Jennie Garth‘s oldest daughter, Luca Bella Facinelli, once found the “Beverly Hills: 90210” alum cutting herself with shattered glass — a moment the actress has described as a life regret that “will stay with you forever.”
In her new memoir, “I Choose Me: Chasing Joy, Finding Purpose & Embracing Reinvention,” Garth, 54, opened up about turning to drugs, alcohol and self-harm amid the unraveling of her marriage to Dave Abrams and explained how one scary instance in 2017 helped her quickly turn her life around.
“I remember one night [my daughter] Luca came home unexpectedly and unannounced. She was in her early twenties. She found me there alone,” Garth wrote. “I was in my room smashing framed pictures of me and Dave, overcome by the pain, back in that all-too-familiar dark place. I was taking the broken glass from the picture frames and I was trying to cut myself with the jagged pieces.”
Garth shares daughters Luca Bella, 28, Lola Ray, 23, and Fiona Eve, 19, with her ex-husband, Peter Facinelli.
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“Not that I wanted to really end my life, but I was certainly not in my right mind and, being that I hate seeing blood, I had no intention of cutting myself deep enough to bleed that much,” she continued. “It was almost an unconscious act, a form of punishment. I looked up from my place on the floor, surrounded by broken glass and all of a sudden Luca was there, witnessing this.”
Garth recalled her daughter taking the glass from her and cleaning up the mess as she buried herself in shame.
“The next morning, I woke up and my self-hatred was at an all-time high,” Garth recalled. “I was being so selfish and self-indulgent, and now I was terrified that I had caused irreparable damage to my relationship with my daughter.”
At that point, the actress had done “so much work” on herself, including therapy and a stint in rehab.
“Still, when I faced this kind of heartbreak and rejection again, I turned to self-destruction,” wrote Garth. “Whenever I felt too much, I shut down. I numbed myself and slipped right back into the old patterns, right back to the way it was. Hadn’t I learned anything? That’s what was compounding the anger and self-hatred.”
“And now, I was hurting my daughter by letting her see me like that,” she continued. “This was one of those regrets in life that stay with you forever.”
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Garth recalled Luca pleading with her to get healthy again.
“My twenty-three-year-old daughter sat down with me and helped me set up a rigorous self-care schedule on my calendar, which I followed for quite a while. I woke up at seven, meditated on the blue couch, and then journaled. I needed this routine—she knew it better than I did, amazingly enough. I needed a regimented schedule to anchor myself, to reclaim some control, and to navigate the days without feeling completely adrift. I was drowning in my heartbreak and disdain for myself, and this schedule helped me find a life raft.”
“I felt stuck at an eighteen-year-old level of maturity, without the tools or perspective adulthood brings. I was reeling from pure self-hatred, feeling like an idiot and a failure—that I couldn’t overcome my addiction, that I couldn’t get love right, that I couldn’t succeed in marriage. Those thoughts came in waves, relentless and heavy, and I had lost sight of the truth—that vodka and pills wouldn’t quiet them, only drown me deeper in them.”
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“I had to do better for my girls, if not for myself,” she added.
Garth and Abrams tied the knot in an intimate California ranch wedding in 2015. Abrams filed for divorce from Garth in 2018. One year later, the couple reconciled.
The actress, who portrayed Kelly Taylor in “90210,” kickstarted her career in Hollywood at 17 years old. By 18, she had been diagnosed with depression.
“For a long time, I thought needing help — needing medication — made me less than. It felt shameful to be on that kind of medicine as a young woman who seemed to be living the dream,” she wrote.
“I carried the weight of feeling weak and somehow damaged through years of trying different medications. I tried them all, chasing balance and battling the belief that I shouldn’t have to. What I see now is that the real strength was in refusing to give up on myself.”
In 2024, Garth — who launched her “I Choose Me” podcast earlier that year — revealed that acting is no longer a “priority,” and explained how her “new clarity” has inspired her to do what she truly loves.
“I love acting, I love being in front of the camera. I do not love being on a movie set,” Garth, who dropped out of high school at 15 to pursue acting, told People magazine. “I don’t love sitting in my trailer waiting for lighting and everything else, I just don’t. And I don’t love being away from my family all those hours. So I was able to say, that’s not my first priority anymore.”
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Garth admitted it’s been “really hard” to say no to certain projects because people get “used to giving the people what they want and making the money and saying yes to everything.”
“You just reach a point where you’re like, life is too short to do something that I don’t fully love,” she said.
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The actress and mom of three told the outlet she “really was trying to figure out my next move” ahead of her 50th birthday in 2022. “I wasn’t sure what I was doing for a living anymore.”
“Turning 50’s a big deal to the world, but it is really a big deal,” she said. “You start to look at things a little differently. You have a new clarity about what you want to do next [and] what you want to spend your precious time doing.”
“I was able, at least, to say, I don’t want to do this, this and this anymore,” she continued. “I want to focus on something else. And then, you have that clarity within yourself to believe it.”
“I decided that I would like to focus on trying to help people or spread some positivity with whatever I do. That’s the message behind the brand, Me by Jennie Garth, and the ‘I Choose Me’ podcast. It’s all about trying to help people.”
Garth’s memoir “I Choose Me: Chasing Joy, Finding Purpose & Embracing Reinvention” is out now.
