The Bachelor star Demi Burnett has always been open about her personal life, but now she’s opened up about her complicated childhood as well.
While appearing on the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast (hosted by former Bachelor Nation stars Ben Higgins and Ashley Iaconetti), Demi spoke about her unstable relationship with her mother, who has been in and out of prison since she was a kid.
She explained,
“My childhood was interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever really talked about this. I grew up with a single dad, my mom moved away. My dad always took care of us. He was an amazing father. My mom was somewhere out there.”
She added,
“It was never stable. Like, we never knew when we were going to see her. We never knew what was going on with her. She was messed up on drugs, messed up with men.”
Demi was pretty young when her mother went to prison for the first time. Her father tried to protect her and didn’t exactly tell her what was going on at the time. She recalled,
“You know, parents want to protect you and that kind of information when you’re a kid. And especially me, I was this super adorable little blonde girl running around and I think the last thing they wanted to tell me was your mom’s going to prison. So it was some time whenever I was younger. Like, I didn’t see her for a while and I didn’t know why.”
According to public record, Demi’s mom Tina Jean Jordan was arrested in 2007 for embezzlement, grand theft, forgery, and a few other things. Demi would have been about 12 at the time.
Her mom went back to prison when Demi was 21 or 22 and got out around the time of the filming of The Bachelor (we even got to see Demi talk to her mom on the phone while on the show). She’s since gone back to prison for a third time for “violating probation or failing a drug test or something,” according to Demi. She’s supposed to be out in May 2020.
If you ask her, Demi will be the first to admit that her relationship with her mother definitely affected her growing up.
“Not having that nurture, it definitely made me a bit harder. I’m a little bit colder.”
She added that she definitely has “mommy issues” and said,
“Having so much love for this woman and you look up to her so much and you want her to love you as much as you love her and chasing her — it hurt. It hurt bad. I used to cry as a kid.”
Despite everything, it’s clear that Demi still loves her mother deeply. She spoke about what little time she did have with her mother as a child fondly, saying that she was always “really sweet” to her and her brother.
Nowadays, Demi is just grateful she had such a strong parent in her father, who she credits with giving her a stable environment growing up. She calls him her “rockstar.”
Since leaving The Bachelor and Bachelor in Paradise, Demi Burnett has launched a sex-positive clothing collaboration with The Laundry Room and a podcast called Big Demi Energy, which you can listen to on Apple and Spotify.
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