Deep Thoughts From a Hollywood Blonde

by Jennie Garth

  I’m new at this, for sure. And I definitely tend to take one step forward, two steps back. But I know I’ve got the skills to learn this kind of self-love. I mean, all I have to do is look at my own children, who still need and want nurturing and love and reassurance from me. It’s so easy and natural for me to give it to them. . . . I guess it’s time to turn some of that maternal love in on myself.

  I used to be the girl who rolled her eyes whenever someone would think he or she was being helpful by sharing the horseshit line, “You’ll never truly be able to love someone else until you truly love yourself.” I would, whether it was coming from a therapist, a shaman, a fortune cookie, or my own mother, shut that message out and then shut right down. But you know what? That old pearl just so happens to be true. And if you don’t believe, do what I did and take a good long look in the mirror. It might just change your life.

  STALKING THE ELUSIVE HAPPY FAMILY

  So there I was, slogging my way through the five stages of grief, which are generally understood to be denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Of course, there’s a lot of other stuff that you have to dig through and digest besides the “big five,” but I’d say this is a pretty helpful checklist, especially in those early days when you’re walking around pretty dazed and confused.

  Initially it felt like I had somehow been ejected from a very exclusive club, and at first I didn’t have a clue why. All I knew was that I’d find myself, say, in the grocery store, standing behind an older couple. I’d immediately notice that they both had on wedding bands, and I’d watch as they’d help each other unload their basket and arrange their items on the conveyor belt. If I was lucky, I might catch a glimpse of the husband gently putting his hand on his wife’s back, or I’d see her smile gratefully at his gallantry. I’d sigh as they gathered up their purchases and made their way to the door. I’d be watching them so intently that I’d find myself holding up the line, where I’d be yearning to drop my potato bread and chase after them and ask, “How is it that you love each other so beautifully? What is the magic ingredient that keeps you so tenderly bound together?” Before I could do this, though, I’d be ripped from my daydream by an important question: “Paper or plastic?”

  I just couldn’t get enough of these sightings.

  I became something of a happy-couple stalker. If it makes me seem a little less pathetic, I can pretend I was doing it for somewhat scientific reasons, like a bird-watcher, or maybe character research for a new role, but whatever compelled me, I’d find myself drawn to a happy couple or family. I’d gravitate toward them, maneuvering myself into their orbit as though somehow, if I got close enough, I’d be pulled into their magic force field of love and familial unity and I would somehow be healed by this. I’d move into their space and gratefully breathe in that unique pheromone happy families give off. If nothing else, I always felt warmed up and fortified by this kind of encounter, benefiting from the unspoken joy and contentment that drew me to these people.

  More than once, a member of a family would eye me suspiciously, wondering, I’m sure, Who the hell is this grown woman who is getting just a little too close? At this point, I would just blurt out how happy they all seemed, how lucky they were to have one another, and I’d back away, waving, thanking them, always with aching sincerity. Those lucky people! I so badly wanted what they had that more than once one of my daughters would have to pull me away, laughing at the fact that I’d have this weird, dreamy look on my face and sometimes even tears in my eyes.

  And this is why I think there’s actually a sixth, unacknowledged stage of grief that we have to go through, at least when it comes to the grieving that happens when your family is broken up after so many years together: pure longing. The missing of it all. The yearning for what was—or what you once thought (and hoped) had been there. I was floored by how much I missed the idea and the actual fact of an “us.” I missed being part of an intact, traditional family. And, for a while there, I was drowning in how badly I still yearned for it.

  Getting through these phases was going to take some time, I realized. And it might, it began to dawn on me, also take some time to begin to wrap my head around the idea, the fact, that I was now single. Single? Are you f*@king kidding me!? I did not like the sound of that at all! Eventually, figuring out how to step into all of this change would come to me.

  But for right then I just needed to be willing to sit there, in the middle of it all, and feel it. And I’d keep my eye out for those who had what I wanted, and I’d keep hoping that their happy-familyness would rub off on me.

  WHO’S THAT GIRL?

  There are moments in life when you get to take a good, hard look at yourself. I had one of those when my marriage was coming to an end. Actually, I had several, so many that I cannot even begin to count them. But despite how many of them I had, it wasn’t until Peter finally pulled the trigger and filed for divorce that I actually got it.

  Here’s what would happen before then: I’d catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I’d think, Ewwww. I don’t look so great. Am I really that tired? Am I really carrying all that junk in the trunk? and so I’d cringe and feel lousy, and then I’d hustle away from that mirror as fast as I possibly could and I’d kind of force myself to forget what I’d just caught a glimpse of.

  I had been in a certain kind of self-imposed hiatus for several years at that point. I’d made the decision to step away from my career and put all of my focus on raising our three girls. I’d wanted us all to move up to our ranch while my dad was still alive, but we missed out on that, and then I’d wanted that with Peter, and . . . well, you know how that turned out.

  I just really, really wanted all of us to be together, to fulfill this ardent, deep wish I had to have all the people I loved best in the world close to one another, caring for one another.

  All of my reasons for going to the country were, on the face of it, quite noble and good, but my altruism, my idealism, like it does for so many of us women, slowly got the best of me when I stubbornly held on to it, ignoring—much to my own detriment—what was actually going on around me.

  I truly thought that bringing my girls up to the country and putting them in a small, rural public school and giving them open space and big starry nights and no stress would be good for them—and me. And it was. To a point. But without my knowing it, I began to hide out up there; I kept way too much of what was really happening for me hidden. I was pouring all of my energies into the girls—totally at the expense of taking care of myself.

  Peter was working his head off then, mostly on the East Coast, and I thought that, since he was basically only flying in for weekends, he could fly in closer to the ranch and just visit us there. Reasonable, right? But this was much harder in practice—for both him and us—than I thought it would be.

  My planting us up in the country meant he would have to add at least two hours of extra travel to get up to the ranch from the city, so he’d get to us after flying across the country tired but always so, so happy to see the girls. He’d arrive with all of this awesome daddy energy, and the girls would go nuts. Then, just like that, he’d have to leave again (usually after just one or two days) and it would take, I now can see, a crazy amount of emotional work on my part—more than I could’ve imagined—to smooth out the edges around those visits, helping the girls transition back into our daily life, which would go on without him. It was hard. It was hard on us all. And it was hard on me in ways that I just didn’t understand back then.

  I felt like I was spending all of my energy holding down the fort, and I was, but pretty soon the fort started to get hold of me, too. My stoicism started to work against me, and before too long, it became clear that something was going to have to give.

  When you become so single-minded, when you really put the blinders on—which, in my case, was to focus on being the most attentive, available mother that I possibly could be—other vital needs go unattended to, and this, we all know (though we usually find out only
with the benefit of hindsight, and we usually get that hindsight only after we’ve been hit with some giant, gnarly, cosmic wake-up call, like your spouse filing for divorce) is never, ever a good thing.

  It’s the yin and yang of it all, keeping the old teeter-totter balanced, if you will. Sure, I had solitude up there on the ranch, but when the kids weren’t with me, that solitude, if I’m honest about it, became isolation. I was hiding out. I wasn’t in the game. I wasn’t really living my life. And it was beginning to show. I stopped taking care of myself and just wore sweats or barn clothes. I felt sluggish and . . . old. In other words, I was depressed. And worn down. And my body was just packing on the pounds as a reaction to all that.

  And that was why I’d avoid mirrors. And shopping. And going anywhere that would entail my having to dress up—because all of my nicest clothes were now too tight. I just looked the other way, looked past myself, for as long as I possibly could.

  But then, after a good couple of years of this, I just couldn’t look away anymore.

  I know that I’m not alone in this. So many of us moms, without even knowing it, just kind of let ourselves go. I don’t just mean that we stop putting on makeup, or mindlessly eat what’s left on our kids’ plates, or start to wear the same yoga pants four days running, and rubber bands become our favorite hair accessories. There is all that, of course. But what I mean is that we let our innermost self—our warrior woman, hot-mama, sexy-goddess self—check out on us. When this happens, we get heavy: heavy of heart, heavy of thought, heavy of butt.

  Believe me, I know.

  I was heavy all the way around. I found that, after two years up at the ranch, I had become pretty low-functioning. There was no doubt that I was depressed, and what little energy I had, the girls got. But you know what? They deserved more than that. And one day it hit me that I, too, deserved more than that.

  I couldn’t just stay in bed, pull up the covers, and wait for life to come wake me up. I was going to have to do that by—and for—myself.

  I think, in some distant lands, they call this learning to take good care of yourself, growing up.

  Life had thrown me a curveball. So what was I going to do about it? I could either duck or I could take a swing at it.

  It struck me as pretty funny that once I got myself upright and decided to take charge of my physical health and eat clean and commit to regular exercise—which, by the way, I hated—I started to lose weight. Pretty soon the headlines were blaring things like, “Jennie Garth on Heartbreak Diet!” or “Garth Rail-thin Due to Divorce Diet!”

  It all became pretty dramatic and, as usual, a way for the tabloids to make some hay with what they thought was my life, but really?

  What I was actually getting rid of was my “sad fat.”

  I had been unhappy—just as Peter had been—for several years, and I finally realized that I could either stay buried by that unhappiness, which was not just wrapped around my heart but clinging to my hips and thighs, or I could buck up and get moving and get on with my life. I could figure out how to heal myself, body and soul. No one said it was going to be easy, and it never is. Ever.

  I started, tiny baby step by tiny baby step, to take care of myself. I started to cry, and to talk, and to eat healthier, and to exercise, and to live again. And as I did, the weight of it all began to lift.

  I’m now thirty pounds lighter. And that’s a relief, because now I’ve got some energy to begin to tackle the really heavy-duty stuff. Like getting back out there and making a meaningful go of it, making a meaningful new life for myself. It will be a challenge, but I am not one to shy away from a good challenge. Ever.

  THROW THIS HOUSE OUT THE WINDOW

  To make our return to the maddening craziness that is LA, we had to begin all over again. Our family home back in LA, the one we’d bought together and had nested in with our kids, was being rented out. So now I had to find a new place for me and the girls to live.

  Coming back to LA was bracing. Not just because I was coming back single, but because we had been gone for two full years, which in Hollywood time is about a hundred years. I had been planted in the middle of quiet for so long. I had forgotten about the traffic and the noise and all the hullabaloo of the business. These things, I realized, would take some getting used to again.

  So the question became where to plant us while I experienced reentry and got reacclimated to my LA life.

  Finally, some good luck! Right away I found a great small house that exuded a peaceful, positive vibe. It was close enough to Peter’s place, pretty close to school, and it was secluded enough to give us some much-needed privacy, so I signed the lease. It’s a midcentury house, so it’s unfussy and open, but it’s got only one bathroom, and for the girls, well, that in and of itself is quite a challenge. And it’s got some other older-house issues as well.

  For instance, it’s got the worst water pressure of any house I’ve ever lived in. It’s definitely one of those places where you cannot flush the toilet while someone is in the shower, which, for us, means pretty much all the time. And if you want to make a cup of tea, you need to make sure you have a spare fifteen minutes just to fill the kettle up with water before you can even put it on to boil.

  And it’s cold. Yes—believe it or not, it gets downright chilly here in LA, especially at night, after the sun goes down. So often, in the morning, we’ll all stagger around, wrapped up in big blankets, thick socks on, while we pull ourselves together before heading off to school and work.

  Oh. And the electric gate’s been on the fritz, too. And the Internet works sporadically, usually at really odd times of the day or night, and so it’s not unusual to see one or another of us, head down, laptop in hand, trying to find a hot—or even lukewarm—spot so we can get enough of a signal to check e-mail or surf the Web.

  For girls, we’re a pretty low-maintenance bunch, though, and so we make this house work. For example, if the TV goes on the fritz, since none of us has any idea what to do, we’ll just go without TV until I remember that I need to call the cable guy and get him to come over and push that restart button on the back of the cable box for us.

  Still, while we’ve managed to acclimate and get back in the swing of things, we’ve had our share of heartbreak at this sweet reentry house, too: Our beloved cat, Gizmo, an indoor guy, somehow or another got out, and after we walked around for a while wondering, “Where’s Gizmo?” we got our answer soon enough when we realized he’d gotten out and, disoriented by this new and unfamiliar place he’d found himself in, was tragically hit by a car. Poor Gizmo had really dug life on the ranch, because there were no cars and there were lots of mice, and he could go in and out without a thought. Losing him was a terrible blow to us all, and I know that forever, for all of us, Gizmo and this little house will be bound together in our minds and hearts.

  But you know what? Despite that tragedy, and though from time to time I find myself telling the girls I’d like to take this house and throw it out the window, I really do kind of love this place. By and large it’s been good to us, and it’s been a sweet, safe, transitional landing pad for me and the girls as we adjust and reconfigure ourselves as a family.

  Just recently we sold our old LA family home. I think I expected to feel really sad at that moment, to feel as though I were closing a favorite chapter, or even getting to the very end of a beloved book, and I did get a little weepy when I took a final lonely walk-through, but what I mostly felt was gratitude and thanks for all that house had given me, had given us. It was something we had created, and I felt incredibly proud of all that house had represented and been. It had been a very good house. A very good home.

  Just a few days after letting go of the old house, I closed on a new house. My new house. Our new house! It’s a total project, but this is what makes it so important to me: I am going to renovate that house top to bottom, just like I did our last house. In my mind’s eye, I can see how to refine it so that it better supports us and better reflects the life I aspire to as a
mom and as an independent woman: a life that is open, relaxed, playful, and yet solid.

  It feels good to be reactivating this part of myself, the part that feels confident taking down a few walls and working with contractors, builders, and craftsmen. It’s feels like I’m going back to some vital part within myself. It’s about reviving an important muscle, the muscle I need to look ahead and to help me build a future.

  It’s going to be a good thing, this new house of ours, and I can even, from time to time, catch a glimpse of us there, down the road, when the girls are coming back from college, or from their far-flung, interesting, and independent lives. They will know that this new place, this place we have yet to live in, will always be their home.

  But like everything these days, the renovation will take time. Everything, it seems, is a process.

  Until then, I won’t throw this little house away—at least, not just yet. We’ll stay here in our rented hideaway, with the dribbly water and chilly morning floors, and we’ll love being here, being together, we four, safe, sound, and snug.

  DOG ABOUT TOWN

  A couple of years ago, for Christmas, we got the girls a dog: a big, floppy Labradoodle puppy. We named her “the Black Pearl” because of her lustrous, shiny black curls, and just because it’s such an awesome name. We call her Pearl for short.