. It was from episode 44. She's the host of Walk-Ins Welcome and Dumpster Fire, and she recently had her first baby. Well, back when I first talked to her back in December 2020, she revealed to me and to the world for the first time that she was married love the fact that

she broke it on our show it was a funny it was emotional and it was an inspiring conversation on victimhood and entitlement drug abuse and recovery overcoming some deep trauma and much much more i hope you enjoy this as much as i did the first time. You and I have never spoken before, but we've corresponded on Twitter and I am a big, big fan of yours. I think you are one of the funniest people, but like most great comedians, one of the most clever and smart.

It's a great combo and it's why comedians are so fun to spend time with, at least virtual time in my case. Do you know you're funny? Do you know that about yourself? That's a great question. Thank you for saying that. That means a lot coming from you. I really respect your work and, I grew up in an Irish Catholic, very big family. And I always joke that my upbringing was like a roast battle. You kind of had to be able to tell jokes and make fun of yourself in order to survive, or you would just be

demolished by, it was a huge family. So I don't know that it was something that I ever thought I was as much as just a survival mechanism growing up. And then it became a coping mechanism as my life progressed and there were some more challenging experiences. I definitely default to humor. So then it just, as far as standup goes, it was something I never considered I could do. It seemed like something that just really crazy, brilliant men could do. So it's so funny because I'm noticing a theme. You're now the third guest I've had on who has specifically cited her Irish Catholic background as the reason, as the reason she's so outspoken and sort of out there first was Piers Morgan. Then there was Andrew Sullivan. Now there's you. I too am Irish Catholic. So I don't know if there's like a theme

emerging here, but, um, it bodes well for my little Irish Catholic Presbyterian Scottish Dutch children, I guess, maybe I'm not sure which side wins out. We were very, very feisty and raised to be very independent. And one of the things it's I was just I've been thinking a lot about my grandfather and grandmother on that and my dad's side a lot. And they were just so resilient and funny. And my grandmother never really took anything too seriously. They were just so optimistic. And it is that very Irish, everybody's telling jokes around a funeral and getting drunk at a wake. It's just that culture of laughing through your troubles. And I'm very grateful that I was raised with that because I

don't know how I would have got through. I remember I was the kind of class clown when I was in rehab, for lack of a better word. And I was just trying to keep everything light and uplifting because it was so heavy, obviously, when I was in a treatment facility. And that really saved me, that and being able to write. I think those two things. But I think that Irish Catholic thing is definitely, I always said I was a recovering Catholic. In many ways, I've reclaimed some of that. But it is that just funny way to view the world

in the worst calamities. I was shown this. It was like one of those memes online that somebody forwarded with the Lucky Charms box on the front of it. And it said something like the Irish protest for the removal of the leprechaun because it's offensive. And the bottom says, just kidding. The Irish aren't offended by jack shit. We do the offending. We're not the we don't get offended.. That's been my experience at least. And I prefer it that way. I mean, I do think it's hard to offend an Irish person. I think there's something in the makeup that just makes them tougher, more like, I don't really give a shit. And I don't know, just quicker to resort to humor. You're right, As a coping mechanism or just a bridge out of a difficult situation. I was raised to, to believe that feeling the need to be offended was really just a way of feeling self-important. And it was a, you know, constantly looking for

ways to be offended. It really, it drives home this idea that you're, you're thinking very highly of yourself or your opinion. And there is that whole, in my whole family, like, oh, come on bridge. What do you, what are you going to, what are you going to cry about it? You know, there's that, there's that culture. I never considered that. You're right. It's more like, how many times have I told you that you're not special? We've gone over this Bridget. Yeah. There's a, that I, you know, it has a kind of my, my grandmother came from a very, she was that kind of came from the line of the stoic Irish women. And my dad tells a story about being at his maternal grandmother's funeral. And one of the legends in our family was just that my grandmother prided herself on really only having cried twice in her life. I don't know that this is necessarily a healthy thing, but it was just kind of the, you know, you talk, we think a lot tearing up and she squeezed his hand so hard that it hurt. And she said, no tears. We don't cry. And there is just that kind of East Coast. I was raised in every summer going to Rhode Island, very blue collar family. Like, oh, you're going to cry about it. It was, oh, you're going to cry about it. My dad's one of 10. It was, you couldn't, it was very hard to be

a sensitive empath and in our family, you were, you were mocked mercilessly. I always give my mom a hard time. She's Italian. So it's, that's also a feisty side. And, uh, she's saying that was the seventies, but she used to say, stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about. I was like, oh, shit. But it was a different time, too. And it is in part generational, I think, you know, that these kids today, the really young'uns, they're, I don't know, they're so quick to be offended. And I think back to, you know, my own upbringing where we laughed at everything. I can't remember a time when anybody got offended. We mocked each other mercilessly.

It was a form of affection. And it's not that I loved every piece of it, but it does give you, as you said, a coping mechanism for when bad things happen to you in life. If humor is a go-to, it really can be a soothing balm. And I do think that this idea I was raised with, which seems to have gone out of fashion, that life isn't fair. That was just I'm the oldest of five. So there was constantly bickering amongst the siblings and fighting over this or that. And the refrain growing up was, well, life isn't fair. And as much as I couldn't stand that, I'm again glad that that was kind of drilled into me.

My mother too is Italian and she's very feisty in that way. And my grandmother used to say, go play in traffic. We were being bad. She'd be like, go play in traffic. And this is a woman who lived through the depression and lived through the war and had 10 children and all of them miraculously made it through their childhood. She lost one of her twins. I think that was one of the only times she cried in childbirth. And she was just, even at her funeral, she had very specific instructions and she said, do not cry. I've lived an amazing life. Even from beyond the grave, she's telling us not to cry. She wanted it to be a celebration of her life. And she was always so grounded in optimism and gratitude. And as I get older, I appreciate that more and more because life, even reading my grandfather's letter, he was 21 years old and he had this perspective of, well, this is life. Humanity's always been this way. Maybe it's my time. Perhaps I'll get through. We have to, it's all, life is weird, but it's also great and

fun. And just having that perspective at such a young age is, it's invaluable. It's I don't my biggest issue with the culture and where I feel the most disconnected is where does a lot of the you know, there's this idea in recovery of playing the tape forward. Where does the kind of victimhood mentality of assuming to always be offended, assuming that you're a victim. Where does that get you ultimately? The pride, the pride in claiming it. Right. I mean, they do it even when it's not true, because they think there's a social status attached to victimhood. And they're right, sadly, with a certain contingent. Of course. And that is true, except on, I guess, a more philosophical or spiritual level or just an internal level, it would be the same as saying, oh, money's going to fix your

problems or money will fix your depression or go if you, you know, any kind of outward searching for status, I feel leaves us empty on the inside. Ultimately, this is... And this is... I can only speak for myself, but this has been my experience. Whether I'm reaching for a substance or a person or a status of being perpetually offended or a victim, it's still not grounded in self-esteem, resilience, knowing that I'm capable of taking care of myself. Those have been some getting out of

entitlement. These have been lessons that I've had to learn very, very much the hard way. And I just don't see where telling people that they're victims or telling people that this is a place where you can get status. Ultimately, they'll probably end up in the same places if you are going to tell them that they are, you know, finding wealth will be the answer to all their problems. Right. And it really just makes you an annoying whiner. I mean, that's what happens. Like no one gives a damn. We all have problems. We could all paint ourselves as victims if we wanted to. Some of us, even despite massive life challenges, have picked ourselves up, moved ourselves along, and things have been fine. Look at Oprah, right?

The number of childhood sexual abuse incidents that she suffered, among other issues. Very, very poor. Black in the South at a time when that was not a great status to have. There was open discrimination on the streets. It wound up okay for her. She had a can do attitude. Even if you don't like Oprah, you got to love that about her. And you know, I want to talk about Oprah cause I have some thoughts, but I was just watching, um, first we watched the King's speech with our,

with our oldest child. And then we parlayed that into, um, the one about Winston Churchill, our Darkest Hour, Darkest Hour. So it had World War II in the brain. And I wound up those two films thinking, we really need more conflict in our lives. We need more real conflict. There's a speech with Winston Churchill, like you would you want to fight or would you want to surrender to churchill or to to hitler and the people are like i'd rather die on the

streets and he he's out there like we will die choking on our own blood in the streets before we surrender to this man and like now we're like a microaggression i need it i need to save space to discuss it like stop yeah up for the love of God and focus on something other than yourself. Yeah, it does feel very self-absorbed. I'm reading. Have you ever read Alone in Berlin? No. It is.

It's a novel written by Hans Falada. And he wrote it in 1947 and died short. He didn't even live to see it published. But it takes place in 1940 in Berlin. And it's about the working class in Berlin who weren't on board with the party. And they were trying to... It's based on a true story of this couple who were putting postcards all over Berlin and basically resisting Hitler in whatever way they could. And there's this insane line in the novel where the wife is talking to the husband when he's telling her way they could. And there's this insane line in the novel

where the wife is talking to the husband when he's telling her about this idea. And she says, isn't this so small? Isn't this enough? And he said, whether it's small or large, it will still cost us our life if anyone finds out. And it was just so moving to me to think about what it was like to live in this time and under Nazi Germany.

And I recently wrote a piece of satire after the election. It was the weekend after and I was reading through Twitter, which is never a great... But I spent the weekend reading my grandfather's letters and then also reading Twitter and people were literally acting like they just got back from the beaches of Normandy. I'm like, you guys, what, what are you talking?

The disconnect is so crazy. I can't, it was just, um, I it's mind boggling to me. And then even reading this novel to think that people really think now that they're living in those same conditions where people were disappearing, where you could not speak out against the Nazi party. You could not

say anything. You would be disappeared. To think that people think that this is what they're living in right now, we've done such a massively horrible job educating our children. I don't know why. I've got to. I read it when you when you published it. And I pulled it for today because I wanted to bring it up. And just so the audience understands, OK, here's your satire about, you know, those who made it through the Trump era.

Here's an excerpt. It's not enough to be racist, mom and dad. You have to be anti-racist. And anti-racist means hating white people. Not a single day has gone by since the bad orange man brutally ripped our safe spaces away from us that I haven't looked in the mirror and hated myself. So I've spent the last four years being the best ally I can be. posting truth bombs on Twitter, making resistance stories on Instagram, screenshotting people's tweets for Commander AOC. And then here's the last part. Not everyone made it. The PTSD was too much. They'd jump at the sight of red hats, constantly bombarded by violent speech like only women get periods and symbols of colonial oppression like the American flag and math. It's just so smart, Bridget. You do a great reading of that, actually. It's really, you read it in the tone that it was very much in my head when I was writing it. I feel like another person takes over when I when I write those like the it's the

parody of the people I imagine. But we did see that we saw it with journalists and with people on the left who are like, I'm so exhausted from my battle before. Yeah, for you. I saw some tweets and was like, after I after I smoked this cigar, my wife had one more thing for me to do. And then it's a picture of them hanging up, you know, hanging the American flag. I was like, you guys are, you are a parody of yourselves. I can't, how am I supposed to take this seriously?

And I just, it's been a, it's been a really revealing five years for me. Somebody who by all accounts has become an accidental pundit. It's not something I ever aspired to be. I find this space to be horrible. I don't know how any of you have done this as long as you have. And not aspirational at all. It seems cynical and toxic to me on good days. I'm like, how have people managed in this space? It's so hard. And I somehow kind of tweeted my way

into the crossfire of the culture wars. And it's been, no matter what, I'm grateful for all that I've learned about myself in the process. I've really been forced to ask myself,. And I mean, it's no mystery to me why you've found yourself succeeding here and you found yourself gravitating toward it because you are smart, you're funny, and you're fearless. And that's the other requirement. It may not be inspirational every day, like the figures who are in this battle. Most of them are not. Some of them are. But I feel like people who are out there like you, and I would like to believe like me,

have our armor on. We got our armor on and we got our swords out and we're fighting. We're doing it. We're trying to do something to fight back. And that in and of itself is worth something in these crazy culture wars. But I mean, maybe I'm the hypocrite because I feel like fighting for the First Amendment, fighting for the rights that are embodied in our Bill of Rights is worth something. And that's not the same as I got somebody fired for a tweet today. Yay me. I just I don't see the two things as equivalent at all. You know, they're in this fake moral battle to save us all from the bad people we are so that they can emerge victorious, atop, and righteous. And I feel like then there are those of us down here

who are like, we're all good, we're all bad. We all have the right to say and believe what we want. Get off of our backs. Mm-hmm. It's a very, this is what I've pushed back against on the left. And it always you know, I it winds. I hear the but Trump, but we don't hear you pushing back. First of all, I came from the left. So it's almost like I see it as my family more than I was not raised in a conservative household at all. In many ways, I was part of

the liberal bubble. I didn't even I think the best example of me realizing what a bubble I was in. And I joke about this a lot is when I went on Glenn Beck's podcast and he was interviewing me and I was sitting there like, did you know that the left has double standards? And Glenn's looking at me like, yeah, I've heard. I'm aware, Bridget. Oh, that's cute. Exactly. It's like an adorable, naive person who got stumped. It really, I am that kind of that classic person on the left who really just repeated

what I heard from CNN for all. I mean, there's really not a great word for it, but I would say I was a quintessential libtard. And I definitely didn't really do any research. I just parroted what I heard and thought I was... Because it is so much... Michael Malice does a great job of kind of explaining this idea of the cathedral, which isn't even his concept. I always forget whose concept it is of the media, academia, entertainment, and me being so lost in this or, or kind of, it's the water that I swam. And I didn't really even realize that it existed. And coming out of that being, I guess,

for all lack of a great term here, either that it's being called red pill to a certain extent. For me, it was just being exposed to the whole entire spectrum of media and seeing how much I didn't know about anything. That's been the most humbling part of the last five years. And it started really when I was a playboy and I was tweeting about something about, there was a mass shooting and I was tweeting about guns. And then I was getting pushback from my audience.

And some of the critique was fair and accurate because I sat back and realized I know nothing about guns. I don't even know how to shoot a gun. I don't know anything about the gun laws in California. And I'm 100% just reacting emotionally to this, which fair enough, it's a horrible tragedy, but I don't know what I'm talking about. And so I solicited emails from my audience to tell me what they thought about what this gun debate is and what should be done. And I got so many interesting, thoughtful essays from people all over America. And I sat back and it really was a big moment for me of

recognizing my limitations in the space, recognizing how little I know about mostly everything. And from there, I really just started. It was a completely new learning experience for me. I got a crash course into home title theft. And you better pray this thing never happens to you because it can ruin you financially. Here's how the crime happens. The legal titles to all of our homes are kept online where they can be hacked.

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Home title lock, however, will protect you. You didn't even know you might fall victim to this crime, but this is a bad one. And in the unlikely event that you do become a victim of title theft while a member of Home Title Lock, Home Title Lock will spend up to a quarter million dollars in legal fees to help restore your home's title. That's amazing. They put their money where their mouth is. So go to hometitlelock.com, register your address to see if you're already a victim, and then use code RADIO for 30 free days of protection. That's code radio at home title lock.com. You mentioned writing for playboy, not necessarily being red pilled, but maybe purple pilled. You sat back, you thought about it, you read, you started educating

yourself. And then you came to the very fun, if somewhat puzzling realization, and I quote, that boobs could save the world. I really do think they can. I do. They're just, they're, they're the universal there. It's funny. If you say boobs in a diner, men will pop up like meerkats. It's just like, you can just say the word anywhere and men's heads will just pop up. I think that there's something just softening about it. And I've been joking about this. I was very provocative and very much an exhibitionist. Some of this, again, I've been on just a very public learning about myself journey. Some of this has come about because I got sober in 2013 and then stumbled into this space. And now looking back, I'm even looking at just how so much of my trauma played out publicly, really without me even realizing it, things that I totally buried have come up and things. Um, so I think that reclaiming my sexuality,

reclaiming my body, and, you know, this is a conversation that I don't even really know how to get into. I've been trying to write about this for years, but there has been this awareness of how I feel that I regret being a slut, which I don't necessarily like saying because I really don't like slut shaming. But I also think that I was kind of lied to, and I'm not saying this as some victim, just that the culture was very much that if you use your sexuality, it is empowering. And I have found that to be the opposite. And it's been a long road of healing and self-esteem and in some cases abstinence and lots of dirt bags in my life before I came to realize that I really had no self-esteem. And if you're coming from that place and weaponizing or using your sexuality, and again, it's kind of like trying to find status or fill that hole. Stop it. Yeah, sorry. No pun intended.

With something else. First, you're talking about the men popping up in diners at boobs, and now you're talking about filling the hole. Good thing we have the explicit warning on this podcast. Everyone I go on always gets the explicit. Yeah, it's it's it's definitely been a journey for me to to really see the those. That's that's the weird thing is reclaiming my power as a woman, but actually coming from a place of self-esteem and confidence

and not coming from a place of desperation or, um, no, I know exactly what you mean. You get, sometimes women will look at other women's, uh, behavior, you know, if it's promiscuous behavior and they go from man to man and you as a woman can see there's an issue there, like not every case, but in a particular case, you can see a woman's looking for love in all the wrong places, right? Like she thinks it's going to be fulfilling. And you can say like, I don't like it. I wish you would make a different choice. And the response to that cannot be you're slut shaming.

No, it isn't. Like I'm trying to figure out why she's doing that and whether it's well motivated. If you're just somebody who loves sex and you love multiple partners and you go in and out of it with a clear head, right on. That's none of anybody's business. But I, like you, have seen a lot of girls, younger women in particular, late teens, early 20s, play this game where they mistake physical affection for love. It's somehow in the moment an ego booster and

then after the fact, anything but. And like a drug, they keep doing it over and over and expecting a different result, like a drug and a crazy person, if you go to the old definition. And it's damaging. It's unhealthy. That's not judgment. That's keeping it real. Like, yeah, that's not a good choice. It's certainly not a choice I want to see my daughter make. Yeah. And it's definitely there's so many mixed messages that you get. And I it's interesting just seeing the, you know, the numbers now with the kids, it seems like there is less sex than ever before. So we've weirdly I feel like there was an overcorrection and then there now seems to be another strange pivot where there's, again, it seems there's a moral,

it seems strange, but it's strangely coming from the left. There's a lot of weirdness around sex, which is something I wouldn't have necessarily expected. And wait, but what I don't follow. Cause I don't, I don't read the playboy magazine and nor do I, I don't have my finger on the pulse here. What, what is the weirdness coming from the left? There seems to be a lot of, I think it's more the confusion around sexuality and gender and the conversations around this are so confusing. And I think because of the Me Too movement, which is absolutely something that we needed, there again feels like there's an overcorrection. And now we're having, um, just having to walk through every step of, for instance, a sexual interaction and getting affirmation every step of the way and having these, what are normally awkward

situations that we all have to go through and navigate, I feel like we're trying to hack our way out of it. And there's no way to avoid that awkwardness in sexuality. You will have to go through that, whether you go through it when you're 13 or 14, or whether you go through it when you're in your 20s. There's no way around that awkward learning about yourself. And I feel like now there is this very strange kind of trying to micromanage this process. And it's not possible. It just seems like now kids are not having sex at all. The numbers are, I think it's the first time in a generation that the generation belowing and whatever other ways they might be getting that fixed. But it still seems like there's less in real life interactions happening. Well, it's interesting.

So it's virtual and not virtuous. Abigail Schreier was saying something along these lines. She wasn't like, yeah, let's get all of our kids sexually active. But she was saying that one of the things you want to do in a young girl who, and you know, her, her theory. Yeah. I love Abigail. Yeah. A lot of research is that there's what's happening with our young teenage girls right now is a social contagion of transgender issues. And, and so in talking about, well, how can we prevent that in our daughters? She was saying, you should encourage your daughter to explore her own body, to be comfortable with her own body. And she, again, she wasn't saying like, yeah, have her lose her virginity at age 15,

but she was just saying there, like watch the shaming and things like that. It's, it's normal for you to be curious about your body for you you, most women are straight, most men are straight, to be attracted to the person of the opposite sex and to want to figure that out a bit. And if you have too puritanical an approach, it can backfire in severe ways. And so you got to figure out how to thread that needle so your kid treats themselves with respect, but doesn't get a complex. Yeah. So I can't imagine being a parent right now, teens or young, even young kids coming up. There's so there seems to be so much confusion. And even just from the younger generation, the kids that I'm talking to, it just seems like there's a lot of fear. You know, there's an abnormal amount of fear.

And I remember my, we all remember our first kiss. I hope most of us have the benefit of that first kiss. I remember mine, it was at a dare dance. And I remember going to the- Dare as in the anti-drug thing? Yeah. You found another vice. Yeah. Right. Right. Um, I mean, it's ironic. And they, then I remember going to second base and I didn't lose my virginity until I was 17, which was actually pretty late for most of the girls in my high

school had serious boyfriends and were already sexually active just with one partner. And so it was pretty, I'm 40. I just turned 42. Okay. Okay. Keep going. Yeah. So I, I was of that, um, younger, I guess I'm an ex-annual technically. I'm like the younger end of Gen X. But I feel much more aligned with Gen X. And I just remember all of the awkwardness. And I wonder, this is why I'm not too judgmental of any of the kids in these positions is if I was a teenage girl, I hated being a woman. I hated it. I've had the worst penis envy my whole life. So much of my life has been defined by this, this just feeling like men

had it easier. Writing for Playboy was eye-opening, really hearing men's struggles around things like erectile dysfunction, balding, being short. I had no idea men suffered as much as women did. It was eye-opening for me because I always thought they just had it easier, period. And so that was just... I don't know if I lived in a culture where I could just all of a sudden decide that I could be another gender or not any gender when I was feeling awkward and my boobs were coming in and, and I was just the awkwardness of puberty. If I could have found some way to short circuit that or to, to change, I might've been all for it. Yeah. Yeah. I can't. Which would have created a whole host of new problems in your life. Yeah. No, I think you have

a great point. And also, you know, the number of layers now that we want to put between young men and women about to have sex for the first time, thanks to, you know, all of the awful incidents of assault and misunderstanding and actual rape and date rape and all of it. It's scary. You know, in addition to having a girl, I have two boys. And the last thing I want is for them to find themselves in a situation where they've had what they fully believe is a consensual sexual encounter, only to find out the next day the woman feels or is claiming she feels like she did not consent. And now they're being looked at as criminals. And that's why you have things like sign this piece of paper before

I get on top of you. It's like insane. But on the other hand, you're like, shit, it's a really litigious society. We are seeing women have what we used to call Sunday morning regrets, you know, which is not the withdrawal of consent. It's just, you're sorry, you did it. Now you want to blame somebody. And, um, it terrifies me, you know, I mean, back in my day bridge and I'm, you know, I'm 50 now we like my first experiences. I remember being like, no, no, no, but I did mean yes. And my no actually did mean yes. And I mean, I'm sorry, I'm not saying it does in every case, but like, I was just trying to be a good Catholic girl and protest when I didn't really protest. And now everything's on top. The world's on top, you know, it's upside down. It's, it's something I've really learned a lot from the younger women that I, when I was writing

particularly about relationships. And I, I definitely understand, you understand. I was waiting tables up to three years ago. And I worked with a lot of younger women. And they were so funny with the men who would touch their butt or all the guys who were in the restaurant industry. It's like if I fought every one of those battles, I would be fighting all day long. But these girls were like, don't touch me. Don't touch my calf. Don't do that. They had language for it and they would stick up for themselves. And I was so impressed with them. And I was like, wow, I never even thought to push back. I just kind of took it. And they're like, well, just because you old ladies took it doesn't mean we need to. And they're not completely wrong about that. They definitely grew up in a... I'm happy for the younger women that they grew up in a culture

where it's not acceptable that their manager is crudely touching their leg when he's holding her while she's standing on a crate to get some coffee down. Those little things that happen, happen all the time. And it was great seeing these 19, 20 year old women being like, don't touch my calf. You're making me uncomfortable. Yeah, no, that's, that's the good part of the me too movement. That's the good stuff that came out. Yeah. There's so much, and this is, I've written a lot about this because I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And, and then the other side where there are just questions I have where I don't understand why two, if you're at college, you go get drunk, you both sleep together. Now men are reporting women and I don't have any numbers on this. I've just read a couple of

stories about how there's a race to almost report because the first person who reports is it's the victim exactly and so there there's this fear and generally i don't understand why if a man and a woman are both intoxicated and they're they're the same level of intoxication you know not a man who's slightly buzzed in a woman who's completely blacked out. Why a woman, why she is kind of automatically deemed the victim in that situation? No, she shouldn't be. She shouldn't be. I mean, true equality means no, she doesn't get some special consideration just because she happens to be female. And you can have female harassers and you actually can have female rapists. And I and I don't, I, if I were a man who thought a woman who was going to do that to me unfairly, I'd have, I'd have to seriously

consider that too, because some women do use it and that, and that undermines all the real victims. It does. And, and this was kind of my, I I'm, I say this as a woman, just so your audience isn't thinking I'm this, you know, heartless person. I say this as a woman who is so your audience isn't thinking I'm this, you know, heartless person. I say this as a woman who is, who is drugged and raped when I was 18. So I had, and this was a situation where it was, I was clearly the victim in a situation like this. And, and it's a lot of, you know, me too, all of this stuff that's come up, all of the Kavanaugh hearings were really hard. All of this has forced me to do a lot of work around that trauma that happened to me. But then seeing I'm a woman who believes in due process. And even if a bunch of women came forward about the person who did it to me because I never

said anything because I was so young and I felt bad and I felt ashamed and I felt like it was my fault and all this other crap that wasn't true. And I thought that he was... I really had an interesting realization. This was the summer of Monica Lewinsky. And I remembered looking at what was happening with her around the same time as Monica Lewinsky's stuff was going very public. And I obviously thought I didn't stand a chance. I was looking at this poor woman who is 21 years old and seeing what was happening to her on a public level. I'm like, yeah, I'm not saying anything. And I wonder how many women who came around that era kind of was looking at this and feeling very similarly. So I just decided not

to say anything. And if somebody came forward now and accused him, I would definitely be right behind them, but I would also feel like he deserves his day in court. You know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be like, Hey, let's go to Twitter and ruin his life. I would want to have him go through the process that everybody deserves. Well, so, so yes, the, the, the me too movement was largely good, largely good just because it wound up, I think dying as a political movement, it got hijacked by political people and used as a weapon, um, which was always like Kavanaugh. Yeah. And so that's, that's when I said, you know, I, I don't want to associate with that term or these people, Alyssa Milano. No, she doesn't.

She and I have nothing to do with one another. I believe in the noble effort to protect women in the workplace and women who are sexual assault victims and women who are placed in these impossible situations from the really severe to the one you mentioned of the waitresses. That's it's not okay. And it's right for women to stand up against it. Something not just when you were younger, we'd never been doing. We really as a, as a gender had never been doing. I too was raised to think you just got to suck it up. And it's only very recently that I think women in this country have started to think, no, I don't. Actually, I don't.

But to round back on your larger point, it's interesting to hear you say if someone came forward against your rapist, you would stand and say, me too. But is this somebody you've never named? Was there never any accountability even after those Monica Lewinsky years? Yeah, no. But what made me think about this was the whole Bill Cosby thing. And I wrote an essay just on Medium, Bill Cosby, rate me kind of. It's obviously not true. But it was me reacting to all these women coming forward. And my initial reaction was, oh, isn't it a little late, ladies? Don't you think?

And I was shocked at my own reaction to it because what happened to these women once I actually read about it is pretty much exactly what happened to me almost identically. And I really had to look at how much of the internalized shame still lived in me because I asked myself if a bunch of women from that time and place came forward and they said, this happened to me with this person, I would definitely back them up. I would definitely... But up. You know, I would definitely, um, but what would you go first? Um, that's a great question. I guess because it's been so long, I, and I, that's a good question. I, I never even thought to, I never, even until this moment, you know, I've told men and they're like, I'll go kill him.

And then you end up kind of taking care of them emotionally when you're telling them this horrible thing, guys, don't do this. Um, and, and so I guess there's been moments, but it's never really even occurred to me. I think it just seems like something that I don't want to put myself through just because I've done. I respect that. I respect you. Just because I've done so much. Yeah. I mean, maybe I don't know that it's happened to anybody else you know I don't I don't I only

know that it happened to me and I feel that I guess it never even occurred to me to do that because I've done so much work around it myself and I just feel like it was something, God, it was like over 20 years ago now. It's like, do what I want to relive that all over again for, I don't think so. I don't, I don't. That's, that's a very valid concern. I, I in no way think you are obligated to do anything there. I think you're obligated to do what's right for you. And that's why I hate when women who find themselves victim number nine, um, somehow feel the need in the press. It's never victims one through eight, um, or rather victims 10 through whatever the ones who came after don't blame them. But the press is constantly asking questions like, well, why didn't you't you you know like as if it's

your fault anything happened after you yeah that's bullshit you every person has to do what's right for her and this is not an in an area in which every woman is wants to be joan of arc and totally understandable these are deep wounds that are deeply affecting. Especially when you're 18, Bridget. It changed my life. You're a girl. Oh, God. I mean, yeah.

I wish I could go back and give that woman or girl. I felt so old. There had been so much stuff in my own family life that I I felt so old. Like there, there had been so much stuff in my own family life that I already felt so old, but I wish that I could have given her the kind of compassion and, and just, I don't know. I didn't,

I didn't have the support that I think you should give somebody in those circumstances. And it ended up, it changed the way I felt about, I mean, I felt dirty for years, years and dated men who didn't deserve me. And, um, yeah, I was in rehab for a heroin addiction a year later. It was not, you know, my drug use escalated drastically there. If there are moments in my life that are pivotal where you can put markers down as to my behavior going from one way to another, one would be my parents' divorce. The other would be this. It was like I was kind of already slipping. I had been doing drinking and smoking pot all through high school and then everything just escalated. I could not get out of my brain fast enough. And then you put yourself in situations doing that that pile onto that shame and pile onto the feelings you're already feeling, which is why I think if you're a woman who's struggling with any of this or has had any abuse or any assault in their background, and then they're like, oh, I'm just going to try and sleep my way through this, which I really did try to do. I'll just try and weaponize sexuality and use it as a powerful tool. It was like a lie I told myself for a really, really long time, a very, very, very long time.

And it didn't really start healing until I got sober. And I mean, for the past seven years, it's just been weeding through so much of all of that confusion and self-loathing and shame. And so, yeah, I guess it just never even occurred to me because I was really on just like a 20-year bender afterwards. And also just your character, again, I refer back to what I saw even someone like poor Monica go through, your character just gets so assassinated. Even if I went on trial now for something like that, I asked myself, do I want to put myself through

what their lawyers are going to put me through? Here's everything we know about this girl from the past 20 years. And knowing my, my reaction to, um, you know, I was basically rehab right after that. So I, you'd get dragged through the mud, even if you didn't go criminally file, even if you just came out publicly, uh, there's very little question you'd get get attacked as well it's that's why it's like it's totally personal and it's not uncommon at all to after a sexual assault or a rape go from man to man looking for a different result looking to feel empowered you know looking aimlessly for just something something better better than what came.

I see your reminders when you reach your anniversary, your sobriety anniversary on Twitter, and you never make them about yourself. You always make them about all the people who are out there struggling and how you're thinking about them and how you know how hard it is. And just hearing you sort of fill out the story

makes it more meaningful and also selfless of you. I mean, I knew that you'd been addicted to drugs, including heroin. I mean, not that it's great to be addicted to cocaine, but heroin is so special. It's a special lane. But you're very giving to others, even in this form in which you're bullied mercilessly, right? In which people are nasty. I know you've called Twitter the high school.

It's like a public high school again for adults. Um, so is that scary for you to be on there talking about things as deeply personal as this, uh, in a place that really is not safe, um safe and not necessarily rooting for you? It's another great question. I think I have to take breaks and make sure that I'm okay and that I really, you know, I had a great experience. There's this kind of idea that in recovery, no matter how far down the scale you've gone, you'll see that your experience can benefit others.

And I never really understood how this can apply to all things. And I was in a meeting one day and a girl walked in, this is pre-lockdown, and she was really young and she had this look on her face and I knew it right away. I was like, she looked like she'd been crying. And I was like, this girl is traumatized. This is not like I'm having a bad day in sobriety. Something happened. So I just sat next to her because I didn't want some like, you know, there's often like weird creepy guys in those rooms and whatever. Um, they're, they're just weird or like a busy body. They're, they're just all kinds of personalities and, and I love them all. But I, I've been around long enough to know that, you know,

I, I felt protective of her immediately and she couldn't really stay, uh, present. And she, I was like, do you want to go outside and talk? And she went outside and her, she just kind of started confessing to me about what happened to her the night before. And it was exactly my story with variations, but very similar thing. And I looked at her, she was the same age as me as when it happened to me, 18, 19. And I looked at her and I said, the same thing happened to me. And I'll never forget her looking at me and being like, really? Like that relief that somebody kind of understood. And she said, what do I do? And I said, I don't know what to do, but I know what not to do. And it's everything I did. And so I said, let's go to a rape center.

There's so many great resources in California in particular. And so we went, we did everything I didn't do. We went, she got a kid that she had counseling. They were amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing. I would donate all my money to the work that these people do. It is unbelievable just the way they treated her and they gave her so many resources. And, you know, she ended up, um, she was scared to tell her family. She ended up telling her mom. Things that I just didn't do. And now it's amazing. She's been sober.

It was just like if I went through that for that one moment in my life, it was worth it. It was 100% worth it. And I think that's kind of how to answer your larger question. I think that's how I look at the dealing with the kind of being open and then dealing with the thunderdome and the negativity. through the darkness and reach out to one person who's depressed or anxious or has been sexually assaulted or feels crazy because they feel like they're politically homeless and no you know I hear this all the time is like thank you I just don't feel crazy any any of those that connection is worth it to me ultimately because what else is all the crap that I went through for if not to try and lift other people up? It just, I don't feel like, you know, you said earlier that it's fearless

and I don't feel like I'm fearless. That's one area where I might feel like I'm funny, but I don't feel like I'm fearless. That's something I feel like I'm just speaking. It seems like pretty unremarkable kind of common sense things. I don't feel like I'm saying anything that's like radically. But knowing what's going to come your way. I mean, like that's that is what you do. But then you're very well aware of what's what's going to come back. I know you've talked about you've talked about the messages back to you aren't just like, you're wrong, you're stupid. It's you're a hack, you're worthless, you're garbage. I mean, it's like the worst shit on there. I mean,

Twitter is vitriolic and toxic. And so it is brave to be out there fighting on nonetheless, trying to create a soft landing space for people who are also hurting. And I just, I, I do have to tell the audience, I hope you don't mind. That's how you and I first connected. I was, I was seeing you get retweeted by people I knew, and then I followed you and it was literally, I mean, gosh, it was like almost to the day, I think, three months after I left NBC. And I was still reeling and in a rough place mentally, just upset and sad and very teary and not totally understanding what had just happened to me. And you DM'd me, you direct messaged me on Twitter. And I hope you don't mind,

but I'm going to read what you wrote. You wrote, I wanted to say, I wanted to say, I love you. I'm so sorry what happened to you. And I know you'll land on your feet because you're strong and brilliant. You inspire me. And I wrote back, thank you so much. You are so sweet. Just when I occasionally start to veer toward the place of, do people get it? Do they see the truth? I get a message like yours and it shores me up.

I'm doing well, enjoying some time with my family and deeply grateful for people like you. But from my perspective, just seeing you're in a different position completely, much more public, obviously a household name, it's like what I go through times a million. And so on days when I'm getting it, I do look to people like you or Oprah or people who have kind of carved their way. And I guess I felt really compelled to reach out because it had happened to me, but I guess I didn't think it was something that would even mean anything. You know, I'm like, I'm sure she's got tons of people around her. It meant so much to me.

And I do have people around me, but the fact that we didn't know each other made it all the more meaningful in a way, that you had no reason to try to shore me up. You had no reason to say what you said. My good opinion of you wasn't relevant in your life. So it was sincere. That's how it felt. And it was just like one of those thank God moments, because when you're getting attacked and that the mob is coming for you, one of the things you do wonder is, can I still be seen? Is the real me still visible? I know who I am, but I don't know if they've succeeded in just painting me as this vile person and whether I can still be seen in messages

like that. Or I don't know, you know, I'll be sitting on the streets in New York and somebody will come over and say something lovely and, you know, like, yeah, good for you for standing strong, you know, this bullshit or that stuff. That's amazing. Right. And you I know you're a big writer about grit, resilience for better or for worse. That's the kind of stuff that gives you grit and resilience. If you don't fall down into a puddle and knock it giving up, just ask myself, why am I doing this? Why am I... It feels masochistic at this point. Why am I putting myself out there? I've received an email or a DM or a random message from someone just out of the blue saying, I just want to thank you. And Glenn Beck gave me great advice. He said, keep all of those things in a file for the days that you feel like when you're asking yourself, why am I doing this? I want to disappear because that's where I go to is I just want to disappear into the woods and have no Wi-Fi and become a writer or something, you know, or like a

or a Unabomber. I don't know. I don't know what would happen to me alone with my thoughts. Tomato. Yeah. He wanted to be a writer, I feel like. Prolific. I think that's really where we're wrong. I think we figured it out. More with Bridget in just one second. But first, I shared a hot story a couple of weeks ago, and it nearly crushed the Scoremaster website. That's your power, people. That's your power.

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What a year, right? I do not agree that it was the worst year ever. You know, I think some folks who lived during the Great Depression or during World War II or some other terrible times in our country's history, like slavery, might disagree that this is the worst year ever. But it wasn't a great one in many ways either. Just looking back, and I hate to ever mention names because you always invariably leave one out. But some people who we loved very much in the public eye died. The year began, don't forget, with the death of Kobe Bryant. It seems like so long ago, the country's been through so much.

That was so painful for everyone. And then we lost some greats like Chadwick Boseman. Herman Cain died. That was personally sad. Regis Philbin, Alex Trebek, people who have brought a lot of joy into a lot of homes. And of course, COVID-19. COVID-19, that is what this year is going to be remembered for. And the hell that it unleashed on the world. You know, the number of deaths, not just in our country, but in so many countries. And the pain, the financial pain caused by the pandemic and the quarantine and the shutdowns,

the anger caused to business owners who just wanted a chance to make ends meet and were told no. The death of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter protests in the street, the anger we saw, the craziness in places like Seattle where all hell seemed to be breaking loose, the divisions that were sown in our country, both on cultural issues and political. As the election geared up, Joe Biden emerged as the victor over Bernie, over Bloomberg,

to take on Donald Trump. The doubts Trump sowed about the election results and the ongoing anger over whether he got a fair shake. You know, the country suffered. The wildfires out in California were still not healed from all of it. Definitely not healed, but we will be. We'll be okay. That's just the nature of America and Americans. You know, I saw one of those little memes online that had the number 13 saying, I'm the worst number and the number 666 saying, no, I'm the worst number. And the number 2020 saying, bitches, please. Made me laugh. I don't know. It's not all bad. It wasn't all bad. I don't know about you, but I had time with my kids. I never dreamed I'd have, you know, and, and part of it was stressful

for sure. Distance learning and all of it. Part of it was totally magical. Part of it was magical. And as I held my son, whose teacher died. Sorrell who we all loved I didn't know him but I loved him through Yates I loved him through my son who loved him so much and talked about him all the time and he got COVID-19 and died too young but in the midst of all that I was with him I was there to hold him we were together as a family and we had stolen moments that just otherwise wouldn't have come. One of those videos that was shared, there were so many funny ones, weren't there? During COVID, my favorite was of the woman, the blonde woman drinking the huge glass of wine outside going, you okay? You all right?

You need help? You're running. Oh, you're running by choice, right? Anyway, it was great. And she was seven in the morning. What are you doing? She does it better than I did it, but it was a great one. But there were really good ones that help bring us together too. There was one that talked about sort of a bedtime story being read to children about COVID-19 and the quarantine. And it was about how despite all the awfulness, all the lives lost and the pain people felt, real tears fallen, there were these moments of togetherness and reevaluation and new perspective where the earth had a chance to heal in some ways. We gave it a break. You know,

we let it breathe where overworked parents got some time to take a breath as well, where kids who normally are run from one activity to another and then to a sport and then to a challenge after school or a club instead had to sit at home with family and talk, right? Um, you can't spend every hour of the day on electronics. You know, there was more talking, there was more eating together as families or as partners. And when you saw your friends, it was so joyful, right? It was so joyful when you got to see your friends, you got to see your mom for the first time in a long time. My friends and I did a beer pong, you know, flip cup via zoom, which was hilarious. I'm like things like that. That's what I'll remember. And then reuniting with them after so long and the way it made me feel right, the way we're starting to feel now we're not out of it,

but we're almost out of it. The vaccines are coming. They're being distributed. They're being taken. And we're right around the corner, right around it from normalcy. One final piece of advice and thinking as we go into the new year, whenever I start the new year, I try to say before I say happy new year, the one word or motivation that I want to channel this year, 99% of the time it's love. And I just make that my own first word privately that I say just as soon as the clock turns to the next year. But it's something to consider doing. And after that, I actually think there's much more value in just taking it day by day, just taking it day by day and looking for little things to be grateful for in a day by

day basis. As you know, I'm not big into the meditation, though, if it helps you, I'm all for it. I kind of do live my life in the moment. And I think it's the key to health and well-being. Just look around you and figure out what makes you happy. Put some flowers up, you know, look out the window. If you don't like your view, try to improve it. Call a friend, do something small. You don't have to go for the home run, right? Just go for the single on a day-to-day basis though, and see how it makes you feel. But try to choose wellness. That's for sure. Try to choose wellness. You know, the things that are good for you and little steps like that will get us out of 2020 into 2021, hopefully a little happier and a little wiser for the wear. Now back to our guest.

I really loved what you said about do people see me? Because we all, you know, there are parts of me, we all become become a little bit of a two dimensional version of ourselves, particularly on social media. And then the world tends to kind of flatten the personality down to our worst moments or the worst tweets we've had in those moments when you might be going viral. And it is, I'm not even kidding when I say some of my favorite moments are when I'm cleaning up my dog's poop in my backyard alone, because I'm like, okay, you're Bridget. You're cleaning up your dog's poop. You're just a little human trying to get through just like everyone else.

There's lots of other people cleaning up their dog's poop right now. You're connected to them. It's just that grounding. I need to be grounded. And a lot of the people who reach out, and I will say this to the people who listen to people and have fans, and I consider them less fans and more just friends. You never know. Reach out, reach out to those people that you see. And also just like people in your life who are, who are going through it because you don't know when that is the right timed,

exactly right timed message that somebody needed. You know, I'm getting more and more to the place in my life where I think I was just saying this to Abby the other day, where I think that, that's my assistant and my little sister. I think when tough times come, I'm putting more and more value into getting yourself out of that place mentally, even when it's happening. Like it's cognitive behavioral therapy, but I used to be much more like, you've got to feel the pain in order to get through the pain. Otherwise it'll all be bottled up inside of you and then it'll spill out in some negative way. I'm not sure I believe that anymore. I having been through quite a few of these, you know, public things that are painful personally, I really kind of think, do what you need to do to keep your mind off of the awfulness as it's happening. And then when your mind eventually does have your mind off of the awfulness as it's happening. And then when your mind eventually does have to go back to the awfulness, hopefully it's not so bad. That's, that's kind of been my experience for me. Can I tell you the

things that I did that like really helped me over the past couple of years? Um, number one, crossword puzzles. The New York times crossword puzzle is a son of a bitch. Monday's wonderful. Tuesday's great. Wednesday's still doable. Thursday's an MF-er. Friday is okay. Saturday, I don't want to talk about. Anyway, it really does keep your mind off of problems because you must think. It's not even just mindless work, almost like a crossword puzzle. I mean, an actual puzzle where you could still think as you're looking for the piece. Crossword puzzle, you have to be thinking using your head. So I really recommend that.

I'm going to confess that my other vice that really helped keep my mind off my troubles was Dateline podcasts all about murder. They could be a real soothing bomb. Yeah, women and their murder, their murder. They're funny. I get it now. I used to think we were just sick. For me, it really takes your mind off of it. I think most women are obsessed with crime because let's face it, we're usually the murder victims. Yeah. And we grow up knowing that we get exposed to the news. And I do think most women have terrible, not fantasies, but like nightmares about being nightmares. Yeah.

Being killed. Yeah. It's my worst nightmare. Yeah. In a way, it's taking an awful thing and turning it into a slight positive for yourself mentally, only that not that you're reveling in somebody's murder, but it just gets your mind off of things. These are compelling, intriguing stories that you fear one day may have personal

relevance, but you know, logically, likely will not. And it's just, it's jarring enough to get your mind off of it. Like if it were something like, I'm going to watch an old episode of Little House on the Prairie, your mind would wander back. But you're talking about like a serious crime. No, it works. And the third thing I will confess, because I've never been a big, well, I used to teach aerobics, but since I became a lawyer and like kind of gave up all things to working at the office, including working out, I haven't been a big exerciser, but I got into exercise. I started taking this thing called The Class here in New York City, and it really helped, really helped. It's like getting in shape physically and group exercise with other people is before COVID. I loved it. And just for what it's worth for people who are out there struggling, I think some sort of group exercise where it's not like a personal trainer. It's not

like something where you could think, but stuff where you can't think. And before you know it, you're across the bridge and the water's less stormy. It's so true. We started doing these in my little community that I have in lockdown. I definitely need to sweat in order to stay sane. That's just been a huge part of even sobriety for me. But also just I know that a 20 minute sweat can completely shift my brain chemistry and my entire perspective and mood. And then I started doing just these group workouts where I would stream the workout on zoom with, um, people in my fantasy.com community, the women, and it's been amazing. It kept me so grounded. We were accountable to each other. It's been something to just take our minds off being, um, a lot of this stuff going, it's a half an hour, 45 minutes where we just get to focus on sweating and there's a really big feeling of sisterhood. I definitely have to lean into that. I love the

crossword puzzle. It's a good idea. I think that meditation has been life-changing for me, just from looking at noticing my thoughts instead of identifying with every single one. That has been just so helpful to me. I love pretty much any and all meditation apps, but I do listen to Sam Harris's a lot because his is a lot more scientific in many ways. See, I can't do meditation. When I sit there, it's the same as me getting a massage where I'm like, ah, I'm drifting. My problems, problems, problems, problems. That's why I need it though.

That's why I need it. But I can't, it's still there, the problem. Yeah, that's why I need it. I need something more demanding. I started with three minutes and now I can, now it's, now I, it's just, but it's, now I love, it's just, but it's, it's been the, it's a challenge. There are days, it's absolutely a practice. Just noticing my mind and how different it is and where it's at every single day is fascinating. It's just fascinating.

How about massage? Are you, when you get a massage, can you quiet your mind? I mean, it's tough. I'm pretty chatty a lot of the time, but I'm like the girl that gets a massage and just wants to know everything about the masseuse the entire time. So you're the one who ruins it for the rest of us. I try to relax, yes. I try to relax, and I do think that massage, body work in general, acupuncture, there's something about acupuncture

where you put that needle right between my eyes and my brain is like, like it just goes flatline. It's silent. It's just there's something about acupuncture that has been helpful. I've joked that it takes a village to keep me sober. The other thing that really helped me is being of service. I will say there's a difference, I think, too, between... I mean, I don't know, maybe not. I think because one of the things I've noticed is grief behaves in a very different way than I think what you and I are talking about challenges in our life or, or picking ourself back up or overcoming hardship. And then there's grief, which is like a completely other animal where you'll be standing in the grocery store and you'll start, you'll be fine cruising along and then you'll be crying.

Grief is weird. I completely agree. Although I will say I was recently looking for this quote by Ethel Kennedy, you know, the, the matriarch of the Kennedy family, who's obviously she had two sons assassinated. There's so much tragedy in that family. So much. you know, good God, how could you possibly know her eldest son was killed in like World War Two in a plane crash? And how did you hear? And she, her answer was essentially, I just got through it. I just like, yeah, she didn't, she tried not to stay wallowed in it. You know, she was like onto the next thing. And that's so much easier said than done. And I wish I had gotten to ask her those questions. Cause I would have been like, well, but how? But what exactly? Like, what about when your mind got overwhelmed with sadness?

Then, you know, how did you avoid that if you did? Or, you know, there's so much more to know because you're right. Grief is in a special category. But when you mention it, when you mention the word, I go right to the loss of my father. When you talk about grief, what, what are you going to? Um, I lost a lot of friends young. So I, I mean, by the time I was 21 years old, there were just, I had been to so many young people's funerals that I was like, I cannot ever watch a parent bury their kid again. I, I just, it was ridiculous. And I don't know if it was because I moved a lot. So I had a lot of different friends all over the place because I ran with them more.

Um, it was a lot of just young teenagers, drunk, getting killed by drivers, driving, um, really tragic, amazing lights. And, um, I think about them still, still, still to this day. And so my mind goes to there. And then my grandparents were really hard. I feel like there's just been a lot of loss and a lot, a lot of loss around me, but I agree that there is something to be said for just... I also recommend therapy. My therapist has a great technique where when I'm in that kind of... If it's grief or even if I'm feeling sorry for myself, she says, self-pity is totally normal. It's not something you indulge in. But give yourself... If you're feeling grief or loss or you're feeling sorry for yourself, give yourself a time. She's like, close the blinds for two hours,

feel sorry for yourself, or maybe it's a day if it's something really bad and eat your ice cream and cry. But then you open the blinds and you basically you basically put, you know, guardrails around it. Like here's the time you're allowing yourself to feel this and allow yourself to feel all those feelings. Don't judge them, let them come and then open the blinds and start your day again. And I, I like that. That is how I used to, I see it by the way, I was talking about Rose Kennedy, not Ethel, but, um, that is how I used to see it. But I am telling you, I morphed away from that. I'm not sure you even need the couple of days. I might be becoming a true Irish woman and advising you to swallow all your feelings.

I think that might be the solution. I'm with you because I'm definitely the tough. I'm not the friend people. They're like, oh, you're my friend. I come to when I need my the tough. I'm not the friend people. They're like, oh, you're my friend. I come to when I need my butt kicked. So I'm definitely not the friend that's going to coddle you. I'm the tough love friend. I mean, I'm just like, bury that shit deep, like the greatest generation and get back

out there. I think we're onto something. I think there's a reason they handled as much as they did without whining. You know, like my Nana, my Nana, she died in 2000, um, 2016, right after President Trump, right before President Trump was elected, she, she died, but she was born in 1915. So she's 101 when she died. And, uh, this is a woman who, you know, she went through the great depression. She went through world war. She went through the civil rights movement. She went through the great depression she went through world war she went through the civil rights movement she went through like all the stuff that she saw the vietnam war and she had to drop out of high school to help support her family and their money was tight they had no dough

blah blah blah she never complained about that stuff she complained about like she she wanted to make sure she got the the right table at the diner she wanted her free bread she wanted her senior citizens discount. It was that shit. You know, I was like, don't you worry about all this other nonsense. But wait, so I want to, I want to, I want to back up to a couple of things. Uh, number one, let's not, let's not move on without spending a minute on Oprah because I've had evolving feelings on Oprah. And I, I heard you, you said you loved her. I used to be obsessed with Oprah, obsessed. I wanted to be just like her. I loved her show. I want to tell my story. She was so helpful to me. You know, just I didn't know her.

I just mean her show. I found it so inspirational. She was just in my head, like her advice over the years, whether it was about physical safety or mental wellbeing or dealing with tragedy, blah, blah, blah. But I didn't like it when she got political, even though I'm an independent, you know, it wasn't like, Oh, how could she support Barack Obama? I was like, okay. Then she seemed to get more and more political. And I, I started to feel a distance from her, which is why they say you shouldn't go political because you're going to create a distance between you and at least half your audience. I felt that. And then she started started to sign on to some of the victimization talk that we're hearing now, which she had never, ever done before. This is a country that's made her a billionaire a couple times over.

She literally lives in a ranch called the Promised Land. I don't think a lot of people want to hear about how hard she's had it as a black woman in America. I really don't. I think it's like Meghan Markle. Like, you married a prince, live in a castle, boo fucking hoo. No one feels sorry for you. And so she started to lose me because she just started to sound more leftist in her narrative and less inclusive. And I just sort of felt myself like separating from her, like in the long hallway in the movie theater

where you get pulled apart and you're reaching out for the other person. Of course, she wasn't reaching out for me at all, but I was reaching out for her, and then before I knew it, I could no longer see her. Here's my theory on this, and it's based on a tweet. I was tweeting about somebody who was going off on billionaires, and they were talking.

I think it was when, um, the Howard, whatever the guy who started a Starbucks, what's his name? Schwartz. Is that his name? Um, Schultz. Thank you. He w when he was running for president, they were all like, Oh, a billionaire, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, Oh, so you guys are going to be mad if Oprah ran for president. And I was schooled by all of the blue check leftists who thought, oh, you thought you were funny and dunking. And they were like, yeah, we do think that it would be bad and that it's bad that she's a billionaire because a billionaire is a failed policy. This is that kind of rhetoric. And I was shocked. I was really surprised to hear this because here to me, Oprah is the epitome of the American dream. Somebody who picked herself up, overcame her own internal demons, started an empire, helped millions and billions of people and made her own way and made billions of dollars. You would think this is somebody that they would say, hey, look, this is my theory is that Oprah sees that, that this is actually a class war and that there is some resentment towards her because she's a billionaire. And so she's pivoting into that place that you are talking about to try and maintain a connection to who she thinks is her audience. This is only my theory. Now, I went to the taping of Ellen and Oprah that happened recently in the past couple of years.

Say what you will about Oprah or Ellen. They were dancing with this woman who I came to find out had a couple of months. Her husband was sitting there crying. I'm like, these people, they move people. Oprah has been in people's lives and hearts and minds. But then they sat down and had the most unrelatable conversation that I've ever heard in my life. Because here you have a lesbian woman and a black woman who are basically, I mean, billionaires. I don't know that Ellen is yet, but I'm sure she's on her way. And they're talking about, joking about how they wanted to buy all the property. I don't know if it's ever aired.

I hope I don't get in trouble for telling the story. I think, I don't know if it's ever aired. I hope I don't get in trouble for telling the story. I think, I don't know. So they're talking about how they were joking about how they were, were neighbors at one point and then they weren't. And then they're like, we should just buy all the property in between our new houses. And I was laughing, but I'm like, this is probably not the most relatable story to be telling. That's, that's one of the problems. I mean, listen, I, I hate wealth shaming because it's part of the American dream. But it definitely, I think for Oprah to sort of pretend that she's still a woman of the people while she's out there every other weekend on David Geffen's yacht.

Maybe it's time to admit that's been like about 50 years since you really understood how anybody lives in America. And that'd be fine. You know, like you've got to own that. But Ellen does have something like, I don't even know how many houses, dozens and dozens of houses. And yet she's supposed to be America's sweetheart. And then all these reports come out about how nasty she is. People do do that to you when you're well known. But I will say in the case of Ellen, I know somebody whose sister worked for her who just had the most awful things to say.

I've heard the opposite, though, from people who have worked for her who say she's lovely. So it's I mean, that's all that seems to me like it. I don't necessarily want to litigate whether Ellen is a horrible person or not. I do. I just don't. It's funny to me that I feel like so much of the divide that's happening in America is a class war. It's much easier to keep us divided by race. This is something I've been talking a lot about and by victimhood and by this oppression Olympics and dividing us all up into groups then because the American working class, if we were all not divided like we are, we'd be an enormously powerful block of people. And it's much, I just think that there is a lack of, this is the funny thing about once you are wealthy,

you do just lose touch. We saw this recently with Cardi B tweeting about her $88,000 purse and whether or not she should buy it. And her audience came for her. lose touch. You saw this. We saw this recently with Cardi B tweeting about her $88,000 person, whether or not she should buy it. And her audience came for her. And, you know, this is and I was joking on Twitter like this is a woman who promoted Bernie and like you fed this beast. You fed there is absolutely a resentment towards wealth. And I would say that Ellen and Oprah, for all of their personal flaws, like whatever they might be, they have touched millions of people and they've brought joy into

the hearts of millions of people and help people get through struggles. And they are massive because that's what they've done. You know that they built their empires on truly connecting to people. And that is. But I don't begrudge them any of that money. But don't you see it like I don't begrudge them any one ounce of their success. It's all earned. But the problem is, in both cases, really, they got very political. I mean, Oprah got very political and alienated half of her base. You know, I mean, I don't know a lot of Republicans who still love Oprah. And same with Ellen, who said, you know, she would never let Trump come on her show. She got shamed after that picture with George W. Bush. That's when they started coming for her. That's 100% when they started coming for her. And instead of, you know, that being like a moment of kumbaya,

it was a moment of Ellen sucks. I mean, that's our country right now. But I do think if you want that universal love and you want to be that transformative figure, you've got to stay apolitical as hard as it may be. You got to do it. You got to be a Dolly Parton, you know, or a Betty White who never touches it. Cause it's just, yeah, as you well know, when you get political, people get angry. They get angry with you. How do you think they do that, though? In so a I would never I if they feel that it's there, this is where it's I feel really conflicted about these things, because if somebody has that kind of platform and wealth,

I feel like it's well within their rights to say whatever they want to say. And if they feel like they need to get political at the risk of alienating their audience, I think J.K. Rowling is a perfect example of someone who might be doing exactly this. Oh, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I just think be prepared. Be prepared for what's coming. Because you will, like Ellen's learning, you will no longer be America's sweetheart. You know, and you can't hold both roles. I do. I do. Because I think

most public people need that affirmation. I do. I think it's a life. Interesting. I mean, I wonder that's what's so interesting is that you become kind of disconnected, I think, by by the sake I dated a very wealthy man who's in that level of wealth. And it was, I call it the zoo of the 0.01%. I'm like, this is another league entirely. When you're that wealthy, it's... Oh, so to finish my Oprah story, after she does her whole little talk, she's standing kind of right in front of me. And the crowd is waving. And she basically puts her hand up like a queen and is just letting people kind of touch her hand like she's royalty you hated yourself for wanting to do it didn't you oh no I absolutely it was funny because I was like I'm touching her hand and I was like I hope

I get Oprah's pneumonia because she just talked about how she had pneumonia. And it was just a funny, it was a really, it was really interesting because I have, I think there's what we view these people as, then you see them as people. But like I said, I mean, I was at a show at Coachella and VIP once and Beyonce and Jay-Z, I felt them walking towards me from behind before I turned around. You could feel their star power is just... That level of star power is so crazy. Rihanna, I was at a restaurant once and Rihanna came in. And their level of star power is...

It's like something I've never seen in my life. And that has got to alter you, like your brain chemistry. When you have everyone around you, I don't even know how you, how can you possibly stay normal in those conditions? No, you can't. That's like Rosie O'Donnell when she used to be A, nice, and B, famous. She openly, I used to love her too. Boy, oh boy boy did she change but um she talked openly about how when she got really famous you know she had that talk show by herself as long before the view

and she was a famous actress and she had a magazine just like oprah's like rosie um she literally started to believe that the laws and the rules did not apply to her. Like she talked about how she thought she could go through the red light without, you know, like that. She was entitled. So it can be, you see this with celebrities like Tom Cruise or whatever. They morph into otherness because that level of fame and money, I don't think it's good. I definitely don't aspire to it. They've been famous for so long.

I mean, and this is the question do you so do you aspire to be not political no I don't I have no aspirations I don't I want to be a good mom and I am you know it's like I wasn And then, and then I changed my life and now I am, I wasn't like a bad mom. I just wasn't a present mom. Um, but honestly, other than that, I want to do right by others while I'm here. I don't care. I never, even now, now I have dough in the bank and I am well known, but I don't really give a damn. And it was, that was never the goal. My, my goal was always to do well. I love to be excellent at something, but it wasn't even to be relevant. It certainly wasn't to have power. It was just the joy of a job well done. That is a pleasure. And I'd like to continue having that feeling. And I, you know, I can, I, one of the things I love about journalism is each day, you know, it's, it's a show and you have the chance of doing, if not the perfect show,

then close to it, you know, close to it. And if you don't, tomorrow's another day you could try it again. Whereas like the law was incredibly frustrating because it never went away. It was just this mountain of paper that continued to build increasing acrimony, nuclear war style, you know, fighting. And you could, you could say hand in the perfect brief, but there's just be no time to sit and enjoy the spiking of the ball is on to the next battle and the never ending fight. So I don't know that that's one of the few things I can say that's positive about journalism. Is it is it just is it just that you I guess my question is what I,

I'm not surprised by Oprah's kind of pivot to where she pivoted. I, I don't necessarily agree with everything she's saying. And I guess I haven't really, um, yeah, I guess I haven't listened to her as much. You know,

I, I, I really don't, I, I think I understand what you're saying and that it does cause a disconnect because I but I don't know if that disconnect is because she's just not she just hasn't really been connected to the common person. And now she's trying to reconnect through politics. And oh, so my other question is, do you think that they feel pressured? You know, there's an enormous amount of pressure for people all the time, which I think is crazy. And I'm always saying this people during running up to the election when I was saying I wasn't voting for anyone. People were like, this is just shameful. You need to speak out. People were bullying me basically

into being a bully. Everyone who has a platform is supposed to speak their opinion and tell other people what to do. It's not my place to tell people what to do. I have no desire to do that. That's not what I'm here to do. And who am I to tell anybody what to do? I don't know anything. I know a little bit about my life and even that is questionable. And I think people with like Oprah and Ellen, you know, this whole idea of like silence is violence that's kind of taken over our culture is what are they supposed to do if they if they're silent sadly sadly all the people who are telling you you had to speak out you had a responsibility work in the straight news roles of cnn totally misunderstood what their role is as well but no i um i you know look i'm a news person so i don't really have any obligation to tell people my opinion on, you know, how they should vote.

And I wouldn't. You know, I can help them understand the issues and I can certainly try to separate nonsense from fact. But I've never been somebody who tells you who to vote for and I've never revealed who I voted for ever. And I and I wouldn't. It's just I agree. For me, it's not it's not my place. And I know you're not a sort of straight news journalist. You're a commentator. But you don't have to take that on as bullshit. Somebody else putting it's not my place. And I know you're not a sort of straight news journalist. You're a commentator, but you don't have to take that on. That's bullshit. Somebody else putting their shit onto you. You don't need to take that. Everybody else can figure it out. And I think the big thing with Oprah was she was looking at Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And here, Oprah is the most famous black woman in America. And her audience was mostly women. And I think

people were wondering if it was somehow a betrayal, you know, that she went with the guy. Yes, he's a black man, but she went with the guy instead of the woman. And, uh, you know, there, she sort of had a choice to make and she, some of her audience felt abandoned. Some Republicans felt abandoned. Some women who wanted Hillary felt abandoned. It's once you go political, it's fraught. All right. Let me take a step back with you, because we did jump. We started at the end. Well, not the end of your story. Let's certainly hope that's not the case. We started at the current day. It might be after this podcast, Megan. And only if Ellen and Oprah are listening. I love them. I love them both.

We have to go back to, not the very beginning, but I did in reading your story, gosh, I felt for you because you talked about how all of your middle school report cards said extremely bright, that you were a model of discipline. You bet your cousin you were going to get into an Ivy League college. And all the while you had no idea what was coming. Chaos and a life that would be upended very shortly. When I learned that it was because of your parents' divorce, that I didn't understand since so many kids get divorced and it's hard, but it doesn't normally lead to as much awfulness that came into your life. So what, what specifically do you think changed your life? Well, we moved away from my dad and my kind of whole family support system. So that was one thing. I would also say, gosh, it's so hard because I don't really love talking about like other people in my family

story. It feels like airing dirty laundry, but my, my, my stepdad was kind of fraught with a lot of challenges. Uh, the, I don't know that my mom was aware of when they got together. Although, I mean, even as a 13 year old, I pretty much could have attention from there after, and it caused a lot. It was, um, very, very, very dysfunctional and chaotic. And, um, we never really knew what to expect. My younger brother moved out pretty, pretty early back to live with my dad. And then there are, uh, four girls in my family. So we were there and it was, it was just, uh, a lot of mental illness and, um, kind of in and out of mental wards and uncertainty and, and, uh, yeah, that I think that just the, that chaos and trying to cope with that and then just being isolated, those two things combined really after a while.

And this is why I have so much compassion for even let's, you know, seeing these lockdowns and what's happening with the schools and I'll see people and they'll say, oh, the schools need to be locked down. I'm like, well, you must come from a great family because for me, school was, even though I didn't want to necessarily be in school, it was, I never knew what I was coming home to. It was an escape from a lot of the chaos. And at a certain point, it becomes very hard to care about your grades. If your mom is in a ball on the floor and your stepdad, you don't know where he is and if he's even dead or alive. Grades start seeming very adorable and simple. And, and it just, all of a sudden you're taking on grownup problems and you're around very serious things. And I think that I just really lost my way. I, I, I feel like I've

lost myself many times in life. And that was the beginning of a long loss of myself and who I was and, and, and potential. Could you not go to live with your dad when things got like that? I could, and I did my senior year. So I, I went, um, after my junior year, I went and lived with him for half of a year, but then my little sisters were calling and crying. And I mean, my mom and I were very connected and I felt like I was her kind of best friend in many respects and her confidant, which I do not recommend if you're a mother out there. And I couldn't live with myself. I felt like I was abandoning my younger siblings, whether or not any of this was true, any of it, obviously looking back, none of this was my responsibility.

None of this fell on my shoulders. I couldn't have saved my mom. I didn't go to college where I wanted to go because I thought I needed to be near my mom and my stepdad. One of the biggest mistakes of my life when I did go to half of a year of college was doing that and being still so close. It was a very dysfunctional codependent. We protected her. My dad really didn't even know. My aunts and uncles have since come out and said, we had no idea what was going on in the house. And again, if you looked at our behavior, it wouldn't take a genius to figure out something's going on. These kids are acting out. These were really well-behaved kids and now they're partying and doing all kinds of, of

nonsensical things. But, uh, there, there wasn't much, my dad was kind of, I think just wrapped up in his new relationship. And, um, we, I just always joke, my, my siblings and I always joke, you know, we did a really horrible job raising our parents. No, but you're right like that. I remember when I was a teenager, I was saying something to my mom about, you know, being friends. And it was a kind, lighthearted moment. It wasn't something profound between the two of us. But she stopped me right then and there and said, I'm not your friend, Megan. I have enough friends. And so do you, I'm your mother. That's good. I mean, at the time I was wounded at the time I was like, wow, harsh. But now I look

back and I'm like, you know what? She was exactly right. And she was creating a boundary that was important. That's an important boundary. And we have a loving, compassionate relationship now where I feel we're building more. And there's a lot of forgiveness on both of our ends and just healing. And I can't walk a mile in her shoes. She had five kids under the age of basically seven. We were all like a year and a half apart. Yeah, all in diapers. We moved every year and a half when we were with my dad.

So she was, we weren't wealthy. So she was unpacking boxes, getting us in different schools, getting us different piano teachers, doctors. I mean, you know what goes into having kids. And she was doing that with five of us every single year and a half. And I don't know, I don't know. I don't know how she stayed sane. It's not, it's not, it's not, she, I don't know how she did it. And no, I look at women who are doing that. I mean, then and now, and I'm not saying anything about your mom, but a lot of

them develop substance abuse problems and other ways of coping because it's really hard when you're, when you have no help like that, especially no, no help from the father, right? It's like, start there. I mean, just having a partner makes all the difference. And then if you don't have that, you don't have help. You don't have a babysitter or a nanny, or you're like a close family friend is going to help you and you have have to put bread on the table like that would drive most people to drink. I mean, it's. Yeah. And she wasn't like a substance abuser. No, I haven't gleaned that. I haven was it's my there's a lot more of that on my father my grandfather, who was in war and never spoke about it and buried it deep. And it manifested in all kinds of substance abuse issues that had a big effect

on things in his life later. So I do think there's a balance that we have to find in our lives. I'm a big proponent of dealing with that stuff and talking about it, even if it's with a professional so that you aren't necessarily self-medicating through some of that pain that the greatest generation buried. But you can't do the New York Times and listen to Dateline 24-7. At some point, you're going to have to reflect and hopefully learn. But yeah. points you're gonna have to reflect yeah hopefully learn but yeah but so so what happened with you because you so you started like like a lot of kids with drinking yeah and then pot i mean i i knew a lot i do you believe i've never tried pot um i i think a lot of see that you can see that i mean i i've been drinking sadly since my teenage years but I've never I'm I've just never gravitated toward it. I don't know. My mother really did stigmatize it in my head. And I was like, at my school, it was like something out of a movie. There were clicks. They were like, they call them the swelts, the dirties, the creamies, the jocks. It truly was like, like one of those movies. Like Grease? And the Dirties were the ones who did drugs. And pot was a drug.

And I was like, well, I'm not a Dirty. So I'm not going to, you know, like, I was a Svelte. The Sveltes drank, so I drank. Which I wish I hadn't. I really, if I could go back into my high school years, I really wish I hadn't started drinking. I wish I had kept sort of that young, healthy body,

healthy for longer, you know? But I keep, I always joke to Doug now, my husband, I'm like, we have like, two more years, my oldest is 11. We had two more years, then we have to convert to Mormonism. I really I want like, I love how like the Mormons, they don't drink and they don't do drugs. And they always stay a tight knit family. I'm like, this Catholicism Presbyterian thing, it doesn't work out. People do drink and they leave their mommies. And I don't, anyway, I digress. But so you start by a little drinking and some pot. And then how does it take the next step? I mean, pot was my true love, actually. And I just, I still, if I was to say I miss anything in sobriety, I still have moments of missing pot.

It was from the minute I smoked it. I was just a daily smoker, basically. And that was when I was 14 or 15. I started drinking. I loved the oblivion that drinking brought me. I never drank to fit in. I drank to fit in and that it's easy to move schools and find the party crew anywhere you go. It's much easier than having to just be myself. But I didn't necessarily drink to be more social. I'm pretty chatty and social anyway, but I really loved the just oblivion that came with drinking

and my mind kind of shutting off, which is why I inevitably think I found heroin to be in my life. And then I did some psychedelics in high school. It was pretty normal, not normal. Looking back, I was a fully functioning alcoholic probably by the time I was 16 and I think I knew it and pothead. And then I started doing harder drugs

when that first, right after that summer and then that first year in college, I think the first real like white powder I ever did was speed, which I hated. I hated it. I hated it.

I couldn't. This is a dumb question from somebody who's never done a drug. Is speed the same thing as cocaine? No. So this is more what we think of like crystal meth now. I guess we call it speed back then. But now I think it's pretty much just crystal meth. And so it was very,

it just made your brain race and no cocaine is, I had many years of that too. That went hand in hand with the restaurant industry and drinking and just the entire restaurant that, that rut that I was in, in a resort town, those things are all, um, just part, part and parcel of the whole kind of lifestyle that you live. And, um, so that's after this, I was later after rehab. So then I started, um, then I got introduced. Then I started doing, I think I tried cocaine around that time. Um, I dabbled in things and then I ended up getting together with a guy

who was, uh, he had access to a lot of these other drugs and then started doing that. But it was it was a very quick bottom for me. I was pretty much in rehab a year after I started doing heavy drugs, any of them like I started doing. Sorry, go on. He's the one who introduced heroin to you? Yes. And other drugs. I mean, we were doing all kinds of drugs, cocaine. I think crack, there was some crack in there. That was a very, God, it seems like another person. When I think of that girl and that time in my life, I was so... And then going to rehab for seven months, I was in a halfway house. I was just... And then getting out of rehab and what followed, which was even crazier, just in personal stuff. And then I ended up moving here when I was 20. I moved to LA. And then I was back doing drugs again. And then I would kind of rescue myself and pull myself back from the brink and stop doing hard drugs and only smoke weed or stop drinking for a while. And then I moved back east to try and repair things with my family. And I was only going to stay there. But then I ended up marrying a Belarusian. And I joked that I married him in a year-long blackout. It's not entirely false. And we were together for a while, both in the restaurant industry. And so yeah, it really started that year right out of high school, the harder drugs, and then it just escalated.

Because I do wonder if even though you've taken drugs before, is there a moment before you you take heroin that you stop even in that state and say, well, this is. Yeah, I remember it. I smoked it the first time and I remember vividly knowing I was crossing an invisible line that I had put down in the city. Even doing meth, which I hated, I have a journal where I was always writing and I have a journal where I was just trying basically to write myself down from the high because I felt like I was losing my mind. Your mind just races. And I knew that that was an escalation. I remember vividly the first time because you kind of chase that emptiness forever. And things just got, I was just so, I don't know why no one noticed. I don't, that's what's so crazy to me. I was so clearly, I was 89 pounds, Megan. Like ribs. I had a horrible cough because I primarily smoked it and snorted it.

But because I was chasing the dragon, you put like tar on a piece of tinfoil and the whole process is very ritualized, like all drug use ends up being. But it just destroys your lungs. I mean, you're inhaling chemicals from the tinfoil, you're inhaling and inhaling horrible black tar. So I had bronchitis and this was one of, you know, there's a lot of shameful moments in my life. And my grandmother who was, um, the greatest generation, I was so woman. She, one day we were driving, she was driving me somewhere and she had this pickup truck. She was just such a character. And she said, you need to watch out Bridget because you have the gene. And she was kind of referring the gene that my grandfather had. And she,

she just saw it in me. She was probably the first and only person who really saw it. And she said, you have to be careful. I was whatever ma'am I don't okay and I was uh I was on heroin at her funeral I was I was um she died when I was like in the middle oh that time of my life was so dark it was, as I just remember feeling so alone and feeling so lost. And then she went into the hospital and it was like, Mame was invincible. She was like the person I thought she'd still be alive. I never thought she'd die. I certainly didn't think she would die before my grandfather who almost died in my childhood. They gave him his last rites.

They still have no idea how he even survived that. He's now passed away as well. But we all thought grandpa would go before her. He had so many health problems. And she just went into the hospital with this lung thing and died. Like it just happened. It was a rare lung disease. I can't remember the name of it. And I was kind of in the midst of it. And I had just been home visiting and I was so sick. I had bronchitis and I came back and then she died like two days later. And then I had to fly back east. I was in Minnesota at the time.

And I had to speak at her funeral. And I remember being high and like having to write this eulogy and being so ashamed that she was, A, the last time I saw her, I was just so messed up. And B, that she was right. I knew she was right. I knew while I was standing there at her funeral. I think everyone around me was just so shocked and grief-stricken that they didn't notice that I was on the roof smoking heroin before I was going to her funeral. I don was like, I don't think I've ever even talked about this publicly. It took me three months to even talk about it in rehab because I

felt like the guilt that I felt. And then I ended up really, I mean, that was another thing that I just spiraled out. And I think the week before I went into my, my, the only rehab I've been in was that rehab then, although that's not when I got sober forever and finally, but I, I would jump in and ask you something about that. Why, why did you feel guilty about that? Uh, I felt guilty that I was on drugs at her funeral. Like I just felt horrible. And she warned me that I was, that I had that gene and I just felt guilty. Like it felt disrespectful to her to be in that state.

It still feels disrespectful to her. I still feel like I, you know, I think part of the thing that keeps me sober, I have, I'm looking at a picture of her right now on her wedding day. I stay sober for her, you know, part of, part of the, the living amends that I make. And there are many, but one of the biggest ones is to her to to just live a every day sober in her honor because she was right and i have to remember that and i have to remember that um on those days when i'm like i don't want to be sober anymore i don't want to be in my head that that it would it's a way of honoring her life and

honoring everything that she so selflessly gave to all of us. She's just so giving and amazing by staying sober. And that guilt, I mean, I lived in the shadow of that guilt for a long, long time. It's so upsetting to me. It's so, it's. But it's so, when you think about it, but when you think about it, it's, it's, it's so crazy, right? Like she would have wanted what was best for you. She would have wanted you to just get well. And not only have you gotten well, you you've you're living a well life. Yeah, I try. I mean, she's I miss I miss both of them every day. I mean, they were both just so they really did take care of us when we would...

Because after my parents got divorced, we would go... We barely saw my dad, but we would go spend summers with him sometimes. And they would end up taking care of us, basically. And we were like these feral children who had no parents. We would be... My aunts and uncles joke like we were these grimy little teens who were totally underweight and we'd be eating raw spaghetti and drinking pickle juice. Is this Minnesota? Is this where-

This was in Rhode Island, which is where my grandparents were. And we moved to Minnesota. I was born in New York City and then moved every year and a half. We were in Connecticut. We were in Minnesota. We were kind of all over the United States. But my family's from Rhode Island. And so that was really just the home base. And it's where my dad ended up going back to after my parents split up. And now most of my family is in the Northeast, but that was really the only real stability I had in my life was them, was my grandparents. That can make all the difference. You know, I've, I know a lot of people who have parents who are not that great and, uh, but who have great grandparents who step up and that, and a grandparent can save you.

Yeah. I mean, I think they tried and, and my, I really do. I did. They did. And I do believe that my parents did. I do believe that crap that people are doing the best that they can, even though I've had a hilarious conversations with Pete. I once had an Uber driver and he was talking about his brother and and he was talking about his brother and how he was on cocaine. And I'm like, well, just try and remember he's doing the best he can with what he has. And he's like, no, he's not. Oh my God. And I'll never forget that because I was like, okay, fair enough. He's like, he's being lazy. How did you get that deep into conversation with an Uber driver? Was it a very, very long ride? No, it's just, I mean, that's just

me. I like, you're the one who talks to the massage therapist. What am I saying? Again, the one who ruins it for all of us. I don't do not want to chit chat while you were rubbing my behind. I'm the girl on the plane that will be like, tell me your whole life story. Oh my God. You're my worst nightmare. I'm like, lady, can't you see I have headphones on? That's a universal sign for, I don't want to talk. I'll leave people with headphones alone, but I have met some amazing people on planes that I'm still friends with. Oh, you are. That's, oh, okay. Now wait, this is a great transition. Um, I was on a plane, I don't know, 15 years ago, not even happened to be seated next to the man who had just bought Penthouse out of bankruptcy from Bob Guccione. And it was a fascinating plane ride.

I did not have the headphones on in that ride. And he was a great conversationalist. He was telling me his wife was a fan. So we wound up chatting. He asked me if I would talk to his wife before we took off. I said, sure. He was telling me his wife was a fan. So we wound up chatting. He asked me if I would talk to his wife before we took off. I said, sure. He called her blah, blah, blah. So he he's telling me all about he was a real estate guy from Ohio who wound up, you know,

owning this pornography magazine. And next thing and they also owned properties that, you know, had actual porn on them, you know, like live porn, I guess just today, porn on video, whatever. Um, and he, he would go to the porn Oscars every year, you know, where like you you'd win like best anal. Oh yeah. Yeah. The ABN. Right. And the girls would be like, yay, you know, I won. And I was thinking, Oh, it's confusing. Um, anyway, we had a great airplane ride together and listening to his world was really interesting. So I get back to Fox sitting in my office and the mailman comes in with this box that is like two feet by two and a half feet and all over the box.

I mean, every square inch of the box reads, penthouse, penthouse, penthouse, penthouse, penthouse, penthouse. And of course, the mailman's got eyes as big as silver dollars. He's like, whoa, what's this? I'm like, oh boy. I open it up and it is a huge book that is a retrospective to 30 years of penthouse covers. And it's on the on the cover of the book is a very ungroomed circa 1972 picture of Madonna, the singer Madonna in full, you know, full regalia. So and then I open it up. It's all penthouses, greatest centerfolds. But I'm thinking, oh, my God, like, what? Where am I am i gonna put this where does this go in

somebody's house and as it turns out it's actually right next to doug's side of the bed which is not it's not there for the reasons you think but it makes a great conversation piece whenever we tour somebody through the house um but all of this is a long long-winded wind-up to you weren't with penthouse but you were with playboy writing you're like the one girl who could both be in in playboy and write for playboy i mean like that's not the only one i don't mean to diminish the others but i'm just saying it's rare to have both a rocking body like you do and the smarts to write an article that could appear in there and um maybe deborah so too she's writing for them she's also gorgeous um anyway, so I know you're a writer and I get writing for Playboy, but let's just

rounding back to the naked Bridget. Like, what do you get out of that? Because I know you don't go like full frontal, but you definitely post naked top pictures of yourself a lot. And I know you like it. Like you're getting something out of it. What are you getting out of it? Well, I mean, I don't do it as much anymore.

Because I'm married, which no one knows. And I was going to tell you right now. What? Yeah, no, I just got married on November 10th. Bridget, best wishes. I know. Thank you. Thank you. Who'd you marry? Oh, I hope it was the rich guy. No, no. Damn. He's the opposite of a rich guy. No, we is a therapist and also works at a nautical themed grocery store. And, um, yeah, we, we met, it's a, it's a crazy story. We met in recovery like a couple of years ago and had a whirlwind romance, but he was pretty new in, in recovery and I never felt okay. I was like, I'm robbing you of this first year

that's so important because I know what it's like to get sober and I know you need that year to really just be with yourself. And I could never get good with it and broke his heart. And then 15 months later, we got coffee and then, God, we've been through a lot actually in the last year even. And, um, and so, yeah, that's, I'm sure people have kind of noticed that it's dialed back, but that's pretty much why.

No, I haven't announced it or anything yet because I feel my private life has always been really mine. You know, there's so, I put much out there. And I've just I've always, this is the most public I've been about really anything. I don't really like to talk about stuff that's happened with my family, other than in a kind of writing controlled environment, just because it feels like it's not my only my story and other people are involved. And I try to do right by everybody. I think everybody, you know, I don't consider myself a victim. I think that that my mom and my stepdad and all the people involved, my dad did they did do the best they could at that time.

And I'm sure they live with their own regrets. And I know that we still, you know, things are, I would say, great now between me and everybody. And so I try, I just have always been kind of fiercely protective of the people in my life. They didn't ask for me to be out here publicly talking about things and also just protective of my private life because it feels like one of the only things that's mine. But now it's bordering on the point of feeling like I'm not lying. Hiding. Yeah, hiding. Yeah. Now it's bordering on the point of, OK, your secret. It's a secret. And yeah, I don't want it to be a secret. I'm proud of, I love him. I'm happy for you. What's his name? Cause what's his first name? Um, uh, Jaron. Oh, I like that. Yeah. Uh, so, well, that's awesome. I'm so happy for you. I feel like a good relationship is such a good deposit into one's emotional bank. I didn't know this, Megan.

I didn't know. I mean, it's been so crazily. I really, you know, talk about the stories that we tell ourselves. So much of my life has been losing myself and finding myself over and over again and hitting 15 different rock bottoms and kind of bouncing back up. And I really thought of myself as that girl that was single forever and that I didn't need a man. And I had so much kind of damage and trauma around those relationships. And being in what I feel is a very healthy, loving, just I didn't know how much of a difference it makes. I underestimated it because I didn't have very many models of it in my life. So I just was very jaded and cynical about relationships. And when we first started dating the first time, I cried every day. I had no idea how to deal with

intimacy. I ran from it. I just did not know. I didn't know how to give it. I didn't know how to receive it. I didn't know, I didn't trust it. I, and then we took that break and he did a lot of, you know, his own work and time and it really did come down to timing. And when, then when we got back together, it was really, we were just never apart again. And, um, yeah, I mean, it's been, it's been, um, uh, uh, kind of a miracle really. I, I didn't weirdly, one of the ways, reasons that I trusted so much is because it's so not something I feel like I'm manipulating in my, in my past, in many relationships, I felt like there was always this power dynamic and I was trying to manipulate the situation or manipulate the man. It felt very insidious and squirrely. I don't know how to describe it. I've never talked about

any of this stuff publicly ever. I've talked about feeling like I was manipulative as a woman, but I just, with him, it feels so pure. There's just no sketchiness. You know, I want it to, I value that core of our relationship. Well, I really feel like now this is when everything, everything grows because like, I do think that having a healthy love relationship in your life, especially with a partner, but it could be with a friend. It could be, you know, somebody else, but especially with a, with a sexual romantic and life partner,

that just, it's like the rocket ship, you know, that it's like, I won't say that it's not, it's that no one can hurt you because you can still be hurt, but man, they can hurt you a lot less. It takes a lot more, a lot more to really ding you up. You know, is it's like, I remember after many low moments over the past few years, looking around and saying, you know, if, if this is my floor or my ceiling, right, like that I'm with Doug and I've got these three kids. Good. I'm good. That's just fine by me.

And I felt that for years. I do think we put too little time into nurturing relationships without because we fail to realize how important they are to overall happiness. So I'm thrilled for you. But he doesn't like the nudes, I guess, is that he wants you to just stick important they are to overall happiness. So I'm thrilled for you. But he doesn't like the nudes, I guess. He wants you to just stick with what you put out there. No, it had nothing to do with him. He actually never said anything about it. It was all me just feeling like I was evolving and changing.

And no, he never, he was never, I'm sure he had his own field. Like this is the beauty of marrying a licensed marriage and family therapist is that he knows how to do his own work. And he definitely, he just, we're very much about allowing us to grow individually. And he never, I felt like I was kind of already pulling away from it because it just felt like it served this time and I just didn't, it wasn't like I ever needed to do it. I wanted to do it. And then I just stopped wanting to do it, you know, And that was really it. I've always done what I wanted to do. I never wanted to feel like I had to post nudies or had to... It was always on my

own terms. A lot of it was just taking... Like I said, I wrote a whole piece about it in Playboy that I actually think is still up. And it's all what I learned from sharing nudes online. Part of it was also just taking control. This was at the dawn of being able to send a man a nudie. And I knew that I wanted to be a writer. I didn't have any clue how this would all play out. But I just wanted to take control of that. I didn't want

anyone to be able to post nudies that I didn't, I didn't want to live in fear of that. So part of me was like, I'm just going to take control of this. Yeah. And I also just, it was, it's a lie. I mean, there's like 15 different pieces. I could talk to you for two hours just about what I learned about myself, what I reclaimed, all of it. And then just really, I think being in a loving, intimate relationship has... I feel, again, it's like going back and saying, oh, I didn't know that there were double standards. This is like me coming to this very naive realization of, oh, a loving and intimate relationship can give you... It can be very uplifting. Yeah, it can be very uplifting and stabilizing. I'm obviously very hesitant about all of this. And the fact that I'm even talking about it is actually really good. But I think that, again, I default to this is not about us.

He has been through so much on his own. He has grown and uplifted himself out of stuff. And we are both very late bloomers. And I think one of the lies that I've told myself and all of my rock bottoms is that I was too old, whether I was 20 or 25, to really make something of myself. And if anything, I think that he's just a rational, just pretty common sense. And he has a lot of street smarts, too. I don't know. I just I feel my personal and very biased opinion is that the world could use his voice out there, too. So listen, here's to late bloomers and second chances. I'm all for it. Great partnerships. Good luck to both of you. Gosh, it's been a pleasure getting to know you. This is the first of many, I hope, Bridget. I hope so too.

Thank you, Maggie. Yeah, yeah. This was really fun. And I really appreciate, I don't know, there's something about, you're an amazing interviewer just in general. You're just amazing at what you do. But there's something to just as a woman, I'm so often interviewed by men that I do. I mean, I cried twice and I never cry when

I'm being interviewed. So that's a testament to you allowing me to feel safe and being kind of, there is something about just that, you know, female bond, I think. Thank you for saying that. It means a lot to me. And if I, if I did provide that space for you, it's, it's minuscule in comparison to the feeling you gave me that day. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.