Call Her Daddy

Oh my fucking God. Look at this. It's a Prada book.

I need to rot, I need to lay, I need to sink into the mattress, I need bed sores, I need to be Willy Wonka's parents plus 10.

Congratulations. The House of Hidden Meanings. I think that this book is incredible because you offer like a very personal look into your childhood.

You offer a personal look into early relationships and just some of the biggest struggles that you've been through in your life.

In the book, you talk a lot about your family dynamics. Can you kind of paint the picture of what your relationship was like with your mother growing up?

I'm curious though when you talk about your mother in the book as you know strong as she was like they're as a child it seems like there wasn't a lot of this like affection and like coming to you with love.

You talk about this big moment where your mom finds out that your dad was cheating on her in the book. Can you kind of like talk to me about that day because it was a pretty intense day.

there's a book called um Toxic Parents that really helped me a lot by Dr. Susan forward

When I came across your TED talk and your book, Burnout, The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, I knew we needed you on Call Her Daddy.

So Amelia and I, Amelia is my twin sister and we wrote the book together and we defined Burnout really simply as feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by everything you have to do and still worrying that you are not doing enough, whatever enough is.

Our motivation for writing this book is actually that Amelia was hospitalized when she was in grad school.

The conversation to burn out about Burnout is very often about like, I can't get stuff done instead of about my body is slowly degrading.

I think it really is that it's, that it's like just Burnout that you, you just sort of like give up on your job or you just are tired.

I started to wonder and I would say this is like the real moment I started to wonder like Do I have romantic feelings for this guy? like is this actually more than just like a casual hookup in Boston not not even a hookup. I think I just was like could we be friends with him?

In your documentary Dancing With the Devil, Yes. you reveal your virginity was taken from you. Yeah. You were raped. Mm-hmm.

You know, what really inspired me was all the DMs from my fans.

They were always writing me wanting advice or to know how I got through this so they could relate to me.

And at the time, what I was going through, sometimes it was so humiliating and I get so hard down on myself.

So that kind of inspired me to think, OK, well, this is my chance to answer all those questions in one place.

Everything from the Hills to my relationships to basically everything that's out there in the media or gossip or whatever that I've always bit my tongue. I never said anything. I just let people say whatever they wanted about me. Well, this is my chance to really put it all in one place and set the record straight.

So before going into the house, I had read something and it was like some book and it was called, you're just not that you're there's like, you're not that great or something like that.

And it was just like acknowledging the fact that you're not that great. And like, I never know, wait, just wait. I don't ever think of myself as like, like when you say like, like it's weird to me even believing when someone's like, Oh, someone's jealous of you.

Like I went into this bachelor world being like, I'm not going to be the prettiest girl in the room. I'm not going to be the best dress. I'm not going to be the most like exciting to look at or be with.

Like I just said, I'm going to be myself and if it works, it works.

I felt somebody at my feet. It felt really good. And I looked down in my darkened bedroom and it was Eve Ensler, the playwright, Vagina Monologues, who's my friend and who had flown down from New York to massage my feet and make me feel better.

I said, why are you here? And she said, because I love you. You know, we have to do that for our friends.

I've always been an Open and honest book from the very beginning and I've always decided I'm not going to let anything ever change me because this is who I am so take it or leave it but I've always been an Open book.

I was talking to my friend the other day and she was like I met you in three minutes we went from talking about this to like deep stuff and it's just like a lot of people when they meet me they can feel that but it's um after that I decided to speak out because I know it could help a lot of people so if I could shine a light on whatever that is then I'm going to do that but I wanted to be in a good enough place and to have the proper help lined up before I spoke out because that stuff was so traumatizing and I truly don't understand how I did what I did under those circumstances and how I put on a face but you know at some point as an athlete you were an athlete so you understand it's like we normalize a lot of stuff but then we push off emotions it's like we do so much it's this like you can create this like false narrative in your head of what you should endure and what's normal and it's that's all you know it's that's all we knew so we thought it was normal because we're all home schooled there together right it's like right you're all going through the same thing yeah so if we're talking to each other and if this is happening to you this is happening to you okay right cool it's normalized.

I'm liking onion let's peel the layers like I'm an Open book anywhere else but with trauma it has to be it has to be by layers because listen I still have to put on face I still have to go do these shows I don't you know um so it was kind of layers by layers but like the compartmentalizing that we do as an athlete and just as a human I know a lot of us to do it was insane and I don't know how I got through it but honestly I think the tour helped me get out there and realize there's more to life than gymnastics and I honestly thought since I didn't compete at the Olympics in the way that I was supposed to and that we didn't win gold I thought nobody was going to show up to my tour stops in night after night it kind of filled my cup up because all of these girls and the fans came out and I remember after a show sometimes we get to see our family but since COVID it wasn't too much family but my family and um some of the producers were at a show and we were in the back we were eating dinner after the show and I broke down crying and I was like I cannot believe people are still showing up why are they showing up we didn't win and that's when I realized like holy crap it's not about that yeah but I always thought it was because that was ingrained in my head and that's what everybody told me

That's so that's like Cheaper by the Dozen.

I read this book. It was actually in COVID time and it's called Letters to a Young Poet. And there's this poet that's asking him like, he has so many questions and I think he's like, probably in his twenties.

And he's like, the one advice I can give you is to live your questions.

I think it was in your book you said like the producers came to you and they were like play the dumb blonde like play it up like and I think what was so interesting is like that is then like it is kind of like how America then saw you. It's like this like rich dumb blonde girl.

The world thinks of me as a sex symbol and I'm here for that because symbol literally means icon but when people saw that sex tape they didn't say icon they said slut and they said whore.

There was a book released. Yes. Honestly I think it was released like in the 90s. Okay. But then I think it like caught on and became really popular like a few years back. Right. And it was it's called The Five Love Languages and pretty much what it is is it says that everyone expresses and receives love in one of five ways.

It's Fifty Shades of Grey. I don't know. Everyone listening is has their own story and their own version.

Your message is that Real Self-Care is not a thing to buy or to do. It's a way to be.

And that is why I wrote this book, Real Self-Care, to redefine, especially for us as women.

I write about this in the introduction of Real Self Care because I wanted to put it front and center.

And so this was a decade ago. And so that deeply informs real self care. And is why you know, what I came to learn is that, again, real self care, real wellness has to happen within your own life.

My goal with Real Self-Care and with Gemma is like, I just want women to know like this isn't our fault.

the show in the kitchen with his mom, which I'm literally just had a nervous laugh coming on with his mother at Thanksgiving when she like literally loses her mind and smashes that.