PART NINE
1
IN FEBRUARY 2008, almost three months after my mom passed away, E! announced The Untitled Denise Richards Show was set to start production and air that summer. The premise was simple. Cameras would follow me in and out of my home as I raised my children and pursued my career as an actress while also recovering from a messy Hollywood divorce and the loss of my mother. The series fit in perfectly on a network schedule whose hits were The Girls Next Door and Keeping Up with the Kardashians. In other words, women tuned in. As Lisa Berger, E!’s executive vice president, said, “At the core of this series is a resilient single mom who is trying to get her life back on track.”
Resilient?
I hoped so.
Trying to get my life back on track?
That was the point—and no matter how much of the show would end up being “produced,” the reality of my reality was a part of every decision long before contracts were even signed. As I said earlier, I told Ryan Seacrest that I wasn’t interested in doing a reality series. I was an actress, with a résumé of movie and TV credits; I was having a hard enough time getting a job and thought a reality show might make it worse. But once Ryan called and talked it through with me, I had a different opinion and recognized that it could actually be a good thing. Also, I felt that more than enough of my real life was being captured in the media. I couldn’t go outside without paparazzi pointing still and video cameras at me. There were photos of me at the grocery store, driving car pools, filling up at the gas station, entering or exiting the courthouse, taking the girls out to dinner, even going to the doctor. How much more could I expose?
As I told Ryan, I was trying to protect my privacy. I’d been ripped to pieces in the press. I felt as if everyone hated me. I was embroiled in an ongoing custody battle. My mom was in the final stages of a losing fight against cancer. And on top of everything else, I didn’t feel good—or rather, didn’t like where I was in my life at that moment. I’d gained weight, I wasn’t social, and I’d pretty much lost all my confidence. My self-esteem was shot. With all I’d been through, I felt beaten and bruised. I was the last person on the planet who needed to put her private life on TV.
On camera, Ryan exudes a boyish, best-friend type of charm, and he’s no less friendly in person. But off camera, in his office, he’s a savvy businessman and a hands-on producer, which pleasantly surprised me. He listened to everything I said; I was excited at the prospect. But I still wanted to mull it over.
Aside from mulling it over with my agent, I went to my mom. My mom thought Ryan was adorable, the all-American boy-next-door type that neither of her daughters brought home, and when I told her that he wanted to produce a reality show starring me, she saw it as an opportunity. I remember being in her kitchen over coffee. “Really?” I asked. She nodded and said, “It might be good for you.” When I ran through all the shit that was going on in my life, all the reasons not to do the show, she shook her head. “You’re stronger than you think,” she said. “People need to get to know the real you.”
By the time negotiations started, my mom had taken a turn for the worse. I negotiated most of the deal while sitting on my mom’s bed in her hospital room. At the time, we were still hoping and praying for a miracle, and so my vision, and the original intention of the show, was to include my mom and dad. They both wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to shoot at their house as well as mine. I envisioned a reality show that was going to be real. I’d been a fan of The Osbournes, particularly the groundbreaking first season, whose addictive charm, I thought, was due largely to their honest take on themselves as a family. I wanted my series to be like that. Maybe not revolutionary; there wasn’t much new ground left to break in reality. But I wanted it to be honest—and raw, if necessary. In addition to seeing me deal with my career and children, I wanted people to see my mom’s heroic fight against cancer. I felt that it was something people could relate to, and I expected her to beat it.
Unfortunately, she then took a dramatic, final turn for the worse, was hospitalized, and never left. However, encouraged by her to continue with the project, I finished negotiating the deal from her hospital room. I had her support and approval. She wanted me to do it. Even as she was dying, she fueled me with strength. “Keep picking yourself up,” she said. She knew my reality. In addition to everything else going on, my attorney fees were draining my bank account and I needed a paycheck. “I’m not worried about you,” my mom said. “You’ll be fine.” I heard that over and over as she held my hand. Instead, she was concerned about my father and her dog, Sheena. “Promise me that you’ll take care of them,” she said. I squeezed her hand. “I will,” I said.
After she died, I could easily have backed out of the show. I had an understandable excuse. But despite my sadness, my mom, in some strange kind of way I didn’t fully understand yet, had left me feeling strong and good about the show even though I didn’t feel strong and good about much else. Later, following the memorial, in those difficult days when my dad and I sat around and cried and I found myself calling her cell phone just to hear her voice, I had a moment where time seemed to stop. I saw clearly where I was at that point. My life stood out like a 3-D landscape: problems here, challenges there, responsibilities all around, risks ahead of me, and maybe opportunities, too. I didn’t know. But I made a stark and frank assessment, and I did something that was very much me, but also very much something my parents had taught me my whole life, and that was to face the facts and fix the things I didn’t like. I had to remake my life.
When I was growing up, and especially during my teenage years, my dad repeatedly told my sister and me that life was what you made of it, and so many times in the past when the cards didn’t go my way, or I felt that they didn’t, I realized he was right. And now those words rang truer than ever before. I heard them loud and clear, as if I were a kid instead of a grown woman, and once again I realized he was right.
It was up to me to make changes. It was simple advice, but true. If I didn’t like my life, I had to face the facts and then do something about it. Another realization I want to pass on: I didn’t look back at events that were within my control with regret. I just had more work to do. Lots more. In fact, I had a whole list: I had to climb out of my depression. I needed to make money. I wanted the negative press to start changing and for people to discover the real me. I also wanted to get my ass in gear, physically, emotionally, and socially. It would only help my girls if I was happier and healthier.
And workwise, well, my career was in the toilet. It was hard for me to accept that my personal life had affected my livelihood. But few people casting new movies and TV shows had me at the top of their list. So for reasons that can best be described as “all of the above,” I decided to move ahead with the reality show. I knew it could go either way. But I had nothing to lose. Things could only get better.
2
THAT DIDN’T MEAN they’d get easier.
I don’t like when people giving advice make it seem as if all you have to do is think positive, snap your fingers, and life changes. It doesn’t. God knows, I don’t have special powers. Real change is a process of taking baby steps and going over speed bumps. Shortly before production began, I got into a minor dustup with Charlie about whether the kids could be in the show. He’d agreed, then changed his mind, and blah-blah-blah. Although we quickly resolved the disagreement, the press worked it up into a piece that made it appear I was an awful mom exploiting the girls for my own benefit. I felt that I couldn’t catch a break.
It only emboldened my resolve to show people a sense of who I really was. In short order my house was transformed into a set. Lights were installed, producers mapped out each room, there were meetings and discussions about my life, and then the crew arrived. On nearly every one of my previous jobs I’d felt an affinity for the crew. They arrived earlier and stayed later than everybody else, and typically they were a bunch of fun people. My kids especially loved when my gym was turned into the production office. Craft service was there, and they loved the people with all the snacks. The first couple days of shooting, when we wrapped, my girls would go into the production room and sneak out saying, “Mom, the people left all their candy.” They said it as if the people had left all their expensive jewels. It was funny. On the first day of production of my show, I introduced myself to everyone and set out food in the kitchen. I wanted them to feel comfortable. But they were standoffish, and I didn’t get it. As we got under way, I kept cracking jokes and talking to them without getting any reaction. Between one quick setup, I turned toward one guy and said, “I heard you have kids.” He nodded. “Boys or girls?” I asked. No response. I thought, “Whoa, this is going to be a long season. It’s going to suck.”
Finally, the director stopped filming and took me into another room. “You can’t talk to the crew,” she said.
I took a step back. “What do you mean I can’t talk to them?”
“On reality shows, they don’t interact with the talent. They’re supposed to be background, almost invisible.”
I shook my head, not angry but firm. “Then you’re working with the wrong person. These people are in my home. This is very personal. I’m going to talk to them. I can’t feel like I’m being an asshole by ignoring them.” She tried to offer a rebuttal, but I interrupted, “I’m sorry. I can’t not talk to them.” By the end of the season, they were eating my dad’s chicken nuggets and we would have dinner with them.
Coming from movies and scripted TV, I was used to scene-by-scene direction and hitting certain marks, but on the reality show I was told to go wherever I wanted and do whatever I planned on doing, which struck me as bizarre. It took a while to adjust. In a way, though, that was a perfect metaphor for what I was trying to do with my life. I had to toss out the old way of doing things, forget about the places I used to stand, and create a new vision for myself.
That new vision included a familiar last name. The opening episode showed me changing my last name back to Richards, but it didn’t fully capture my frustration when that seemingly simple task turned into a bureaucratic nightmare. I’d had to wait four years or until my divorce from Charlie was granted in the court system, which meant I was Denise Sheen longer than I was actually married. So with cameras following me, I went to the DMV to change my driver’s license and all the corresponding paperwork. After I waited in line, the woman behind the counter looked over my paperwork and shook her head no. I needed my court-approved divorce decree, she explained. “It’s our policy,” she added.
I couldn’t believe it. “Come on,” I said. “My divorce has been everywhere, on the news. You know I’m divorced.”
She nodded. “From Charlie Sheen.”
“See. You know.”
“But I need to see the official court papers. That’s our policy.”
A few days later, I returned with the legal document, waited in the same line, and saw the same lady. To my disbelief, I received another shake of her head. This time, after scrutinizing my divorce papers, the woman pointed out that the judge had failed to stamp my divorce decree.
“So even though it says I’m divorced, even though the judge signed it, you can’t process my name change?” I asked.
“Nope. Not unless it’s stamped.” I stared at her, frozen. Begging her. She was not swayed. “It has to be stamped.”
Now, Charlie was about to marry his girlfriend, Brooke Mueller. Their engagement and upcoming nuptials were all over the news. “This isn’t fair,” I said. “My ex-husband is allowed to get remarried but I’m not able to change my last name? I still have to be Denise Sheen?” She nodded yes. Whatever … still doesn’t make sense to me, but I was at the mercy of the DMV.
After my attorneys took the papers back to the judge, I made another trip to the DMV. The third time was the charm. At home, my dad congratulated me. He whipped up a celebratory dinner, one of his three-course specialties.
That was another problem. After being married to my mom for thirty-seven years, he was lost without her. They’d sold their coffee shop when she got sick; his life was about taking care of her, as he squeezed every possible minute of companionship before she was gone. Then his life fell apart and I had to be there for him. At my insistence, he moved into my house right before production started. The timing was perfect. Being around the girls helped him through the worst of the pain, and he enjoyed hanging out with the show’s crew. In a way, it was a godsend to have so many people in the house every day.
He took over the cooking chores with the gusto of a man with a renewed purpose. At breakfast, he planned lunch and dinner. While he was skilled in the kitchen, he only knew how to cook multicourse feasts. Every meal was Thanksgiving dinner—meat and potatoes and dessert. My dad was a rail. He’d never worried about weight in his life. However, I ended up gaining about ten to fifteen pounds. It was the first time in my life I added padding where I didn’t want any. I began to look at the bowl of mashed potatoes as my enemy. I forced myself to decline seconds when, in truth, nothing made me feel better than a heaping spoonful of spuds whipped with butter and showered in salt. I knew I was going to have to start hitting the gym. Ugh.
My body needed more work than that. I also visited tattoo artist Kat Von D., who transformed the tattoo of Charlie’s name on my ankle into a beautiful, and feminine, fairy. It hurt like hell. But I expected as much. Changing your life, like a tattoo, isn’t easy—or without pain.
3
AS WE FINISHED episodes and the airdate neared, I fretted about the obvious risk of doing a reality show at this tenuous point in my life. What if nobody watched? What if people didn’t like me? What if being myself wasn’t good enough? What if it didn’t go over? Would low ratings mean I would never, ever work again? Was I doing the right thing? Was I setting myself up for failure?
These were all normal concerns people have when they venture to remake their lives. Hey, talk to any woman who starts to emerge from her shell after a divorce. It’s not easy showing up at your kid’s classroom as a single parent or going to a party with friends as a third wheel. Doing all that on TV just magnified the risks, though I only had myself to blame if it failed.
Fortunately, it didn’t. Though I was grilled about everything but my new TV series when I promoted it on shows such as Today and CNN’s Larry King Live, more than 1.5 million people tuned into It’s Complicated when it debuted in May 2008. E! considered it a success. Mail and e-mail poured in. As I’d hoped, the show struck a nerve among a group of viewers who settled in front of their TV sets on Sunday nights. Judging from the comments I received, many saw someone like themselves in me or someone they knew. They identified with me. “Denise, I do the same thing,” one note said. Others shared stories of their divorces. “Hang in there, girlfriend,” another wrote.
Relieved to have support instead of criticism, my spirits and self-confidence slowly started to build. People related to me and my family, especially my dad. Despite some of the corny scenes that were set up, they got to know me. They saw me with my friends, my dad, and my children, and they liked what they saw, which was exactly what I needed after two years of thinking the world hated me.
The fifth episode, titled “Saying Good-bye,” dealt with my mom’s death, and not surprisingly it garnered the biggest reaction. It was also the most authentic of all the episodes, too. It came about after the director observed my dad and me off camera still grieving my mom and suggested we deal with it on camera. I debated whether I wanted to show that much of my life. It seemed too personal. There had to be limits. But then I thought, why not? We were going through this painful process—maybe other people going through the same thing would be comforted seeing they weren’t the only ones crying or calling a loved one’s cell phone just to hear his or her voice again.
After my dad and sister agreed to share these intensely personal emotions, which took a lot of guts, cameras followed us down to Encinitas and into my parents’ house. It was the first time Michelle and I had gone there since my mom passed. All three of us had a difficult time going inside. We felt my mom’s absence in every room. My sister and I went through my mom’s closet and drawers looking for favorite items to turn her clothes into memory bears for our children.
My dad and I gave Sami and Lola their special bears one afternoon as they were having a tea party. They were made from an old pair of denim pants and shirt. I told the girls they were special gifts that “would always remind them of Nana.” They reached out, their faces lighting up as if my mom were giving them the gifts herself. “How pretty!” Lola said. “I love it,” Sami added.
I tried my best not to break down. “Whenever you want, you can talk to Nana,” I said. “She’ll always be with you.”
Lola looked up at me with her wide eyes that reminded me of my mom. “My angel?”
“Yes, your angel,” I said.
Afterward, I was pleased with myself for doing that episode. Again, it opened a door few people knew how to go through. Death is a subject rarely spoken about, and grief is similarly neglected. Not for lack of interest. I think it’s more about fear—fear of the unknown, fear of the pain and what the deep sorrow of loss and grief feels like. After my mom, a few people did speak to me about their experiences and asked me about the feelings I was experiencing, and it was helpful. Talking and sharing was cathartic, and they jump-started the hard process of healing. Likewise, in the same way I’d found it helpful when I was pregnant to talk to girlfriends who’d had a baby, I talked to friends who’d lost a parent. I found it therapeutic to open up with girlfriends who’d gone through breakups and divorces, who were single moms raising children on their own, and who’d worked up the nerve to get their asses back into the world.
Talk is good, especially when it’s real and substantive and addressing subjects that might turn into debilitating fears and secrets if kept bottled up. It’s equally good to chat about the tiny, everyday stuff, such as the brand of shampoo or beauty products you have on the bathroom counter, a fabulous farmers’ market in the neighborhood, or a good summer camp for the kids. In those discussions I’m always reminded of how similarly most of us live. Anyway, I’m a talker, and I hadn’t done much of that since my life had turned into a nonstop soap opera after I got together with Richie. Even though it took doing a reality show to open me up, the resulting conversations had a positive effect.
We did an episode in Hawaii where I refused to get into a bikini and took heat in the tabloid press for looking chunkier on the sand, but as soon as the season ended, I put myself on a disciplined exercise regimen, starting at 5:00 a.m. when I gulped a cup of coffee and my Pilates instructor had me on my reformer getting my ass in shape.
Besides getting into better shape, I made other changes. I moved to a four-bedroom, two-story Cape Cod–style home in Pacific Palisades. I wanted to be closer to town and thought the girls might like living by the beach. I also used that time to figure out where I really wanted to settle before they started kindergarten. But when I look back at what was behind my decision that summer, I can see another reason I moved, a reason not readily apparent to me but one stemming from the risks I’d taken and the work I was doing on myself. I wanted light in my life.
I know that might sound a little too New Agey for some, as it would for me, but that’s not the way I mean it. I literally wanted light. I was ready to step out from the darkness of the past few years. I thought it would be nicer living closer to the ocean. I didn’t realize fog fills the sky much of the year, but, hey, that was a technicality; and as things turned out, I moved back to my old neighborhood a year later. But the change was a fun distraction that got me thinking about how I wanted my life to look. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with devoting time and energy to your surroundings. I encourage it. I am constantly working on a project, redecorating a room, renovating a house, rearranging my closet, doing something that makes me feel good. It can be as little as lighting a wonderfully aromatic candle, or taking forty-five minutes out to get a manicure, or meeting a friend for a long, leisurely lunch, or sitting on the beach with the kids in the last warm rays of the day’s sunshine, or curling up with a good book.
An insight that took me time to rediscover: life’s short, and we’re all adults. If you get the urge to redecorate a room, your house, or your entire life, do it.
4
IN JANUARY 2009, I flew to Utah for the Sundance Film Festival to help promote a small, offbeat romantic comedy I was in called Finding Bliss. As I got off the plane, my It’s Complicated crew met me. It was the first time I’d seen them since the previous summer. Now we were starting the second season. I gave one guy a big hug and turned to the camera and explained, “This is my crew!” I saw the director. “Everyone knows there are cameras following me,” I said. On the second season we actually broke the third wall and talked into the camera a lot of the time. Since I did it a lot with the crew, when the producers saw dailies, they actually liked it. Probably annoyed I was still Chatty Cathy with our crew, but whatever. I still did it.
If keeping it real was my new mantra, I was happy to see return another part of my life—my sense of humor. Before the Finding Bliss press conference, I was chatting with my costar Jamie Kennedy. He asked if I had any idea what questions reporters might ask us about the movie. “I wish they’d ask me about the movie,” I said. “They’ll just ask about my social life and my relationship with Charlie.” As for Jamie, I thought it was pretty obvious what the press would ask him, too. Then I realized something. “You haven’t seen the movie yet, have you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Why?”
I smiled.
“Does my pickle show?” he asked.
I nodded. Jamie played a young porn star in this movie about an enterprising young filmmaker who enters the business through the adult-film industry. One scene included a full-frontal peek at his pickle. “Oh my God,” he said facetiously. I laughed. Having done nudity on-screen, I assured him there was nothing to worry about, as long as he kept his parents from seeing the movie—and from looking at websites that would post screen grabs.
A little more than a month into shooting the second season of It’s Complicated, I took another risk. I joined ABC’s hit series Dancing with the Stars. Yes, gulp. It seemed from the time the show debuted in 2005 they had invited me to participate, and each time I politely declined. The reason? I wasn’t a dancer. Oscar-winning choreographer Debbie Allen had her hands full when she prepared Charlie and me for our first dance, and prior to that my only real experience with anything resembling dance moves was pom-pom girls and cheerleading, and if you recall, my career came to a teary end in eleventh grade when I didn’t make the team. But I said yes this time for a couple reasons.
First, Sami and Lola, who were fans of the show and enjoyed dressing up in costumes with sparkles and fixing their hair, like me, had started taking gymnastics lessons. They seemed like naturals to me, but they were shy about doing routines the first few times. They expected to be perfect out of the gate. I tried explaining that nobody starts out perfect and that having butterflies is normal, but they had a hard timing understanding. Then the Dancing offer arrived and I thought, perfect, I’ll show them Mommy goes through the same thing.
Selfishly, I’d noticed many of the Dancing participants got in great shape from doing the show. That sounded good to me. I also simply thought it would be fun to learn how to dance. Looking back, it would’ve been more fun to take private lessons instead of doing it in front of twenty-two million people. Oh, well, c’est la vie.
Like every other fan of the show, I waited eagerly for the rest of the cast to be announced. Except for a couple of the performers, I learned the names like everyone else did—well, most of them anyway. At the time, I was with a girlfriend in New York. I quickly read the names: Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak; rodeo champ Ty Murray; his wife, Jewel; Steve-O; football star Lawrence Taylor; singer Belinda Carlisle; country singer Chuck Wicks; Nancy O’Dell; rapper Lil’ Kim; David Alan Grier; actor Gilles Marini; and—
“Here’s the winner,” I said.
“Who?” my girlfriend asked.
“Shawn Johnson. She’s the Olympic gymnast. She won a gold medal and a silver.”
“And you think she’s going to win?”
“Yup.”
I was partnered with Maksim Chmerkovskiy, the handsome, fiercely competitive dance champion. We met for the first time on Good Morning America—not even in the greenroom, but on the air—where we promoted the new lineup of stars. We hit it off right away. I thought he was sexy, obviously an amazing dancer, and funny. We had the same sense of humor.
On and off camera, I mentioned I was nervous but hoped to have fun anyway. Maks told me not to worry. But he told me he’d be mad if I got nervous … um, okay. Welcome to Maks’s sense of humor.
The mistake I made in agreeing to go on Dancing was doing it at the same time I was shooting my reality series. It was too much and made every day a scheduling nightmare. Starting from the moment I left Good Morning America, Dancing required an intense time commitment and concentration, and to do well with my nonexistent dance background I needed to devote more time and energy than I had.
The first two weeks of rehearsals were great—then not so great. Maks and I were best pals during our three-hour lunch breaks, but our friendship was strained on the dance floor. The problem? Our approaches were different. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you I’m disciplined and a hard worker, and I wanted to learn how to dance. But without any experience, I wanted to start with simple steps, not complicated routines. Maks disagreed. He had his way of teaching and long story short, after one particularly physically and emotionally grueling rehearsal, I asked my construction worker brother-in-law if he would bring over a sledgehammer and break my ankle. “It’ll hurt less,” I said.
5
THANK GOODNESS MAKS and I liked each other outside the studio. The camaraderie with all the participants was the best part. I loved the entire cast. As we rolled up to the season premiere, Shawn Johnson still looked to me like the front-runner. Gilles Marini, who became a good friend, also looked super, and I suspected he had some dance experience. If not, he was a natural. I picked him to give Shawn a run for the title. As for the pros, Derek Hough was amazing to watch and awesome at finding the strengths in every partner. You could tell he had a talent for making each dance about them, not himself. Cheryl Burke was similar—amazingly skilled at bringing out the best in her partner. Kym Johnson is one of the nicest women I’ve met and has the hottest body!
However, all of the pros impressed me. They were genuinely nice people, patient, immensely fun to watch close-up, and thrilled at the opportunity to have their talents put in the spotlight.
With a week to go before the season opener, the atmosphere behind the scenes turned intense. The effort took a toll. Jewel withdrew with what she thought was tendonitis. It turned out she had fractured tibias in both legs. Then Nancy O’Dell dropped out with a torn meniscus, which required knee surgery. Former Bachelor contestant Melissa Rycroft and Girls Next Door Playmate Holly Madison stepped in as last-minute replacements.
Ignoring reports of the Dancing curse, Maks pushed me to my limit and beyond as we worked on our first dance, the chacha. One day I simply cracked. I backed up against the mirror and slid to the floor, crying. Word got out, and Maks was accused of driving yet another partner to tears. I didn’t blame him. I put pressure on myself. I wanted to do well. I also didn’t want to embarrass myself on live TV.
On the flip side, I was in heaven with all the sequins, heels, eyelashes, spray tans, and costumes. It was the best kind of dress-up game, and I shared it all with Sam and Lola. On Sunday, we did an extensive run-through for the director and cameras. It was a full day of blocking. Early the next morning, everyone was ferried to the studio, where we rehearsed with the live band for the first time, spent the rest of the day getting dolled up and dressed, and then, finally, it was showtime.
I’ll let you in on a not-so-little secret: never mind the twenty-million-plus people watching at home, I freaked out at the idea of dancing in front of the studio audience. Though a novice dancer, I was going to attempt to pull off a complex routine that would’ve tested someone who’d cha-cha-ed for years, and when our turn arrived, my nerves were as apparent as my spray-on tan. I didn’t feel confident in my dance, and consequently I never relaxed. “You looked terrified out there,” said judge Carrie Ann Inaba, and Bruno Tonioli agreed. “You’ve got it all, but you don’t know what to do with it,” he said. They were spot-on, of course. But I’d just wanted to make it through the routine. No flubs, no falls, no problem.
During week two, Maks was nicer. “Look at you, you’re becoming a little ballroom dancer,” he said in one rehearsal. “I’m so proud of you.” On the show, the judges noted an improvement, too. “Much better,” said Carrie Ann. “You were together,” added the third judge, Len Goodman. “Well done.” Though pleased, I had trouble the following week with the samba, which Bruno compared to a waffle, and I was sent home. Talk about relief. It was the first time I breathed easily in nine weeks.
The next morning I broke the news to Sam and Lola. They were delighted I no longer had to spend my days rehearsing. Sam just had one question: “Does this mean you don’t get the trophy?” No, I didn’t, I explained. But there were other rewards. First and foremost, I’d provided my daughters a lesson in facing your fears, and I’d showed myself that I had the courage to step outside my comfort zone. It was okay to be afraid, but you couldn’t let fear stop you.
In the process, I’d also lost an inch in my waist, dropping from a 26 to a size 25 jeans! My stomach was also flat and my legs and butt were rock hard. I wasn’t eating any less, either. I was just in better shape.
Maks was the first person I called. I thanked him profusely for my new jeans size. He was also amused when I confessed that, despite our battles in rehearsals and my early elimination from the show, I’d fallen in love with dancing—and didn’t plan to stop.
My friend Lisa Rinna had also turned into a dance fanatic after competing on the second season of Dancing, and she took me to a class taught by DWTS veteran Louis Van Amstel, who coached many of the show’s pros. In the class, we did all the dances they did on the show, including the cha-cha, the samba, the quickstep, and the paso doble, except you didn’t need a partner. It was a fantastic workout, with none of the pressure of the show. I didn’t check my watch once the whole hour. After one session, I was hooked. I still go.
After Dancing, I wrapped season two of It’s Complicated, and when I finally had a few moments to myself when I could stop and take stock of the whirlwind my life had been since my mom’s turn for the worse, I was pleased about where I’d ended up. I was a little surprised, too. My mom had insisted I’d get through all the obstacles I faced, and when I didn’t see how, she’d simply said I was stronger than I thought, I’d figure it out, and as I thought about it now, I guessed she was right.
I still wasn’t at the top of anyone’s list for movies or TV, but I accepted that my career as I neared forty might not be the same as it was at twenty-five. It could still be great, and with all that I’d been through, I felt that I could bring even more depth to a part. For the time being, though, my personal life was higher on my list of priorities, and I felt stronger and more confident than I had in years. I still had a ways to go. Who’s ever done growing and evolving? I don’t think I’ll ever be finished. And with kids, I had more growing and evolving ahead of me than I could possibly imagine. I didn’t even want to think about my little cuties hitting puberty, dating, and doing God only knows. For the time being, though, I was pointed in the right direction. My two gambles—doing a reality TV series and saying yes to Dancing—had paid off. The lesson? I’d taken control of my life instead of waiting for things to happen. My zest for life returned. I laughed more. I went out and socialized without worrying about the whole world hating me. People were starting to get to know the real me. I’d joined Twitter, which terrified me, opening myself up for people to tweet me whatever message they wanted to. I was so humbled and pleasantly surprised by the number of supportive messages and shocked that my followers are more than two million. They were a huge inspiration for writing this book.