A big part of Gabby Windey’s Bachelorette journey has been talking about her estranged relationship with her mother. But has the co-lead heard from her mom Rosemary Hewitt since the show premiered?
“I really haven’t,” the ICU nurse told Us Weekly. “But that’s OK.”
Gabby went on to explain why she’s been so open with her suitors about her lack of relationship with her mother.
“You get a limited amount of time with these guys. So on our one-on-ones is where you really have to get down to the nitty gritty so they can understand who you are, how you’re gonna be in a relationship,” Gabby said. “And, of course, our parents really influence who we are as adults and how we act in relationships and our attachment styles and things like that.”
Gabby emphasizes her need to be “transparent” with her suitors.
“I have done a lot of work around my childhood, and sometimes it’s hard feeling the feeling of being loved because it applies to a romantic relationship, you know? It’s hard because it’s almost like, ‘Gosh, I have to get everything out right now,'” she continued. “But also, I need these men to really know who I am and understand why I am the way that I am.”
After having previously discussed the lack of a relationship with her mom during Clayton Echard’s season of The Bachelor and during one-on-one dates with Nate Mitchell and Erich Schwer, Gabby talked about how much her time in therapy has helped her during her chat with Jason Alabaster on the Monday, August 1st episode.
“My mom and I are estranged. She didn’t have the capacity to kind of, like, love me as a kid. And she was, like, really quick to take away love,” Gabby explained. “Like, ‘Oh, if you don’t do this and that, you’ll have to go live with your dad.’ And it’s like, I don’t ever want to lose my mom. That was so scary for me. And then when I left for college, she washed her hands of me and didn’t want anything to do with me.”
Gabby continued, “But through a ton of therapy, I’ve kind of had to learn how — really how to allow people to love me because I never had an example of receiving it as a child. I think the hardest part is, like, I love her so much, but you can’t always — she just can’t be in my life. She just doesn’t have the tools to love me back.”
As someone who always had a loving relationship with both her parents, hearing about Gabby‘s estrangement from her mother absolutely broke my heart. I really have to admire her for working through the loss and pain with therapy. She seems to have come out so much stronger for it, as she appears to be much more confident in her belief that she deserves love than is her co-star, Rachel Recchia, who threatens to quit multiple times per episode.
TELL US- HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT GABBY’S OPENNESS ABOUT HER LACK OF RELATIONSHIP WITH HER MOM? DO YOU HAVE ANY WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT FOR GABBY?
[Photo Credit: ABC/Gizelle Hernandez]
