Jennette McCurdy opened up about the emotional and physical abuse she endured from her late mom, Debra McCurdy, in her new memoir, I'm Glad My Mom Died, and now she's speaking candidly about where she stands with the thought of having her own children one day.
During a Red Table Talk interview with Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith, and Adrienne "Gammy" Banfield-Norris, which aired on Wednesday, Jennette said that at this point in her life she's "good" without children, though that may change in the future. However, if she ever did decide to have kids, she noted that she would never have them for her "own identity."
"I have two nieces I adore and a third one the way," Jennette shared. "I am happy to be an aunt. I am open to maybe a couple years from now, if something hits me and I just feel like, 'Yeah, I do want [kids]' -- but for now, I am good."
Jennette says that despite her toxic relationship with her mother, she is still extremely close with her three brothers, who have given her the title of aunt with their children. In her book, Jennette detailed a scenario of how when she was 11 years old, her mother had her and her then-16-year-old brother in the shower bathing them together.
When asked how that has affected her relationship with her siblings, Jennette replied, "What a beautiful question that I appreciate for my brother. I am so close with all three of my brothers and they are supportive and consistent in my life. We have such a beautiful bond. There is an understanding because of the things we went through together."
During the episode, McCurdy read aloud an email she once got from her mother -- who died of cancer in 2013 -- when she was 18 years old and ran away to Hawaii with a much older man whom she was dating at the time. While she noted that she understood her mom's issue with the age gap -- which was 14 years -- she doesn't understand the way Debra handled the situation.
"Liar, conniving and evil," her mother wrote, calling her a slut as well. "You look pudgier too, it is clear you are eating your guilt. Thinking of you with his ding dong inside of you makes me sick. I raised you better than this. You are an ugly monster now."
Jennette told the panel that her mom "signed the email off by saying, 'Mom, or should I say Deb since I am no longer your mother. P.S. send money for a new fridge, ours broke.'"
After years of Debra enabling Jennette's unhealthy weight loss by monitoring her food intake and constantly measuring her, the former Nickelodeon star recalled her last words to her mom, which was about how thin she was.
"Everybody tries to say something to the person who is dying, an attempt to get them to wake up," Jennette said, noting that her mom's cancer had spread to her brain at this point. "My brothers gave the good news of their lives. I said, 'Mommy I am so skinny right now.'"
"The thing that I felt like was the most I had to offer was my thinness," she added. "In my core I believed that would get my mother to wake up. I believed she cared more about my body than anything else that could be uttered by my brother's. I told her, 'I am 89 pounds.'"
When it comes to whether Jennette has forgiven her mom for her behavior, the author tears up and shared a revelation from her therapist.
"I work towards forgiveness. I will get emotional," she said. "I worked towards forgiveness for a really long time and my therapist said to me one day, 'What if you don't have to work toward forgiveness?' And I wept and I knew that that's what I needed to hear."
"I had been trying to find a way to still honor my mom and respect her," she continued. "I was still trying to live for her and find a way to make it all mean something because it had to. It was her. That was exactly what I needed to hear. Hugely emotional but my god did it help."
At the end of the interview, Jada, Willow and Gammy surprised Jennette with video messages from pals Nia Dennis, Jonathan Cohen, Mayim Bialik, Bella Thorne, David Archuleta, Abby Jasmine, Rosie McClelland, Violet Benson and Alyson Stoner, who praised her for being an inspiration.
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