While fans saw a confident, talented performer, the reality was a young girl learning to navigate fame while contending with overbearing parental control.
As she moved into her late teens, she began to push back.
”Being on this children’s television show that’s so glossy and so polished and so exactly like perfect…. My actual life felt so the opposite,” she hard with AP.
2013 marked a turning point in her life.
Her mother, Debra, passed away after her cancer returned in 2010. Debra’s death left her feeling unmoored and struggling to find solid ground.
After that, therapy became a lifeline. Before starting therapy, she struggled with excessive drinking and became involved in unhealthy romantic relationships.
”I’ve dreaded showers for a while, five years or so. Whenever it was that I started to feel uncomfortable that Mom still showers me. She doesn’t mean to make me uncomfortable, I don’t think,” she wrote.
Leaving Hollywood
Five years after her mom’s passing, she stepped away from acting entirely.
She realized she needed to break free from her mother’s ambitions and carve out her own path. One way she began to process her trauma was by writing a book, I’m Glad My Mom Died, which was published in 2022 and became a New York Times bestseller.
In the book, she revealed that until she was 17, her mother conducted invasive vaginal and breast exams on her under the guise of medical checkups or cancer screenings and never allowed her to shower alone. She also recalled that her mother, Debra, didn’t step in when she was served alcohol or photographed in a bikini as a teenager.
