Je’niece McCullough, Daughter of the late legendary Bernie Mac Stopped by the “Can We Talk?” Podcast and weighed in on a discussion about healing parental wounds.
We are days away from the 13th anniversary of Bernie Mac’s death and in the ” Can We Talk” relationship podcast she shared that it is important that we understand that celebrities are not exempt from making mistakes.
They are human as well. She also said her father parented with rage and frustration which lead her to ‘walk on eggshells’ in her own marriage.
“If he was happy, we were happy.”
Je’Niece describes herself as an introspective person and she journaled as a child religiously to figure things out emotionally and to determine the source of certain emotions she was feeling.
She would often reassess her emotions by going back and reading past posts in her journal to see how far she had come emotionally.
In her segment, she shared that for a long time she was unsure of whether she wanted to be a mom, and if she did she was adamant that she didn’t want to make the same mistakes her parents did when she was a child.
She said she was very angry with her father and found herself struggling with moving forward with her own family without resolving some of the anger she was feeling towards him.
She recalls him calling her ‘weak’ and ‘soft’, chastising her for not fighting back at school.
After finally deciding to start a family herself she knew she was ready to take the first steps towards healing and wrote her father a letter detailing how she felt.
Whether he read the letter or not she saw this action as her first step towards some level of emotional resolve.
She then went on a 7 day fast, and during her fast, she realized that he will never be the version of the father she wanted but he would be the grandfather to her first child.
(she found out she was pregnant on day five of her fast)
Je’Niece said she started to look at her dad as a ‘whole human being’ and that realization helped her to get past some of the anger she was feeling.
She admitted that she eventually found peace with her father before he died.
She continued to share – when she divorced her ex-husband, he actually hugged her and comforted her during the process and was a whole different guy as a grandfather to her daughter.
Je’Niece also shared that one of the things that were a turning point for him was that he didn’t think he would live to meet his grandchild.
He thought he wouldn’t live to see 50, so in his own way, he wanted to make things right as well.
In her story, she ended by saying that Bernie Mac actually apologized to her admitting that he was hard on her when she was growing up, and said, he was trying to make her better for the world but may have messed up.
She shared that all she ever wanted was to know that he could actually love her the way she wanted to be loved.
At the time of Bernie’s passing, they had evolved so much from father-daughter to friends, and she had the closure she needed.
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This podcast was amazing, watch the entire thing below:
